Hiroshima Nagasaki

June 2, 2014
Australian journalist Ham (Sandakan) re-examines the atomic attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, confronting the popularly held belief that the nuclear attacks were justified because they ended WWII in the Pacific without a costly invasion of Japan’s home islands. Ham’s central argument is that such an invasion would not have occurred because the American leadership had deemed it too costly in potential U.S. casualties. Ham backs up his assertion by pointing out that both American and Japanese commands were well aware that Japan was already defeated by the summer of 1945 through the combined effects of naval blockade and conventional air bombardment. He counters the common justification for the atomic attacks by proposing that the strongest influence for the attacks was the threat of Russia entering the Pacific War and dominating Asia after the war. An absorbing and thoroughly researched work, it is a must-read for those interested in the moral aspects of total war and military strategy in general. Ham’s work will be cited as an important addition to a debate that continues 70 years after the event.

July 15, 2014
A provocative look at the closing days of the Japanese Empire and the long shadow cast ever after by the atomic bomb.The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not have to happen: Thus, in a nutshell, is Sunday Times Australia correspondent Ham's (1913: The Eve of War, 2013, etc.) position, as distinct from that of many authors and historians who have insisted that the United States would have suffered more than 1 million casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainland. Ham's lines of argument introduce several profitable data points: For one thing, the emperor seemed inclined to peace even as the peace faction within his government grew with the dawning realization of the inevitability of defeat. For another thing, the destruction of the two cities, which were not of primary military value, was as much a signal to Joseph Stalin that that is what awaited his country as it was an effort to force the peace with Japan. Ham also looks at pregnant counterfactuals: What if Harry Truman had taken Henry Stimson's suggestion and approached the Soviets as partners, committing with the other Allies not to use atomic weapons without the consent of all involved? Of a piece with W.G. Sebald in the matter of the bombing of Dresden and other German cities, Ham argues persuasively that the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented but two episodes in an all-out "process of deliberate civilian annihilation"-a process, interestingly, that found many critics in American churches who "quietly registered their Christian disapproval of the mass killing of noncombatants."A valuable contribution to the literature of World War II that asks its readers to rethink much of what they've been taught about America's just cause.

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Starred review from May 15, 2014
In 1945, in the midst of secrecy about the development of the atomic bomb and ongoing debates over the most efficient way to end the war with Japan, American leaders made the fateful decision to launch nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings certainly stopped the war and destroyed its targeted cities, killing more than 100,000 people, but had they been necessary? Ham presents a forceful argument that the bombing was excessive and unjustified. Alternate chapters recount the building tension toward the awful decision by the Allies and the day-to-day lives of starving Japanese caught between their aggressive emperor and military and sure retaliation. In this sweeping and comprehensive history, Ham details the geopolitical considerations and huge egos behind evolving theories of warfare, the burgeoning killing technology of biological and nuclear war on the part of the Japanese and the Allies as well as the shameful tactic of dehumanizing the Japanese enemy. But most powerful are the eyewitness accounts of 80 survivors, ordinary people caught up in the events of war, who felt the terrible destruction of a nuclear blast and its aftermath of radiation sickness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)