Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

An update to my post yesterday on the decision to drop the bomb on Japan. Glenn Reynolds' reader Josh Fagan writes:

I read Giangreco’s Hell to Pay recently. I believe it was you who linked to it a while back that made me aware of this book; and what a good book it is. It thoroughly details what it would have taken to invade the jap home islands, and left me wondering whether we could have actually ever forced them to surrender without the additional shock to their regime of using the few atom bombs we had in our arsenal against them.



Maybe give it another plug. This book certainly counters the pervasive anti-American narrative under which we exist.

And that anti-American narrative is powerful, as I've experienced with my students. It gets quite emotional even, I think from the extreme frustration some have in resisting a rational explanation to why we dropped the bomb. In any case, I hadn't heard of the book and I'm putting on my list for birthday presents.