Overview

With the development of the B-29 “Superfortress” in summer 1944, strategic bombing, a central component of the Allied war effort against Germany, arrived in the Pacific theater. In 1945 Japan experienced the three most deadly bombing attacks of the war. The firebombing of Tokyo in March burned the city’s most densely populated sector, killed some 85,000 residents, and left more than one million homeless. The attack was part of a months-long campaign of incendiary bombing that destroyed almost two-thirds of Japan’s cities. The two atomic blasts in August killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of them civilians. The bombing brought a destabilizing devastation that, combined with a declaration of war by the Soviet Union, induced Japan, as they put it, to terminate the war. Many at the time and since have credited American air power, and especially the two atomic bombs, with Japan’s surrender. But Richard Overy tells a different, more dimensional story. Drawing on his expertise on the war and its bombing campaigns, he delivers a precise recounting of these aerial attacks, and a balanced, informed assessment of how and why they occurred. Overy is astute on the Allied decision-making, and, notably, integrates the Japanese leadership as well. He ably navigates the dramatic endgame of the war, which featured factional infighting within the Japanese cabinet, a scramble by American officials to formulate an acceptable version of “unconditional surrender,” and the crucial role played by the emperor, Hirohito. The atomic bombing emerges as impactful but not decisive in this rich, multilayered history

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Reviews

A fresh and persuasive outlook on one of the great moral crossroads in world history.-- ""Kirkus Reviews"" Tight and balanced...Rain of Ruin is a compact, first-rate history of one of World War II's great tragedies.--Jonathan W. Jordan ""Wall Street Journal""

""A first-rate history of one of World War II’s great tragedies."" -- Jonathan W. Jordan - Wall Street Journal ""Quietly devastating.… A sombre reminder that the border between civilisation and savagery is wafer-thin."" -- Philip Snow - Literary Review ""An excellent short book.… Rain of Ruin makes clear…that the strategy of mass murder by bombs [is] not just immoral but hardly ever effective."" -- Ian Buruma - Spectator ""Rain of Ruin, a new study by war expert Richard Overy, decisively shows that the atomic bombs didn’t force the Japanese emperor’s hand.… His brief yet nuanced account draws on a wealth of historical scholarship down the decades, on Allied and Japanese political and strategic thinking…a compelling reconstruction of how morality fares amid total war."" -- Christopher Harding - Telegraph ""[A] chaff-clearing book about the last days of the war in the Pacific.… Among the topics Overy discusses with exemplary clarity are the moves already afoot within Japan to bring the war to an end and whether the decision to drop the atomic bombs was really meant as a signal to the Soviet Union."" -- Michael Prodger - New Statesman ""[Rain of Ruin] give[s] a greater profile to the firebombing campaign, placing it alongside the atom bombs, as well as presenting the layered problem facing the Americans in their desire to bring a final end to the war. This is an important story, not least because it had consequences that went beyond 1945."" -- Ian Rapley - Asian Review of Books ""The book is short, but that belies its weight and seriousness, as it asks how the most devastating bombs in human history could be used on two populous cities. Overy’s contribution is to place the atomic bombs in two contexts: first, the context of strategic bombing more widely; and second, in our changing understanding of the Japanese as well as the American side of the end of the Second World War in Asia."" -- Rana Mitter - Times Literary Supplement ""Unless particularly well versed in the events described here, this book is likely to push the reader off balance. The story of how the American bombing of Japan came about, why it escalated, and Japan’s response, is often surprising.… Overy’s slim yet comprehensive account makes for essential reading."" -- Andrew Mulholland - Past ""A fresh and persuasive outlook on one of the great moral crossroads in world history."" -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Richard Overy is the author of many outstanding histories of World War II, including Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan. His study of Hitler and Stalin, The Dictators, won the Wolfson History Prize. He lives in England and Italy.

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