Jeff Jellets's Reviews > Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath

”Radio Tokyo described Hiroshima as a city of death … peopled by [a] ghost parade, the living doomed to die of radioactive burns.”

For most of Hiroshima Nagasaki, author Paul Ham delivers a compelling account of the U.S. bombings of two Japanese cities at the close of World War II, ushering in the age of atomic energy and providing the first frost to the upcoming Cold War. The history is nicely done with Ham providing an engaging overview of the ‘top secret’ Manhattan Project and a cool minute-by-minute account of the actual airstrikes, balancing the cool military-mindedness of the mission with the pilots’ first pangs of moral consciousness about the terrible Pandora’s Box being opened. Vivid, hellish descriptions of the two bombs’ explosive power and unimaginable consequences make for a ghoulish tour de force as Ham wisely gives us both a ‘before-and-after’ of the two Japanese cities, peopling the metropolises with a number of Japanese citizens – many of whom were children at the time of the attack – who offer firsthand accounts of the bombs’ terrible effects and stamping the almost incomprehensive destruction with a shuddering human pathos.

Much of the book is therefore amazing, but it is also history with a slant as Ham roots around in the politics of the decision to drop the bomb in an attempt to myth-bust the rationale and justification for the attacks, putting the kibosh on the notion that the atomic bombings were at all necessary, were at all important in saving American lives, or had any actual impact on ending the war. Ham does a credible job of stacking the evidence for his point of view, but I found his argument ultimately unconvincing and heavily dependent on the ‘certainties of hindsight.’ Even assuming that everything Ham asserts is unequivocally correct, his perspective seems to depend upon U.S. leaders of the time also being aware (and certain) of the same facts as the historian … and that those in the ‘real-time’ of war were able to sift those same facts from all the other bits of information and rumor that permeate the fog of combat. My guess is ‘certainty’ was much harder to come by during the War and that the simpler explanation – that U.S. leaders were ready to put any option on the table to avoid a ground war in Japan and end the conflict as quickly as possible to avoid even the slight risk of greater American causualties – is a more likely reality. Maybe the atomic bombings were ultimately unnecessary – as Ham asserts – but I don’t think that the U.S. brass knew that with any certainty at the time.

Ham’s theories aside, I usually don’t capsize a book just because I can’t entirely get on board with the writer’s perspective – especially when a book is admittedly great elsewhere – but Ham fairly turns his perspective into a bludgeon halfway through the narrative. After zipping through the first 300 pages, things turned terribly tedious over the last hundred pages or so – which is a shame because there is certainly more amazing work as to be found as Ham captures the tragic lives of the hibakusha (bomb-affected people) with a voice that is both compelling an emotionally poignant. Sadly, even that feels over-powered by the screed of the final chapters.

Mixed emotions on whether to recommend this one. Compelling, but Ham’s urge to ‘make a point’ is over-sold and keeps this unquestionably important history from telling itself.