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Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

Average customer rating:

Yet more praise
This book should be required reading for all Americans and Japanese
The Definitive Account!
Not as impressed as other reviewers
Excellent, but misses the whole point

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Richard B. Frank
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0141001461

Amazon.com

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire is an impeccably written analysis of the last months of the Pacific War and the unfolding of the American air campaign over Japan. The story opens with a searing description of the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945, which caused more deaths than the atom bomb in Hiroshima. Within five months, Japan's economy was collapsing and the country faced catastrophic starvation. Richard B. Frank coolly analyzes different scenarios for ending the war (Russia waited in the wings). Frank concludes that the emperor and the Japanese military were far from ready to surrender, and that the decision to use the atom bomb probably saved millions of lives, not only Allied but Japanese and other Asian lives, also--perhaps a hundred thousand Chinese were dying each month under Japanese occupation. The effects of the bomb worked on many levels, even lending faces to the Japanese militarists, who could convince themselves that they were defeated not by a lack of spiritual power but by superior science. Densely documented, intelligently argued, Downfall recreates the end of the war from the viewpoints of the principals, giving the book an unusual immediacy. A highly valuable insight into the disintegration of the Japanese Empire, one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II. --John Stevenson

Book Description

In a riveting narrative that includes information from newly declassified documents, acclaimed historian Richard B. Frank gives a scrupulously detailed explanation of the critical months leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Frank explains how American leaders learned in the summer of 1945 that their alternate strategy to end the war by invasion had been shattered by the massive Japanese buildup on Kyushu, and that intercepted diplomatic documents also revealed the dismal prospects of negotiation. Here also, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of how Japan's leaders were willing to risk complete annihilation to preserve the nation's existing order. Frank's comprehensive account demolishes long-standing myths with the stark realities of this great historical controversy.

Customer Reviews:

Yet more praise.......2007-04-10

I was so fascinated by this book that I read all the previous reviews. I only want to add my unlimited praise and to add a few thoughts and stories...
I was as unaware as anybody of the details of the end of the Pacific war until I met a fellow (Bill Lear, son of "the" Bill Lear) who was on a troop ship to Olympic. He said the officers told them that they all were going to die. After that the book was a natural, and I couldn`t have chosen better.
In my present line, I am in Japan a lot. If there is any one thing that makes Frank`s book fascinating, it is the detailed look at the inner workings of that eastern mind in the government and military leaders, and the resulting confusion for their hapless diplomats. In some cases it is not so radical - we Americans still get huffy about Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese were following a pretty basic tenet of war. Frank didn`t really go to a lot of trouble to remind us that the "unfathonable" Asian way of seeing things is normal to them. Perhaps it isn`t necessary. Any Japanese soldier who sees dying for his emperor/country as his highest honor will tend to see anyone who surrenders or is beaten before he can sacrifice himself, as the lowest sort of worm, not worthy of bayonet practice let alone a bowl of rice. Just an example, but with a point. Frank managed to state facts, back them up with numbers and intel documents and let it go at that. The case builds easily in the reader`s mind that this was a terrible war and that the allies/Americans were in a real conundrum about how to end it. Which brings up the sadly fascinating fact that the very thing that the allies demanded, as a way of keeping "these fascist and militarist governments from starting a world war every few years", was unconditional surrender, the very thing the Japanese couldn`t accept.
One thing which makes a really great book is that it opens discussion on the topic rather than, say, on the writer`s vocabulary. By that measure, this is one of the best. Please indulge me...
I have been to the peace museum in Hiroshima. It is very moving and also very evenhanded. It shows the little uniforms of the school kids killed - they were in town that day to help build firebreaks. It also has the army order on the wall which commanded that when the invasion came, all subjects were to show up on the beaches with pitchforks, sticks or any other weapon that came to hand. Hiroshima, by the way (to answer a previous comment) was the headquarters of the 5th Japanese Army, in charge of Japan and Korea (where they'd been since 1920, only getting to Manchuria in 1931, re another comment)It was also a recruit center, and a navy shipyard, in other words not exactly non-military.
My Dad flew in B-29s. He was a tough old farm boy, but once he met an army buddy who had also `been there` That`s the only time I saw him cry. I don`t think it`s wrong to lament the terrible things humans are capable of doing to each other and to make them stop; a basic about war, by the way. The fact that millions of innocents had died and were likely to keep dying in this war would make any way of stopping it look pretty good, ie, "moral". I personally would say, you can`t argue with success. The Japanese had been fighting since at least 1920. Days after the bomb, it was over. I`m in the camp of "the Russians had nothing to do with it." I want to thank Mr. Frank for explaning readably and in detail, how that came about.
Finally a note from my Mom... The war council was correct in believing that Americans were sick of the war (Incorrect in their eastern way in seeing Potsdam as weakness). They were beaten but wouldn`t quit. If you had a family member in the service, you put a red star in your window, and if they were killed, you changed it to a gold star. There were plenty of houses with two gold stars in the window. People in 1945 wanted the war to end and wanted the boys home. Imagine you are Truman, and a wife/mother says to you, "You mean to tell me you had the means to end this war the day before my boy was killed, and you didn`t do it?"
Read this book.

This book should be required reading for all Americans and Japanese.......2007-03-26

It is easy today, with so much information out there about the horrors of atomic warfare, and so little remembrance of the actual history of the final stages of WWII, to be critical of the U.S. decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.

Sadly, as a result, most Japanese are taught today that they were merely the victims of overwhelming American might, rather than the aggressors and instigators of war, and even more sadly, we are confronted with the shameful specter of anti-nuke, anti-war, anti-history Americans pathetically apologizing to the Japanese, misquoting history, and blindly ignoring the real facts behind the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.

In this book, Richard Franks sets about methodically re-creating the historical context of the end stages of WWII. He addresses virtually every controversial claim, every possible scenario, in the decision process that led to the atomic bombing. Other reviewers have mentioned several points already, and so I present only a summary of the major controversies dealt with in this book:

1. Why was it necessary to drop two atomic bombs or to use them on civilians? - The U.S. was afraid that Japan would think that its supply of atomic bombs was limited (and in fact, production was limited, but was steadily growing), and wanted to demonstrate to Japan that it had the ability and willpower to completely annihilate Japan with a series of atomic bombs. As it turns out, the U.S. calculations were correct. After Hiroshima was bombed, Franks points out that there was a faction in the Japanese military that had enough knowledge of the difficulty of uranium separation to deny the possibility that the U.S. could have developed such a bomb or claimed that the U.S. would not be able to keep up the atomic bombing, and used these arguments to continue to hold out against surrender. Other Japanese military leaders hoped that world opinion would bar the U.S. from further use of the atomic bombs on civilians. That the Japanese military doubted the willpower of the U.S. to use atomic bombs against civilians is proof that a mere demonstration on some unpopulated target would have been useless. Dropping two atomic bombs thus served to vaporize all of the final delusions of these fanatic military leaders.

2. Wasn't Japan close to surrender already because of the massive firebombing of its cities? The U.S. had destroyed over 60 Japanese cities already, killing over 100,000 in one raid on Tokyo alone. However, while this caused enormous suffering for Japanese civilians, the military elite ruling Japan couldn't care less, and continued to hold out for a final land battle, intending to inflict enormous casualties on any U.S. invasion. Their calculation was that the U.S., a democracy with freedom of the press and freedom of speech that even then was extremely sensitive to casualties, could be forced to offer a negotiated surrender with better terms (see no. 5 below for more on this) instead of unconditional surrender. One thing that Franks does not emphasize enough is that subsequent firebombings after Tokyo killed far fewer people per raid, as the Japanese learned how to deal with the firebombing better. A significant factor in the success of the firebombing was the nature of the highly flammable wooden cities of Japan. However, neither firebombing nor the inaccurate conventional bombing of that era would have had much impact on the dispersed and hidden armed forces of the Ketsu-Go operation (the Japanese plan for a massive suicidal countering of an American invasion on the island of Kyushu). Ketsu-Go versus the atomic bomb would have been a completely different story. The general in charge of Ketsu-Go happened to have his headquarters in Hiroshima, and after surviving the atomic bombing and seeing its effects, he bluntly told Hirohito that he could not be sure anymore that his forces would be able to fend off an invasion. IMHO, it was this realization by the military that Ketsu-Go would fail in the face of the atomic bomb that was the key in forcing the military to accept defeat without an invasion. And it was this realization by Hirohito that the military would accept his "command" to accept unconditional surrender that encouraged this timid personality to finally step in and "command" surrender (Franks gives some more convoluted reasons that I think are less convincing. He does not emphasize enough that Hirohito had no legal authority at the time to force the military to do anything - Hirohito's power was entirely based on tradition, respect, and superstitious symbolism - and in fact the military fanatics had a history of assassinating advisors to Hirohito whenever it seemed that he was favoring a course of action that they did not like).

3. Weren't the estimated potential U.S. casualties in an invasion grossly inflated? Perhaps they were, but first of all, if you are an American and think that ANY number of dead American soldiers in an invasion of Japan would have been worth trading in return for not using the atomic bomb, then you need to have your citizenship revoked. And if you are Japanese, and believe that a U.S. invasion would have been preferable to atomic bombing, then you really don't understand the fanaticism of the military elite that was in control at the end of the war. At Saipan and Okinawa, the local Japanese citizenry had been recruited into the battles and had suffered enormous casualties. Even worse was being planned for an invasion of the Japanese homeland, with the entire civilian population given bamboo sticks and suicide bombs which they were expected to use against U.S. soldiers. Franks calculates that the civilian casualties in an invasion of Japan would have far exceeded what was suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, U.S. intelligence eventually revealed that preparations for Ketsu-Go were so extensive that chances for a successful invasion were becoming increasingly uncertain. American casualties would have almost certainly been enormous. While General MacArthur blithely swept all of that intelligence under the rug, and continued to insist on the original invasion plans, Admiral Nimitz was on the verge of going on the record opposing the invasion when the atomic bombs were dropped. This book makes clear that a U.S. invasion of Kyushu, led by the over-confident MacArthur, could have well been a complete disaster.

4. Wouldn't a blockade and continued bombing of Japan have forced a surrender? - Yes, but it would have taken a much longer period of time, at a minimum of several more months, and resulted in enormously greater loss of life to others besides U.S. soldiers. Franks points out that by attacking Japan's railway systems and vital coastal shipping, the U.S. could have easily shut down all food distribution in the country. However, again, because the Japanese warlords did not care about the suffering of the civilian population, it is likely in such a scenario that they would have held out for so long that Japanese deaths from starvation would have easily exceeded the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus there were also the vastly greater numbers of deaths that would have occurred in the countries that had been invaded by Japan, people who would have continued to die under a brutal occupation. There would also have been much greater numbers of deaths amongst Allied POWs. The numbers calculated by Franks are truly staggering, and make clear that atomic bombing to force a surrender was by far the least of all evils in terms of total numbers of dead people. Franks also recounts the massive atrocities committed by the Japanese in WWII. Yep, after you read these sections (the atrocities mentioned included dissecting and drilling holes into the brains of captured, living American airmen, among other niceties), you might also look more favorably upon atomic bombing Japan. Let's face it, this was a war without mercy, and the Japanese, who were merciless in their treatment of their enemies, had no right to expect any. Nevertheless, after the surrender, Japan did receive mercy, in the form of massive shipments of food from America to their starving civilians.

5. Wouldn't a negotiated surrender, as demanded by the military warlords, have been preferable to atomic bombing? No, first and foremost, up until the atomic bombings, the Japanese militarist faction simply refused to consider surrender under any conditions. They wanted an invasion and a chance at redemption of national honor with their Ketsu-Go operation. The peace faction's best efforts consisted of delusional hopes that Russia could somehow broker a negotiated settlement. Even AFTER both atomic bombs had been dropped, and Russia had declared war on Japan, the militarist faction continued to hold out briefly for a negotiated surrender with three additional terms besides maintenance of the emperor (which the peace faction also wanted): a short occupation by a minimal force, demobilization of Japanese troops by Japanese officers, and trying of war criminals by Japanese courts (Franks does not mention these details in his book - they are contained in another book "The Day Man Lost Hiroshima"). Acceptance of such conditions would have resulted in only a temporary cease-fire, much like the treaty of Versailles had been for WWI. It would not have removed the basic root causes that led Japan to attack East Asia and America - the institutions and ideology of an intensely nationalistic and fanatic military elite that put national honor and pride above everything else, including common sense. This bitter lesson from WWI, that the military elites and institutions of Germany and Japan needed to be completely eradicated in order to ensure lasting peace with those nations, was what caused Roosevelt to demand unconditional surrender. Roosevelt did not want the sacrifice of the lives of so many soldiers to be in vain, as it had been for WWI.

In summary, people critical of the atomic bombing of Japan simply fail to grasp just how difficult it was at that time for the U.S. and the peace faction in Japan to force an increasingly delusional military elite that was fanatically committed to national honor and pride to give up all of their institutions of power without first completely immolating their country. Read this book, read it carefully, and you WILL understand.

The Definitive Account!.......2007-01-21

With regards to the dropping of the atomic bombs, this is the finest book I have ever read. Frank uncovers new evidence to illustrate that initial casualty figures given to Truman were based on a handful of Japanese defenders on the island of Kyushu. In reality, there were twice the amount of defenders willing to die for their emperor. Thus, Frank proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the bombs WERE needed in order to save THOUSANDS of American lives. Additionally, he proves with great clarity that the decision to drop the bombs ultimately saved thousands of Japanese lives as well. With this wonderfully well-researched piece of scholarship, Frank destroys Gar Alperovitz's arguement that Truman dropped the bombs in order to quell the emerging threat of Soviet communism. A must-read for anyone seriously researching the decision to drop the atomic bombs!!

Not as impressed as other reviewers.......2006-12-14

This is a mediocre summary of the rise of Japan and the American response during world war 2. The description of the war is not very well written but some new perspectives were added that were not available in other texts. While some of the thoughts are very inspiring the writing was not good enough to hold my interest and it was a struggle at times to get through the whole book.

Excellent, but misses the whole point.......2006-10-21

The issue is not whether Japan was about to surrender,
yet the US, for reasons of its own, opted to use the bombs.

Nor is the issue whether Japan, wanting to or not,
would - no matter what - have had to surrender within a few months,
if only the US had opted to blockade, not invade,
the home islands.

For a host of reasons I agree the bombs had to be used
for the simple reason we had to effect a surrender as soon as possible.

The real issue is whether the US needed / should have used those bombs,
without warning, on two large civilian targets (Give me a break,
if Hiroshima or Nagasaki were in any way military targets,
then every place in Japan was also).

Why was not the first bomb instead dropped into Tokyo harbor?
Or used just to knock the top off of Mt. Fuji?

Many, many fewer casualties, yet providing every bit as much shock and awe.

I think the second bomb would nonetheless had to have been dropped
on a city, if only to make the Japanese realize the Allies meant business.

But even then, a warning could / should have been broadcast
to all six or so possible target cities, saying "Leave at once or be incinerated"
because a bomb like that just used will be dropped.

Scholars need to stop attacking straw men,
and start addressing the real issues.

Average customer rating:

Downfall:The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Richard B. Frank
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HEQ9Y0

Average customer rating:

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.
Richard B. Frank
Manufacturer: 0
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IBYVJM

Average customer rating:

Downfall : The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Richard B. Frank
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJ3YBO

Average customer rating:

Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
Richard B. Frank
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N7FKHS

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