Wanting to end the war as soon as possible, without an invasion of Japan—which was believed would result in half a million dead Americans—not dropping the atomic bomb on civilians as a possible shortcut would have seemed a real missed opportunity. And moral boundaries? They had long disappeared—at least since the incineration of Tokyo, five months before Hiroshima.
Nothing that changes the course of history, as a rule, falls from the sky. Not even the atomic bomb. Everything is thoroughly and meticulously prepared, leaving little room for the workings of chance. The book you’re about to read a review of (Overy, Richard. 2025. Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 224) testifies to this. It’s not a book about Oppenheimer and Los Alamos or the making of the atomic bomb, but about everything that rained down on Japan—including its surrender.
The story begins at the time of the start of the air war against Germany, when American and British airmen, as well as the politicians who supported them, differed in strategy. Americans bombed Germany during the day, aiming to precisely hit selected military-industrial targets. The British bombed at night, without aiming, using incendiary bombs across cities—carpet bombing, mostly affecting civilians. This approach was applied to Hamburg, unmissable Berlin, and finally Dresden. American airmen gritted their teeth and morally objected—we don’t bomb civilians! And then, less than a month after the burning of Dresden, it was they who attacked Tokyo following the (refined) British recipe, with even more effective incendiary bombs, leveling much of the city and killing around 100,000 people in one night. Radiation aside, no single attack ever caused so many casualties.
Where did this shift come from? The author points to three main reasons. The first was the failure of the U.S. Air Force to make precision bombing truly precise. Weather conditions over Japan were unlike those over Germany. The weather often changed over the island, and the winds were stronger. The second was the demonization of the Japanese—the “yellow race”—successfully instilled in the American public. Admittedly, Japan’s treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor and other atrocities during the brutal Pacific War contributed to that perception. In short, to the American public, Japanese civilians were not really civilians—so anything was permitted. The third reason was the desire of U.S. airmen to be the ones, and not the Navy or the Army (of which they were still a part), to win the war against Japan, so they could leverage that achievement to become an independent branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.
And what better way to achieve that than by firebombing Japanese cities and killing their inhabitants—perhaps even triggering an internal rebellion—that would force Japan to surrender. On this last point, they weren’t entirely wrong.
The author notes that the Japanese emperor, after visiting the ruined, flattened Tokyo, began to consider surrender—referred to in Japanese as a “termination of the war.” It turned out that the emperor was the key figure in making that decision.
After Tokyo was bombed on the night of March 9–10, 1945, the series of incendiary carpet bombings of Japanese cities continued relentlessly. From the attackers’ point of view, it was a string of successes—more and more cities leveled, more and more civilians killed. Post-war American literature often claimed that killing civilians was unavoidable, since supposedly much of Japan’s war production was located in small workshops within residential neighborhoods, often even inside homes. Thus, precision bombing was not feasible; only carpet bombing would work. The author mentions that there were intelligence reports during the war supporting this layout of facilities, and these were certainly considered when making military decisions. However, the responsible U.S. body for assessing the effects of bombing, after the war, conducted a detailed review of all available evidence on the ground and found very little truth in those intelligence reports. Unfortunately, historiography still cites those reports more often than it warns that they were wrong.
So why were those bombings so “successful” from the attackers’ perspective? Simply put, they were extremely well-prepared. Until 1945, American airmen didn’t all agree with carpet bombing—but they were certainly preparing for it. They exchanged operational experience with the British, conducted joint experiments on test ranges, and later built two testing sites in the U.S. that replicated the typical buildings of German and Japanese cities. There they studied how to set them ablaze most effectively and create firestorms. The sites were even chosen in areas with weather conditions similar to Japan’s. Everything was thought out. Of course—it had to go smoothly once they moved to carpet bombing civilians who weren’t civilians, but Japanese. They painstakingly worked on how to burn down an entire country.
And then came the atomic bombs. According to the author, their use should be viewed as a continuation of the relentless campaign to level Japanese cities. The message American airmen sent with atomic attacks was simply that one plane carrying one bomb could now destroy an entire city. Productivity had just increased—their determination to destroy however many Japanese cities it took to force surrender, and their willingness to go through with it, had already been demonstrated. Therefore, the author believes that the decision for Japan to surrender was driven by the unrelenting firebombing campaign, the use of atomic bombs, and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan—which occurred on the same day (Tokyo time) the second atomic bomb was dropped. All of this together led the emperor to impose the decision to surrender on the military elite.
Did the atomic bomb end the war? Was it necessary for Japan’s surrender? Based on everything written, it contributed—but most likely, it wasn’t indispensable. Still, the author argues, that’s not the real question. The real question is: why did those who made the decisions at the time believe it was necessary? Wanting to end the war quickly, without a costly invasion of Japan—expected to claim half a million American lives—not using the atomic bomb on civilians as a shortcut would have seemed a real shame. And moral boundaries? They had long disappeared—at least since the scorched earth of Tokyo, five months before Hiroshima.
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