BLURBS

Violence, heroism, suspense and horror — The Fall of Japan is a hypnotic narrative with all the elements of a thriller, a masterly reconstruction of the last months of the Pacific War, from a few weeks before the dropping of the first nuclear bomb to the formal surrender on September 2nd, 1945.
William Craig explores the personalities of the key figures involved. Men like Admiral Takijiro Onishi, desperate strategist, as he launches onslaughts of kamikaze — air suicide squadrons — on the advancing US navy; General Curtis Lemay whose revolutionary low-flying fire-bomb attacks made half Tokyo a funeral pyre; Yoshiro Fujimura and the mysterious Dr Hack, highly unofficial plotters for peace; and the gentle Emperor Hirohito who bravely defied the military fanatics who
preferred national hara-kiri to surrender on any terms.
Japanese intelligence anticipated almost every American move, except the dropping of the A-bombs, and here is the first close-up account of the Nagasaki raid. The author also recreates a series of little-known dramas, comic, fearful and touching by turns, such as the US pilot who saves his head by lying to the Japanese about the A-bomb; the vindictive murder of US prisoners by Japanese officers after the truce, and the bizarre adventures of the Overseas Special Service men parachuted into occupied China to rescue stranded allies.
Drawing upon a mass of diaries, memoirs and official documents, many of them newly come to light, combined with numerous personal interviews, William Craig has written an authoritative, intensely dramatic piece of living history.

'William Craig has described the most violent, shock-filled and melancholy chapter in human history ... he has a vivid imagination, a clean style, an intense feeling for people, diligence in research and, most astonishing of all, exactitude and perspective in dealing with military operations, bureaucratic tangles and technical problems. . . . It is a measure of Craig's talent as researcher and writer that the description of this pivotal event of the century reads like something new and is more suspenseful than any other chronicle. . . . Craig's interpretation seems to be as authoritative as it is sensational. . . . "The Fall of Japan" is virtually faultless.'
New York Times Book Review

CONTENTS

Prologue
1 The Tactics of Despair
2 Meetinghouse
3 The Diplomacy of Defeat
4 The Project
5 The Little Boy
6 The Genie
7 The Air-Raid Shelter
8 Reaction in Washington
9 August 11—The Conspiracy Begins
10 August 12—Day of Crisis
11 The Mounting Peril
12 August 14—The Final Word
13 The Rebellion
14 Peace on Earth
15 The Emperor Speaks
16 Delayed Reactions
17 An Order From MacArthur
18 Violent Interlude
19 Lazarus
20 The Enemy Lands
21 "These Proceedings Are Closed"
22 The Last Recourse
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes and Sources
Selected Bibliography
Indexes

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Photograph of the painting by Japanese artist Shirikawa which commemorates the meeting in the Emperor's underground shelter where the surrender of Japan was decided upon
2. Admiral Takijiro Onishi
3. Premier Kantaro Suzuki
4. General Korechika Anam
5. Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai
6. General Yoshijiro Umezu
7. Admiral Soemu Toyoda
8. Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma
9. Cabinet Secretary Hizatsune Sakomizu Map showing the route of the atomic bomb planes (The Azimuthal Equidistant projection is used)
10. Rebellious Japanese army officers : Lieutenant Colonel Masahiko Takeshita; Major Hidemasa Koga; Major Kenji Hatanaka;
11. General Takeshi Mori
12. Mamoru Shigemitsu, followed by General Umezu, on deck of U.S.S. Missouri
13. General Umezu surrenders the Imperial Japanese Army to the enemy
14. General Tomoyuki Yamashita surrounded by his accusers in Manila
15. Field Marshal Sugiyama and his wife
16. General Hideki Tojo near death after attempted suicide