The Downfall of Imperial Japan

CHAPTER 14 · FEB–SEP 1945 · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

By 1945 Japan is beaten by every measure except the one that matters: it will not surrender. The blockade has cut imports to a trickle; B-29s from the Marianas burn the wooden cities — the Tokyo firestorm of 9–10 March kills around 100,000 people in a single night, more than either atomic bomb. Iwo Jima costs 26,000 American casualties for eight square miles; Okinawa is worse — 12,000 Americans, 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians, with kamikazes crashing into the fleet offshore. American planners project an invasion of the Home Islands at hundreds of thousands of

The turn: Hiroshima, 08:15, 6 August.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.