Michael: Most of us think we know how World War II ended: America dropped the bomb, Japan surrendered. End of story. But what if the single deadliest air raid of the entire war wasn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki? And what if the man who ordered the bomb never lost a night's sleep over it? Kevin: Wait, not Hiroshima? What was it then? And no regret? That's a heavy claim. Michael: Exactly. It was the firebombing of Tokyo, a raid that killed over 100,000 people in one night. And that's the brutal, complex world we're diving into today with Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan. Kevin: Ah, part of their massively popular but also very controversial Killing series. I've heard these books are page-turners but also stir up a lot of debate. Michael: They certainly do. And O'Reilly has a personal connection here; his own father was a sailor in the Pacific and firmly believed the atomic bombs saved his life by preventing an invasion. That perspective heavily shapes the book's narrative. Kevin: A shaped narrative. That's a good way to put it. Because to even begin to understand the bomb, the book argues you have to understand what came before it. And it paints a picture of a war that was getting more, not less, brutal as it neared its end.

Michael: Absolutely. The authors argue you can't judge the bomb in a vacuum. You have to look at battles like Peleliu in late 1944. It was supposed to be a 'quickie,' a four-day battle at most, according to the American commander. It turned into a two-month meat grinder. Kevin: Why was it so much worse than expected? Michael: Because the Japanese changed their strategy. Instead of defending the beaches, they retreated inland. The book describes how Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the Japanese commander, turned the island's coral ridges into a fortress. As one marine famously said, "The Japs weren’t on the island, they were in the island." They had created a network of over 500 interconnected caves, complete with sliding steel doors and artillery positions. Kevin: Wow. So it wasn't a battle, it was an excavation. Michael: A bloody one. It took, on average, 1,500 rounds of ammunition to kill a single Japanese soldier on Peleliu. The American forces were fighting an enemy that was literally underground, popping out for ambushes and then disappearing back into the rock. Kevin: And this is where the book's portrayal of the Japanese military ethos, the Bushido code, comes in. They were ordered, "Do not survive in shame as a prisoner. Die, to ensure that you do not leave ignominy behind you." Was it really that absolute? Michael: For the military, it was. The book is filled with chilling examples. On Peleliu, a Japanese soldier throws a grenade into a group of Marines. Corporal Lewis Bausell, without a moment's hesitation, dives on it to save his squad. He's posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. On the other side, you have Colonel Nakagawa, at the end of the battle, burning his regimental colors and then committing ritual suicide rather than being captured. It was a war of annihilation. Kevin: That’s horrifying. So the American calculus becomes: if they fight this hard for a tiny, strategically questionable island like Peleliu, what would an invasion of Japan itself look like? Michael: Exactly. The book lays out the numbers. After the brutal battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which were even bloodier, military planners were preparing for Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands. General MacArthur's staff was estimating up to a million American casualties in the first few months alone. Kevin: A million casualties. That's a staggering number. It completely reframes the context for the decisions that followed. Michael: It does. The book makes the case that American leaders were facing a choice between two horrific options: a prolonged, bloody invasion with unthinkable losses on both sides, or something else. Something new and terrible.

Michael: And that terrifying calculus lands on the desk of a man who was never supposed to be president: Harry Truman. The book portrays him as this plain-spoken guy from Missouri, a former farmer and haberdasher who considered himself a "political eunuch" as Vice President. Then, Roosevelt dies, and on April 12, 1945, Truman is suddenly the most powerful man in the world. Kevin: And he inherits the biggest secret in the world. He had no idea the Manhattan Project even existed, right? Michael: None whatsoever. Just twelve days into his presidency, he's pulled into a meeting and told, "Within four months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city." Imagine being in his shoes. Kevin: I can't. And at the head of this project, you have this completely different figure: J. Robert Oppenheimer. The book describes him as this brilliant, tormented, chain-smoking genius. How on earth did a guy like that get chosen to lead a top-secret military project? Michael: That's the paradox. He had zero management experience, he was a theoretical physicist. And the FBI was deeply suspicious of his past communist associations. His wife, his brother, his former fiancée—all had deep ties to the party. But General Leslie Groves, the military head of the project, saw his genius. Groves famously said Oppenheimer could talk to you about anything... except sports. He knew Oppenheimer was the only one who could wrangle all these brilliant, egotistical scientists at Los Alamos. Kevin: And the book really captures the atmosphere of that place, Los Alamos. This secret city in the New Mexico desert, where the world's brightest minds were racing to build this weapon. Michael: It was a pressure cooker. The book details the scene at the Trinity test, the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb. The weather is terrible, there's a lightning storm, and they're worried the test will be a dud. Oppenheimer is gaunt, down to 116 pounds, just pacing and chain-smoking. Kevin: And when it finally goes off? Michael: The descriptions are apocalyptic. A light "ten times more brilliant than the sun." The steel tower vaporized. The desert sand melted into green glass. And Oppenheimer, watching this, famously recalls a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He knew exactly what he had unleashed. Kevin: So you have this untested president and this haunted scientist. When Truman gets the news at the Potsdam Conference that the test was a success, what does he do? Michael: He feels the historical weight. He writes in his journal, "It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark." But the book makes it clear his primary concern was brutally pragmatic: ending the war and saving American lives. He saw this new power not as a moral question, but as a tool to force a surrender that seemed impossible to achieve otherwise.

Michael: Which brings us to the final, most difficult part of the story: the use of the bomb. The book gives a minute-by-minute account of the Enola Gay's flight to Hiroshima. It's incredibly tense. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot, is calm, focused. The crew knows they're carrying something special, the "gimmick," but only a few know its true nature. Kevin: And then, at 8:15 AM on August 6th, 1945, they drop "Little Boy." The book doesn't pull punches describing the aftermath, does it? Michael: Not at all. It's horrific. It describes people vaporized instantly, leaving only their shadows burned onto walls. It tells the story of survivors with their skin melting off, of the "black rain" of radioactive fallout, of a city reduced to rubble in seconds. It's the stuff of nightmares. Kevin: And this is where the book faces its harshest criticism. Many reviewers have called it insensitive, that it juxtaposes the crew's relief with the horror on the ground without enough empathy. It frames the bomb as a necessary evil, but many historians argue Japan was already on the verge of surrender, especially with the Soviets about to invade Manchuria. Does the book address that counter-argument? Michael: It does, but from its own distinct viewpoint. The authors point out that even after Hiroshima was destroyed, the Japanese Supreme Council was deadlocked. The military faction still wanted to fight on, believing in a final, glorious battle on home soil. They present Truman's decision to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki as a direct response to that defiance. Kevin: So the book’s argument is that it took two bombs, and the Soviet invasion, to finally break the stalemate. Michael: Precisely. The book's legacy, and why it's so polarizing, is that it forces this debate. It doesn't present the decision as easy, but it does present it as necessary. Was it a strategic masterstroke that saved millions of lives that would have been lost in an invasion? Or was it, as some critics claim, an unnecessary atrocity, a war crime committed against a nation that was already beaten? Kevin: And the book doesn't give you an easy answer, even if the authors have a clear perspective. It lays out the facts as they see them and leaves the final judgment to the reader.

Michael: Exactly. The core of our podcast today is really an exploration of the brutal calculus of total war. Killing the Rising Sun doesn't shy away from the horror, but it consistently frames that horror within a narrative of necessity. It argues that in the face of an enemy culture that viewed surrender as the ultimate dishonor, a terrible weapon was used to prevent an even more terrible outcome—a full-scale invasion that would have dwarfed the death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Kevin: It's a powerful and deeply unsettling argument. It really makes you grapple with the lines we draw in wartime. The book quotes President Truman, years later, telling the pilot Paul Tibbets, "You're damn right you did [what you were told]. And I'm the guy who sent you." He took full responsibility. It makes you ask yourself: faced with the same intelligence, the same casualty estimates, the same unending bloodshed... what would you have done? Michael: A question with no easy answer. And it's a question that echoes through history, from the halls of power to the families, like O'Reilly's, who believe their very existence is owed to that decision. We'd love to hear what you think. Join the conversation on our social channels and share your perspective on this complex piece of history. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.