How America Vanquished WWII Japan
About 20 months ago, I began scouring my library for books set at the turn of the 19th century, books about such heroes as Teddy Roosevelt, Earnest Shackleton, and the Wright Brothers, among many others. I wasn’t sure if I’d put myself through the horrors of WWI before jumping ahead a few decades with a return to WWII era books, but I think I now have my answer.
While a book like American Caesar lies unread upon my shelf, and while my bookmark inside The Cartographer of No Man’s Land is probably starting to grow roots at page 40, I find myself dabbling in such books as Unbroken, Anne Frank’s Diary, and now this, Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard.
I’ve read these two latter authors before with their Killing series and have loved their work. Of the three I’d read before, I probably place them in this order from most favorite to least: Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Reagan. Where might Killing the Rising Sun fit into the list? I think it punches past the bottom two to land solidly in second place. Maybe third. But don’t think that means I hated it!
This book is essentially a brief biography of the A-bomb, and one of my favorite genres of books is exactly that, a “biography of things” and all the lives which the “thing” has impacted over time. I think of Henry Petrosky, whenever I think of a “biography of things”. [I know that’s not the correct word….can anyone tell me the official term for such a genre?]
The only problem with this particular biography of the A-bomb is that Dugard and O’Reilly share very little actual info about the A-bomb itself, instead preferring gaudy stories of Oppenheimer’s love interests over details about how the A-bomb even came about. It’s this penchant for such a side-story focus on key characters that actually gives the book its charm, of course, at least when the stories aren’t crude and unnecessary. At times it feels as if we’re plowing through the rough seas of WWII, and every white-capped peak is a new key character, and every trough is some tragic event that perpetuates the story of misery and terror that was WWII.
One of the key characters that enjoys plenty of attention is President Harry S. Truman. I have two massive volumes on Truman also lying dustily on my shelf (one by David McCullough and one by Margaret Truman), so getting this introduction to the President helps foreshadow what might come were I to crack those massive tomes open. Here I learned that Truman was a reluctant President, yet one whose sincerity endeared him to the public. He inherited the A-bomb, yet he also bore responsibility for its impact (at least that’s how I read it). President Harry S. Truman certainly was a unique man and one worth reading about, but I’ve got plenty of other biographies on my shelf that I’m sure I’ll hit before I ever get to these books.
I was looking forward to hearing something about Unbroken‘s Zamperini, but he never gets so much as a mention in this book. What does get a mention is literally everything else. It’s almost as if the authors wrote two books simultaneously—one that flows well (the text), and one that’s a hodgepodge of interesting facts (all those footnotes!). Don’t get me wrong, the footnotes were fascinating and enlightening. But I do recall reading somewhere that if you’ve got information you want your readers to know, find a way to put it in the text, because only lazy or arrogant authors use footnotes. I don’t know how true that is globally, but the footnotes certainly were a distraction for me in this book.
It’s not my place in this book review to get into the morality of the A-bomb. Murder is murder is murder. War is war is war. Sometimes the lines between the two, however, blur. My opinions on Capitol Punishment have morphed over the years, as I’ve gained a stronger discernment about Christ and the Old Testament, but these opinions haven’t yet extended to wartime acts, so I seriously can’t give an opinion. All I can say is how happy I am that I wasn’t President Truman. Or the commanding officers. Or the pilots. Or the Japanese citizens.
This was an excellent look at the history of WWII’s end, and it’s a fitting addition to O’Reilley’s Killing series. I look forward to reading through the other books in the series. I just hope they fix their footnote fetish at some point!
©2021 E.T.
Read More from Bill O’Reilly:
- Killing Lincoln (2011)
- Killing Kennedy (2012)
- Killing Reagan (2015)
- Legends and Lies: The Patriots (2016)
- Killing the Rising Sun (2016)