Hiroshima Nagasaki

Paul Ham did a great job, the research is evident in the details and the story is very well balanced, many different perspectives and facts that go well beyond the surface.

The section describing the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima is quite harrowing, with personal and graphic descriptions that took me back to my visit of the Hiroshima Peace Museum and the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

Paul Ham presents a honest and balanced account of the atomic bombings. Ham shows that no decisions, whether horrific or insignificant, can be pigeon holed as either a black or white finality by later day armchair historians. Ham presents the cacophony of voices that spoke for and against the use of atomic weapons and gives flesh to a few of the Japanese who survived the attack. I thoroughly enjoyed that Ham presented all sides, facts, opinions, and innuendoes and did not lead the reader, but allowed you to come to your own conclusions about this time in our history.
I learned more about the Manhattan Project and the results of its work than any other source I have yet read. "Hiroshima Nagasaki" reads like a historic novel where I sometimes forget I already know the ending.

It was very illuminating to learn about the real reasons for Japan's surrender.

I thought Mr. Meldrum portrayed all characters very well, but I enjoyed his rendition of Roosevelt the most.

Another Day of Infamy

I've asked numerous friends their belief about what caused the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, and all answered 'the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki'. Paul Ham provides convincing evidence that the first (and fortunately only) use of atomic weapons in war had almost no influence on the surrender decision taken by the doomed government in Japan. Encircled, and economically strangled by naval blockade, its major cities razed by systematic fire-bombing, Japan chose to surrender to the US and its allies to avoid invasion by the Russians who surged across the Manchurian border only days after the devastation of Hiroshima, but before the significance of that event had even begun to be understood. Ham arrives at this point after providing the detailed political, military and scientific context in which it occurred. He is a superb historian and skilled narrator, who has changed my view of the end of WWII with this marvellous book. I could not recommend it more highly.