We thank Ekman & Co AB and Gadelius Holding Ltd for their kind and generous support, making this research available online for free. Lottaz and Ottosson explore the intricate relationship between neutral Sweden and Imperial Japan during the latter’s 15 years of warfare in Asia and in the Pacific. While Sweden’s relationship with European Axis powers took place under the premise of existential security concerns, the case of Japan was altogether different. Japan never was a threat to Sweden, militarily or economically. Nevertheless, Stockholm maintained a close relationship with Tokyo until Japan’s surrender in 1945. This book explores the reasons for that and therefore provides a study on the rationale and the value of neutrality in the Long Second World War. Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War is a valuable resource for scholars of the Second World War and of the history of neutrality.

Unconditional Defeat-the second book in a Pacific War trilogy that is part of SR Books' Total War series-examines the concluding stages of World War II in Asia and the Pacific, from November 1943 until September 1945. Thomas W. Zeiler argues that this "war without mercy" could only come to one conclusion: the complete, unconditional defeat of Japan by a mobilized, overwhelming, vengeful United States. Zeiler describes these final 22 months of the Pacific War as a story of contrasts. While the U.S. launched a methodical, smothering attack with all the means at its disposal, Japan fought a fierce yet hopeless defense with diminishing supplies. By November 1943, Japan lacked the necessities not just for victory, as in the earlier phases of the war, but for adequate defense. The Japanese had no options. The strategic planning rested with the Americans. Zeiler's gripping and thorough overview discusses other contrasts between the two foes. The Americans planned multiple advances in the Pacific Ocean and on the Asian mainland. They used a massive number of troops, devised and adopted new amphibious techniques, and deployed the new nuclear category of weapons. The Japanese stubbornly but desperately clung to their territory, often with the basest of defenses. By August 1945, the United States' forces at sea, on land, and in the air had brought Japan near complete defeat. In addition, the Japanese Empire was diplomatically isolated. Japanese politics was in turmoil, the government faced rebellion, and the Emperor stood on the brink of extinction. Wracked by the destruction of the homeland from the air and blockade by sea, Japanese society veered near chaos and the people peered into the abyss of an uncertain future. In the meantime, America's military had experienced such horrors at the hands of Japan that the U.S. made the difficult decision to unleash the atomic bomb. Despite the stark differences between the U.S. and Japan, argues Zeiler, there was one aspect of the war that both sides held i

New York Times Bestseller: A “virtually faultless” account of the last weeks of WWII in the Pacific from both Japanese and American perspectives (The New York Times Book Review). By midsummer 1945, Japan had long since lost the war in the Pacific. The people were not told the truth, and neither was the emperor. Japanese generals, admirals, and statesmen knew, but only a handful of leaders were willing to accept defeat. Most were bent on fighting the Allies until the last Japanese soldier died and the last city burned to the ground. Exhaustively researched and vividly told, The Fall of Japan masterfully chronicles the dramatic events that brought an end to the Pacific War and forced a once-mighty military nation to surrender unconditionally. From the ferocious fighting on Okinawa to the all-but-impossible mission to drop the 2nd atom bomb, and from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House to the Tokyo bunker where tearful Japanese leaders first told the emperor the truth, William Craig captures the pivotal events of the war with spellbinding authority. The Fall of Japan brings to life both celebrated and lesser-known historical figures, including Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the brash commander who drew up the Yamamoto plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor and inspired the death cult of kamikaze pilots., This astonishing account ranks alongside Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day and John Toland’s The Rising Sun as a masterpiece of World War II history.

A WWII history told from US and Japanese perspectives—“an impressively researched chronicle of the months leading up to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima” (Publishers Weekly). During the closing months of World War II, two military giants locked in a death embrace of cultural differences and diplomatic intransigence. While developing history’s deadliest weapon and weighing an invasion that would have dwarfed D-Day, the US called for the “unconditional surrender” of Japan. The Japanese Empire responded with a last-ditch plan termed Ketsu-Go, which called for the suicidal resistance of every able-bodied man and woman in “The Decisive Battle” for the homeland. In 140 Days to Hiroshima, historian David Dean Barrett captures war-room drama on both sides of the conflict. Here are the secret strategy sessions, fierce debates, looming assassinations, and planned invasions that resulted in Armageddon on August 6, 1945. Barrett then examines the next nine chaotic days as the Japanese government struggled to respond to the reality of nuclear war.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II. Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order.

A gripping account of the final American bombing mission of World War II and how it prevented a military coup that would have kept Japan in the war. How close did the Japanese come to not surrendering to Allied forces on August 15, 1945? The Last Mission explores this question through two previously neglected strands of late—World War II history, whose very interconnections could have caused a harrowing shift in the course of the postwar world. On the final night of the war, as Emperor Hirohito recorded a message of surrender for the Japanese people, a band of Japanese rebels, commanded by War Minister Anami's elite staff, burst into the palace. They had plotted a massive coup that aimed to destroy the recordings of the Imperial Rescript of surrender and issue false orders forged with the Emperor’s seal commanding the widely dispersed Japanese military to continue the war. If this rebellion had succeeded, the military would have proceeded with large-scale kamikaze attacks on Allied forces, costing huge casualties and just possibly provoking the Americans to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan over Tokyo–and continue to drop more bombs as Japanese resistance stiffened. Meanwhile, in the midst of an “end-of-war” celebration on Guam, Air Force radio operator Jim Smith and his fellow crewmen received urgent orders for a bombing mission over Japan’s sole remaining oil refinery north of Tokyo. As a stream of American B-29B bombers approached Tokyo, Japanese air defenses, fearing the approaching planes signaled the threat of a third atomic bomb, ordered a total blackout in Tokyo and the Imperial Palace, completely disrupting the rebels’ plans. Smith and his fellow crewmembers completed the mission, and a few hours later, the Emperor announced the surrender over Japan’s airwaves, dictating the end of the war. The Last Mission is an insightful piece of speculative investigation that combines narrative storytelling with historical contingency and explores how two seemingly unrelated events could have profoundly changed the course of modern history.