Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham

Hiroshima Nagasaki by Paul Ham

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet the bombs were our least abhorrent choice, American leaders claimed at the time--and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives.

Ham challenges this view, arguing that the bombings, when Japan was on its knees, were the culmination of a strategic Allied air war on enemy civilians that began in Germany and had till then exacted its most horrific death tolls in Dresden and Tokyo.

He gives powerful witness to the bomb's destruction through the eyes of eighty survivors, from 12-year-olds forced to work in war factories to wives and children who faced it alone, reminding us that these two cities were full of ordinary people who suddenly, out of a clear blue summer's sky, felt the sun fall on their heads.

Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007), and Kokoda (2004) are among Paul Ham's works. Vietnam earned the Premier's Award for Australian History in New South Wales and was a finalist for the Prime Minister's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2008. Kokoda was a finalist for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the Premier's Prize for Non-Fiction in New South Wales. The book Sandakan: The Hidden Tale of the Sandakan Death Marches was released in 2012 and was nominated for the Prime Minister's Literary Prize for History in 2013. 1914: The Year the World Ended is his most recent book.

Paul is a former Sunday Times correspondent who holds a Master's degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics. He currently spends his time writing history. With his family, he splits his time between Paris and Sydney.