War is difficult enough to understand, atrocities that are historical in their scope and deviance require an entirely different level of effort. The author spends a great deal of time explaining the culture of Japan and the mindset toward any outsiders that the culture sought, and largely succeeded in creating. This is not to say that the Japan that created and celebrated atrocities like Nanking encompassed every member of the nation, it did not, and the author illustrates individuals who did go against what was defined as acceptable behavior. The facts remain that the circumstances that awaited Allied soldiers who faced captivity in wartime Japan included the prospect of being victims of ritual cannibalism, biologic warfare experimentation, and brutality that is almost impossible to imagine and very difficult to read. Decapitation as a sport and national interest that was followed in newspapers is a unique form of sociopathic behavior.

Mr. Bradley also covers in great detail the firebombing of Japanese cities and then relates their destruction to comparably sized metro areas in The United States. He deals with the contradictions in our early condemnation of others and our actions that later made them hypocrisy. He also deals with a subject that remains a controversial one, the use of atomic weapons. Once again, if the facts he shares about the fire bombings are viewed in the context of 1945 along with the atomic alternatives, those that wish to portray the use of the two bombs as some special type of horror have little empiric evidence to make their case with. Viewing weapons used 50 years ago with knowledge we have today remains a weak position.

This book is a tribute to those who survived the war in the Pacific and those citizens of Japan that refused to engage in behavior that is never acceptable even in war time. This book documents atrocity but it primarily celebrates the human desire to survive in the face of pure evil.