This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. For nearly 80 years, humankind has lived with the threat of

nuclear weapons, now in the hands of nine countries. But in all those decades, only one country

has used nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. That was the United States, which dropped atomic

bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945, killing as many as 200,000 people. Historians have long debated

whether that carnage was necessary to compel Japan to surrender and end World War II.

In the summer of 1945, Germany had surrendered to the Allies, while Japan largely defeated was defiant,

and still capable of inflicting horrific casualties on any force that might try and invade the

Japanese mainland. Our guest writer Evan Thomas has returned to that critical period with a new book

that examines the thoughts and motivations of key players in the US military and government,

and in Japan's ruling elite. It's a story of American leaders wrestling with the practical

and moral dilemmas presented by the most terrifying weapon ever made, and of determined Japanese

leaders confronting the humiliating prospect of defeat, and the removal of the country's emperor,

who was seen by Japanese as a deity. Evan Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for 33

years at Time in Newsweek. He wrote more than 100 cover stories, and in 1999 won a National

Magazine Award. He's the author of 10 previous books. His latest is Road to Surrender,

Three Men and the Countdown to End World War II. Evan Thomas, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Hi, Dave. Let's go back to the summer of 1945. Germany, as we said, was defeated, and the

Allies were focused on Japan, which was also clearly facing defeat. What was the state then

of the Japanese armed forces? Japanese armed forces were by and large intact, although we had

fought this heavy campaign through the Pacific Islands. The Japanese still had millions of men

in their army. Many of them were in Asia, occupying China and Southeast Asia, but there were about

a million of them collecting on the southern tip of Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island,

...