Nagasaki

The second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series on each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors.

On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.

Rendered in harrowing detail, this historical narrative is the second and final volume in M.G. Sheftall’s series Embers. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.

The result is in intimate, first-hand account of life in Nagasaki, and story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bomb drop, This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man”, to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if Japan would surrender to the Allies, or if more bombs would fall.