When the Shooting Stopped

“Highly recommended as a sobering but enlightening account.” Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Japanese EmpireIn the 44 months between December 1941 and August 1945, the Pacific Theater absorbed the attention of the American nation and military longer than any other. Despite the Allied grand strategy of “Germany first,” after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. especially was committed to confronting Tokyo as a matter of urgent priority. But from Oahu to Tokyo was a long, sanguinary slog, averaging an advance of just three miles per day. The U.S. human toll paid on that road reached some 108,000 battle deaths, more than one-third the U.S. wartime total. But by the summer of 1945 on both the American homefront and on the frontline there was hope. The stunning announcements of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 seemed sure to force Tokyo over the tipping point since the Allies’ surrender demand from Potsdam, Germany, in July. What few understood was the vast gap in the cultural ethos of East and West at that time. In fact, most of the Japanese cabinet refused to surrender and vicious dogfights were still waged in the skies above Japan. This fascinating new history tells the dramatic story of the final weeks of the war, detailing the last brutal battles on air, land and sea with evocative first-hand accounts from pilots and sailors caught up in these extraordinary events. Barrett Tillman then expertly details the first weeks of a tenuous peace and the drawing of battle lines with the forthcoming Cold War as Soviet forces concluded their invasion of Manchuria. When the Shooting Stopped retells these dramatic events, drawing on accounts from all sides to relive the days when the war finally ended and the world was forever changed.

A superb achievement. This fast-paced and riveting account of the final weeks of the Pacific War is filled with fresh material, including personal stories and vivid historical detail. Another Barrett Tillman triumph., [A] shrewd, fast-paced, and wide-angle account exploring one of the most intriguing but seldom pursued topics about all of World War II: the ragged ending of the Asia Pacific War. There was no neat finale on the decks of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This work musters the full panorama of days, weeks, and longer that shaped the fates of nations and peoples, but colors it brightly with well-chosen stories of individuals in combat, in liberation, in defeat, in tragedy, and in joy., It's all here in this excellent account of the last month of WWII., This is an excellent study of the last few weeks of the Second World War, showing that the surrender of Japan was a rather more complex and confused affair than the earlier collapse of Nazi Germany.”, It's a complex story, very well told here. - New York Journal of Books

Barrett Tillman is a professional author and speaker based in Arizona with more than 40 nonfiction books as well as novels to his credit. He holds seven awards for history and literature including the 1996 Tailhook Association Lifetime Achievement Award and third place in the US Naval Institute Prize in 2009. Tillman has appeared in more than a dozen documentaries including The History Channel’s Dogfights. The son of a World War II aviator, he learned to fly at a young age and has logged hundreds of hours in historic aircraft. Therefore his narratives feature details not only of how fliers from many nations performed their missions, but the sound, sensation and feel of mid-20th century aircraft. His combination of research, writing and cockpit immediacy are rare today and unequalled.