The final week of World War II unfolded like a political thriller—with millions of lives hanging in the balance.
By early August 1945, Japan had been chased across the Pacific, hemmed in on the Asian mainland, and isolated by the fall of Nazi Germany. But it did not surrender. Even after an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima, Japan held on – and seemed prepared to fight to the last man. For Japan to raise the white flag, it would take another atomic blast, a Soviet attack, and a failed coup by Japanese militarists. Carefully researched history that unfolds like a political thriller, Eight Days in August chronicles the dramatic series of events that led to the end of World War II with Japan.
The story opens on August 8, 1945, with Japan still reeling two days after Hiroshima. On the island of Tinian, American B-29 Superfortress Bockscar flies a practice run for dropping a second atomic bomb. In Moscow, the Soviet foreign minister hands the...