Killing the Rising Sun

What would you do if faced with a weapon that could end the deadliest war in history — but only by unleashing unprecedented destruction upon civilians? In Killing the Rising Sun, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard confront this moral and historical question as they recount how World War II in the Pacific reached its brutal conclusion. They argue that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while horrifying, were necessary to end a conflict that had already cost millions of lives and might have claimed millions more. The book is not only a history of events but a moral exploration of leadership, power, and the limits of human endurance under total war.

The authors contend that Japan’s militarism, fueled by Emperor Hirohito’s divine status and a culture of death-before-dishonor, left the Allies with little choice but total destruction. To understand the staggering decisions behind the atomic bomb, O’Reilly weaves together vivid narratives—from General Douglas MacArthur’s campaign across the Pacific, to Harry Truman’s sudden rise to presidency, to Robert Oppenheimer’s race to harness nuclear energy. The result is both a human drama and a chilling study in the calculus of war: how far must nations go to stop tyranny, and what happens to the soul of a civilization when it crosses that line?

From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: A War Without Limits

The story begins with Japan’s dream of empire. In 1931, it seizes Manchuria; in 1937, its army commits unimaginable atrocities in Nanking, slaughtering and raping hundreds of thousands of civilians. The authors detail these crimes in graphic, documentary-like precision. They are not written to shock gratuitously but to remind the reader that Japan’s wartime brutality set the stage for the Allies’ merciless response. The Japanese worldview, embodied in the bushido code, made surrender shameful and dehumanized enemies as subhuman. This ideology produced kamikaze pilots, comfort women, vivisections of POWs, and mass suicides among civilians—atrocities that hardened the American resolve to use any means to end the war.

Meanwhile, in the United States, leaders such as Roosevelt and later Truman faced staggering moral and logistical challenges. The war’s enormity dwarfed normal politics: armies marched across jungles and oceans, while scientists at Los Alamos tried to invent the future. O’Reilly and Dugard frame the Pacific War as both tragedy and technological revolution—the point where humanity’s creative genius and its capacity for destruction became indistinguishable.

Enter Truman and the Weight of Destiny

One of the book’s most compelling threads is Harry Truman’s transformation. He is introduced as an unassuming Missouri senator, more comfortable playing piano than talking policy. When Franklin Roosevelt dies in April 1945, Truman inherits the most powerful nation on earth—and a secret that will change it forever: the Manhattan Project. The authors emphasize his humility and humanity. When he first learns of the atomic bomb, he barely understands its scale. But after years of Japanese refusal to surrender, brutal fighting at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and intelligence showing preparations for a suicidal homeland defense, Truman concludes that only nuclear force can end the war swiftly.

In O’Reilly’s telling, Truman is a reluctant executioner—firm but not callous. He writes in his journal that the bomb is “the most terrible thing ever discovered,” yet resolves that using it will save “a million American lives.” This moral balancing act—between horror at mass killing and responsibility to end greater suffering—drives the story’s tension. The reader feels both the tragedy of necessity and the necessity of tragedy.

MacArthur, Oppenheimer, and the Machinery of Victory

To give the reader multiple perspectives, O’Reilly alternates between military, political, and scientific storylines. General Douglas MacArthur becomes the war’s theatrical face—an egotistical, brilliant commander whose promise “I shall return” turns into both prophecy and obsession. His campaigns through the Philippines and across the Pacific come alive in cinematic detail, complete with heroism, arrogance, and moral contradiction. He is a man convinced of his destiny, often clashing with admirals and politicians, longing to conquer Japan himself rather than see it annihilated from the air.

Simultaneously, in New Mexico’s deserts, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer leads another kind of army. The authors illuminate his genius and fragility—his gaunt body, his tragic ambitions, his quoting of the Bhagavad Gita (“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”). His Manhattan Project becomes its own war—a battle of the mind fought with equations and fission tests. The Trinity explosion in July 1945 marks humanity’s arrival into the nuclear age, and its success seals Japan’s fate.

Why It Matters Today

By looking at these intertwined lives—Truman’s moral burden, MacArthur’s theatrical patriotism, and Hirohito’s divine detachment—the book forces you to reconsider what victory means. Was the nuclear ending inevitable? Could the world have learned peace without annihilation? These are not just historical debates—they’re warnings about power and psychology. O’Reilly and Dugard present the Pacific War not as a closed chapter, but as a mirror for all modern conflicts where technology outpaces morality. In a world still shadowed by nuclear arsenals, the question that haunted Truman remains yours to ponder: how do you stop evil without becoming part of it?

“We have discovered the most terrible formula in the history of the world... We can destroy entire cities.” – President Harry S. Truman, 1945

At the heart of Japan’s aggression was Emperor Hirohito, a shy marine biologist turned living god. O’Reilly and Dugard depict a paradoxical ruler: divine in authority yet passive in action. The emperor’s belief in his own sacred ancestry from the sun goddess Amaterasu became the ideological spine of Japan’s militarism. For ordinary Japanese, obedience to him was not civic; it was spiritual. That blind devotion fueled kamikazes and mass suicides, transforming patriotism into self-destruction.

Mythology Turned to Murder

In one of the book’s most harrowing chapters, the authors revisit the Rape of Nanking (1937). Entire families were slaughtered, women raped and killed by Japanese soldiers who saw them as expendable subjects of the emperor’s will. The horror is given personal focus through diary excerpts, reminding you how belief systems can numb empathy. Such savagery, celebrated at home as heroic, paved the way for an unyielding war ethos that would later engulf the Pacific.

Divine Isolation

Hirohito himself appears detached, living in imperial seclusion while his nation starves. His palace life—oatmeal breakfasts, marine biology hobbies, and absentminded strolls with his pants undone—contrasts grotesquely with the carnage he authorizes. As the war worsens, he becomes prisoner of his own godhood, unable to speak directly to his people or admit failure. Few subjects even knew his voice until the 1945 surrender broadcast. The authors use this irony to show how mythic leadership, unchecked by reality, can become catastrophic.

By merging divine power with human fear, Japan created a war machine without self-correction. O’Reilly’s message is unambiguous: when leaders cannot be questioned, nations go insane.

Few figures in twentieth-century warfare embody the mix of arrogance and genius like General Douglas MacArthur. In O’Reilly’s narrative, he’s a cinematic character: pipe in mouth, Ray-Bans glinting, striding through surf declaring, “I have returned.” The authors portray him as both hero and diva — a man whose hunger for glory matches his military mastery. His campaigns across the Philippines, Leyte, and the Pacific islands form the dramatic backbone of the war’s last phase.

The Strategist and the Showman

MacArthur’s genius lay in his island-hopping invasions — bypassing fortified Japanese strongholds to seize key airfields. But he also understood the power of image and narrative. His scripted return to the Philippines was not just military strategy; it was psychological warfare, restoring American morale. Yet his obsession with personal control and rivalry with admirals like Chester Nimitz almost derailed operations. His contradictions make him fascinating: a soldier who despised political limits, a patriot who often saw himself above his country.

Victories and Vanity

MacArthur’s victories came at immense cost—Peleliu, Luzon, Leyte Gulf—but even as the Japanese wilted, his ego inflated. He envisioned leading the final invasion of Japan, seeing it as his ultimate destiny. When Truman later excluded him from the atomic secret until the eleventh hour, MacArthur’s fury was palpable. He wanted to conquer Japan through courage, not vaporize it from the air. This tension between soldierly honor and technological annihilation underscores O’Reilly’s broader point: modern war often sidelines the old ideals of valor, replacing them with the cold efficiency of science.

While soldiers fought in jungles and seas, a parallel battle unfolded in the New Mexico desert — a war of intellect and conscience. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the frail, chain-smoking physicist from Berkeley, became its reluctant general. O’Reilly weaves intimate details of Los Alamos life — parties of Nobel laureates, code names like “Trinity” and “Fat Man,” and the psychological isolation of scientists creating a doomsday device — into a vivid portrait of genius under pressure.

Science as Salvation and Damnation

Oppenheimer’s fascination with the Bhagavad Gita (“Now I am become Death...”) illustrates his intellectual torment. He built the bomb believing it would end all wars, yet he foresaw an arms race that could end civilization itself. The Trinity test, at 5:29 a.m., July 16, 1945, becomes a biblical moment: desert sand turns to glass, a sun rises on Earth, and humanity crosses an irreversible threshold. (As in Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb, O’Reilly captures the awe and terror of witnessing pure power unleashed.)

The scientists’ moral unease contrasts sharply with generals’ pragmatism. The “gadget,” as they called it, is celebrated with martinis that night, but the party mood masks dread. This inner conflict — celebrating invention while fearing its consequences — becomes the moral pulse of the modern world.

When Harry Truman learns of Hiroshima’s annihilation aboard the USS Augusta, he calls it “the greatest thing in history.” Yet O’Reilly shows that beneath the triumph was torment. Truman’s diary and letters reveal his grim awareness that he had crossed a moral boundary but convinced himself it was the lesser evil. The logic was merciless but simple: if Japan would not surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo and the fall of Okinawa, only shock beyond comprehension could compel it.

The Burden of Responsibility

Truman’s decision was shaped by projections of American casualties — up to one million dead if Japan were invaded. Advisors like General Marshall and Secretary Stimson argued that an invasion would be suicide. Others, including Dwight Eisenhower, objected that Japan was already beaten. Truman sided with Stimson. He viewed the bomb not as cruelty, but as mercy in disguise. He also intended it as a signal to Stalin: America now possessed godlike power. In this way, Hiroshima became the opening act of the Cold War even before World War II had ended.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Horror and History

O’Reilly recounts the bombings minute by minute—Akiko Takakura dusting her desk at the bank, Akira Onogi deciding to skip work, the blinding white flash at 8:15 a.m., the vaporized city. He focuses not on abstract statistics but on faces, giving tragedy its human weight. In Nagasaki, the same horror repeats under Fat Man’s purple cloud. By the time the emperor surrenders, roughly 200,000 civilians are dead, countless more dying from radiation. Yet the paradox persists: this horror ends a greater one. The reader feels the moral vertigo of a world saved through catastrophe.

Hirohito’s surrender speech on August 15, 1945, broadcast in a trembling falsetto, marks Japan’s first step into humanity. O’Reilly describes the scene with cinematic detail: the emperor bowing in defeat, Tokyo’s smoldering ruins, civilians collapsing in tears. For a nation raised to worship him as a god, hearing him admit failure was unthinkable. Yet it opened the door to a rebirth shaped by its conqueror, General MacArthur.

The Emperor Meets the General

When MacArthur finally meets Hirohito, he stages the moment as psychological theater: standing tall, unarmed, in khaki next to the diminutive emperor in tails and top hat. The photo published worldwide symbolizes a total reversal — the divine ruler turned supplicant. MacArthur chooses pragmatism over vengeance, sparing Hirohito to stabilize Japan. Under the occupation, he abolishes militarism, grants women suffrage, and transforms the empire into a democracy. The irony is rich: the same man who dreamed of conquering Japan ends up rebuilding it.

The book ends where it began — with questions of power and morality. Japan’s resurrection and America’s nuclear dominance usher in the global order we still live under. O’Reilly closes with the haunting image of Oppenheimer’s reflection: humanity, forever split between creation and destruction, forever living under the shadow of its own genius.