The Conventional and Atomic Bombing of Japan

Following the Meiji Restoration during the 1860s, Japan experienced a rapid transition from a largely rural and quasi-feudal society to an increasingly urban, industrial country. Modernisation and militarism fused, often tortuously, with the power of tradition in Japanese identity and culture. By the end of the 1930s, Japan was a colonial power, whose political culture was dominated by an aggressive nationalism Japan also joined Germany and Italy as one of the Axis powers who would fight the Allies during the Second World War. From 1944-1945, the Japanese population suffered not only heavy conventional bombing by the United States Air Force, but also the utter devastation of the atomic bombings in August 1945. Japan remains, uniquely, the only country to have suffered nuclear attack, the causes and consequences of which are still powerfully and emotionally debated not only among academics, but among the survivors themselves.