In August 1945, two atomic bombs were detonated over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of people, including many civilians. A few days later, Japan officially surrendered, bringing World War II to an end. Conventional wisdom credits the dropping of the atomic bombs with Japan’s surrender and the end of WWII in Asia. Professor Richard Overy tells a different story in his new book Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan. In this webinar, moderated by Professor Endo, Professor Overy will discuss his views on the use of the atomic bombs and how they changed the post-World War II world.

About The contributors

Richard Overy

Professor Richard Overy is an Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter, where he taught for ten years after teaching at Cambridge and King’s College London. He is the author of more than thirty books on the Second World War, the European dictatorships, and the history of air power. His book The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 won a Cundill Award for historical literature, and his book Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War 1931-1945 won the Duke of Wellington medal for military history in 2022. He has recently written a major study of warfare, Why War?, published in 2024. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2024 he gave the keynote address at the annual conference of the Japanese National Institute of Defense Studies in Tokyo.

Ken Endo (moderator)

Professor Ken Endo (moderator) is Chair of International Politics at the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, and Part-Time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at European University Institute. He is one of the leading experts in the studies of the European integration, global governance and security. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Politics from the University of Oxford in 1996. He has served as Visiting Professor at Institut d’études politiques de Paris, France; and at the National Chengchi University, Taiwan. He served as a member of the Policy Evaluation Committee, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, 2015-24. In 2014, he received the prestigious Yomiuri-Yoshino Sakuzo Prize, sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Chuokoron-Shinsha, for his book The End of Integration. He is also a commissioning editor of Iwanami Series of Japan’s Security, 8 vols (c100 articles), 2014-15.