Killing The Rising Sun

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan is a top-selling history book by the popular and controversial author Bill O’Reilly. The co-author of this book, along with the six others in the series, is New York Times bestselling author Martin Dugard. The series includes Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, Killing Reagan, and most recently, Killing England. Killing the Rising Sun was published in 2016 and covers the World War II events leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. This particular historical narrative is told mostly in the present tense and alternates in perspective from Americans on the battlefield both on the ground and in the air, and also relates the points of views of the American and Japanese leaders. O’Reilly is a well-known political commentator and his show The O’Reilly Factor, one of the highest rated cable news shows in the United States, aired from 1996 to 2017 on the Fox News Channel.

Killing the Rising Sun opens in Washington D.C., in 1939, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt is making the decision to build nuclear weapons at the start of World War II. The Manhattan Project is underway under his guardianship. Then the narrative moves forward to 1944 where conflict is escalating between the United States and Japan. The battles of Peleliu and Iwo Jima, along with the battle of the Philippines, are described in bloody, gruesome detail.

In 1945, the Americans are nearing the completion of the atomic bomb and debating their strategy to end the war. After Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman becomes President and is left with the major end-of-war decisions. In Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito’s refusal to surrender and the willingness of Japanese soldiers to fight until the death or be dishonored leads to a moral dilemma still being debated today. Is it the right decision to use nuclear weapons in Japan to win World War II? Or would an invasion of Japan with ground forces be the more humane option?



Killing the Rising Sun is critical of President Roosevelt’s actions throughout the war and depicts him as a key contributor to many human rights violations, insinuating that his mistakes are responsible for Eastern Europe being dominated by the Soviets for so many years. It also emphasizes that he was in full support for the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in internment camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which many Americans consider today to be one of the most shameful events in their recent history.
According to the narrative, it is President Harry Truman’s good judgement and his ability to make difficult decisions that turns the U.S. into the heroes of World War II. President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur do not see eye-to-eye on the best plan of attack. MacArthur thinks that an invasion of Japan on the ground would be the more moral and effective route to ending the war. Truman ultimately decides to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to the surrender of the Japanese and the war ending shortly after. The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki are described in great detail — the dead bodies and the physical horrors are given center stage.

MacArthur is portrayed as a publicity-hungry general who, if he had gotten his way and there was a full-scale invasion of Japan, the lives of many more Americans would have been lost.  Evidence of the rigidity of his pride is shown in his decision earlier in the war to not allow aerial bombing of the Filipinos for the protection of the civilians. This decision is shown as highly irrational because the Japanese went on to cruelly torture and murder so many Filipinos. The book argues that it would have been much more humane to allow for more bombing from above.

Reviews of Killing the Rising Sun are mixed based on which side of the political spectrum a reader falls on. Many critics found everything about the book offensive and dehumanizing to the Japanese, from the cover, which shows the heads of Truman and MacArthur next to a nuclear explosion, to the concluding passages after the atomic bombs are dropped. O’Reilly writes about how the Japanese were incinerating, and immediately after includes a description of Americans celebrating with whiskey. The critics believe there is a callousness and misappropriation of feeling about this holocaust that the United States orchestrated. However, Amazon reviews show many Americans and veterans think that O’Reilly and Dugard are giving the gift of truth with this story and are honoring the brave actions of those who fought in World War II. They take pride in every difficult decision that Truman and MacArthur made and believe all the deaths and cruelty were worthwhile because they were for the “good of the country.”