Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets, Takoma, presents Stephen Harding as he discusses his new book Last to Die: A Defeated Empire, a Forgotten Mission, and the Last American Killed in World War II.
Harding, a longtime military journalist, chronicled one of the Second World War’s final military engagements in The Last Battle; now he looks at Japan in the war’s concluding days. While Emperor Hirohito officially surrendered on August 15, 1945, word of the Allies’ victory did not reach all combatants until several days later. As a result, the final American war casualty occurred after the war, in an aerial mission to verify compliance with the terms of the cease fire.
