Between the grinding battles of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa and the finality of the atomic bomb strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. Air Force conducted a bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands that escalated to new levels of destruction.

Burning Japan is an investigation of how and why the air force shifted its tactics against Japan from a precision bombing strategy to area attacks. The guiding doctrine of the 1930s and 1940s called for focused attacks on specific targets deep behind enemy lines. Eager to prove itself, the nascent Army...