Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.” But online the wording has been modified to put the atomic bombings in a more positive light - once again showing how myths can overwhelm historical evidence. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. ![]() We must end the war when we can deal with the United States.” This would destroy the foundation of Japan. 13 that Japan had to surrender quickly because “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki explained on Aug. Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Command compared the emperor’s execution to “the crucifixion of Christ to us.” The allied demand for unconditional surrender led the Japanese to fear that the emperor, who many considered a deity, would be tried as a war criminal and executed. However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used - and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives. The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns us, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1947. ![]() The fateful decision to inaugurate the nuclear age fundamentally changed the course of modern history, and it continues to threaten our survival. At a time when Americans are reassessing so many painful aspects of our nation’s past, it is an opportune moment to have an honest national conversation about our use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities in August 1945.
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