When the story of Hiroshima is told in most American histories, the day of the bombing-Aug. 6, three days later they bomb Nagasaki with another, and on the next day the Japanese signal their intention to surrender.* One can hardly blame American newspapers for running headlines like: “Peace in the Pacific: Our Bomb Did It!” Army Air Force bombs Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon on Aug. The traditional interpretation has a simple timeline: The U.S. The first problem with the traditional interpretation is timing. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender. The support for this narrative runs deep. 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The United States bombed Hiroshima on Aug. They fail to question the utility of the bombing in the first place-to ask, in essence, did it work? The orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. In the 48 years since, many others have joined the fray: some echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.īoth schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into surrendering on Aug. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. Initially, few questioned President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has long been a subject of emotional debate.
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