73rd Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings

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Hiroshima commemorates the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bomb (9 Photos)
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Doves fly over the cenotaph dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing during a ceremony to mark the 73rd anniversary of the bombing at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, Monday, Aug. 6, 2018. The Atomic Bomb Dome is seen in center background. Shingo Nishizume, Kyodo News via AP Fullscreen


The two bombs almost annihilated two large cities, indiscriminately killing hundreds of thousands of residents. Sputnik recalls these horrible events, which occurred in the final days of the Second World War, and the memories of their survivors.

06.08.2018 - Japan Commemorates 73rd Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings
Japan Commemorates 73rd Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings

The Japanese city of Hiroshima has marked the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bombing by the US Air Force that took place during the last days of the Second World War. During the ceremony in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the country's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, held a speech assuring that Japan, as the only country that has experienced an atomic bombing, will champion the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world.

"Our nation, while maintaining our (non-nuclear weapons) principles, will patiently work to serve as a bridge between the [nuclear and non-nuclear states] and lead efforts by the international community to reduce nuclear weapons," Abe said.

Mayor of Hiroshima Kazumi Matsui warned nuclear states against repeating the mistakes of the past during a speech at the ceremony, urging all countries to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m., the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the 20 kiloton atomic bomb "Little Boy," which devastated most of the city, killing 80,000 people instantly, leaving 12,000 missing and 40,000 wounded.

Reiko Yamada, one of the survivors of the event, described what happened that day.

"When the bomb exploded I was in the school yard, 2 kilometers away from the epicenter. The district on the opposite side of the river was completely destroyed. The road from the center of the city was crowded with people running away. Without receiving any proper medical assistance, they fell dead one after another right on the road. In order to clear the road, bodies were raked up in piles in dug up holes right in our school yard and burned as if they were garbage. The same thing happened in other school yards too and the air in the city was thick with the stench of burned flesh."

On August 9, 1945, at 11:01 a.m., another US bomber dropped the 21 kiloton atomic bomb "Fat Man" on another Japanese city — Nagasaki — killing about 40,000 people and leaving 60,000 injured. The casualties would have been greater if the bomb hadn't missed its original target due to weather conditions.

Yoshiro Yamawaki survived the blast in a bomb shelter and recalls the aftermath of the bombing which he saw, as he and two of his brothers went looking for their father, who never came home from his shift at a factory that stood half a kilometer from the epicenter.

On the bridge we saw rows of dead people standing, leaning against the railings on both sides. They were standing with their heads bowed as if they were praying. Dead bodies were flowing down the river, too. In the factory we found the body of our father — it looked like his dead face was smiling."

Those who survived the bombings were not left unscathed either — around 200,000 people were irradiated and either died of or suffered from related diseases for the rest of their lives, raising the casualties to almost half a million, according to some estimates.


06.08.2018 - Japan's Atomic Bomb Survivors Urge Abe to Join Nuclear Weapons Ban Deal - Reports
Japan's Atomic Bomb Survivors Urge Abe to Join Nuclear Weapon Ban Deal - Reports

On Monday atomic bomb survivors' groups in Japan met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and requested that their country, which is the only nation in the world to have experienced atomic bombings, join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the NHK broadcaster reported.

According to the broadcaster NHK, the meeting with atomic bomb survivors' groups took place after the Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima.

The representatives from seven such groups reiterated the need for steps aimed at the elimination of nuclear weapons, especially in light of North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization announced at the Washington-Pyongyang summit in Singapore, the media outlet reported.

Abe, in turn, expressed his support for the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and pledged to urge both nuclear and non-nuclear countries to join the treaty, the broadcaster stated.

After the meeting, the head of the survivors' group in Hiroshima, Kunihiko Sakuma, noted that the prime minister’s reaction had demonstrated that he had not given the idea much thought. Sakuma vowed that his group would request next year that the Japanese government join the treaty, NHK added.

Earlier in the day, Abe said that Tokyo had not reversed it's decision on non-participation in the treaty. He noted that, even though the country backed the cause promoted by the treaty, the participation of nuclear powers was needed to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

The TPNW was adopted on July 7, 2017, at a UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. It contains a set of prohibitions, including an obligation not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. So far, the TPNW has been signed by 60 states and ratified by only 14.


06.08.2018 - Hiroshima marks 73rd anniversary of atomic bombing in WWII
Hiroshima marks 73rd anniversary of atomic bombing in WWII

Hiroshima marked the anniversary of the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing with a somber ceremony Monday to remember the people killed and injured and a call to eliminate nuclear weapons amid hopes of denuclearizing North Korea.

Mayor Kazumi Matsui opened his peace address by describing the hellish scene of the blast that morning 73 years ago and the agony of the victims, telling the audience to listen "as if you and your loved ones were there." He raised concerns about the rise of egocentric policies in the world and warned against the idea of nuclear deterrence as a threat to global security. Matsui urged leaders to steadily work toward achieving a world without atomic weapons.

Certain countries are blatantly proclaiming self-centered nationalism and modernizing their nuclear arsenals, rekindling tensions that had eased with the end of the Cold War," Matsui said, without identifying the countries. Nuclear deterrence and nuclear umbrellas are "inherently unstable and extremely dangerous" approaches that seek to maintain international order by only generating fear in rival countries, he said, urging world leaders to negotiate in good faith to eliminate nuclear arsenals instead.

 

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09.08.2018 - Expert Debunks Hiroshima, Nagasaki Myths on 73rd Anniversary of Atomic Bombings
Expert Debunks Hiroshima, Nagasaki Myths on 73rd Anniversary of Atomic Bombings

The Japanese city of Hiroshima marked the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bombing by the US Air Force two days ago. The anniversary for Nagasaki, another Japanese city that also experienced an atomic bombing by the US, is Thursday.

On August 6, 1945, the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the 20-kiloton atomic bomb "Little Boy," which devastated most of Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people. Just a few days later, on August 9, 1945, another US bomber dropped the 21-kiloton atomic bomb "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, killing approximately 70,000 people and leaving thousands of others injured. The casualties would have been greater if the bomb hadn't missed its original target due to weather conditions.

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at the organization Beyond Nuclear, joined Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear Wednesday to discuss the important anniversaries.

"The number of deaths and injuries are mind-boggling: 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima, a city of 360,000. Nagasaki — because the bomb didn't hit downtown exactly because there was cloud cover that interfered with the targeting — [resulted in] another 70,000 [being] killed. What an announcement of the atomic age that that was," Kamps told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.

"At first, the American people were filled with joy and relief that the war was over not long after the Nagasaki bomb, but as a book called ‘By The Bomb's Early Light' by Paul Boyer explained, that joy gave into fear because the American people realized within weeks, if not days, that if we can do that to somebody else, somebody else can do that to us. And sure enough, Russia had the bomb within four years," Kamps added.

According to Kamps, US estimates of American casualties during the first month of a US invasion of mainland Japan — before the bombs were dropped — were approximately 50,000, not 1 million.

"And the myth became that a million American lives were saved by dropping the bombs. That was not true. The truth is, the bombs were dropped to send a message to the Soviet Union where to get off. Billions of dollars in 1945 money had been spent on that [atomic] project, and the bombs were dropped to fulfill an experiment as well, to show some return on the so-called investment. If those billions of dollars had been spent on ships, tanks and guns in the US military instead of atomic bombs, would the war have ended sooner because of that?" Kemps asked.

Another common myth is that the bombs ended World War II, Kamps said.

But no, it was the threat of a Soviet military invasion that ended World War II.

The Japanese had been firebombed by the Americans for months already, and that lends a lot more to the theory that these atomic bombings were tests, because they [the Americans] were saving some cities to use these bombs against, and they wanted to see full on what the effects were. So Hiroshima was preserved for that purpose," Kemps told Radio Sputnik.

"Another irony about Nagasaki is that it is the primary Christian city in Japan. Christians had missions in Nagasaki for a long time. There was a cathedral in Nagasaki. The boxcar plane that dropped the bomb and the crew were blessed by a Christian priest before the mission," Kemps added.

During a Monday ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a speech assuring that Japan, as the only country that has experienced an atomic bombing, will champion the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, Sputnik reported Monday.

"Our nation, while maintaining our [non-nuclear weapons] principles, will patiently work to serve as a bridge between the [nuclear and non-nuclear states] and lead efforts by the international community to reduce nuclear weapons," Abe said.


Back-dated 09.08.2016 - US Won't Apologize for 'Test Blasts' at Hiroshima, Nagasaki that Killed (Murdered!!!) 226,000
US Won’t Apologize for 'Test Blasts' at Hiroshima, Nagasaki that Killed 226,000

Contrary to a popular assertion that nuclear bombs used on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War II, US government documents have indicated that the atomic-bomb atrocities were "test blasts" to "justify" weapons development expense.

On Tuesday, the 71st anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a massacre just three days after the annihilation of some 146,000 people in Hiroshima, the White House has again refused to issue an apology to the people of Japan for what some historians call an act of genocide.

Many in the United States believe that, despite the carnage, the use of the weapons was a necessary evil to bring about a quick end to World War II.

Recently, the Obama Administration has set about to increase and make more usable the US nuclear weapon stockpile, budgeting some $1 trillion over the next 30 years toward "nuclear modernization," while Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump states blandly, "why can’t we use them?"

Why does the White House refuse to apologize and why is it upgrading nuclear weapons?

"It is a very dangerous time that we are in with these upgrades. The US is upgrading its nuclear arsenal at a cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years, under the Obama Administration, from someone who, in Prague, who said in 2009, that we need to get rid of these things," stated Kamps.

One of the historic failures to live up to an opportunity was when Obama visited Hiroshima and talked about the horror of the nuclear bomb — which was good — but the thing he left out, incredibly enough, was the impact of the radioactivity on people from the bombs," said the activist. "He talked about the blast and the fire, but he didn’t mention the radioactivity, which is a huge component of a nuclear weapons, and is why those who survive the bombing are still dying from the bombing to this day, because they have fatal cancers and diseases, including genetic damage."

There are huge opportunities to try to abolish these things and learn those lessons that are being missed," stated Kamps.

Why was the second bomb dropped in Nagasaki after the horror of Hiroshima?

"The death toll was measured in the tens of thousands of lives lost in the instant of being vaporized at ground zero," said Kamps. "The reason why the [second] bomb was dropped, three days later, was that the first bomb was a uranium bomb and they knew that it was going to work because they had tested it before they dropped it on Hiroshima, killing 100,000 people instantly. The second bomb was a plutonium bomb, a more complicated bomb, and they had to test it to determine if it would really work."

"The US did test the bomb Trinity in New Mexico a few weeks earlier, and it did work in New Mexico, and it did work in Nagasaki, and these were tests actually," said the activist. "An expert actually got his hands on the primary documents from the US government for the committee that was responsible for determining the targets for these bombs, and they spoke in these terms that these were 'test blasts.'"

"Later the Department of Energy provided a list of the test blasts that they had done," said Kamps. "What were the first three? Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and when he called attention to this they quickly changed the documents so that they did not list Hiroshima and Nagasaki as test blasts. That’s what they were."

"The US had spent billions of dollars of 1940s money on these projects, they had spent all of this money, and in their mind they had to justify the expenditure."

 

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The US attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killed 140,000 people. The bomb dropped three days later on Nagasaki killed another 70,000 before Japan’s surrender ended World War II.

Hiroshima marks 74th anniversary of atomic bombing

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui (R) offers a new list of A-bomb dead, people who died since previous year's anniversary from the side effects of radiation, during the 74th anniversary of memorial service for atomic bomb victims at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on August 6, 2019. (AFP)

TOKYO: Hiroshima marked the 74rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city with its mayor renewing calls for eliminating such weapons and demanding Japan’s government do more.

Mayor Kazumi Matsui raised concerns in his peace address Tuesday about the rise of self-centered politics in the world and urged leaders to steadily work toward achieving a world without atomic weapons.

“Around the world today, we see self-centered nationalism in ascendance, tensions heightened by international exclusivity and rivalry, with nuclear disarmament at a standstill,” Matsui said in his peace declaration.

He urged the younger generations never to dismiss the atomic bombings and the war as a mere events of history, but think of them as their own, while calling on the world leaders to come visit the nuclear bombed cities to learn what happened.

Matsui also demanded Japan’s government represent the wills of atomic bombing survivors and sign a UN nuclear weapons ban treaty.

Japan, which hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the US nuclear umbrella, has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an inaction atomic bombing survivors and pacifist groups protest as insincere.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged widening differences between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

“Japan is committed to serve as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states and lead the international effort, while patiently trying to convince them to cooperate and have a dialogue,” Abe said in his address at the ceremony. He vowed to maintain Japan’s pacifist and nuclear nuclear-free principles, but did not promise signing the treaty.

Survivors, their relatives and other participants marked the 8:15 a.m. blast with a minute of silence.

The Hiroshima anniversary ceremony came hours after North Korea launched suspected ballistic missiles in its fourth round of recent weapons demonstrations. The activity follows a stalemate in negotiations over its nuclear weapons.

The US attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killed 140,000 people. The bomb dropped three days later on Nagasaki killed another 70,000 before Japan’s surrender ended World War II.

 

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Maria Zakharova said that "historical truth has been sacrificed for a military and political alliance between the two countries".

US never apologized to Japan for atomic bombings, Russian diplomat emphasizes

Flowers laid for the atomic bomb victims in front of the cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima
© AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi

SOLNECHNOGORSK, August 9, 2019 - Not a single American President has ever offered an apology to the people of Japan for the terrible and militarily senseless atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharov told an audience at the all-Russia youth forum Terra Scientia near Moscow.

"Currently, the prevailing attitude regarding the nuclear tragedy of the two Japanese cities in the United States and in Japan, too, which is under the influence of US propaganda, has nothing to do with historical truth. It depends entirely on time-serving political considerations.

Historical truth has been sacrificed for a military and political alliance between the two countries", she pointed out. "To this day not a single US president has presented any real, full-scale apologies for the atomic strikes the way it should have been done. Japanese society strictly observes the taboo on simple public mentions of the plain facts related to those events. In the public space, everybody painstakingly keeps quiet about what country dropped the atomic bombs on Japan’s civilian population and what country is to blame for the terrible and senseless deaths of multitudes of its fellow citizens."

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first and fortunately sole instance of nuclear weapons being used against the civilian population", Zakharova said. "It is especially cynical the Target Committee the US leadership created in the spring of 1945 intentionally refrained from pinpoint attacks against Japanese military facilities. In fact Washington deliberately opted for the mass extermination of civilian population."

The US military carried out the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II on August 6 and 9, 1945. The official aim was to accelerate the capitulation of Imperial Japan. The bombings were the sole-ever combat use of nuclear weapons. To this day, the United States has never recognized its moral responsibility. It argues that such actions were justified militarily.

#Zakharova: On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki. Both cities were wiped off the face of the Earth. The #nuclear blasts instantly killed 150,000 people. The total number of victims exceeded 450,000.

 

[Gwenllian]

This French SOTT article lists a few documentaries and films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I watched two of them. One is a moving film about the devastation felt by the Japanese people, the long-term (health) consequences of the bomb and how the main character moves on after all these horrors by adopting an orphan who lost his parents during the American attack, while the grand-father of the boy who turned blind after the bomb succumbs to his despair (with English subtitles):

Unfortunately, this documentary hardly reveals any pictures of people who suffered horrendous wounds or who succumbed to radiation disease. Instead, they sanitise all kinds of events by using dramatisation. I remember watching a few documentaries where they showed the aftermath of the bomb. Although it was graphic I felt it was necessary. It clearly showed how many years later people still suffer (mentally and physically). A few interesting tidbits: According to the documentary two hours after the atomic test in New Mexico where sand turned into glass they shipped out this monstrous thing to Japan, so-called diplomacy be damned. The personal testimonies are the most interesting. The person who dropped the bomb still doesn't feel any remorse and still buys into the lies he was told by the army. Some very moving accounts from survivors make the documentary worth watching plus some very short footage of Oppenheimer, the inventor of the bomb and "the destroyer of the world" (in his own words). In French only:

 

[Gwenllian]

I made a mistake: the bomb wasn't of course shipped out to Japan, but to the Tinian island.

 

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Japan's new emperor echoes father, expresses deep remorse over war

Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako bow during a memorial service ceremony marking the 74th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War Two, in Tokyo, Japan August 15, 2019. Kim Kyung-Hoon

TOKYO August 14, 2019 - Japan’s new emperor, Naruhito, expressed deep remorse over the country’s wartime past and prayed for global peace on Thursday, echoing his father’s words in remarks at an annual ceremony marking Tokyo’s surrender in World War Two.

Naruhito, 59, became Japan’s first monarch born after the war when he inherited the throne in May. His father, Akihito, stepped down in the first abdication by a Japanese emperor in two centuries.

“Looking back on the long period of post-war peace, reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated,” he said.

“Together with all of our people, I pay my heartfelt tribute to all those who lost their lives in the war ... and pray for world peace and the further development of our country,” Naruhito said, echoing his father’s message a year ago.

Naruhito is a grandson of Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese troops fought World War Two.

Japan PM Abe sends offering to Yasukuni shrine for war dead: Kyodo

Men wearing Japanese imperial military uniform visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan August 15, 2019, on the 74th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War Two. Kim Kyung-Hoon

TOKYO August 14, 2019 - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the controversial Yasukuni shrine for war dead on Thursday, the anniversary of Japan’s World War Two surrender, but refrained from visiting in person amid tense ties with South Korea.

Past visits by Japanese leaders to Yasukuni have outraged South Korea and China because the shrine honors 14 Japanese wartime leaders convicted as war criminals.

Ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Tomomi Inada, a former defense minister and now special aide to Abe, made the monetary offering, called a “tamagushi-ryo”, on the premier’s behalf, domestic media said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to comment, saying it was a private matter.

“The peace and prosperity of our country is due to those heroes who gave their lives for their homeland and I express my gratitude and respect,” Inada quoted Abe as saying, according to domestic media.

Abe has only visited the shrine in person once since taking office in 2012 but has regularly sent offerings on Aug. 15 and during the shrine’s spring and autumn festivals.

Bitter memories of Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of Korea have long plagued ties with South Korea.

Relations between Washington’s two Asia allies deteriorated after a ruling by South Korea’s Supreme Court last year that Japanese companies should compensate South Koreans conscripted as forced laborers during World War Two. Tokyo says the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty normalizing ties.

The two nations this month ended each others’ fast-track trade status and Tokyo on Tuesday urged caution for travelers to South Korea ahead of crucial anniversaries this week. South Korea celebrates Aug. 15 as a national day of liberation from Japanese rule.

China’s relations with Japan have also long been haunted by what Beijing sees as Tokyo’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during World War Two.

A steady stream of visitors paid their respects at Yasukuni under partly cloudy skies as temperatures soared. Groups including members of a tiny nationalist party and critics of the U.S. military presence on Japan’s southern Okinawa island gathered near the entrance.

Police, some in anti-riot gear, patrolled nearby. A sign inside the grounds said activities such as hoisting flags, demonstrating or destroying property were banned.

“The people enshrined here fought for Japan and we have come to express our gratitude and to show them our resolve to build a better Japan,” said Yoshiko Matsuura, 71, a former ward assembly member from Tokyo visiting with other local politicians.

 

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#Zakharova: On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki. Both cities were wiped off the face of the Earth. The #nuclear blasts instantly killed 150,000 people. The total number of victims exceeded 450,000.

August 6th and August 9th, 2020 will be the 75th Anniversary of the United States Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace has published a book and did an hour interview (6.7.2020). Unfortunately, he parrots the U.S. Military account - that there was no other choice. The interview was one of "omission" as he steered around the facts. I find it sad, that an individual who is in a prominent position as a news anchor and has the way and means and resources at his finger tips - to flesh out the truth with Documentation - has allowed himself to be used as a pawn. Self-worth and creditability doesn't seem to be top priority?

The Truth about Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Global Research
June 11, 2020 = Chris Wallace of Fox News has published his first book, Countdown 1945. It’s about the final days of the run-up to dropping the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You might have hoped that it would be a bit contrarian — like some of his interviews and commentary on that network.

Would he question what Robert Jay Lifton and I have called “The Hiroshima Narrative” that has held sway in the media and popular culture since President Truman announced the attack on August 6, 1945? That narrative has insisted that the bomb, and only the bomb, could have ended the Pacific war against Japan and thereby saved hundreds of thousands or even a million American lives.

Sadly, based on the evidence of an hour-long Fox News special, which he hosted this past Sunday night, and on his book—now a national bestseller—the answer is no. The only thing remarkable about Wallace’s arguments are that they offer nothing new, as if no challenging evidence or counter-narratives have been raised over the past 75 years.

Why does this matter today? Among the many issues Wallace failed to mention on Fox: America’s official “first-use” policy, initiated in 1945, which enables any president to respond to a non-nuclear attack or threat by launching our nuclear missiles, remains fully in effect today. The enduring defense of the use of the bomb against two cities in 1945 to “save American lives” can only encourage, or at least enable, possible future use—by the U.S. or any other country. In fact, polls show that large numbers of Americans say they would support a nuclear first-strike in response to a grave danger posed by North Korea or Iran.

There were some true howlers in the Fox special, such as showing an overhead view of the mushroom cloud rising at Hiroshima using footage actually shot over Nagasaki; then, a few minutes later, using the same footage for the Nagasaki bomb but changing it from color to black and white, hoping we wouldn’t notice. Earlier, the producers briefly flashed footage of the atomic test in the ocean off Bikini in 1946 to represent the first test of the bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945.

But the program can be criticized more for omissions than errors of commission.

There was not a single second of footage from the aftermath of the bombings that revealed any injured, sick, dying or dead Japanese victims. All we saw was rubble and damaged buildings.

What else was left out? There was no discussion of Japan’s near collapse weeks before the attacks. In the summer of 1945, the country was suffering under a full blockade. Increasingly desperate surrender feelers were being communicated by Japanese diplomats, of which Truman was well aware, but you would never know that from the program.

We also do not learn that the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have likely surrendered, even without the atomic bombings, before the U.S. invasion planned for late that autumn.

Instead we’re told that the “enemy showed no willingness to surrender,” and “few doubted that defeating the Japanese could drag on for another 12 to 18 months.” In fact, by July 1945, many American military analysts, including leading generals, doubted this.

Nor did we hear in the documentary that several top Truman advisers believed that Japan would quit the war if the United States modified its “unconditional surrender” demand by signaling that the emperor could remain on the throne. There was no admission in the program that after dropping the bombs we allowed the emperor to stay on anyway. What if we had done that earlier?

Beyond the use of the two atomic bombs, several other factors speeded the end of the war, most notably Russia’s entry on August 8, which the U.S. had demanded and Stalin had agreed to at Potsdam two weeks earlier. Securing that from Stalin, Truman wrote in his diary, “Fini Japs” and “we’ll end the war a year sooner now”—referring to the Soviets’ declaration of war, not the expected dropping of the bomb. The only reference on the Fox show to this critical factor was a brief mention in Wallace’s closing remarks.

Wallace accurately cited the immediate death toll for both cities as 100,000, but failed to present the ultimate toll due to burns, injuries and radiation poisoning, which doubled the number of deaths if not more. Hiroshima was repeatedly referred to as a “military target” or even a “military city”—a key U.S. claim going back to August 1945 when Truman labeled it a “military base”—even though Japanese soldiers only represented about one in ten deaths there (and there is no mention of the dozen U.S. prisoners who died in the attack). A total of about 150 Japanese military personnel died in Nagasaki.

As is customary in such programs, Nagasaki was barely a footnote. Kurt Graham, director of the Truman Library and Museum, offered a bizarre and false defense of dropping the second bomb: The U.S. did not yet have the kind of “satellite reconnaissance” that would have allowed an aerial assessment of damage in Hiroshima, so we had to plunge ahead with the Nagasaki bombing.

This is nonsense, as photos from a U.S. flyover of Hiroshima were quickly sent to Washington. (The New York Times in a front-page headline cited 60% of the city destroyed.) You’d never know from Wallace that many of the historians and others who support the use of the first bomb feel that the bombing of Nagasaki, just three days after Hiroshima, is indefensible, perhaps even a war crime.

The range of “expert” opinions on the show was extremely narrow, with the main commentators—except for one Hiroshima survivor—a conservative Republican senator (Roy Blunt), that director of the Truman library, a historian for the military bomber group that carried out the attacks, and a department chairman from the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Twenty-five years ago that institution brought shame on itself when it caved to pressure from veterans and politicians which led to the cancellation of a balanced exhibit surrounding its triumphant display of the newly restored B-29 bomber Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the Hiroshima bomb. The Wallace book appears to support that suppression.

Wallace claims further that Truman deeply pondered for weeks whether to deploy the new weapon, even spent many “sleepless nights.” Truman himself, however, would repeatedly assert that he never lost any sleep over it. Asked once how long it took to make the decision, he snapped his fingers in reply.

One Japanese survivor, Hideko Tamura Snider (married to an American) is allowed in the TV special and book to tell the moving story of experiencing the bombing and losing her mother. But this is undercut by the overall message that the loss of civilian lives was a) Japan’s fault; b) unavoidable in war; and c) a paltry number compared to the lives that would have been lost in a U.S. invasion.

In any event, her story ends on a disturbing note as she is filmed visiting the restoration of the Enola Gay at an Air & Space Museum annex. There she assures Wallace that she feels no anger about losing her mother, though she still grieves. Then she turns to the plane and says “Sayonara,” as Wallace hugs her around the shoulders.

That is the one thing “new” in the Fox special. Otherwise it follows a tired formula. And while Wallace’s Countdown 1945 book is more detailed and at times more nuanced, its arguments are fully reflected in the TV special, and reduces all questions about the necessity of dropping the bombs to “hindsight.”

From my particular perspective, what I also found astounding was how much the program echoed moves by the Truman White House and military to sabotage the first movie about the bomb, produced by MGM in 1947, which lends its name to the title of my new book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

As long ago as that, Truman and the military forced changes in the movie script to, among other things, bolster the “military target” and “million lives saved” arguments, remove any scenes of victims on the ground, cut any references to Nagasaki or to Truman’s alleged “sleepless nights.” Truman even ordered a re-take of a key scene and got MGM to fire the actor playing him for lacking the proper “military bearing.”

Chris Wallace’s unqualified summation in the Fox special perfectly matches the message of both that MGM film and what’s been the main plotline of The Hiroshima Narrative for seven and a half decades: “The bomb ended the war more than a year earlier than any invasion of Japan would have, and likely saved more than a million casualties on both sides.” Yet there is little credible evidence that Japan, in its desperate state and after a Soviet declaration of war, would hold out for a year after a massive U.S. invasion—or even without one—nor did few military experts expect a million U.S. casualties in such an invasion.

That ultimate Wallace argument also rests on a tragically faulty premise. Having successfully tested the bomb, and with more ready to be quickly assembled, there is only a slim chance that the invasion, though well-planned, would ever have happened. There is no way Truman would have ordered tens of thousands of American soldiers to their deaths once he had atomic bombs at the ready. As we’ve seen, he also believed that, even without the atomic weapon, the Russians’ attack on Japan meant the war would end “a year sooner.”

The historical debate thus has always rested on the issue of whether Truman should have waited another few days, or weeks, for Japan to capitulate before ordering the bomb dropped over the center of two cities, killing more than 200,000, an estimated 95% of them civilians.

Yet Wallace diminishes what he calls “questions of morality” by concluding, “It’s unrealistic to think that Harry Truman would have made any other choice.” That may be true, but all of us have the responsibility to consider whether that choice was the correct one, with possible “first-use” of nuclear bombs still a terrifying option today.

Get Chris Wallace's New Book

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  Countdown 1945
  By Chris Wallace
  From Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday, comes an electrifying behind-the-scenes account of the secret meetings and events across the globe during the 116 days leading up to the world’s first atomic bombing—the American attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.