Newspapers publish retrospectives, television documentaries revisit the devastation, and world leaders gather to warn against the destructive power of atomic weapons.
Yet history tells a different story.
By the summer of 1945, Japan had largely lost the war militarily. Its Navy rested on the muddy floor of the Pacific, while the remains of its air force were being converted into kamikazes. Sixty-four of its cities had been reduced to rubble and ash by incendiary bombs, as a submarine blockade strangled its economy, cutting off food, fuel, and raw materials.
Japan still counted 5 million men under arms, a force military leaders believed offered one final opportunity. Their strategy was simple: inflict such brutal casualties on invading American troops that Washington would have no choice but to abandon its demand for unconditional surrender and grant Japan more favorable peace terms.
Then, on August 6, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, obliterating nearly five square miles of the city. Approximately 140,000 men, women, and children ultimately died from the blast or the subsequent effects of radiation.
Many were convinced that Hiroshima represented a terrible but isolated event. Atomic weapons were new and extraordinarily expensive, and they surmised that there was no way the Americans had more than one—or at most, a few—such bombs.
Nagasaki shattered that illusion.
That realization prompted Japan’s leaders to at last confront the reality that the war could not be won. Even after Nagasaki, however, surrender was far from certain. The Supreme War Council deadlocked three-to-three between those favoring peace and those determined to fight to the finish. The impasse was broken only when Emperor Hirohito took the extraordinary step of personally intervening in the political decision-making process—a move virtually unprecedented in modern Japanese history—to demand Japan at last accept surrender.
But moral judgments and historical causation are not the same question. And the historical evidence is clear. Hiroshima alone did not end the war. Nagasaki did.
Understanding that distinction is important.
History should continue to remember Hiroshima as the beginning of the atomic age.
But it should also remember Nagasaki as the moment World War II finally ended.
Hence then, the article about we must remember nagasaki was published today ( ) and is available on Time ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( We Must Remember Nagasaki )
Also on site :