This past week there were many stories about how America’s use of atomic bombs was a terrible act against humanity and we should not have used such a weapon, and afterwards the allies were wrong in keeping it’s use a secret.
Remember, this occurred in 1945 during a massive global war that had been going on for over six years.
How many of us know that Germany had been researching atomic weapons during the war and that the allies were able to discover Germany’s secret and disable the production of a bomb? After the first bomb was dropped the Japanese leadership was offered a surrender deal. They had no idea about how many bombs of this type the Americans had. Still the offer was turned down.
The bombs that were dropped on Japan caused an estimated 210,000 casualties. That is a horrible total of human suffering. However, estimates of 1 million casualties could be the result if we and our allies had invaded Japan. Also there probably would have been an additional year of war.
President Truman was able to make hard decisions. Secrets are necessary when kept for the right reason.
