Weapons for victory

On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 Enola Gay released an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9 another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Fifty years have passed since these catastrophic events, and the bombings still remain highly controversial. The official justification for using these weapons was that they prevented enormous losses on both sides by avoiding an Allied invasion of Japan. Many diplomatic historians, however, have asserted that the bombings were unnecessary. One extreme argument is that Truman knew the Japanese were ready to surrender but…