The Time That It's Always Been

Today's date snuck up on me, but when I posted in the wee hours of this morning and saw the date stamp, I realized that I'd need to put something together. I'm sorry that this didn't get posted to take the top blog position for most of the day, but we do what we can.

If the date doesn't immediately ring a bell for you, today is the sixty-second anniversary of the first of only two atomic bombs ever dropped as an act of war (so far). I'm very much in the camp that believes the bombs were not necessary to end the war. Japan was very much a defeated nation before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Although there was some expectation that the Japanese would never stop fighting if their land was invaded, all it took was for Emperor Hirohito to appeal to the people to accept defeat. The fact that they didn't battle against the occupying U.S. Army puts the lie to the notion of a never-surrendering Japanese culture of war.

The most prominent proponent of the argument that the atomic bomb wasn't necessary to end the war is Gar Alperovitz, who wrote the books Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Here's an article he wrote on the continuing controversy a couple of years ago for the sixtieth anniversary. While I was googling around on the subject last night, I also came across this more recent article on the implications at the time of the decision to use the weapon. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the question of necessity is going away any time soon. Let's just make sure that the discussion remains in the current context and that there won't be a need to update our arguments.