Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Did we do the Right Thing?

National Archives

Seventy-two years, the United States dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki three days later.

Why did the United States drop the bomb? Why did they drop the bombs in early August and why did they hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

British historian Gill Bennet attempts to answer these questions in a blog post for the British government website in an essay called "What’s the Context? 6 August 1945: an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima."

But was dropping the atomic bomb the right thing to do? Were there alternatives?

That's what historian Alex Wellerstein considers in a post for Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog.

Students might debate the merits of the two narratives.

Here are other resources about the  wisdom of dropping the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan in 1945.

• No Other Choice: Why Truman Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan by Tom Nichols in the magazine, National Interest
• 70 years after Hiroshima, opinions have shifted on use of atomic bomb, from the Pew Research Center
• Was it right to bomb Hiroshima? from BBC IWONDER