His second thoughts are widely shared today, fifty years later. Most Americans, and certainly most Japanese, look at the decision to drop the bomb in moral terms, and ask if it was right to flatten an entire, city–two cities, counting Nagasaki. But to the men who made the decision in the summer of 1945, morality was only one factor, and not the most important. Politics, both domestic and geostrategic, counted for more. So did anxiety, haste, weariness.
In the pages that follow, NEWSWEEK relives the apocalyptic ending of the most horrific war in the history of mankind, explores both the American and Japanese perspective–and examines whether it could happen again.
