Revisionist historians deny that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in order to save American lives.
They say the Japanese high command was ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped and that, in any case, an invasion of Japan would not have caused the 1 million Allied casualties or 500,000 deaths that President Truman later claimed were averted.
The real reason for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they say, is that American leaders thought the existence of the bomb and the U.S. willingness to use it would strengthen the American position in relation to the Soviet Union.
The essay collection, Hiroshima’s Shadow, which I am now reading, provides the documentary evidence for these arguments. The contributors include historians who know much more about this subject than I do, but historians disagree.
I think the revisionist arguments not as false, but as inconclusive. Yet I draw the same moral for our own…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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