On August 6th, in 1945, the world saw the first use of atomic weapons against human targets. On this day 63 years ago, humanity lost its nuclear virginity. Until the end of time we will be a species that has used fission bombs in anger.
Time has passed, and we still haven't blown up our world, despite a close call or two. Which makes it difficult to criticize the decision - would things still have turned out all right, if anyone had chosen differently, anywhere along the way?
Maybe we needed to see the ruins, of the city and the people.
Maybe we didn't.
There's an ongoing debate - and no, it is not a settled issue - over whether the Japanese would have surrendered without the Bomb. But I would not have dropped the Bomb even to save the lives of American soldiers, because I would have wanted to preserve that world where atomic weapons had never been used - to not cross that line. I don't know about history to this point; but the world would be safer now, I think, today, if no one had ever used atomic weapons in war, and the idea was not considered suitable for polite discussion.
I'm not saying it was wrong. I don't know for certain that it was wrong. I wouldn't have thought that humanity could make it this far without using atomic weapons again. All I can say is that if it had been me, I wouldn't have done it.
What I've never understood is why it's so much worse to be vaporized/die of radiation burns than it is to be incinerated/die of fire burns. Or why it's "wrong" to nuke people cheering on soldiers who used pregnant women as bayonet targets but "just an unfortunate part of war" to blast the same people into little bits. I'm being coy, of course. There is no difference. The fact is that the "sin" of dropping one bomb versus another was concocted, and has since been propagated, by the anti-American Left and Right.