Criticizing the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Gar Alperowitz is one of the leading researchers who criticizes the decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  This article of his discusses the issue in a very abbreviated manner: Hiroshima After Sixty Years: The Debate Continues CommonDreams.org 08/03/05.

I found the concluding paragraphs particularly interesting:

Why are historians still struggling over these issues? One reason is that few nations find it easy to come to terms with questionable actions in their past. Nor is this a simple left-right debate. In recent years liberals have been critical of the decision. At the time The Nation magazine defended the bombing while many conservative publications criticized it - including Human Events, and later, the National Review. “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," former President Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend.

One of the most important reasons the issues don’t seem to get resolved has to do with the historical record. The fact is most discussions concerning the decision to use the atomic bomb were simply not recorded. Not only were such matters handled in an extremely secretive manner, they were largely handled outside the normal chain of command. There is also evidence of the manipulation of some documents and of missing documents in certain cases–and in some instances, evidence that documents were destroyed.

Perhaps one day we will know more and the long debate over Hiroshima will come to an end. We are unlikely, I think, to discover new official sources. However, a new generation of scholars may well be able to ferret out diaries, letters, or additional personal papers in the attics or basements of descendants of some of the men involved. An even more interesting possibility is that the President’s daughter Margaret will one day donate additional papers to the Truman Library. (In her own writing Margaret reports details which seem clearly to be based on documentary sources. However, she has so far refused to respond to inquiries from historians asking for access to these.) A third possibility is that if, as some believe, the Soviets bugged the Truman villa near Potsdam, Germany (or the villas of other American or British officials who were there for the July 1945 meetings just before the bombings), there may be tapes or transcriptions of some key conversations in NKVD or other files in the Russian archives.