This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The signing of the historic surrender document by Japan took place on Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. The surrender came abruptly after the atomic bombs fell on two principal Japanese cities of Hiroshima (on Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (on Aug. 9).

Did President Harry Truman have a viable alternative to dropping the atomic bombs on Japan, as some critics have suggested? No issue has fueled more anti-American sentiment than the revisionist idea that the United States, by dropping the bombs, shared primary guilt for the war.