Fewer than 1 in 25 Americans alive today have even the faintest memory of World War II. Pearl Harbor, the draft, D-Day, Iwo Jima — they are all simply material in history books to about 10 million to 15 million Americans. The same is true for the final moments of the war: the United States ending the war by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
As the 75th anniversary of that bombing passed, debate over the atomic bomb flared up. Did President Harry Truman make the right call? What was the alternative? Was it any worse than our “conventional” bombing of Tokyo or German cities?
Plenty of people will tell you that they probably wouldn’t exist if not for Truman’s decision: Their grandfathers were stationed in the Pacific, and they would’ve been sent into a long, deadly mainland invasion of an island empire where even the women and children were prepared to fight to the death with sticks and stones.
It was, at the time, seen as clearly the right choice.
One 1945 poll asked Americans what they would have done were they in Truman’s situation. A plurality (44%) said they would have done what Truman did and bomb one city at a time. That was too weak for another 23%, who said they generally would have wiped out cities. So, that’s 77% who would have deliberately targeted Japanese civilians in order to end that war.
Asked if they approved of the decision, 85% of people back then said yes.
After 75 years, opinions have changed, but a majority still seem to be on board.
When pollsters asked again in 2005, 57% approved of the nuclear bombing of the two cities. The percentage of those calling the bombing “justified” fell from the 1990s to 2015, but still, 56% said it was justified. One 2019 survey found 61% agreeing that it was the right thing to do.
Why are people in the U.S. turning against the atomic bombings? It’s largely generational. Younger Americans disapprove at a much higher rate. Maybe it’s a matter of young people who don’t know the horror of that war not seeing the stakes in ending it sooner. Maybe it’s a culture more skeptical of the wisdom of our leaders.
