NYTimes: 70 Years After Nagasaki Bombing, Atomic Debate Yields Little Consensus

"Did the United States have to drop the bomb?

Seventy years after the United States launched the atomic age with attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hastening the end of the war in the Pacific, The New York Times asked readers how they viewed the decision by President Harry S. Truman.

On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the second such attack on Japan in three days.

At the time, Truman defended his decision to drop the bombs as the only way to avoid a full-scale invasion of Japan. That, arguably, would have cost more lives, American and Japanese, than the approximately 200,000 who died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

NYTimes: 70 Years After Nagasaki Bombing, Atomic Debate Yields Little Consensus