Hiroshima gets all the attention, but Nagasaki teaches the more important lesson. The need to destroy Hiroshima will be forever debated, but the counterarguments were unpersuasive to President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. A world war had taken the lives of tens of millions. Noncombatants were not spared. When a war-ending weapon was finally available — too late to make unnecessary the Normandy landing, but just in time to substitute for the invasion of Japan’s home islands — Truman and Stimson chose to end the carnage as soon as possible.

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