Lessons of Nuclear Warfare From Japan's Atom Bomb Survivors

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80 Years Later, Learning From Hiroshima and Nagasaki

"The survivors gather at memorials
dwindling in number each year.
Time claims what bombs did not.

There may come a day
when no one is left
to tell the stories firsthand."

“Split Horizons: A Contrapuntal” by Collin Kim, 10th grade, California
First-place contest winner, Peace and Conflict category, 2025 Fighting Words Poetry Contest

After the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman had been president for all of 12 days when he was faced with the most fraught decision ever to confront an American leader. That was the day Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson went to Truman’s office and briefed him on “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” It would be ready for use within four months. The decision to use it or not would be the president’s alone.

Historians generally agree that it is unlikely Truman ever gave serious consideration to not using this weapon against the Japanese. He understood the civilian toll would be enormous, but he justified the use of the bomb by calculating the number of lives—both American and Japanese—that would be spared if an invasion of the Japanese home islands could be avoided.

When the August 6, 1945, incineration of Hiroshima was announced, the astounding news was greeted with jubilation. For the American public, there was no second-guessing Truman’s decision. A Gallup poll taken a few weeks after Hiroshima and Nagasaki indicated that 85 percent of Americans supported the use of the atomic bomb. Newspaper editorials were nearly unanimous in their approval.

Today, 80 years later, most of the world views any use of such weapons with horror. At the same time, a sense of complacency has set in, even though nine nations now possess nuclear weapons, some of them many times more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan. The doomsday threat remains.

Over the decades, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known in Japan as hibakusha, have emerged as compelling advocates for nuclear sanity. Only a few hibakusha remain alive today, but their stories and their voices, captured in Pulitzer Center grantee Scott Michels’ powerful documentary for Retro Report, remind us of the peril we still face.

To mark the 80th anniversary, the education teams at the Pulitzer Center and Retro Report are providing resources to support classroom conversations about this important topic. Along with our latest resource guide that dives deeper into themes of global conflict and the use of nuclear weapons, we are also inviting educators to join a free professional development webinar on August 13, 2025, 7:00-8:15pm EDT, to learn more about Michels’ project and its accompanying resources.

Best,

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Impact

The Forever Lobbying Project (PFAS Lobbying Papers), supported by the Pulitzer Center, has been selected as the winner of the 2025 Helen Darbishire Award. The prize celebrates "outstanding efforts to advance human rights, environmental protection, anti-corruption, and democratic accountability through the use of the right of access to information."

The investigation by grantees Stéphane Horel and Luc Martinon, conducted with a team of 46 journalists in 16 countries, exposed industry lobbying against PFAS regulation in Europe. Reporters filed 184 access-to-information requests at the EU level and across other European countries, producing a trove of documents that became the backbone of the project. These records are now publicly available in the Industry Documents Library at the University of California, San Francisco, home of the famous “Tobacco Papers.”

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This message first appeared in the August 8, 2025, edition of the Pulitzer Center's weekly newsletter. Subscribe today.

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