The title makes it sound like conservatives were anti-nuke, one and all. This is based on a single letter written by one man?? One swallow does not a spring make, as the old adage goes.
Hiroshima was a carefully thought out target. It had to have enough ‘shock and awe’ to trick the japanese leaders into thinking that continuing to fight was useless. Don’t forget, we only had 2 bombs in total! The US had been avoiding Kyoto and other places (with regular carpet bombing) that were not used for military purposes with the thought of a post war Japan needing to keep some of its positive heritage and dignity. This is a courtesy that would not have been extended to us by either the Germans or the Japanese.
Clearly if the bombs in Japan were “crimes” and akin to dousing people with gasoline, then the “American conservative nationalist right” (all terms used by the author in this liberal handwringing piece) must’ve LED the “ban the bomb” movement, right?
And we were getting the third bomb ready to go when Japan finally decided that life was better then death.
By the time November rolled around we would have had bombs coming off the line pretty steadily and we would have used them.
You have only to visit Shuri Castle in Okinawa to understand why. You will see pegs in the wall about knee and ankle height that what was left after the bombing. And the commander still would not surrender.