We Must Remember Nagasaki

Each August, the world pauses to remember the U.S. dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.Newspapers publish retrospectives, television documentaries revisit the devastation, and world leaders gather to warn against the destructive power of atomic weapons.Nagasaki, bombed just three days later, receives only a fraction of that attention. The imbalance extends well beyond anniversary commemorations. In 2025, Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum welcomed over 2.5 million visitors, while Nagasaki’s attracted fewer than 900,000.Yet history tells a different story.While Hiroshima has become the defining symbol of the atomic age, it was Nagasaki that helped change the course of World War II. The second atomic bomb—not the first—broke the deadlock within Japan’s leadership, compelled Emperor Hirohito to intervene in the political process, and set in motion Japan’s surrender. Eighty-one years later, that fact remains one of the least appreciated turning points of the twentieth century.By the summer of 1945, Japan had largely lost the war militarily. Its Navy rested on the muddy floor of the Pacific, while the remains of its air force were being converted into kamikaze...