Sunday, August 6th, marks the 78th anniversary of the use of an atomic weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days hence we will commemorate the obliteration of Nagasaki in the same manner. The success of the film “Oppenheimer,” about the mercurial physicist who headed up the Manhattan Project that brought forth the nuclear age, has prompted rethinking on the subject. This is a good thing.
Much time has passed since these two seminal events not just in World War II, but the history of the human race. It marks the moment when the world saw the power our scientists at Los Alamos had unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. The power to destroy an entire city with one bomb was inconceivable before 1945. Now, nuclear weapons are glibly accepted as just another arrow in the quiver of our and other nations’ national defense. And yet, such a sublime anniversary and how it has shaped the post-war world, should be contemplated more than it is, regardless of how much time passes.
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