Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial.

When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow.

Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional

information visit dignity memorial.com. This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies.

For nearly 80 years humankind has lived with the threat of nuclear

weapons, now in the hands of nine countries. But in all those decades, only one

nation has used nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. That was the United States

which dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 79

years ago this week, killing as many as 200,000 people.

Historians have long debated whether that carnage was necessary to compel Japan to surrender and end World War II.

In the summer of 1945, Germany had surrendered to the Allies,

while Japan largely defeated was defiant

and still capable of inflicting horrific

casualties on any force that might try and invade the Japanese mainland.

Today we're going to listen to my interview with Evan Thomas, whose book examines the thoughts and

motivations of key players in the U.S. military and government, and in Japan's ruling

elite in the closing months of the war.

It's a story of American leaders wrestling with the practical and moral dilemmas presented

by the most terrifying weapon ever made, and of determined Japanese leaders confronting the humiliating prospect of defeat

and the removal of the country's emperor seen by most Japanese as ruling by divine right.

Evan Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for 33 years at time in Newsweek.

He's the author of 10 previous books.

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