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Hello and welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia.

My name is Jodi Avergan.

This day, August 1945, 80 years ago, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

The United States dropped atomic weapons on those two cities in an effort to bring a quick close to World War II. President Truman, who ultimately

made the decision to use the nuclear weapons, wrote that he wanted his generals to, quote,

use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.

This, of course, did not happen.

In the initial bombing and then in the aftermath, some 90,000 to 170,000 people in Hiroshima,

and some 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki died.

90% of them were civilians.

There are, of course, so many ways to mark this 80th anniversary.

There's the voices of those people on the ground, the American scientists who developed the bomb,

the political leaders in this country who convinced themselves that dropping the weapon

would be the only way to end the war, which is something that historians will be debating

for eternity. Our guest today is Garrett Graff,

...