This is Fresh Air, I'm Dave Davies.

This week, as we mark the 78th anniversary of the destruction of the Japanese cities of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American audiences seeing the film Oppenheimer are revisiting

the fateful decisions made by US military and political leaders to use atomic weapons

on a civilian population.

Estimates of those killed in the two cities range from 150,000 to roughly 225,000.

So nine countries now have nuclear weapons.

The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain their only use in armed conflict.

Today we're going to listen back to three Fresh Air interviews which explore whether

the use of atomic weapons against Japan was justified and whether the American public

was misled about their effects.

We begin with Robert J. Lichten, a psychiatrist who has studied the psychological causes and

effects of war and political violence.

Mary Gross spoke to him in 1995 when he published the book Hiroshima in America.

He said that Americans had been fed a myth about the decision to use atomic weapons.

The myth is which is the official American narrative of Hiroshima that we dropped the

bomb reluctantly after great reflection only in order to save lives and end the war and

that therefore it was a good and necessary thing and that we should not in any way trouble

ourselves over it.

You trace the beginning of the official version of the story of the atom bomb and why we

dropped it on Hiroshima to a press release after the bomb was dropped.

Can you read an excerpt of that press release for us which you reprint in your book Hiroshima

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