James Gibney, Columnist

Did Bombing Hiroshima Save Japanese Lives?

Wartime diaries of civilians suggest an invasion would have been even worse.

May 19, 2016 at 2:24 PM UTC

James Gibney is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. Previously an editor at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy and the New Republic, he was also in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1989 to 1997 in India, Japan and Washington.

An invasion would have been worse.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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"Yoshikado-sensei said, 'They're still there. Spear them! Spear them!' and it was really fun. I was tired, but I realized that even one person can kill a lot of the enemy."

So wrote Mihoko Nakane, a 10-year-old Japanese girl, in her diary in July 1945. She was describing the hand-to-hand combat training she and her classmates were getting for the "decisive battle" to be fought if and when the U.S. and its allies invaded mainland Japan.