Eighty years ago, in one of the most consequential understatements of all time, Emperor Hirohito told the people of Japan that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

He was originally going to say that “the war situation has deteriorated day by day,” but that was considered too strong — even after the United States had dropped the atom bomb on two Japanese cities.

Whether it was justified to use the bomb constitutes one of the most controversial historical questions in American history, but it was clearly the right call.

If it’s nice to think that Imperial Japan would have decided to surrender on the same timeline without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is no evidence of it.

The Japanese had a strong strategic commitment to defeating or inflicting a sever

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