Honestly, what the remaining WWII vets think isn’t relevant to the current political interests of the United States. Not that I expect the current president to act in those interests, but the United States, today, has tremendous areas of overlapping security interests and concerns with the japanese. You have to be blind not to be able to read a map and see where the major security threats to both of us in asia are coming from.
Yes, a democrat dropped the bomb. Not sure what political affiliation has to do with anything so far in the past. Democrats of the 40’s were more conservative than todays republican party. Comparing obama and truman is a laughable exercise, but the joke is on us!
Yes, bombing japan saved countless lives of US soldiers in the bloodbath that home island invasion would have been, and probably saved more japanese lives to boot, though that wasn’t the motivation for it. Only people ignorant of the actual history or unable to get around their nuclear or anti-american neuroses would argue against the use of the bombs. There do appear to be quite a few such people, though. I cannot see how not using the bomb would have benefited either the US or Japan (post-defeat) in any sense whatsoever, and I have wondered about what additional territory Stalin would have been able to annex/acquire/liberate in such a scenario.
As far as radiation, yes, hydrogen bombs caused radiation but it was VERY short-lived, from what I have read. If you were nearby, you died of it, but it was at vastly lower levels pretty quickly. The cities were rebuilt pretty much where they were before as far as I can tell (I have driven close to but not through nagasaki), which says a lot.
Better read again.
The two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII were fission (uranium), not fusion (hydrogen), and they were NOT clean bombs. We hadn't developed that technology yet.
Another long term benefit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that for the entire period of the Cold War, Russia believed that mutually assured destruction was not a path to follow. I suspect that if those bombs had not been dropped, Russian reluctance to trigger a nuclear exchange would have been much less. I fear that the world and it’s young leaders are forgetting this. India/Pakistan for example.