However, University of Maryland Professor Gar Alperovitz explains that Japan was already largely defeated. So when Gen. Eisenhower was told in advance of the decision, he declared it wasn’t necessary, and most top World War II military leaders agreed with him.

U.S. intelligence officials were determined that Japan would surrender if promised their emperor could remain as a figurehead, and if the Soviets declared war on them, which they did on Aug. 8.

But Truman ignored the intelligence, and rather than wait, bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6. His chief of staff, Adm. William Leahy, later wrote, "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender … In being the first to use it, we … adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

On Aug. 6, 2008, 45,000 Japanese gathered to hear Hiroshima’s mayor urge the next U.S. president to work for the abolition of atomic weapons. The atom bomb had instantly killed more than 140,000 civilians and fatally injured tens of thousands more with radiation or horrific burns. When the United States dropped another atom bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, we killed another 70,000 civilians.

Today in America, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not on the radar.

Let’s make Aug. 14, 2008, the day we stop investing in more nuclear weapons and work for total nuclear disarmament.