Documents show U.S. initially estimated Hiroshima bombing victims at 100,000
The documents were released by the George Washington University's National Security Archive in Washington.
One of the documents, titled "Hiroshima Mission" and created by the U.S. Army Air Forces, said that the heart of the city of Hiroshima was so completely devastated by the atomic bombing that "not even debris of buildings was left," adding that it seemed as though the area had "never existed."
"The most conservative estimate here is that at least 100,000 of Hiroshima's inhabitants had been needlessly sacrificed by their military leaders," the document, dated Aug. 8, 1945, said.
The city of Hiroshima estimates that about 140,000 people died after the atomic bombing by the end of 1945.
Discussions within the then-U.S. government over atomic bomb demonstrations were also included in the newly released documents.
The National Security Archive said that while U.S. leaders have hailed the atomic bombings for bringing the war to an end, "many others have raised ethical questions about the use of weapons that caused so many civilian deaths and that in succeeding decades led to a costly and dangerous nuclear arms race."
The institute collects and studies official documents whose confidential designations have been lifted, based on the Freedom of Information Act. Since 2005, it has been advancing the disclosure of documents related to atomic bombs.
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It is right that we continue to commemorate the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pivotal and dreadful moments in the history of humankind. But responsibility for them should rest with the Japanese leaders who launched their country into a war of aggression that cost countless lives. We should be thankful that billions of today's people, though familiar with little history, at least know what happened on those August days 80 years ago, and thus recognize that a repetition would augur an end of everything. Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His histories include "Inferno: The World At War, 1939-1945," "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975" and "Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962."
