On the american side

Norman Ramsey signing his creation : Fat Man - atomicheritage.org

It is difficult not to react to the fact that the Americans have baptized their Bombs "little boy" or "Fat man", most probably a way to free the guilt of the young GI who from their island of the Marianas, tanned, well-fed, bare-chested and in shorts, were about to send death to thousands of civilians. Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXD_fzrcE20: This film shot on Tinian Island ** shows the preparations for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; The physicist Norman Ramsey, responsible for the design of the bombs, putting the finishing touches to the look of the nuclear device by signing his work, as an artist would do, is a hallucinatory testimony that illustrates well the state of mind of the American military at the time.

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum

Today’s small American nuclear weapons reach a ratio of 600 to 2200 kT of TNT per ton, 30 to 100 times more powerful than "Fatman". Russia and the United States own 93% of the world's nuclear arsenal.*

The historical "truth" about the atomic bomb

I had heard on a radio show that the historical truth is always the one of the winner and that the first motivation of the US to drop their two bombs on Japan was not like Truman said "to save many young American soldiers lives", but to frighten the Russians! Inquiring on these statements I discovered that the desire to rewrite history is not only the prerogative of the Japanese; the Americans are even better at it. 

To clarify my statement, here is an excerpt from an article published in the french newspaper Le Monde2 : "If what we had to hide is that the bomb was not necessary to obtain the capitulation of Japan? This is what the revisionist (North American) history school (WA Williams, G. Kolko, G. Alperovitz, JRPauwells (Canadian Historian)) claims.*** Two conditions would have been sufficient for the immediate surrender of Japan: first of all that President Truman insisted that the Soviet Union immediately declared war on Japan, and second that the Americans promised to leave the emperor alive and in office. Truman has refused both at the Potsdam conference that began on July 17, 1945. The day before, the president had received the "good news": the bomb was ready, the successful test of Alamogordo, Mexico, had demonstrated it brilliantly. The Americans pushed the nuclear fires, not to force Japan to surrender to the slightest evil, but to impress the Russians. A legacy for the Cold War and an ethical abomination.

The bomb existed, it could only be used."

The multitude of trustworthy sources supporting this hypothesis does not leave much ambiguity about the real motivations of the Americans in 1945. For my part, I would tend to think that the "American revisionist" hypothesis is the right one. In my research and my journey I could easily picture the 1945  Japan which was on one hand really very weak morally and militarily, and on the other hand where the Japanese military government that controlled the emperor was ready to sacrifice all Japanese lives to the last rather than surrender. It was not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that would have pushed Japan to surrender, the Japanese had already suffered on March 10 1945 the "conventional" bombing of Tokyo, which killed 120,000 people and destroyed 40 square kilometers of the city in one night ... The Japanese placed all their hopes on a mission of peace led by the Soviet Union and Prince Fumimaro Konoe. However, Stalin announced his declaration of war with Japan on August 8, thereby annihilating all possibilities for Japan to negotiate conditional surrender. Being trapped in a corner the imperial council therefore accepted unconditional surrender on August 14th. There is no evidence that the atomic bombs triggered this capitulation, at the most they precipitated the decision of the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan (8 August instead of 15) and thus pushed the Japanese to capitulate a little earlier,."according to the US National Archives, the Emperor of Japan decides, on June 20, 1945, to cease hostilities. On July 12, an official Japanese emissary was appointed to discuss the basis for conditional surrender. Even if the Emperor's Cabinet and the General Staff are divided, the Japanese government follows and awaits the outcome of these negotiations" 1 …

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum - Globe showing the size of nuclear arsenal by country
proportionally illustrated by atomic mushroom clouds ...

1 : Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, American historian specialist on the matter, who studied the US Archives.

2 : Thinking of the unthinkable nuclear destruction article by Jean-Pierre Dupuy philosopher, le Monde 03-08-2015

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons

** http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp8.shtml et http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945

*** Interesting paper (in French) : http://www.mondialisation.ca/la-destruction-de-lhumanite-a-hiroshima-et-nagasaki-la-vraie-verite/5468193?print=1

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