We won’t go into all the countries that fought in the Second World War other than to say the British fought the Germans and the Germans fought the British and subsequently the British fought the Italians and so on. What was unusual in that war is that, whereas most respectable countries know when they’ve lost and consequently surrender, the Japanese did no such thing.

They were quite competently beaten and should have surrendered, but they didn’t do so. This left the British and the Allies with an unusual circumstance whereby the Japanese became an opponent who refused to surrender. Make no mistake, the Japanese had lost. I’m not entirely sure of the figures, but there was a significant number of armies which had been brought to the state where they should have surrendered, but they didn’t do so. It was something the Allies hadn’t anticipated; in fact, it was something which was unique in a modern war. There was a group of opponents which just wouldn’t give in. This might be due to the attitude of the Japanese towards war, or it might be the attitude of the Japanese towards that war. Either way, they weren’t going to quit.

Very fortunately, the Americans and the Britons expected this to happen and they had regarded from the beginning that they would somehow have to defeat the Japanese competently and single-handedly. Thus, from the beginning of the process whereby they were in defeat of the Japanese, they launched the question within the Allied forces: How are we going to bring this to an end? The bottom line was, there was no question of Japanese surrender under any circumstances.

What is there to be done in a war where your opponent refuses to surrender? There was no question that something had to be done. The war had cost an absolute fortune. Fortunately, the Americans and the British, et cetera, had anticipated something of this nature and worked out that the only thing to do was to defeat the Japanese so thoroughly, so competently – to the point where they would be forced to surrender.

Almost on cue, the use of the atom bomb swam into view to meet this requirement. The Allies, apart from anything else, were keen to find out the potential effect of the atom bomb on a group of individuals, and the good citizens of Japan unwittingly made themselves surrender to this process.

The Allies did everything that was required of them to make the Japanese aware of their intentions, short of advising them what an atomic bomb was and how it would be used. They didn’t make any distinction between a war against individuals in the Japanese army and Japanese civilians in the proposed action. They widely advertised to the Japanese that it was their intention to defeat, and to defeat on a large scale, individuals without giving them mercy. They dropped conventional bombs in many parts of Japan and Japanese-held territory and did so without any regard for civilians.

It’s quite possible the Japanese knew of the possibility of being bombed and it’s quite probable they knew of the possibility of the use of some type of bomb which would be very destructive. Nobody had used atomic bombs until that period and the Americans wanted to use the atomic bomb because they wished to see and assess the result of the use of atomic bombs on applicable targets.

If the atomic bombs proposed to be used by the Americans were as destructive as the Americans believed, the Americans would want to have some idea of the degree of impact of a single atomic bomb by means of a single test.

The Americans went slightly further than they had to. They dropped two bombs – an atomic bomb and a nuclear bomb. The second was not really necessary because the Americans were quite confident the first one had done the job. One day I hope that I have enough time and money to visit the site of the first nuclear bomb, not because I want to glorify the picture of the world’s first nuclear bomb but because I want to see the site of the only nuclear bomb ever used in war.