Here's an historical look back at Japan's second awful encounter with atomic energy. The bombing of Nagasaki.
Someone would have created and employed the bomb and, given our roster of enemies at the time, I'd rather it had been us. But the World War II race to the bomb doesn't necessarily absolve us from the horror it unleashed -- then and now. And while I debate with myself about whether we should have used it or allowed hundreds of thousands of American casualties invading the Japanese mainland, I also find it difficult to believe there were no other options beyond annihilating hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and ushering in decades of fear.