It is well known that the media likes to make themselves the main character of every story they can, but Tuesday’s PBS American Experience documentary about the atomic bombings on Japan took things to a whole new level. The main takeaway for PBS’s assembled cast of BlueSky historians is not that the narrative we tell ourselves about the necessity of the bombs is true, but rather that it is a coping mechanism to hide any moral guilt from a 1946 John Hersey article documenting the bombs’ aftermath.
Naturally, PBS did not have anyone on to defend the orthodox view. Instead, PBS gave us Vincent Intondi, a man whose website describes him as “the preeminent authority on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons.” Intondi lamented, “The American public took the narrative, hook, line, and sinker, and said, ‘Okay, this is—we trust the government that this is what was needed. Thank God we got it and it wasn't, you know, another country, and that we have this, and it was the right thing to do.’"
Fellow historian Alex Wellerstein followed, “And this is a remarkably resilient narrative to the point where, if you tell somebody this narrative, they'll say, ‘Right, that's the story, right?’ And no, that didn't get really solidified until 1947. So, like, quite a ways after Hiroshima. And in many ways, it's not true.”
According to Wellerstein, the real purpose behind dropping the bombs was to show the Soviet Union who the big man on campus was, “There was no deep deliberation over whether to use the bomb. There was no deep concern about the Japanese victims. The plan was to bomb and invade, not one or the other. The bombs weren't used to end the war promptly. The bombs were used to scare the Soviet Union into submission. They were not the last salvos of World War II, but the first salvos of the Cold War.”
This is false, and therefore something to keep in mind for the next time PBS complains Republicans are allegedly trying to teach kids fake history. Elsewhere in the documentary, PBS’s cast said that Truman’s public desire for the Soviets to enter the war was contrary to his private desires because he did not want Japan to be divided like Germany. In his book Hell To Pay—which deals extensively with the Soviet role and U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the Pacific War—D.M. Giangreco debunks the idea:
President Truman flatly rejected [Stalin’s] proposal [for an occupation zone on Hokkaido] as being contrary to agreements made earlier that year at the Yalta Conference, and Stalin immediately dropped his demands. There would be no Soviet landings, and unlike in Germany, Japan would not become a divided nation during the long ‘cold war’ to follow.
However, this idea clouded the entire documentary so that later when discussion shifted to Hersey’s article, Wellerstein claimed the orthodox narrative was the product of “a number of people associated with the Manhattan Project—James Conant, the president of Harvard, General Groves, Secretary of War Stimson—they collaborate and produce this multiple-authored article that's going to come out under Stimson's name, and it's going to be the official 'Why we dropped the atomic bomb.'"
He added, “The United States built this weapon because it was afraid of the Nazis. It didn't really want to use this weapon, but Truman had this choice in front of him. Do we invade Japan?”
Even PBS acknowledged at the beginning of the documentary that the Nazis were working on a similar program and scientists who fled the regime were terrified of Hitler getting such a bomb.
However, fellow historian Michael Gordin huffed, “There is a very elaborate narrative that such an invasion would have been enormously destructive of American lives, and even more destructive of Japanese lives. And so the atomic bomb was a merciful way to end the war with the fewest casualties possible. And that's a way of trying to erode the moral clarity that Hersey is putting forward.”
Detailing the aftermath of an atomic bombing may tug at Gordin’s heartstrings, but it is simply and objectively true that an invasion would have cost more American and Japanese lives.
Journalism Prof. Mitchell Stephens also downplayed this inconvenient truth, “Similar to the Hersey piece, Harper’s hyped it heavily, and it gained a very wide audience. Newspapers reprinted parts of it. A lot of people basically said, ‘Well, we've, we've had our doubts, but this settles it. Now that we understand why the bomb was used, we don't have to hear about people raising moral issues' or something.”
Wellerstein agreed, “This becomes the definitive way to attack the criticisms, by saying, "It was the lesser of two evils. We agree it's really cruel, but they put us in that position, and we had no alternative."
Debates about the atomic bombs have been going on since they were dropped, but one thing that PBS’s side of the argument has never been able to convincingly explain away is that the god-king emperor of Japan himself said in his famous radio address that the atomic bombs were what compelled Japan to accept the Allies’ terms.
Here is a transcript for the January 6 show:
PBS American Experience
1/6/2026
10:19 PM ET
VINCENT INTONDI: The American public took the narrative, hook, line, and sinker, and said “Okay, this is—we trust the government that this is what was needed. Thank God we got it and it wasn't, you know, another country, and that we have this, and it was the right thing to do."
ALEX WELLERSTEIN: And this is a remarkably resilient narrative to the point where, if you tell somebody this narrative, they'll say, "Right, that's the story, right?"
And no, that didn't get really solidified until 1947. So, like, quite a ways after Hiroshima. And in many ways, it's not true. There was no deep deliberation over whether to use the bomb. There was no deep concern about the Japanese victims. The plan was to bomb and invade, not one or the other. The bombs weren't used to end the war promptly. The bombs were used to scare the Soviet Union into submission. They were not the last salvos of World War II, but the first salvos of the Cold War.
…
WELLERSTEIN: So a number of people associated with the Manhattan Project: James Conant, the president of Harvard, General Groves, Secretary of War Stimson, they collaborate and produce this multiple-authored article that's going to come out under Stimson's name, and it's going to be the official "Why we dropped the atomic bomb."
The United States built this weapon because it was afraid of the Nazis. It didn't really want to use this weapon, but Truman had this choice in front of him. Do we invade Japan?
MICHAEL GORDIN: There is a very elaborate narrative that such an invasion would have been enormously destructive of American lives, and even more destructive of Japanese lives. And so the atomic bomb was a merciful way to end the war with the fewest casualties possible. And that's a way of trying to erode the moral clarity that Hersey is putting forward.
MITCHELL STEPHENS: Similar to the Hersey piece, Harper’s hyped it heavily, and it gained a very wide audience. Newspapers reprinted parts of it. A lot of people basically said, "Well, we've, we've had our doubts, but this settles it. Now that we understand why the bomb was used, we don't have to hear about people raising moral issues" or something.
WELLERSTEIN: This becomes the definitive way to attack the criticisms, by saying, "It was the lesser of two evils. We agree it's really cruel, but they put us in that position, and we had no alternative."
