Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war

Hear, O child of conscience, the voice of George Wald, a man of science and a bearer of truth, who declared with unflinching clarity: “Dropping those atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime.” These are not light words, nor born of passion alone, but of moral vision. For in them he names the unleashing of fire upon two cities not as triumph, not as necessity, but as a transgression against humanity itself. His voice calls us to see beyond victory, beyond power, and to weigh the act itself in the scales of justice and compassion.

The origin of these words lies in the final days of World War II. In August 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb upon Hiroshima, and days later another upon Nagasaki. In moments, tens of thousands of men, women, and children were annihilated. The cities became fields of ash, where shadows burned into stone were all that remained of human lives. Survivors, the hibakusha, bore wounds that never healed—skin melted, bones scorched, generations afflicted by radiation. Wald looked upon this and refused to accept the easy justification that it was only “the price of peace.” For him, to deliberately destroy entire cities, knowing that innocents would be its chief victims, was to step across the line into crime.

Consider the story of a young girl named Sadako Sasaki of Hiroshima. She was only two years old when the bomb fell. At first she survived, but years later she developed leukemia, one of the cruel legacies of radiation. As she lay dying, she folded paper cranes, hoping to reach a thousand, for the crane was said to bring healing and long life. She folded six hundred and forty-four before death claimed her. Her classmates folded the rest, and today her statue stands as a testament to both suffering and hope. Through her story we see what Wald meant: the victims were not armies, but children, mothers, fathers—human beings whose only crime was to dwell beneath the mushroom cloud.

It is true that the defenders of the bombings argued that the strikes hastened the end of the war, sparing countless soldiers’ lives. Yet Wald pierced this veil with his words. For even if war may demand sacrifice, there are lines that humanity must not cross. The deliberate targeting of civilian populations, the unleashing of destruction so absolute it endangers not only the present but generations unborn, belongs not to the code of warriors but to the ledger of atrocities. By naming it a war crime, Wald insists that even victory does not cleanse guilt, and that power does not sanctify every act it commands.

The deeper meaning of Wald’s words is this: technology may grant men terrible new weapons, but morality must remain their master. If humanity allows itself to be ruled by expedience alone, then every horror can be justified in the name of necessity. But when morality guides power, there are boundaries that may never be crossed. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Wald reminds us, was not merely the end of a war—it was the beginning of an age where mankind holds in its hands the power to annihilate itself.

What, then, is the lesson for us who inherit this fearful power? It is to resist the temptation of easy answers, to refuse to excuse atrocity for the sake of expedience, and to guard against the silence of forgetting. Let us remember the hibakusha, let us tell the story of Sadako and her paper cranes, let us teach our children that no cause, however righteous, can justify the slaughter of innocents. And let us guard our future by working always toward disarmament, peace, and the protection of life, not its destruction.

Therefore, O listener, take this teaching into your heart: speak boldly when the powerful seek to justify cruelty. Resist the voices that would call destruction a necessity. Uphold compassion as the highest law of war and of peace. For as George Wald declared, the dropping of the atomic bombs was a war crime—and to forget this is to risk repeating it. Let memory become your shield, and conscience your sword, so that never again shall the sky be torn by such fire.