[Have decades of nuclear policy been based on a lie? ]
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THE BOMB DIDN’T BEAT JAPAN … STALIN DID  
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Ward Wilson
November 11, 2021
GetPocket
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_ Have decades of nuclear policy been based on a lie? _

TIME cover Feb 05-1945 ill. of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin by
manhhai, This image was marked with a CC BY 2.0 license.

 

The U.S. use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II has
long been a subject of emotional debate. Initially, few questioned
President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued
that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war,
Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have
done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use
was, therefore, unnecessary. Obviously, if the bombings weren’t
necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
wrong. In the years since, many others have joined the fray: some
echoing Alperovitz and denouncing the bombings, others rejoining hotly
that the bombings were moral, necessary, and life-saving.

Both schools of thought, however, assume that the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki with new, more powerful weapons did coerce Japan into
surrendering on Aug. 9. They fail to question the utility of the
bombing in the first place — to ask, in essence, did it work? The
orthodox view is that, yes, of course, it worked. The United States
bombed Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, when the Japanese
finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and
surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are
three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly
undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.

Timing

The first problem with the traditional interpretation is timing. And
it is a serious problem. The traditional interpretation has a simple
timeline: The U.S. Army Air Force bombs Hiroshima with a nuclear
weapon on Aug. 6, three days later they bomb Nagasaki with another,
and on the next day the Japanese signal their intention to surrender.
One can hardly blame American newspapers for running headlines like:
“Peace in the Pacific: Our Bomb Did It!”

When the story of Hiroshima is told in most American histories, the
day of the bombing — Aug. 6 — serves as the narrative climax. All
the elements of the story point forward to that moment: the decision
to build a bomb, the secret research at Los Alamos, the first
impressive test, and the final culmination at Hiroshima. It is told,
in other words, as a story about the Bomb. But you can’t analyze
Japan’s decision to surrender objectively in the context of the
story of the Bomb. Casting it as “the story of the Bomb” already
presumes that the Bomb’s role is central.

Viewed from the Japanese perspective, the most important day in that
second week of August wasn’t Aug. 6 but Aug. 9. That was the day
that the Supreme Council met — for the first time in the war — to
discuss unconditional surrender. The Supreme Council was a group of
six top members of the government — a sort of inner cabinet — that
effectively ruled Japan in 1945. Japan’s leaders had not seriously
considered surrendering prior to that day. Unconditional surrender
(what the Allies were demanding) was a bitter pill to swallow. The
United States and Great Britain were already convening war crimes
trials in Europe. What if they decided to put the emperor — who was
believed to be divine — on trial? What if they got rid of the
emperor and changed the form of government entirely? Even though the
situation was bad in the summer of 1945, the leaders of Japan were not
willing to consider giving up their traditions, their beliefs, or
their way of life. Until Aug. 9. What could have happened that caused
them to so suddenly and decisively change their minds? What made them
sit down to seriously discuss surrender for the first time after 14
years of war?

It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in
the late morning of Aug. 9, after the Supreme Council had already
begun meeting to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only
reached Japan’s leaders in the early afternoon — after the meeting
of the Supreme Council had been adjourned in deadlock and the full
cabinet had been called to take up the discussion. Based on timing
alone, Nagasaki can’t have been what motivated them.

Hiroshima isn’t a very good candidate either. It came 74 hours —
more than three days — earlier. What kind of crisis takes three days
to unfold? The hallmark of a crisis is a sense of impending disaster
and the overwhelming desire to take action now. How could Japan’s
leaders have felt that Hiroshima touched off a crisis and yet not meet
to talk about the problem for three days?

President John F. Kennedy was sitting up in bed reading the morning
papers at about 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 16, 1962, when McGeorge Bundy, his
national security advisor, came in to inform him that the Soviet Union
was secretly putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. Within two hours and
forty-five minutes a special committee had been created, its members
selected, contacted, brought to the White House, and were seated
around the cabinet table to discuss what should be done.

President Harry Truman was vacationing in Independence, Missouri, on
June 25, 1950, when North Korea sent its troops across the 38th
parallel, invading South Korea. Secretary of State Acheson called
Truman that Saturday morning to give him the news. Within 24 hours,
Truman had flown halfway across the United States and was seated at
Blair House (the White House was undergoing renovations) with his top
military and political advisors talking about what to do.

Even Gen. George Brinton McClellan — the Union commander of the Army
of the Potomac in 1863 during the American Civil War, of whom
President Lincoln said sadly, “He’s got the slows” — wasted
only 12 hours when he was given a captured copy of Gen. Robert E.
Lee’s orders for the invasion of Maryland.

These leaders responded — as leaders in any country would — to the
imperative call that a crisis creates. They each took decisive steps
in a short period of time. How can we square this sort of behavior
with the actions of Japan’s leaders? If Hiroshima really touched off
a crisis that eventually forced the Japanese to surrender after
fighting for 14 years, why did it take them three days to sit down to
discuss it?

One might argue that the delay is perfectly logical. Perhaps they only
came to realize the importance of the bombing slowly. Perhaps they
didn’t know it was a nuclear weapon and when they did realize it and
understood the terrible effects such a weapon could have, they
naturally concluded they had to surrender. Unfortunately, this
explanation doesn’t square with the evidence.

First, Hiroshima’s governor reported to Tokyo on the very day
Hiroshima was bombed that about a third of the population had been
killed in the attack and that two thirds of the city had been
destroyed. This information didn’t change over the next several
days. So the outcome — the end result of the bombing — was clear
from the beginning. Japan’s leaders knew roughly the outcome of the
attack on the first day, yet they still did not act.

Second, the preliminary report prepared by the Army team that
investigated the Hiroshima bombing, the one that gave details about
what had happened there, was not delivered until Aug. 10. It didn’t
reach Tokyo, in other words, until after the decision to surrender had
already been taken. Although their verbal report was delivered (to the
military) on Aug. 8, the details of the bombing were not available
until two days later. The decision to surrender was therefore not
based on a deep appreciation of the horror at Hiroshima.

Third, the Japanese military understood, at least in a rough way, what
nuclear weapons were. Japan had a nuclear weapons program. Several of
the military men mention the fact that it was a nuclear weapon that
destroyed Hiroshima in their diaries. Gen. Anami Korechika, minster of
war, even went to consult with the head of the Japanese nuclear
weapons program on the night of Aug. 7. The idea that Japan’s
leaders didn’t know about nuclear weapons doesn’t hold up.

Finally, one other fact about timing creates a striking problem. On
Aug. 8, Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori went to Premier Suzuki Kantaro
and asked that the Supreme Council be convened to discuss the bombing
of Hiroshima, but its members declined. So the crisis didn’t grow
day by day until it finally burst into full bloom on Aug. 9. Any
explanation of the actions of Japan’s leaders that relies on the
“shock” of the bombing of Hiroshima has to account for the fact
that they considered a meeting to discuss the bombing on Aug. 8, made
a judgment that it was too unimportant, and then suddenly decided to
meet to discuss surrender the very next day. Either they succumbed to
some sort of group schizophrenia, or some other event was the real
motivation to discuss surrender.

Scale

Historically, the use of the Bomb may seem like the most important
discrete event of the war. From the contemporary Japanese perspective,
however, it might not have been so easy to distinguish the Bomb from
other events. It is, after all, difficult to distinguish a single drop
of rain in the midst of a hurricane.

In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force carried out one of the
most intense campaigns of city destruction in the history of the
world. Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked and all of them were
either partially or completely destroyed. An estimated 1.7 million
people were made homeless, 300,000 were killed, and 750,000 were
wounded. Sixty-six of these raids were carried out with conventional
bombs, two with atomic bombs. The destruction caused by conventional
attacks was huge. Night after night, all summer long, cities would go
up in smoke. In the midst of this cascade of destruction, it would not
be surprising if this or that individual attack failed to make much of
an impression — even if it was carried out with a remarkable new
type of weapon.

A B-29 bomber flying from the Mariana Islands could carry —
depending on the location of the target and the altitude of attack —
somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000 pounds of bombs. A typical raid
consisted of 500 bombers. This means that the typical conventional
raid was dropping 4 to 5 kilotons of bombs on each city. (A kiloton is
a thousand tons and is the standard measure of the explosive power of
a nuclear weapon. The Hiroshima bomb measured 16.5 kilotons, the
Nagasaki bomb 20 kilotons.) Given that many bombs spread the
destruction evenly (and therefore more effectively), while a single,
more powerful bomb wastes much of its power at the center of the
explosion — re-bouncing the rubble, as it were — it could be
argued that some of the conventional raids approached the destruction
of the two atomic bombings.

The first of the conventional raids, a night attack on Tokyo on March
9-10, 1945, remains the single most destructive attack on a city in
the history of war. Something like 16 square miles of the city were
burned out. An estimated 120,000 Japanese lost their lives — the
single highest death toll of any bombing attack on a city.

We often imagine, because of the way the story is told, that the
bombing of Hiroshima was far worse. We imagine that the number of
people killed was off the charts. But if you graph the number of
people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find
that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart
the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was
fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima
was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the
conventional attacks carried out that summer.

From our perspective, Hiroshima seems singular, extraordinary. But if
you put yourself in the shoes of Japan’s leaders in the three weeks
leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the picture is considerably
different. If you were one of the key members of Japan’s government
in late July and early August, your experience of city bombing would
have been something like this: On the morning of July 17, you would
have been greeted by reports that during the night four cities had
been attacked: Oita, Hiratsuka, Numazu, and Kuwana. Of these, Oita and
Hiratsuka were more than 50 percent destroyed. Kuwana was more than 75
percent destroyed and Numazu was hit even more severely, with
something like 90 percent of the city burned to the ground.

Three days later you have woken to find that three more cities had
been attacked. Fukui was more than 80 percent destroyed. A week later
and three more cities have been attacked during the night. Two days
later and six more cities were attacked in one night, including
Ichinomiya, which was 75 percent destroyed. On Aug. 2, you would have
arrived at the office to reports that four more cities have been
attacked. And the reports would have included the information that
Toyama (roughly the size of Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1945), had been
99.5 percent destroyed. Virtually the entire city had been leveled.
Four days later and four more cities have been attacked. On Aug. 6,
only one city, Hiroshima, was attacked but reports say that the damage
was great and a new type bomb was used. How much would this one new
attack have stood out against the background of city destruction that
had been going on for weeks?

In the three weeks prior to Hiroshima, 26 cities were attacked by the
U.S. Army Air Force. Of these, eight — or almost a third — were as
completely or more completely destroyed than Hiroshima (in terms of
the percentage of the city destroyed). The fact that Japan had 68
cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for
people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of
Japan’s surrender. The question is: If they surrendered because a
city was destroyed, why didn’t they surrender when those other 66
cities were destroyed?

If Japan’s leaders were going to surrender because of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, you would expect to find that they cared about the bombing
of cities in general, that the city attacks put pressure on them to
surrender. But this doesn’t appear to be so. Two days after the
bombing of Tokyo, retired Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro expressed
a sentiment that was apparently widely held among Japanese
high-ranking officials at the time. Shidehara opined that “the
people would gradually get used to being bombed daily. In time their
unity and resolve would grow stronger.” In a letter to a friend he
said it was important for citizens to endure the suffering because
“even if hundreds of thousands of noncombatants are killed, injured,
or starved, even if millions of buildings are destroyed or burned,”
additional time was needed for diplomacy. It is worth remembering that
Shidehara was a moderate.

At the highest levels of government — in the Supreme Council —
attitudes were apparently the same. Although the Supreme Council
discussed the importance of the Soviet Union remaining neutral, they
didn’t have a full-dress discussion about the impact of city
bombing. In the records that have been preserved, city bombing
doesn’t even get mentioned during Supreme Council discussions except
on two occasions: once in passing in May 1945 and once during the
wide-ranging discussion on the night of Aug. 9. Based on the evidence,
it is difficult to make a case that Japan’s leaders thought that
city bombing — compared to the other pressing matters involved in
running a war — had much significance at all.

Gen. Anami on Aug. 13 remarked that the atomic bombings were no more
menacing than the fire-bombing that Japan had endured for months. If
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no worse than the fire bombings, and if
Japan’s leaders did not consider them important enough to discuss in
depth, how can Hiroshima and Nagasaki have coerced them to surrender?

Strategic Significance

If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned
with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union.

The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They
were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad.
The Army, however, was still strong and well-supplied. Nearly 4
million men were under arms and 1.2 million of those were guarding
Japan’s home islands.

Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the
war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how
to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible. The Allies
(the United States, Great Britain, and others — the Soviet Union,
remember, was still neutral) were demanding “unconditional
surrender.” Japan’s leaders hoped that they might be able to
figure out a way to avoid war crimes trials, keep their form of
government, and keep some of the territories they’d conquered:
Korea, Vietnam, Burma, parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, a large
portion of eastern China, and numerous islands in the Pacific.

They had two plans for getting better surrender terms; they had, in
other words, two strategic options. The first was diplomatic. Japan
had signed a five-year neutrality pact with the Soviets in April of
1941, which would expire in 1946. A group consisting mostly of
civilian leaders and led by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori hoped that
Stalin might be convinced to mediate a settlement between the United
States and its allies on the one hand, and Japan on the other. Even
though this plan was a long shot, it reflected sound strategic
thinking. After all, it would be in the Soviet Union’s interest to
make sure that the terms of the settlement were not too favorable to
the United States: any increase in U.S. influence and power in Asia
would mean a decrease in Russian power and influence.

The second plan was military, and most of its proponents, led by the
Army Minister Anami Korechika, were military men. They hoped to use
Imperial Army ground troops to inflict high casualties on U.S. forces
when they invaded. If they succeeded, they felt, they might be able to
get the United States to offer better terms. This strategy was also a
long shot. The United States seemed deeply committed to unconditional
surrender. But since there was, in fact, concern in U.S. military
circles that the casualties in an invasion would be prohibitive, the
Japanese high command’s strategy was not entirely off the mark.

One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the
invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused
Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events
affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug.
6, both options were still alive. It would still have been possible to
ask Stalin to mediate (and Takagi’s diary entries from Aug. 8 show
that at least some of Japan’s leaders were still thinking about the
effort to get Stalin involved). It would also still have been possible
to try to fight one last decisive battle and inflict heavy casualties.
The destruction of Hiroshima had done nothing to reduce the
preparedness of the troops dug in on the beaches of Japan’s home
islands. There was now one fewer city behind them, but they were still
dug in, they still had ammunition, and their military strength had not
been diminished in any important way. Bombing Hiroshima did not
foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.

The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria
and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet
Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator —
he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by
the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally
dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the
southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly
guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be
the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in
Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its
best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the
Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an
elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of
gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion
of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up
Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be
prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home
islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th
Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and
was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet
plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.

It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be
possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading
from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great
powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion
invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it
invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of
Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically
decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the
bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.

The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much
time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that
U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other
hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet
invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.

And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier.
In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that
Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the
Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same
meeting, “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with
the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”

Japan’s leaders consistently displayed disinterest in the city
bombing that was wrecking their cities. And while this may have been
wrong when the bombing began in March of 1945, by the time Hiroshima
was hit, they were certainly right to see city bombing as an
unimportant sideshow, in terms of strategic impact. When Truman
famously threatened to visit a “rain of ruin” on Japanese cities
if Japan did not surrender, few people in the United States realized
that there was very little left to destroy. By Aug. 7, when Truman’s
threat was made, only 10 cities larger than 100,000 people remained
that had not already been bombed. Once Nagasaki was attacked on Aug.
9, only nine cities were left. Four of those were on the northernmost
island of Hokkaido, which was difficult to bomb because of the
distance from Tinian Island where American planes were based. Kyoto,
the ancient capital of Japan, had been removed from the target list by
Secretary of War Henry Stimson because of its religious and symbolic
importance. So despite the fearsome sound of Truman’s threat, after
Nagasaki was bombed only four major cities remained which could
readily have been hit with atomic weapons.

The thoroughness and extent of the U.S. Army Air Force’s campaign of
city bombing can be gauged by the fact that they had run through so
many of Japan’s cities that they were reduced to bombing
“cities” of 30,000 people or fewer. In the modern world, 30,000 is
no more than a large town.

Of course it would always have been possible to re-bomb cities that
had already been bombed with firebombs. But these cities were, on
average, already 50 percent destroyed. Or the United States could have
bombed smaller cities with atomic weapons. There were, however, only
six smaller cities (with populations between 30,000 and 100,000) which
had not already been bombed. Given that Japan had already had major
bombing damage done to 68 cities, and had, for the most part,
shrugged it off, it is perhaps not surprising that Japan’s leaders
were unimpressed with the threat of further bombing. It was not
strategically compelling.

A Convenient Story

Despite the existence of these three powerful objections, the
traditional interpretation still retains a strong hold on many
people’s thinking, particularly in the United States. There is real
resistance to looking at the facts. But perhaps this should not be
surprising. It is worth reminding ourselves how emotionally convenient
the traditional explanation of Hiroshima is — both for Japan and the
United States. Ideas can have persistence because they are true, but
unfortunately, they can also persist because they are emotionally
satisfying: They fill an important psychic need. For example, at the
end of the war the traditional interpretation of Hiroshima helped
Japan’s leaders achieve a number of important political aims, both
domestic and international.

Put yourself in the shoes of the emperor. You’ve just led your
country through a disastrous war. The economy is shattered. Eighty
percent of your cities have been bombed and burned. The Army has been
pummeled in a string of defeats. The Navy has been decimated and
confined to port. Starvation is looming. The war, in short, has been a
catastrophe and, worst of all, you’ve been lying to your people
about how bad the situation really is. They will be shocked by news of
surrender. So which would you rather do? Admit that you failed badly?
Issue a statement that says that you miscalculated spectacularly, made
repeated mistakes, and did enormous damage to the nation? Or would you
rather blame the loss on an amazing scientific breakthrough that no
one could have predicted? At a single stroke, blaming the loss of the
war on the atomic bomb swept all the mistakes and misjudgments of the
war under the rug. The Bomb was the perfect excuse for having lost the
war. No need to apportion blame; no court of enquiry need be held.
Japan’s leaders were able to claim they had done their best. So, at
the most general level the Bomb served to deflect blame from Japan’s
leaders.

But attributing Japan’s defeat to the Bomb also served three other
specific political purposes. First, it helped to preserve the
legitimacy of the emperor. If the war was lost not because of mistakes
but because of the enemy’s unexpected miracle weapon, then the
institution of the emperor might continue to find support within
Japan.

Second, it appealed to international sympathy. Japan had waged war
aggressively, and with particular brutality toward conquered peoples.
Its behavior was likely to be condemned by other nations. Being able
to recast Japan as a victimized nation — one that had been unfairly
bombed with a cruel and horrifying instrument of war — would help to
offset some of the morally repugnant things Japan’s military had
done. Drawing attention to the atomic bombings helped to paint Japan
in a more sympathetic light and deflect support for harsh punishment.

Finally, saying that the Bomb won the war would please Japan’s
American victors. The American occupation did not officially end in
Japan until 1952, and during that time the United States had the power
to change or remake Japanese society as they saw fit. During the early
days of the occupation, many Japanese officials worried that the
Americans intended to abolish the institution of the emperor. And they
had another worry. Many of Japan’s top government officials knew
that they might face war crimes trials (the war crimes trials against
Germany’s leaders were already underway in Europe when Japan
surrendered). Japanese historian Asada Sadao has said that in many of
the postwar interviews “Japanese officials … were obviously
anxious to please their American questioners.” If the Americans
wanted to believe that the Bomb won the war, why disappoint them?

Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s
interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the
Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be
enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would
increase, and U.S. security would be strengthened. The $2 billion
spent to build it would not have been wasted. If, on the other hand,
the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then
the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what
the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception
of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be
enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the
Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount
to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

It is troubling to consider, given the questions raised here, that the
evidence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is at the heart of everything we
think about nuclear weapons. This event is the bedrock of the case for
the importance of nuclear weapons. It is crucial to their unique
status, the notion that the normal rules do not apply to nuclear
weapons. It is an important measure of nuclear threats: Truman’s
threat to visit a “rain of ruin” on Japan was the first explicit
nuclear threat. It is key to the aura of enormous power that surrounds
the weapons and makes them so important in international relations.

But what are we to make of all those conclusions if the traditional
story of Hiroshima is called into doubt? Hiroshima is the center, the
point from which all other claims and assertions radiate out. Yet the
story we have been telling ourselves seems pretty far removed from the
facts. What are we to think about nuclear weapons if this enormous
first accomplishment — the miracle of Japan’s sudden surrender —
turns out to be a myth?

_Ward Wilson is a senior fellow at the British American Security
Information Council and the author of “Five Myths About Nuclear
Weapons,” from which this article was adapted._

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