Oppenheimer is a thought-provoking cinematic achievement. The movie suggests the scientist was treated unfairly by Truman and the US government.
Oppenheimer publicly expressed profound regret that we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, indicating it was unnecessary. He later felt that our developing more powerful nuclear weaponry was wrong, even though Russia was successfully going full tilt in that direction. Ergo, he believed we should pull back no matter what the Russians decided.
Truman obviously disagreed with both assertions. He also felt that someone who was publicly antagonistic to US military policy should not have full security clearance.
So who was right? Perhaps we might ask the Japanese? What? Have I lost my mind? NO!
Curtis Lemay in 1964 became the only American to win Japan's highest civilian honor, the Grand Cordon Rising Sun medal. Why you ask? Because as commander of the US Air Force and the one in charge of dropping the "bomb," he was credited by the Japanese government with saving potentially 2-3 million lives by avoiding the bloodshed of a naval invasion by the US*.
If the Japanese government felt this way perhaps they have a point? As for future nuclear weapon development, we eventually agreed to reduce our and Russia's stockpile of nuclear weapons by over 80% mutual agreement (from 70,000 warheads to currently about 12,000)*. We first had to reach parity with Russia to gain the negotiating leverage to accomplish such.
Are we out of the woods? Certainly not.
*BTW, the approx 100,000 people killed in the nuclear blast was dwarfed by the between 250,00-400,000 Japanese killed during incendiary bombing raids preceding Hiroshima.
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