And as for the truth, I think anyone interested in history should watch the documentary series
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War, which reveals the gruesome details of how we got to the world we live in today. I knew some things, but for example I did not know that the American army had the intention of dropping the third atomic bomb on Japan, and
the first one did the horrors in Hiroshima and brought Japan to its knees.This is untrue, Japanese leadership did not Believe the Hiroshima bombing was one bomb and Nagasaki was to prove that it was and the threat was the next was to be dropped on Tokyo if they did not surrender. In reality Dropping those bombs saves lives.
There may be some other truths, but I am speaking based on the documents I saw in the documentary, and in one of them Henry Lewis Stimson (United States Secretary of War) sends a letter to Truman in which he says that Japan's capitulation is inevitable because they are in complete sea and air blockade and that a ground invasion will not be necessary.
However, the Manhattan project, on which over 600 000 people worked and which cost $2 billion at the time, and the possibility that the Russians would reach Japan sooner (they advanced through China) made what some call a crime against humanity, because dropping atomic bombs was not necessary for Japanese capitulation.
In addition, Nagasaki was chosen as a secondary target because there was a thick cloud above the primary one (I can't remember the name) - and as the center of the explosion they chose the part of the city where the Japanese Christians lived - they killed them all together with the bishop, priests and nuns, and of course demolished the cathedral - someone obviously really hated Christians in the headquarters of the US army.
When you say that lives were saved that way - what about the 200 000+ thousands of Japanese civilians, most of whom died the most horrible death that man can imagine?