On 6 and 9 August, the Allies dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ‘When we talk about the hydrogen bomb’, Donald MacKinnon reflected on the radio, ‘we are talking about something we have chosen to develop and to use. We are talking about choices we have actually made; we are not talking about events in which we have become involved…[W]e are referring to human actions.’[210] In two flashes of blinding light, so bright they turned human beings into shadows, the bill of 1.5 million soldiers was paid by 200,000 civilians. The exchange was not like for like but it
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