One of the difficulties in talking with Americans in particular about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that many of them have, at best, a half-remembered high-school version of that history in their head, and the subject is typically not covered well in high school.
It depends who you talk to, of course, but Japan has its own narratives of the bomb, which are curiously different (in ways both expected and not) from American narratives in my experience (which is largely limited to writings in English and discussion with Japanese academics).
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E.g., it is interesting to me that many anti-war and anti-nuclear Japanese prefer the "orthodox" American narrative about the bomb (e.g., they were necessary and ended the war), because it works as a lesson about the dangers of Japanese militarism.
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Which is very different from the "Japanese were victims" narrative that is also very common (esp. at memorials, though the current Hiroshima Peace Museum presents a somewhat more balanced case than it used to, I understand).
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(Personally I was most drawn to the "everybody is an asshole in war" message that the Kyoto Museum for World Peace makes throughout their exhibits. It doesn't let anyone off the hook!)
End of conversation
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