The International Center of Photography recently had an exhibition, "Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945," and I attended the panel discussion. This month 66 years ago the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Back in 1995, I had attended another ICP panel discussion on Hiroshima, which was part of the exhibition "The Pacific War." That year was the 50th anniversary of the war's ending.
As I recall, the three main speakers on the earlier panel were historians, and each offered a different reason why the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: