Nobody should ever say that it was a good call, but it was the only one a U.S. President was likely to make in 1945.

The decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 80 years ago, was the almost-inevitable outcome of Japanese intransigence and of the technical success of the Manhattan Project, which brought into being nuclear weapons.

The anniversary is generating a wave of commemorations and renewing the arguments for and against the mission of Col. Paul Tibbets to drop Little Boy from his B-29, named Enola Gay, over Japan on that summer morning. In the 21st century, many brand the bombing a war crime — maybe the worst of all those committed in World War II save the Holocaust.