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Why the U.S. bombed Hiroshima

Hiroshima, Japan, September 1945
A file photo dated September 1945 of the remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building after the bombing of Hiroshima, which was later preserved as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Atomic Bomb Dome or Genbaku Dome.
AFP | Getty Images

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Seventy years ago this week, the world changed when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. That bomb, along with another dropped on Nagasaki three days later, killed more than 150,000 people and ushered in the nuclear age.

Historians, politicians, and ordinary Americans have been debating ever since whether the U.S. had to drop the bomb in order to end the war in the Pacific.

University of Virginia History Professor Robert Stolz joins Mike Mulcahy for a conversation about why the U.S. did it, and whether there was more to it than what most people learn in history class.