This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Clinton Fernandes’ commentary ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’. On the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historian Clinton Fernandes delivers a gripping reassessment of the world’s only use of atomic bombs against civilians and exposes the ‘superweapon alibi’ that enabled a politically convenient end to World War II for both the United States and Japan. Fernandes draws on Japanese archives referring to the bombs as ‘heaven sent’ and ‘gifts from the gods’, as well as US government reports that they were dropped ‘without undue suffering’. He argues that nuclear weapons facilitate new geopolitical realities – ones we should be cognisant of as Australia invests further in AUKUS. Here is Clinton Fernandes with ‘“Without undue suffering”: Japan’s August 1945 and the superweapon alibi’, published in the August issue of ABR.

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