ROGER KIMBALL: The atomic bomb saved Japanese lives, too.

This year, the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s new movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb has given the controversy over the development and deployment of that awesome weapon a new urgency.

Something else that has contributed to the fraught atmosphere is the war in Ukraine. After all, one side in that conflict, Russia, controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, more than 6,000 warheads. My friend Roger L. Simon is right: atomic weapons are “as close or closer to being used today than ever since World War Two because of the endless war in Ukraine.”

That is a sobering thought.To his succeeding questions “Was this worth doing? Was it moral to build such an extreme weapon?” I would answer “yes” and “yes.” I also, by the way, support our use of this most horrible weapon in Japan. Why? Because its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War Two. In so doing, it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Data point: the military is still using the huge supply of Purple Hearts it manufactured in anticipation of an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Really? Somebody should make a video about that: