‘My God, what have we done?’

Robin McKie

The words of the co-pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima still echo 80 years on. Could the devastation it wrought ever be justified?

It was one of the most dramatic moments of my father-in-law’s lengthy military service in Burma. Captain Marcus Mitchell, a company commander in the East Surrey Regiment, was given the task of telling troops in August 1945 that a single atomic bomb had just destroyed the city of Hiroshima. This revelation was followed days later with news that Nagasaki had suffered a similar fate. Japan was suing for peace. The war was over.

Understandably, the soldiers were overjoyed. They would no longer be involved in an invasion of Japan that had seemed inevitable only a few days earlier. At the same time, the idea that a solitary device could destroy an entire city left them dumbfounded.

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