Many of those who still defend President Truman's decision on Hiroshima consider the bombing of Nagasaki three days later completely avoidable, even a crime of war.

How the "Hiroshima narrative" has been handed down to generations of Americans -- and overwhelmingly endorsed by officials and the media, even if many historians disagree -- matters greatly.

As citizens are waking up and rejecting Trump's message of hate, this election has also forced Americans to open their eyes and begin to think about the importance of nuclear disarmament.

There is something oddly fragile in the super-patriot stance that allows no room for finding lessons in past conflicts, but instead demands only praise.

The consequences of an accidental nuclear war would be staggering. Thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads, some of them orders of magnitude larger than the one that wiped out Hiroshima, are primed for launch on warning.

This week, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, incinerated and vaporized by American nuclear bombs 71 years ago. For the U.S., as with Japan's own wartime atrocities that still deeply rankle the emotions of its Asian neighbors, the profound apology that matters is not about the past but the future. It is about taking convincing actions today that ensure what happened in the past never happens again. That future-oriented apology remains lacking all around. (continued)