Rich and Co., on today’s edition of The Editors, mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and consider the moral questions at the center of the historical debate.

Charlie is convinced that, while it was a horrific event, “You cannot simply rest your eyes upon the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You have to imagine the carnage elsewhere. For a brief reference point, consider that when we sent, after Pearl Harbor, a few planes into Japan in the Doolittle raid — which didn’t do too much damage, but boosted American morale — the Japanese killed a quarter of a million Chinese people for having helped American airmen. A quarter of a million of them.”

Looking back now, Charlie believes “that an invasion would have been a disaster. We would have won, but we would have lost huge numbers of people. I believe that a Soviet invasion of Japan would have been a disaster and led to a situation much like the one we got in Europe with a split Germany and a Soviet bloc. I believe that even a naval blockade would have killed a million or more Japanese and would probably have killed a whole bunch of Chinese people as well.

“It is awful that we had to do that, but we had to do that because Japan had invaded us, was prosecuting a war against us, and was refusing to back down.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.