History, especially post-conflict history is, as we are repeatedly reminded, usually written by the victors. That such narratives are generally accepted and perpetuated may be attributed to the understandable human tendency to want the winners to be ‘the good guys’. The natural order is, after all, premised on the triumph of good over evil.
The truth, though, as we are also regularly reminded, is the first casualty of war and war is therefore fertile ground for almost endless research and, to a large extent, revisionism. Indeed, the more we learn of the past, the more we are reminded that there are few absolutes when it comes to the study of history and the quest for the truth. There will always be competing narratives.
The 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb by the United States of America on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, solemnly commemorated yesterday, and the release of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945, provide a sobering illustration of the different perspectives that
