I don't understand the point of this review.
You need to show some empathy and to put yourself in the shoes of the American President. The battle of Iwo Jima has just been fought. Of the 22,000 Japanese solders, 21,000 fought to the death and American casulties at 27,000 were greater than the Japanese. Okinawa was even worse, 100,000 Japanese soldiers fought to the death and American casulties were over 50,000. Based on this evidence and the Kamikazi suicide missions becoming greater and greater, military opinion was expecting casulties from the invasion of Japan to exceed 1 million.

Who as a military leader of his nation, particularly after the horror stories coming out about the treatment of prisoners of war by the Japanese, would not use what ever weapons that he had at his disposal to try to end the war quickly particular when he knew that if the military regime in Japan had access to such weapons they would have no compunction in using them. To act otherwise would be a serious dereliction of his oath to serve the American people as best he could.

This is all sad.

And the Australian medical profession has discovered that weapons, conventional and nuclear, are designed to kill people and do kill people.

Most of the people have been civilians.

It does not make the people of Hiroshima feel any better (most are ignorant of the wider history) that Japanese troops and civilian contractors killed more than 20 million Asian people in World War Two, mainly in China.

Pete

The radiological effects were no secret.

My grandfather was a POW in Nagasaki.

After the surrender the pows were given new uniforms, their first new clothes in years.

When they were flown to Manila they were forced to strip and the 'contaminated' uniforms were burned. (That did not go down well but they did get new uniforms)

The non dutch POWs were flown to California for observation. (The dutch POWs were drafted to fight the Indonesians.)

EQ "doesn't get the point" of this article, and urges the writer to "show some empathy" for the American government.
Well, I have read Paul Langley's book, and he shows a clear understanding of the pressures on the American government, and the need for secrecy in weapons planning, during World War 2.
EQ doesn't seem to have any empathy for the Allied soldiers, American civilians, Australian pastoralists and aborigines, Pacific islanders and Japanese civilians who were affected by radiological harm from atomic bomb testing and use.

In peacetime, the nuclear testing continued, shrouded in secrecy, and in the pretense that only the actual blast, and perhaps some very long range effects, were harmful.

64 years after World War 2, this pretense continues, but Langley's book proves that the authorities knew, in 1941, that the radiological effects would cause cancer, and other serious health effects.

It's time to stop the pretense, time for acknowledgment of the truth, and for justice for those victims. And time for governments to come clean on the effects of radioisotopes, especially depleted uranium, before these epidemic harms spread even further.