“There was no sound of planes. The morning was still; the place was cool and pleasant. Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. … It seemed a sheet of sun.”

– From “Hiroshima” by John Hersey

In the summer of 1945, the United States brought to bear on its Japanese enemy the most awesome and terrible weapons ever developed. Two atomic bombs – named Little Boy and Fat Man – were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first on Aug.6; the second on Aug. 9.

The devastation was immediate. In Hiroshima, at least 70,000 people died from the atomic blast. Perhaps 50,000 more died from radiation poisoning in the days and months afterward. In Nagasaki, the dead numbered at least 40,000 on the first day and eclipsed 73,000.

In the early years after the bombings, few people questioned the legitimacy of using nuclear weapons. The bombs had ended the war and made it unnecessary for the United States to invade the Japanese mainland, saving thousands – maybe even a million – U.S. lives.

The military and the U.S. government worked to establish the permissibility of using nuclear weapons in a first strike under certain circumstances. Part of that strategy depended on keeping photographs and film footage of the two cities away from the public. Images documenting the devastation and injuries, including badly burned and scared women and children, were classified, kept secret. The American public would not see the damage done by atomic weapons if it could be helped. For almost 40 years, it was.

Now, 60 years later, some of the archival footage has been made public while some has never been aired. Editor and Publisher magazine, on Aug. 5, revealed for the first time the extent to which government officials went to hide the images.

“I always had the sense,” Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern told Greg Mitchell, the author of the E&P report, “that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force – it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn’t want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. … They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done – at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn’t want the material out because … we were sorry for our sins.” McGovern directed U.S. military filmmakers in 1945-46 and kept watch on the top-secret material for decades.

There are no definitive answers to the many what-ifs and coulda-beens surrounding Little Boy and Fat Man. The evidence is contradictory about how close Japan was to surrendering before the bombings, although we believe an invasion, if necessary, would have claimed millions of lives. The three-month Battle of Okinawa alone claimed more than 110,000 Japanese lives while 12,000 U.S. servicemen were killed. Fighting on the Tokyo plains surely would have been much worse.

What is clear, however, are the consequences of nuclear weapons.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the greatest threats facing humanity. Whether it’s Iran, North Korea, India or Pakistan, the responsibility of atomic weapons cannot be entrusted to fragile governments and their insecure leaders. And, needless to say, everything possible must be done to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of non-state players, such as al-Qaida, who would think nothing of destroying an entire city. At the same time, even mature democracies like the United States must accept limitations. Research into a new generation of “useable” nuclear weapons forgets the lessons of the past.

The shadows of lost lives should be seared by nuclear fire into our collective consciousness. Somehow, the world still forgets.