Scottish historian Iain MacGregor revisits the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima through the lives of five men whose decisions, experiences and sacrifices shaped one of history’s darkest moments. As the world marks the 81st anniversary of the attack, his new book offers a deeply human perspective on the dawn of the nuclear age and the enduring moral questions it continues to raise.
Eighty-one years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the events of 6 August 1945 remain among the most consequential and haunting moments in modern history. In a single flash, the uranium bomb Little Boy destroyed much of the Japanese city, killing approximately 80,000 people instantly. In the weeks, months and years that followed, tens of thousands more died from radiation poisoning, making Hiroshima the site where humanity first witnessed the devastating reality of nuclear warfare.
Based on reporting by El País, Scottish historian Iain MacGregor revisits this defining moment in his 2026 book, The Men of Hiroshima (Los hombres de Hiroshima), published by Ático de los Libros. Rather than presenting a conventional military history, MacGregor reconstructs the story through the lives of five individuals whose experiences collectively illuminate the scientific, military, political and human dimensions of the world’s first nuclear attack.
His five central figures are physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, widely regarded as the scientific leader of the Manhattan Project; General Leslie Groves, who directed its military and logistical operations and later became a firm defender of nuclear weapons; Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped Little Boy over Hiroshima; journalist John Hersey, whose reporting introduced the American public to the true human consequences of the bombing; and Hiroshima’s mayor, Senkichi Awaya, who was killed alongside his three-year-old granddaughter Ayako when the bomb exploded almost directly above them.
Speaking to El País, MacGregor explained that he deliberately chose a narrative driven by people rather than institutions or military operations.
“By following their careers and personal journeys, I try to transport readers back to that historical moment,” he said. “These five people, all intimately connected with Hiroshima, allow me to trace the long road that led to the bombing and to understand the economic, social, military and moral context in which it took place.”
He said he wanted to avoid writing a dry academic history.
“I wanted to write something that could grip readers like the script of a film, with an extraordinary cast of characters who allow us to experience the tragedy of Hiroshima through their own eyes. My aim was to draw readers into their lives, awakening either empathy or hatred towards them.”
Although the book focuses on five male protagonists, MacGregor also includes the testimony of Hiroshima survivor Michiko Kodama, whose recollections provide one of its most vivid and moving accounts.
Kodama was a schoolgirl when the bomb exploded.
“Suddenly I saw a dazzling, blinding light rushing towards me,” she recalled. “I still cannot fully describe what that light looked like. It was a mixture of yellow, silver and orange.”
She later wandered for hours through what she described as “hell on earth”, where the streets were covered with bodies blackened by fire. Some survivors crawled with severe burns, their skin hanging from their bodies, while others had lost their hair or suffered horrific injuries that defied comprehension.
MacGregor says one of the most rewarding aspects of his research was rediscovering the largely forgotten story of Hiroshima’s mayor, Senkichi Awaya.
While Oppenheimer, Groves and Tibbets have long occupied prominent places in historical accounts, Awaya had almost disappeared from public memory. MacGregor discovered him after reading a 1967 interview given by Awaya’s eldest daughter, Motoko Sakama, which was later reproduced in English by The Christian Science Monitor in 1995.
That discovery prompted extensive research in Japan. MacGregor travelled to Hiroshima, interviewed survivors and historians, visited the modest memorial dedicated to Awaya beside the Motoyasu River, and eventually located Motoko’s memoir about her father in the National Library of Tokyo.
Although only around 30,000 words long, MacGregor says the memoir provides a remarkably complete portrait of the man who governed Hiroshima on the day it ceased to exist.
He describes Awaya as an able civil administrator whose career began during Japan’s democratic era before witnessing the rise of militarism. A Christian, multilingual and well-educated admirer of Western culture, Awaya viewed Japan’s increasingly militarised society with scepticism rather than enthusiasm.
After seeing the devastation caused by American firebombing raids on Tokyo, he persuaded his wife, who worked in the capital, to return to Hiroshima because he believed it would be safer. She survived the initial explosion but died several days later from radiation exposure.
MacGregor notes that the United States deliberately avoided bombing Hiroshima before August 1945 so that the effects of the atomic weapon could later be studied more clearly.
Reflecting on Awaya’s legacy, MacGregor expressed surprise at how little he is remembered in Japan today.
“He is a man whom history has forgotten,” he said. “It is as though he was vaporised twice—first physically by the bomb, and then again by the collective loss of memory.”
The book also follows Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr. from his distinguished career as one of America’s finest bomber pilots to his command of the 509th Composite Group based on Tinian, the world’s first nuclear strike force.
Before carrying Little Boy, Tibbets had earned an outstanding reputation flying B-17 bombers during the Second World War. The atomic bomb itself weighed 4,509 kilograms and measured 3.6 metres in length.
“It was a monster compared with any bomb I had ever dropped,” Tibbets later wrote in his memoirs.
The standing order before take-off was equally unforgettable: under no circumstances was the bomb to be brought back.
MacGregor also traces the remarkable career of journalist John Hersey, whose reporting fundamentally altered public understanding of Hiroshima.
Already respected for his wartime coverage of Bataan and Guadalcanal and for his famous account of John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 ordeal, Hersey later published his landmark report on Hiroshima in The New Yorker on 31 August 1946 before expanding it into a book.
His reporting exposed the horrific long-term effects of radiation at a time when only a very small number of people fully understood them. MacGregor estimates that perhaps only around 200 individuals knew the true dangers posed by radioactive exposure during the immediate aftermath of the bombings.
Throughout the book, MacGregor also examines the enduring debate over whether the decision to use atomic weapons can ever be morally justified.
He argues that the question must be understood within the historical circumstances of 1945. Following the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Allied planners expected enormous casualties if Japan had to be invaded. Estimates associated with Operation Downfall projected between 400,000 and 800,000 American deaths, while Japanese casualties were estimated at between five and ten million.
Within that context, the use of the atomic bomb was justified by American leaders as a means of avoiding even greater bloodshed, while also enabling soldiers to return home. MacGregor notes, however, that concern for Japanese casualties was not a major factor in those calculations.
He also points to the racial hatred that characterised the Pacific War, comparing its intensity with the brutality of the Eastern Front in Europe. At the time, he argues, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were widely viewed as extensions of the existing strategic bombing campaign rather than as fundamentally different weapons, even though they introduced an entirely new form of destruction.
Public opinion reflected that wartime perspective. A poll conducted on 26 August 1945 found that 85 per cent of Americans supported the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, while only 10 per cent opposed it. Knowledge of radiation poisoning remained extremely limited, and official acknowledgement of its effects emerged only slowly.
Looking at today’s world, MacGregor hopes that the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to serve as a warning.
“I hope humanity has learned something from Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said. “Nuclear weapons have not been used since then, and that is already significant, although I worry that today’s leaders did not live through the Second World War and that so many international agreements have expired.”
More than eight decades after the first atomic bomb transformed the course of history, The Men of Hiroshima returns readers to the individuals whose lives converged in that single blinding moment. Through scientific ambition, military planning, political leadership, courageous reporting and the testimony of survivors, MacGregor presents a deeply human account of an event that continues to shape the world’s understanding of war, memory and the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons.
