At the Potsdam Conference of the Allies, President Truman noted in his diary that there had been a "telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace".

Despite Japanese efforts to negotiate peace, the Japanese were ordered to surrender unconditionally. When Japan held out, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, killing 70,000 people instantly. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 40,000 instantly.

What was it like to experience the bombings first-hand? What are the lessons for today?

Kazuo Maruta is a 93-year-old hibakusha, i.e., atomic bomb survivor. In his interview (which had to be pre-recorded due to the time difference), he explains how his world changed in a single day, when he narrowly avoided being wiped out himself. It was not until school lessons eventually resumed that he learned a third of his classmates were now dead.

Prof Geoffrey Roberts is Professor Emeritus of History at University College, Cork. An expert on Russian and World War II history, his publications include Stalin's Wars: from World War to Cold War and Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov, which won the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award. He is a regular commentator on geopolitics.

Kathy Kelly is President of World Beyond War, which is a leading peace organisation with chapters across the world, and which was involved in organising the 2018 Dublin Conference on US/NATO military bases. Kathy has taken her peace activism to warzones, and in 2003 stood by the Iraqi people, refusing to leave Baghdad even when the bombing started. She has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace and has been sent to federal prison in the US for her activism.

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