Little Boy and the Enola Gay

NBC decided to air "The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb" in 1995 because it was still close to the Cold War and nuclear tensions between America and the Soviet Union. In years closer to the war's end, the American public wasn't aware of the true horrors that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were just happy the war that took away their men was over and they could return to their normal lives. The veterans who fought against the Japanese experienced the extreme tenacity of Japan's soldiers and the American lives estimated to have been lost if an invasion was necessary range from 100,000 to 1 million. I don't know when the Cold War was, but judging by Bryant Gumbel's reference to the US's cutting of their nuclear stockpile by a third it was probably pretty recent. The American public had experienced and learned about the power of nuclear weapons when Kennedy called the Soviet Union's bluff at Cuba and felt a lot of guilt toward what had happened to Japan during the war. NBC thought that American citizens would understand the immeasurable damage caused by the atomic bombs and the 50th anniversary was a good time to air this news segment.