With the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings fast approaching, commemorative events and symposia are being planned across the globe in places as diverse, yet symbolically significant, as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tinian, London, Tokyo, Washington, and Los Alamos. While forthcoming books by historians Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Gerard DeGroot, and Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird will advance the scholarly criticism of the bombings and show that viable alternatives for quickly ending the war without a U.S. invasion of the Japanese homeland existed, the bombs’ defenders, including Gen. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, will also be out in force. Tibbets, echoing a refrain made popular by President Harry Truman, insists that he never lost sleep over that decision. Interestingly, the 1952 Hollywood film, Above and Beyond, on which Tibbets consulted, shows him unable to sleep on the night before the bombing of Hiroshima as he grappled with the profound consequences of what he was about to do. As historian Peter Kuznick explains, those consequences included not only the wanton slaughter of over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the condemning of additional scores of thousands to a life of torment, but the inauguration of the nuclear era in a fashion that Truman and others understood could ultimately end life on the planet. The major mobilization this May around strengthening the Non- Proliferation Treaty during the review meetings at the United Nations is designed to reverse the spread of nuclear weapons and the further increase in nuclear weapons states to make sure that that dire prospect is never realized. Japan Focus introduction.