Abstract
In Ottawa, the capital of Canada, on August 6, 1945, Prime Minister Mackenzie King learned that an atomic bomb had obliterated Hiroshima. Subsequent to an initial public statement lauding this “greatest achievement in science,” Mr. King wrote in his diary:
We can now see what might have come to the British race had German scientists won the race. It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe. I am a little concerned about how Russia may feel, not having been told anything of this invention or of what the British and the U.S. were doing in the way of exploring and perfecting the process.
Notes
J. W. Pickersgill and D. F. Forster, The Mackenzie King Record, Volume II, 1944–45 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), p. 451.
Diary of Mackenzie King, August 6, 1945. Public Archives of Canada. The voluminous King diary “was kept largely to serve as a record from which he could recount and explain his conduct of public affairs.” Pickersgill and Forster, p. viii. C. P. Stacey, the official historian of the Canadian army during World War II, asserts that the riary “is the most important single political document in twentieth-century Canadian history.” C. P. Stacey, A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1976), p. 9.
References
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