The danger of having an incurious president

THERE are infinite questions to ask of history. For instance, is Frederick Douglass being recognised more and more? (Yes, partly because he's doing an amazing job but mostly because he's dating Taylor Swift.) Or here's a basic question we as a species should pose to the 20th century every Aug 6 (the anniversary of Hiroshima) through Aug 9 (Nagasaki): What if fewer children were killed?

On Aug 10, 1945, that query was on president Harry Truman's mind. A Cabinet secretary's diary said that, the day after the five-tonne nuclear weapon obliterated Nagasaki, Mr Truman said that he did not "like the idea of killing all those kids".

Lately, he has been in my thoughts. Not because Franklin Roosevelt's death drop-kicked him into the Oval Office unprepared, but because of his secretary of war, Henry L Stimson, who had visited Kyoto in the 1920s and persuaded the president to take the city off the list of potential targets for atomic bombs. As Mr Stimson recalled in Harper's in 1947: "Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared."