Toni A. Perrine

Just as Americans have alternately embraced and rejected war in general, so too have their views on nuclear weapons shifted since the atomic bomb was first developed in the 1940s. After the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in order to end World War II, Americans initially held the new weapons in awe. In the 1950s this soon gave way to fear of the effects of radioactive fallout and worry that the Soviet Union might attack the United States with nuclear weapons. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, several major antinuclear films and novels had become popular. By the late 1960s, however, antiwar protestors had turned their attention from nuclear weapons to the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

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