They had the best sense of all of just how long the war would drag on with an enemy determined to fight “until every last (Japanese) man, woman and child” was dead. They had a hint that Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese main islands, was to begin that November. They knew “luck” was the only thing that was keeping them alive on these killing grounds. Hearing a Marine recall a saying in the ranks after Iwo Jima, “Golden Gate in ’48, breadline in ’49,” drives it home. Yes, there were good reasons for doing it if you dive deep enough into the context of the times. Yes, the United States is still the only nation to use an atomic bomb in war. Here are eyewitnesses and survivors, the last living Americans who fought in the Pacific, relating the awful things they faced, the friends and comrades they buried and the Japanese immovability even after the firebombing of Tokyo. Here’s the footage of the hellish combat leading up to the A-Bombs of August, the slaughterhouses of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. That’s not a problem with “Apocalypse ’45,” a new documentary from Abramorama that will make its way to the Discovery networks at some point. You’d think a crew of America’s elite historians would see that, revisionism or not, you can’t discuss the end without providing context, the carnage of the months leading up to that fateful decision, the undeniable fanaticism of an intractable enemy and the civilian slaughter to come. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII, and the controversy stemmed from America’s greatest historical museum’s decision to narrow the focus to that event alone and its morality or amorality. Some years back, the Smithsonian got into trouble in planning an exhibit around the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber whose crew dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which helped end World War II.