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Harry Truman and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
Harry Truman
Peter Robinson expressed his opinion on Twitter today that President Truman did not approve the use of the nuclear bomb. “Truman never approved the use of the bomb–or disapproved it,” He wrote. “The military considered it one more weapon, like a new submarine or aircraft. They kept Truman informed. But they did not ask his approval.”
That’s not my memory from reading David McCollough’s Truman, so I decided to look it up, as best I could.
Here’s what Truman himself said of the matter, as quoted by McCollough on page 442 of the paperback edition:
The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used.
McCollough continues on the same page:
Though nothing was recorded on paper, the critical moment appears to have occurred at Number 2 Kaiserstrasse later in the morning of Tuesday, July 24, when, at 11:30, the combined American and British Chiefs of Staff convened with Truman and Churcheill in the dinning room. This was the one time when Truman, Churchill, and their military advisers were all around a table, in Churchill’s phrase. From this point it was settled: barring some unforeseen development, the bomb would be used with a few weeks.
Peter followed up by saying that Truman authorized the release of a “document explaining the bomb, not the bomb itself.”
Page 435-437:
With the start of his second week at Potsdam, Truman knew that decisions on the bomb could wait no longer. At 10:00 Sunday morning, July 22, he attended Protestant services led by a chaplain from the 2nd Armored Division. …
[Secretary of War] Stimson had appeared at Number 2 Kaiserstrasse shortly after breakfast with messages from Washington saying all was about5 ready for the “final operation” and that a decision on the target cities was needed. Stimson wanted Kyoto removed from the list, and having heard the reasons, Truman agreed. Kyoto would be spared. “Although it was a target of considerable military importance,” Stimson would write, “it had been the capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture…” First on the list of approved targets was Hiroshima, southern headquarters and depot for Japan’s homeland army. …
Tuesday, July 24, was almost certainly the fateful day.
At 9:20A.M Stimson again climbed the stairs to Truman’s office, where he found the President seated behind the heavy carved desk, “alone with his work.” Stimson had brought another message:
Washington, July 23, 1945
Top Secret
Operational Priority
War 36792 Secretary of War Eyes Only top secret from Harrison.Operation may be possible any time from August 1 depending on state of preparation of patient and condition of atmosphere. From point of view of patient only, some chance August 1 to 3, good chance August 4 to 5 and barring unexpected relapse almost certain before August 10.
Truman “said that was just what he wanted,” Stimson wrote in his diary,” that he was highly delighted….”
Page 448:
Late on Monday, July 30, another urgent top-secret cable to Truman was received and decoded…
The time schedule on Groves’ project is progressing so rapidly that it is now essential that statement for release by you be available not later than Wednesday, 1 August….
The time had come for Truman to give the final go-ahead for the bomb. This was the moment, the decision only he could make.
The message was delivered at 7:48 A.M., Berlin time, Tuesday, July 31. Writing large and clear with a lead pencil on the back of the pink message, Truman gave his answer, which he handed to Lieutenant Elsey for Transmission:
Suggestion approved. Release when ready but not sooner than August 2.
On July 25, Truman had written in his journal, McCollough quotes on pages 443-444:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world… This weapon will be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo, where the Imperial Palace had been spared thus far].
He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them a chance.
McCollough notes that Truman knew that it was “only partly true” that the bomb would be used only against military targets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the sites of military installations, so they were legitimate military targets, but of course we know that many civilians perished. The morality of the atomic bomb is not the subject of this post, but I’d like to mention that at this point more than 50,000 American soldiers had been killed in just four months of island hopping and that 100,000 Japanese had died in a single night of firebombing.
On page 457:
On August 9, the papers carried still more stupendous news. A million Russian troops had crossed into Manchuria–Russia was in the war against Japan–and a second atomic bomb had been dropped on the major Japanese seaport of Nagasaki.
No high-level meeting had been held concerning this second bomb. Truman had made no additional decision. There was no order issued beyond the military directive for the first bomb, which had been sent on July 25 by Marshall’s deputy, General Thomas T. Handy, to the responsible commander in the Pacific, General Carl A. Spaatz of the Twentieth Air Force. Paragraph 2 of that directive had stipulated: “Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff.” A second bomb–a plutonium bomb nicknamed “Fat Man”–being ready, it was “delivered” from Tinian, and two days ahead of schedule, in view of weather conditions.
There are no doubt additional relevant quotes, but I’ll limit it to these. Does anyone else have insight into this momentous decision?
Published in General
I don’t know… The Japanese military leadership didn’t want to surrender even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Hiroshima bomb was left partly dissembled until after takeoff for precisely that reason. Final assembly was completed in the air.
The Nagasaki bomb was too complex, there were just some safeties that had to be removed.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s utter [redacted].
Yes, the Japanese were making peace feelers for several months prior to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the military leadership was reserving several completely unacceptable conditions, including no occupation of Japan.
Even after the second bomb, there was an attempted coup against Hirohito by elements of the army in an attempt to prevent the surrender.
I’ve read all three books in the Trilogy since April. They really are fantastic.
Another great book about the period is James D Hornfischer’s The Fleet at Flood Tide. Ostensibly about the last year or so of the war in the Pacific, in reality it can be read as a brief as to why the Atomic bombings were absolutely necessary to bring the war to an end.
The bombings cannot be understood without the context of the battles for Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Kamikaze campaign against the fleet. The toll was terrific, and the resistance of the Japanese was increasing the closer we got to the home islands.
Full disclosure – two of my father’s relatives were killed in the Pacific in WWII, one in a kamikaze attack on his LST in December 1944 for which he earned a posthumous Silver Star, and one lost at sea in the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the ship that was torpedoed after delivering the parts for the Hiroshima bomb.
There was a weird Baptists-and-bootleggers type of tacit agreement on the left and the right that the Soviets wouldn’t have had a bomb if it weren’t for espionage. This is because on the right, we were locked into the idea that the Russians were primitive dimwits; on the left, it was an article of faith that the USSR was horrified by the bomb and wouldn’t have built on themselves if we hadn’t forced them into it. Fact is, they already had an atomic research program, and they’d gotten roughly as far as we had at the beginning of 1942. So, of course, did the Germans and Japanese, who were roughly where we were in late 1941. They all knew it was possible. Only the UK and the US thought it could be done in time to affect the current war.
The Soviets could have had the bomb without spying, but it would have taken another couple of years. Given the miserable state of the country at the end of 1945, it’s highly unlikely they would have made that commitment if they hadn’t known that there was a working device at the end of the path.
You will have to read it and judge for yourself; I have no expertise in the history.
But to me your argument doesn’t stand up. The fact is that when the Emperor surrendered, it didn’t matter what some Japanese “wanted” or didn’t want. The Japanese revered the Emperor and generally accepted his surrender as a divine decision binding on them. Those few who disobeyed (a) presumably were presumably the same ones who would have done so if he’d surrendered before the bomb, to the same null effect.
I was surprised to see that review in the WSJ peddling yet another version of the Gar Alperovitz stuff from the 60s, using misquoted documents and poor analysis. With the release of the Magic decrypts in the 90s we now know what American policymakers were seeing and it is consistent with the recent work of Japanese historians which is the Japan cabinet was deadlocked with the military leaders insisting on peace terms in which Japan would retain some of its conquests and there would be no American occupation. In fact, even after Hiroshima they did not change their position. It took Nagasaki and the unprecedented intervention of the Emperor to do so.
If the bomb had not been used and Japan had not surrendered by mid-August, Truman likely w0uld have faced another difficult decision. The Navy and Air Force chiefs were preparing to change their approval, given at a June 18, 1945 meeting with the President, of preparations for the invasion of Kyushu in November. Based on recent intelligence they were going to recommend against proceeding with the invasion.
Was it written by the FSB, Antifa, or BLM?
Paul Fussel’s article Thank God for the Atomic Bomb & Fr Wilson Miscamble’s book The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan both cover the morality of the bomb. Additionally, there are several YouTube videos by Fr Miscamble- one at Prager U and the other https://providencemag.com/video/christian-conversation-on-hiroshima-nagasaki-anniversary/
that cover the subject well.
My problem with the atomic bomb is that the justification that we used it to save American and Japanese lives and end the war as quickly as possible could be used by any country at any time for any types of weapons. What’s okay and what isn’t? Poisoning a water supply? Starving people to death? Chemical weapons? Biological weapons?
I find all of this very difficult to sort out.
If you have a chance to read the book or review, I would be interested to know if it changes your mind, or if not, just where is the disagreement.
I do recall that the book directly refutes your argument. But I neither remember the details of its argument, nor have detailed knowledge of the history to discuss it.
What I remember from the review is
I recall no mention of the question of occupation, sorry.
As you know, both of these were met by the US after the war. [EDIT: Obviously, “no occupation” was not.]
If there were a condition of “no occupation”, how could the authors have said all conditions were met, in the event? But why do you and the book disagree on a fact? This is why I am at a loss to discuss it. You would need to read the review or book.
Post WW2 it was the Geneva conventions that outlawed certain types of warfare. Food as a weapon is out along with conventions that seem to outlaw tactics like your water supply. Bio and Chem weapons too. The conventions are, in general, backed by the Western possession of nuclear weapons -the existence of which are credited with 70 years of “peace” at least with regard to great power conflict.
Prior to WW2 European nations went to eat about every 7 years or so. Hasn’t happened since 1945.
If you read my Comment, you will see that I don’t recall who wrote the book.
Gumby Mark, you read the review. Could you answer MiMac’s question?
Intimidating the USSR was certainly part of the equation, but not anywhere near the deciding factor.
Don’t forget, we’d been trying to get them to commit to declaring war on Japan since well before Germany fell. We did an abrupt about face once we were sure the bomb worked. The Japanese ranked Soviet entry into the war just below the bomb in importance in postwar accounts of the surrender.
But the idea that we dropped it just to scare Stalin is fantasy.
Once it was clear that the Germans had no bomb (when was that? British intelligence, late 1943; our own more cautious OSS, spring 1944) Manhattan Project scientists, well aware of how hated the purveyors of poison gas were after WWI, began thinking of themselves as potential scapegoats. This was not a crazy fear. We (well, at least American Catholics) tend to see the Vatican as always being on our side, because they were anti-Communist, but they condemned the use of the bomb within 24 hours of Truman’s announcement. A lot of churches were dubious, especially after The New Yorker published John Hersey’s Hiroshima in 1946.
Here is a panel discussion I participated in July of this year and at 2:34 mark we talk about the Bombing.
The salient point my co panelist made is that the bomb was going to be dropped because it cost 1 percent of the GDP of the United States of America to build. If they had spent all that money and never use it, there would have been hell to pay.
He also gets into how Truman really creates the presidential control of the bomb that now happens. I was a little annoyed in the stream at a certain point dealing with outlandish statements he made on Olympic and Coronet, but the rest of his presentation is good to watch.
https://youtu.be/L7n4HHcxnV0
Your example of Dresden is correct. However, it was not as destructive as Tokyo or Hamburg, and probably less than Berlin. As previously discussed:
I’m with Patton. Maximum violence in a short period of time saves lives over lower level violence over a long period of time.
An excerpt from Paul Fussel, Thank God For The Atom Bomb
As noted earlier, I had family on the Indianapolis. And my dad was active duty Army Air Corp in 1945.
Oh yeah, one more thing. The bombs probably saved a few million Japanese from starving. The food supply was in really rough shape by August of 1945, and with the economy collapsing from lack of oil, wasn’t going to get any better.
On this finer point of Catholicism, you’re missing the point. In Catholicism you cannot do an evil act to justify a good outcome. So any justification that would say it would have saved American lives is a non-starter. Now at what point did the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki become combatants? I don’t have the expertise to know, but I find it hard to believe that the majority of the civilians were directly supporting the war. After all there were women and children there. What I don’t understand is why was a populated area targeted as a starting pointy? Why not some remote area first used to demonstrate its immense destructiveness? Over my lifetime, I’ve moved 180 on this. I no longer think it was the right thing to do. Of course in the fog of war, I can see how it was the path chosen, and I might have done the same thing at the time, but in retrospect it was a grave sin.
My daughter, now age 55 and a lawyer and FBI agent, was in 6th grade when the teacher conducted a “war crimes trial of Harry Truman” with her class. He was convicted by the children. Marxist teachers go well back in the school system. My daughter is also a Democrat with a heavy case of TDS.
Also, the Japanese had been working on a Uranium bomb and thought the Hiroshima bomb was a one off. They never anticipated the Plutonium bomb and that added to the effect psychologically. I have forgotten where I read that.
I’m doubtful. We didn’t say it was plutonium, and Japanese scientists didn’t have enough time (and likely lacked the expertise) to detect the difference based on ground samples.
I’ve always been interested in how Tokyo found out about Hiroshima. The electric grid suddenly indicated an enormous drop in that sector. Phones were out. Military radio tried raising the local station. It made no sense, because Japanese radar hadn’t picked up a wave of bombers. Within an hour, railway stations up and down the Hiroshima line reported lines of survivors walking along the tracks away from the city, badly burned.
It’s true though. The fastest way to win a war is to inflict the maximum amount of damage against your enemy as quickly as possible. Killing x enemies today will ensure that y-x enemies do not die later, to say nothing of z of your own countrymen.
Didn’t see you comment when making my earlier one along the same lines.
So it wasn’t a complete bluff. Thanks!
It was more a general philosophy of his, but here are the two closest quotes I could find:
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.
There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time
These are very difficult questions, of course, but there are many additional factors involved that you don’t mention. Estimates of civilian deaths under Japanese occupation are up to a half million per month, a quarter million per month in China alone. Dropping the bombs ended that quickly, probably saving several million civilian lives.
As to a demonstration in an unpopulated area, if the destruction of Hiroshima did not persuade the military leadership of the need to surrrender, and the destruction of Nagasaki still did not — the emperor’s intervention was required — I don’t see how blasting an unpopulated island would have done the trick.
I strongly recommend Richard Franks’ book “Downfall” on these subjects. It thoroughly documents US intercepts of Japanese communications to illustrate the mindsets of the crucial period.
1) Hiroshima was the HQ of the army group tasked with defending against the up coming invasion & was a major transportation hub & arms depot.
2)Nagasaki was a major harbor and naval weapons manufacturing site.
3) Japanese industry was typically spread thru out cities and much work was outsourced to civilian homes-so it was near impossible to target industry w/o catching civilians in the destruction.
the advocacy for a demonstration overlooks the fact that we had 2 bombs & needed to use both to convince Japan to surrender (and even then there was an attempted coup to prevent surrendering AFTER both bombings). I definitely recommend listening to Fr Miscamble on the issue- he is both a Catholic priest and a history professor. The issue is definitely difficult to resolve and it is too easy to moralize from safety & comfort decades later( a point strongly made by P Fussel)- I am glad I didn’t face Truman’s decision.