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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
Checking Victor Davis Hanson’s recent WWII podcast, he says the Japanese military was killing about 20,00o people each day in China and Indochina and the Pacific. In comparison, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed an estimated 129,000–226,000 people which equal a mere 6–11 days of conventional war deaths.
Yes that is consequentialism. I’m not going around in circles. Perhaps the least evil option was not to do anything. If that doesn’t solve the earthly problem, then so be it. Christianity is hard. Christ walked to Calvary. This ain’t no prosperity Gospel. Those are put forth by charlatans.
No you’re putting words in my mouth. Prosecution of war is not evil to restrain evil. Committing evil acts in conducting that war is evil. Killing innocent people in cities is evil. I don’t think there is any argument about that. The question is utility. Is it easier to just bomb cities? Of course it’s easier. It’s still immoral.
Some last points, and I’m disengaging from this conversation. Saying that one saved millions of lives by killing innocents, so therefore the act is moral is akin to works righteousness. You can’t work off an evil act by trying to make up for it with multiple good works. Christianity doesn’t work that way. Each of us are responsible for the acts one commits.
Now perhaps I should make this clear. I do not believe Truman committed a war crime because the bombing of cities had unfortunately been established as a norm. Whether it was an atomic bomb or some other device really is irrelevant. The norm had been established and so evil carried the day. In one of my early comments I said I might have done the same thing in the fog of war. I can understand the decision. In the past I supported Truman’s decision, but in recent years I reversed myself. From a truly Christian perspective you cannot kill innocent people to reach ultimate goals, even if they are good and noble goals. You cannot do evil to stop evil.
It is important therefore to not excuse the immorality of the act. Otherwise this evil continues to be perpetuated.
Bombing cities of the population supporting the war is not evil if it saves the lives of my Army.
If the Japanese did not want their nation reduced to ash, they should not have attacked Perl. Period. End of Story.
As of that point, we were moral in the utter destruction of their nation if they refused to surrender.
Considering their horrible evil acts against the people of Asia, they had it coming.
This is fatuous, and the last comment is offensive. You guys are arguing apples and oranges. Dropping The Bombs resulted in the incineration of thousands of people and the slow deaths of thousands more. This is unquestionably evil.
Dropping The Bombs ended the most violent war in human history and demonstrated the need to avoid further Great Power hostilities, this preserving the peace on a grand scale from August 1945 until China’s biological warfare attack on the West in early 2020. To end this war and delay Great Power hostilities in this way is unquestionably good.
There is no need for the opinions of theologians to be in accord with those of politicians. Indeed, in a secular state, friction between the two is generally a good thing.
Life is not always black and white. An open mind can accept contrary propositions at times. Light is a particle. Light is a wave. Jefferson was an evil man because he was a slaveholder. Jefferson was a great man for his seminal role in establishing republican government in this nation.
Dropping the bomb was an inherently evil, yet noble and necessary act. Both are true.
Get used to it.
Not really a problem for me, I’m not the one apparently arguing that the bombs should not have been used.
And yet . . . that assertion of evil is what I, and many others, question.
They act like the executioner, and the convicted murderer being executed, are equally evil. That makes them ridiculous, as far as I’m concerned. (Ridiculous: deserving of ridicule. Exactly so.)
We understand that not all actions undertaken for good cause are themselves good. We even have phrases in English which show that we understand this, think of “a necessary evil” or “the lesser of two evils”.
Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki deliberately killed tens of thousands of innocent Japanese. This is deeply evil. However, as several writers have eloquently shown above, these evils were both necessary and lesser than other choices.
So I applaud the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even as I recognize the evil inherent in these acts. It was necessary to do so and in the large scale, saved lives.
It is to our credit as a civilization that we have voices, in this case Catholic theologians, who are willing to point out the evil inherent in certain necessary actions. They help to keep us honest.
Please understand that I’m not a flower child about this. My late friend Jerry Kamber landed at Iwo Jima and was lucky to survive. When we cruised by Iwo Jima in 2008, my son Jon was 19. Two generations earlier, the Japanese would have been training machine guns on him, instead of our looking at a solar eclipse.
Morning Doctor Robert,
I think this analysis into the evil of actions during war has limited value. It is an exercise made in the luxury of survival and freedom. We probably would agree that there would be no resolution to the war with Japan without the loss of innocent life. If we do not stop Japan, innocents in China and Indo-China would be dying at approximately 20K per day, if we were to invade innocents would die or commit suicide as in Okinawa. So we are left with no choice in which innocent life will be lost, so then do we count speculated lives lost? I am challenging the value of this type of thought on the ethical actions of others by those who are paying no cost. The idea that there might be war without horror leads us to the foolness of my generation, that if we just gave peace a chance, war could be avoided or abolished. Since the earliest times, it was understood that during war, death would come to those who were innocent as well as those who were combatants. Then the question of innocents also makes grand statements concerning the killing of innocents suspect.
Well said. This sort of navel gazing only works when one is safely sequestered from the consequences of inaction.
That navel gazing also seems to ignore the reality that a whole lot of Japanese civilians – those not already producing weapons etc – would have very quickly become combatants if there had been a land invasion.
Late arrival! But this is a topic of great interest.
Over the years I have been lucky enough to walk the battlegrounds of Guam, Saipan (including the ‘Suicide Cliffs’), and Tinian (the atomic bomb loading pits are preserved). I have explored Okinawa from end to end and viewed the invasion beaches of Iwo Jima from Mount Suribachi. I have visited Hiroshima many times (including on Aug 6) and Nagasaki twice (including a rare port call in a US Navy ship, which was greeted by vigorous dockside protest for the media followed by an exceptionally warm welcome from the mayor on down). I have seen Enola Gay and heard the story of the Hiroshima bombing from Brigadier General Paul Tibbets himself. By chance I later had a private moment with him and was able to thank him for his service.
After all that, and reflections which naturally flow from such experiences, eventually I found that the book to read is Japan’s Longest Day by the Pacific War Research Society. It is the definitive story of the Japanese surrender told by the Japanese themselves.
There’s a fine summary of the situation from Japan’s point of view here: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/08/14/commentary/japan-commentary/reflections-japans-longest-day-75-years/
No, Japan was not going to surrender before the second bomb was dropped, and everyone who survived the war can thank Truman, Tibbets, and their lucky stars that they were. “The day between the government’s decision to end the war and the radio broadcast has become known as “Japan’s longest day” because of the mayhem and uncertainty that precipitated the surrender. It was a period that witnessed an attempted coup, the successful and attempted assassinations of multiple government leaders, ritual suicides and a recorded Emperor’s speech that barely evaded interception.”
During the Q & A after Brigadier General Tibbets’ presentation he was asked if he ever went to Hiroshima and what did he do there. He answered that he went there shortly after the bombing and that he “bought some souvenirs for my wife.”
An NRA convention was going on during one of the Nashville meetups. Concretevol and I went to the convention during some free time. Theodore van Kirk, the navigator on the Hiroshima mission was signing autographs. @jamesofengland got one.
No they were not. The kids maybe, but the adults cheerd the war on. They supported the atrocities of their nation.
The Japanese people to this day treat the decendants of Korens brought over as slaves as second class citizens.
They were not innocent. They were guilty and they lost, as a people, any right to any mercy when they engaged in their horrible war.
Regarding comments 131, 132, 133, 136: you’re missing my point, which is a pretty good sign that I argued it clumsily.
My point is twofold. First, that it can be necessary to commit evil acts (nuking the home of thousands of innocents) in order to serve a greater good (ending the war quickly with a clear victory and reduced overall casualty count).
Second, that the “navel gazing” by theologians and others who point out that certain actions, as necessary as they were, were evil, is a good thing. It is good to have to justify your evil actions as necessary or lesser by comparison to other options. Such a framework lessens the chance of committing unnecessary or greater evils. A decision maker who cannot clearly justify a lethal action has no business taking that action. “Yes, that was evil, but we had to do it because of Y and Z” is an acceptable answer when challenged.
Thus do I, Dr Robert, Ricochetto since August 2012, simultaneously applaud the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and recognize the evil inherent in those actions. Hell, had I been President Truman I would have dropped another, on Moscow or whatever city Uncle Joe Stalin was then residing in. Think of how much easier the 1950s and ‘60s would have been had that occurred.
I’ll quit now while I’m behind.
cheers,
Doc R.
I think the problem you run into is that a lot of people are just “That was evil, Full Stop.” If I’m… “arguing”… with someone like that, I probably wouldn’t accept their premise that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “evil,” because that is where they will stop.
Paul Fussell in his essay Thank God For The Atomic Bomb wrote something similar though he called the bombs a tragedy rather than evil, while at the same time being grateful they ended the war. Fussell’s perspective was as an infantryman who’d fought and been wounded in Europe and was preparing to be sent to the Pacific to be part of the landing on Honshu, planned for March 1946.
It was not evil. Full stop.
They were not innocent. Full stop.
That’s close to the point I was going to make, but just got too tired last night to chime in: Too many people use a very loose definition of “evil”, as in the clichés mentioned earlier (“lesser of two evils”, “necessary evil”). I try to reserve the word evil for actions that are truly such, in the religious (or for some, philosophical) sense. Because if everything that is bad, tragic or even horrible is labeled evil, if someone who simply disagrees with you is evil, then the word means nothing anymore as a means to make a distinction. And if the loss of innocent life is always what makes any action “evil”, then not only is war always evil (because even a defensive war will result in innocents being killed), but so is commuting to work, and rock climbing, and policing, and medicine and [fill in the blank]. As a result, there can be little meaningful discussion of actions and their consequences, especially difficult actions under the duress of a global war, if every act is already marked as evil per se.
Helpful example:
Killing of Jews at Auschwitz by Nazis = Evil
Killing some innocents as an unavoidable byproduct of a campaign to defeat the Nazis and liberate Auschwitz = Not Evil.
Even the babies and children?
They were innocent, but their deaths were actually the results of their parents’ actions (in general, if not specifically).
It’s like when people cry about “separating children from their parents!” at the border.
Well guess what? Children get “separated from their parents!” every day, when the parents commit crimes and go to jail for it.
Not The Government’s Fault.
Exactly
The Japanese called it upon themselves. They asked for it.
Don’t sneak attack America.
Don’t rape Asia.
the Japanese supported monsters. They were monsters.
At the end of the day, I would rather every man woman and child in Japan die, die a horrible death, than one American.
If you don’t support that, then what is your acceptable ratio of dead Americans to dead enemy?
Well…
Do I get to pick the American? :-)
I believe there was a proposal to drop the bomb in the Japan Sea, the purpose being to warn the Japanese what to expect should they not agree to surrender. It was rejected on the grounds that dropping the bomb in the sea would only be a “giant firecracker” that wouldn’t dissuade Japan to continuing the war. Additionally,
“Some scientists felt the bomb’s fearsome force should have been demonstrated to the Japanese by exploding it in an unpopulated area.
And that question has been raised on each anniversary of the bombing of Japan.
Critics underline the fatalities. As many as 80,000 died instantly at Hiroshima, and at least 40,000 at Nagasaki, with tens of thousands dying afterward from the trauma. A wire story published in the Tribune later that August touched on the severity of the suffering of those who were lingering:”
Why wasn’t that alternative tried? Oppenheimer and Fermi already knew the power of the bomb from testing in New Mexico. If Japan wouldn’t surrender having witnessed the destructive power of the bomb they could still have dropped it on Hiroshima. Could it be that the generals, scientists, and Truman preferred to use it as a military weapon rather than a warning that could have brought the war to a close?
Mikescapes
The bomb that was tested in New Mexico was very different than the Hiroshima bomb, in fissile material and method of detonation. It was untested because they “knew” it would work, but in truth nobody knew, and the US didn’t want to risk a dud. Even worse would have been a bomb that didn’t go off, but made it to the ground, revealing the secrets of its mechanism.
This was an A-bomb, a fearsome sight on detonation, but it wasn’t a horizon-filling H-bomb. When the A-bomb was demonstrated in 1946 (Operation Crossroads), Soviet and other observers were not that impressed. It’s possible that a similar demonstration to the Japanese a year earlier might have had the same “big deal” response. We simply didn’t have enough bombs to risk it.
The surrender was so tenuous, I am boggled you would suggest that.
Go study history.
I don’t want to spend the time to answer the question, particularly when I (and now you) have access to a remarkably well presented answer.
Here you go.