The decision to use the atomic bomb

Less than two weeks after being sworn in as president, Harry S. Truman received a long report from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. “Within four months,” it began, “we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.” Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted from the interplay of his temperament and several other factors, including his perspective on the war objectives defined by his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the expectations of the American public, an assessment of the possibilities of achieving a quick victory by other means, and the complex American relationship with the Soviet Union. Although in later decades there was considerable debate about whether the bombings were ethically justified, virtually all of America’s political and military leadership, as well as most of those involved in the atomic bomb project, believed at the time that Truman’s decision was correct.

Truman’s perspective

During World War I, Truman commanded a battery of close-support 75mm artillery pieces in France and personally witnessed the human costs of intense front-line combat. After returning home, he became convinced that he probably would have been killed if the war had lasted a few months longer. At least two of his World War I comrades had lost sons in World War II, and Truman had four nephews in uniform. His first-hand experience with warfare clearly influenced his thinking about whether to use the atomic bomb.

A second factor in Truman’s decision was the legacy of Roosevelt, who had defined the nation’s goal in ending the war as the enemy’s “unconditional surrender,” a term coined to reassure the Soviet Union that the Western allies would fight to the end against Germany. It was also an expression of the American temperament; the United States was accustomed to winning wars and dictating the peace. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to great rejoicing in the Allied countries. The hostility of the American public toward Japan was even more intense and demanded an unambiguous total victory in the Pacific. Truman was acutely aware that the country—in its fourth year of total war—also wanted victory as quickly as possible.

A skilled politician who knew when to compromise, Truman respected decisiveness. Meeting with Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, in early May, he declared: “I am here to make decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong I am going to make them,” an attitude that implied neither impulsiveness nor solitude. After being presented with Stimson’s report, he appointed a blue-ribbon “Interim Committee” to advise him on how to deal with the atomic bomb. Headed by Stimson and James Byrnes, whom Truman would soon name secretary of state, the Interim Committee was a group of respected statesmen and scientists closely linked to the war effort. After five meetings between May 9 and June 1, it recommended use of the bomb against Japan as soon as possible and rejected arguments for advance warning. Clearly in line with Truman’s inclinations, the recommendations of the Interim Committee amounted to a prepackaged decision.

Scientists and the atomic bomb

Among those who had full knowledge of the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb, most agreed that the weapon should be used. However, sharp dissent came from a group of scientists at the project’s facilities at the University of Chicago. Their leader, Leo Szilard, along with two prestigious colleagues, Walter Bartkey, a dean of the University of Chicago, and Harold Urey, director of the project’s research in gaseous diffusion at Columbia University, sought a meeting with Truman but were diverted to Byrnes, who received them with polite skepticism. As he listened to them argue that the United States should refrain from using the bomb and that it should share its atomic secrets with the rest of the world after the war, Byrnes felt that he was dealing with unworldly intellectuals who had no grasp of political and diplomatic realities. He neither took their suggestions seriously nor discussed them with Truman, who most likely would have shared his attitude anyway. Szilard and his associates seem to have represented only a small minority of the many hundreds of scientists who worked on the bomb project. In July 1945 project administrators polled 150 of the 300 scientists working at the Chicago site and could find only 19 who rejected any military use of the bomb and another 39 who supported an experimental demonstration with representatives of Japan present, followed by an opportunity for surrender. Most of the scientists, however, supported some use of the bomb: 23 supported using it in a way that was militarily “most effective,” and 69 opted for a “military demonstration in Japan” with an opportunity for surrender “before full use of the weapons.” In later years, several key figures, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral William Leahy, and Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, claimed to have opposed using the bomb, but there is no firm evidence of any substantial contemporary opposition.

Most of the scientists, civilian leaders, and military officials responsible for the development of the bomb clearly assumed that its military use, however unpleasant, was the inevitable outcome of the project. Although they were forced to formulate an opinion before a single bomb had been built or tested, it is unlikely that a more precise knowledge of the weapon’s power would have changed many minds. Truman faced almost no pressure whatever to reexamine his own inclinations.

The military situation in the Pacific

When Truman became president, a long and bitter military campaign in the Pacific, marked by fanatical Japanese resistance and strongly held racial and cultural hostilities on both sides, was nearing its conclusion. In February 1945, about a month after he was sworn in as vice president, American troops invaded the small island of Iwo Jima, located 760 miles (1,220 km) from Tokyo. The Americans took four weeks to defeat the Japanese forces and suffered nearly 30,000 casualties. On April 1, 12 days before he became president, the United States invaded Okinawa, located just 350 miles (560 km) south of the Japanese home island of Kyushu. The battle of Okinawa was one of the fiercest of the Pacific war. The small island was defended by 100,000 Japanese troops, and Japanese military leaders attempted—with some success—to mobilize the island’s entire civilian population. Offshore, Japanese kamikaze planes inflicted severe losses on the American fleet. After nearly 12 weeks of fighting, the United States secured the island on June 21 at a cost of nearly 50,000 American casualties. Japanese casualties were staggering, with approximately 90,000 defending troops and at least 100,000 civilians killed.

The Americans considered Okinawa a dress rehearsal for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, for which the United States was finalizing a two-stage plan. The first phase, code-named Olympic, was scheduled for late October 1945, with a landing on Kyushu, defended by an estimated 350,000 Japanese troops backed by at least 1,000 kamikaze planes. Olympic entailed the use of nearly 800,000 American assault troops and an enormous naval fleet. The scale of the operation was to be similar to that of the Normandy invasion in France in June 1944, which involved 156,000 Allied troops in the first 24 hours and approximately 850,000 others by the end of the first week of July. Estimates of casualties from an invasion of Japan varied, but nearly everyone involved in the planning assumed that they would be substantial; mid-range estimates projected 132,000 American casualties, with 40,000 deaths. Truman told his military advisers that he hoped “there was a possibility of preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to another.”

The second phase of the plan, code-named Coronet, envisioned a landing near Tokyo on the home island of Honshu in the spring of 1946 and a Japanese surrender sometime before the end of the year. The same mid-range estimate that predicted 132,000 casualties for Olympic projected 90,000 for Coronet. If both invasions were necessary, by the most conservative estimates the United States would suffer 100,000 killed, wounded, or missing, as compared to a Pacific War total that by mid-June was approaching 170,000. Thus, the best estimates available to Truman predicted that the war would continue for a year or longer and that casualties would increase by 60 to 100 percent or more.

But would Japan have surrendered without either invasion? By mid-1945, an American naval blockade had effectively cut off the home islands from the rest of the world. Moreover, regular incendiary bombing raids were destroying huge portions of one city after another, food and fuel were in short supply, and millions of civilians were homeless. General Curtis LeMay, the commander of American air forces in the Pacific, estimated that by the end of September he would have destroyed every target in Japan worth hitting. The argument that Japan would have collapsed by early fall is speculative but powerful. Nevertheless, all the evidence available to Washington indicated that Japan planned to fight to the end. Throughout July, intelligence reports claimed that troop strength on Kyushu was steadily escalating. Moreover, American leaders learned that Japan was seeking to open talks with the Soviet Union in the hopes of making a deal that would forestall Soviet entry into the Pacific war.

The future of the emperor

In the absence of formal negotiations for a Japanese surrender, the two sides communicated with each other tentatively and indirectly, and both were constrained by internal sentiment that discouraged compromise. In Japan no military official counseled surrender, and civilian leaders who knew that the war was lost dared not speak their thoughts openly. Vague contacts initiated by junior-level Japanese diplomats in Sweden and Switzerland quickly turned to nothing for lack of high-level guidance. The Japanese initiative to the Soviet Union also produced no results because Tokyo advanced no firm concessions. Japan faced inevitable defeat, but the concept of surrender carried a stigma of dishonour too great to contemplate. In the United States, conversely, the sure prospect of total victory made it close to impossible for Truman to abandon the goal of unconditional surrender.

The most tangled problem in this conflict of national perspectives was the future of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito. Americans viewed Hirohito as the symbol of the forces that had driven Japan to launch an aggressive, imperialistic war. Most Americans wanted him removed; many assumed he would be hanged. Few imagined that the institution he embodied would be allowed to continue after the war. Private discussions among State Department officials and Truman’s advisers achieved no consensus. Although some thought it necessary to keep Hirohito on the throne in order to prevent mass popular resistance against the American occupation, others wanted him arrested and tried as a necessary first step in the eradication of Japanese militarism. American propaganda broadcasts beamed at Japan hinted that he might be kept on the throne, but Truman was unwilling to give an open guarantee.

The Japanese saw the emperor as embodying in a near-mystical way the divine spirit of the Japanese race. Although not exactly an object of religious worship, he was venerated as an all-important symbol of national identity. Moreover, the entire Japanese civilian and military leadership had a special interest in his survival. They were his servants, and for the military officers especially Hirohito’s continuance represented their best hope of retaining some power—or at least avoiding execution or prison—in the postwar period. In the absence of something approaching formal negotiations, American and Japanese diplomats could not even meet to discuss a compromise formula for postwar Japan.

The problem of the Soviet Union

Although the atomic bomb was never conceived as a tool to be employed in U.S.-Soviet relations, its very existence would have an unavoidable impact on every aspect of America’s foreign affairs. Truman regarded the Soviet Union as a valued ally in the just-concluded fight against Nazi Germany, but he distrusted it as a totalitarian state and was wary of its postwar plans. His personal diaries and letters reveal hope for a satisfactory postwar relationship but determination not to embark on a policy of unilateral concessions. By mid-summer 1945, although he was already upset by indications that the Soviets intended to impose “friendly” governments in the eastern European states they occupied, Truman still wanted the Soviets to enter the war against Japan. Truman and Byrnes also certainly assumed that the atomic bomb would greatly increase the power and leverage of the United States in world politics and would win the grudging respect of the Soviets. However, it is a giant leap to conclude that the bomb was used primarily as a warning to the Soviet Union rather than as a means to compel Japan’s surrender.

At the Potsdam Conference in Germany in mid-July, Truman met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (who was succeeded near the end of the conference by Clement Attlee) and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. From Truman’s perspective, the conference had two purposes: to lay the groundwork for rebuilding postwar Europe and to secure Soviet participation in the war against Japan. On July 16, the day before the conference opened, Truman received word that the first atomic bomb had been successfully tested in the New Mexico desert. He shared the information fully with Churchill (Britain was a partner in the development of the bomb) but simply told Stalin that the United States had created a powerful new weapon. Stalin—who had detailed knowledge of the project through espionage—feigned indifference. He also reaffirmed an earlier pledge to attack Japanese positions in Manchuria no later than mid-August. Truman, apparently uncertain that the bomb alone could compel surrender, was elated. Revisionist historians would later argue that the bomb was used in the hope of securing Japan’s surrender before the Soviet Union could enter the Pacific War.

End game

As the conference neared its conclusion, Truman, Attlee, and representatives of the Chinese Nationalist government issued the Potsdam Declaration, an ultimatum that called on Japan to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction.” Although it promised a peaceful government in accordance with “the freely expressed will of the Japanese people,” the declaration did not specifically threaten the use of an atomic bomb or provide clear assurances that the emperor could retain his throne. Still gridlocked, the government in Tokyo responded with a statement by Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō (who privately sought an end to the war) dismissing the ultimatum.

Thereafter , events moved quickly and inexorably. On August 6 an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, instantly killing more than some 70,000 people and effectively destroying a 54.4-square-mile (9.3 11.4-square-km) area of the city centre. Two days later , a powerful Soviet army attacked Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese defenders. On August 9 the United States dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, instantly killing approximately 40,000 people. After that, Japanese supporters of peace were able to enlist Hirohito to order a surrender. In addition to those killed instantly, many died over the next year of severe burns and radiation sickness. Significant numbers of people also died later from cancer and related diseases, and fatal birth defects may have been caused by the radiation.

The Japanese surrender offer that reached Washington on August 10 requested the retention of the emperor. Truman’s response granted that request (though the emperor would be subject to the authority of the supreme commander of the Allied occupation forces), thereby partially modifying America’s original demand for “unconditional surrender.” The response also cited the Potsdam Declaration’s promise that the Japanese would be allowed to choose their form of government. Having received detailed reports and photographs from Hiroshima, Truman did not want to use a third atomic bomb solely for the purpose of deposing Hirohito. He told his cabinet that the thought of killing another 100,000 people—many of them children—was too horrible.

At Hirohito’s insistence, Japan accepted the American terms, though there was a final spasm of resistance by a military faction that unsuccessfully attempted a coup d’état. Truman always felt that he had done the right thing. But never again—not even in the worst days of the Korean War—would he authorize the use of atomic weapons.

There were no significant international protests over the use of the atomic bomb in 1945. The vanquished were in no position to make them, and the world had little sympathy for an aggressive Japanese nation that had been responsible for the deaths of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific. From the beginning, however, many Americans thought that the atomic bombs had changed the world in a profound way, one that left them with a feeling of foreboding. The influential radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn declared that “For all we know, we have created a Frankenstein,” and Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, wrote a widely-cited editorial declaring that modern man was obsolete. In an article for the New Yorker (later published separately as Hiroshima [1946]), the writer John Hersey put a human face on the casualty figures by detailing the horrible effects of the bomb on six Japanese civilians.

Doubts about the wisdom of using the atomic bomb grew in subsequent generations of Americans but were never accepted by a majority. Hersey and writers who followed him left the American public conversant with the awful facts of nuclear warfare. Critics of the Cold War increasingly took up the argument that the atomic bombs had not been necessary to compel Japan’s surrender but had been deployed to prevent Soviet entry into the Asian war or to provide the Soviet Union with a graphic example of the devastation it would face if it challenged American supremacy in the postwar world. In the minds of many Americans—and the citizens of other western nations—these two streams merged to create a powerful argument for banning atomic weapons. However, the Soviet Union’s possession of atomic weapons after 1949 constituted an even more compelling argument for holding on to them.

It is possible to construct scenarios in which the use of the atomic bomb might have been avoided, but to most of the actors the events of 1945 had a grim logic that yielded no easy alternatives. No one will ever know whether the war would have ended quickly without the atomic bomb or whether its use really saved more lives than it destroyed. What does seem certain is that using it seemed the natural thing to do and that Truman’s overriding motive was to end the war as quickly as possible. In the decades following the end of the war there was increasing debate about the morality of using the atomic bomb, with opponents arguing that even if it did hasten the end of the war, its use was unjustified because of its horrific human consequences.