Introduction

In 1945, the US military attacked two Japanese cities with nuclear weapons. It was argued, at the time, that the use of the nation’s new atomic arsenal was necessary to bring about the end of the war and prevent an extended struggle. Research has since indicated that the reasons for dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not as clear-cut as government spokespeople claimed. The growing tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union were one of the more important factors, with hawks in the US military establishment hoping that demonstrating the nation’s devastating new weapons would serve as a warning against Soviet hostility.

Topics Covered in this Chapter Include:

In July of 2021, C-SPAN released its annual rankings of the nation’s presidents. These were based on the opinions of 142 historians and political analysts chosen to represent a cross section of American culture in terms of race, ethnicity, age, gender, and political alignment. According to these experts, Missouri native Harry Truman was the sixth most effective leader in American history, beating out cherished former presidents like Thomas Jefferson, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama, and sitting just behind Dwight Eisenhower.¹

Truman was not initially elected to the presidency. He came to the nation’s highest executive office just after the unexpected death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April of 1945 (FDR ranks third in terms of presidential leadership and had been elected to an unprecedented fourth term). Truman’s careful and considered leadership, however, won him the respect and admiration of the American people and made him one of the most popular presidents in history.

Born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884, Truman worked his way up the rankings in politics from a judgeship in Jackson County, a suburb of Kansas City, to the US Senate. He supported Roosevelt’s New Deal and chaired the Truman Committee on defense spending during the Second World War, which brought him to national prominence. Roosevelt chose Truman as his running mate in 1944 largely because Truman gave Roosevelt slightly more traction with the Southern branch of the Democratic Party. After only 82 days as vice president, Truman found himself thrust into the presidency. After managing the end of World War II and the negotiations that resulted in the establishment of the United Nations (UN), Truman was popular enough to earn a second term. His attempts to institute a new set of even more progressive social and economic policies known as the “Fair Deal” gained him many allies, but moderates and conservatives diluted or defeated most of this program.

Public opinion soured during Truman’s second term as he struggled to balance transitioning the economy away from wartime and with the emerging threat of Russia and the Korean War. The latter was very unpopular in a nation that had just emerged from a deadly and difficult crisis. In the years that followed, public opinion of Truman improved; he has been credited with making important economic and civil rights strides and with successfully leading the nation through some of the most complicated foreign policy programs in its history.²

However, for as much as Truman has remained high in presidential rankings, there is a dark mark that hangs over his presidency. Truman was the first and only president to authorize the use of what might today be called a “weapon of mass destruction.” The atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki successfully ended the war, but as their use caused such terrible suffering, lasting for decades, there are many who would class Truman among history’s greatest war criminals.

A Weapon of Last Resort?

When Truman took over as president, the outcome of the Second World War was all but decided. Hitler committed suicide just four days after Truman took office, and the conventional bombing campaigns targeting Japan had reduced Tokyo to rubble and killed tens of thousands. The Japanese refused to surrender, but they were beaten. Working in secret for several years, American military engineers had created a new weapon, harnessing the fundamental power of the atom. Facing an intransigent Japanese leadership refusing to surrender, military leaders pressured Truman to authorize the experimental use of this new weapon on Japan.

On August 6, 1945, B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb code named “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The weapon obliterated buildings and instantly killed more than 100,000 inhabitants. Three times this number would die from radiation poisoning in the decades that followed. Three days passed, and Japan had yet to issue a full unconditional surrender, though they had agreed to negotiate. Truman authorized the use of a second bomb, code named “Fat Man,” which was dropped on the city of Nagasaki on August 9. By August 14, Japanese authorities agreed to a complete, unconditional surrender, officially ending the Second World War.³

The following two articles from the August9, 1945, issue of the Detroit Evening Times, show how Americans back home learned about this act of violence:

“Death to Stalk Hiroshima Area for Next 70 Years”

“City Converted Into Cosmic Dust”

Scholars have invested years of effort trying to determine the ways that the atomic attack impacted Japan and the Japanese people. According to twenty-first century estimates, nearly 130,000 were instantly killed in Hiroshima from the immediate impact. Tens of thousands more died from radiation poisoning, with the combined total estimated to be at least 190,000 in Hiroshima alone. At least another 100,000 died in the immediate attack and the next few weeks after the attack on Nagasaki. In total, population scientists believe that at least 300,000 to 400,000 were killed, the vast majority of whom were civilian families. Estimates indicate that 30 to 40 percent of Nagasaki residents were children, and so there were upwards of 50,000 children killed in this attack alone.⁶

The moral questions surrounding the use of such weapons center on the fact that the massive blast radius and deadly radiation mean that nuclear weapons are indiscriminate and cannot be used to target combatants without also targeting non-combatants. When Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed, hospitals and elder-care facilities were obliterated along with the patients, residents, and staff. Schools and daycare facilities were destroyed. Targeting children, the elderly, the wounded, and the physicians, teachers, and other caretakers has been considered morally reprehensible for thousands of years. The use of atomic weaponry, like chemical weapons, is now considered a crime against humanity and is a violation of the Geneva Convention on warfare. The lingering debate, then, is whether the United States was ever justified in using atomic weapons and whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary.

Justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction

Records show that key members of the military establishment were very much in favor of using atomic weapons. The principal argument used was that the severity of such an attack would shock Japan into surrender and would therefore allow the United States to avoid a costly invasion that would likely lead to tremendous loss of American soldiers and Japanese civilians and soldiers as well. Prominent American physicist Karl T. Compton, who was part of the scientific committee who advised Truman on the use of the bomb, was one of the officials who argued that the use of the atomic bomb saved lives by forcing Japan to surrender.⁷

Historian Gar Alperovitz, author of the 1995 book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, disagrees. Alperovitz’s investigation, which drew on a number of declassified government and internal White House communications, indicated that the American military was aware that it was not necessary to utilize atomic weapons to avoid a costly end to the conflict. As the global war was drawing to a close, US relations with the Soviet Union had taken a turn for the worse, and there was a looming threat of a continued conflict with the Soviets. The Soviet Union was preparing to move on Japan and capture Manchuria. The Japanese military was too depleted to fight both enemies. It is now known that the Soviet Union was likely planning to take most of Japan’s territory to expand their own empire. Alperovitz argues that Truman and Secretary of States James Byrne hoped that the bombing of Japan would demonstrate the nation’s military might and that this would provide an advantage when negotiating with Russia. There is evidence that this strategy worked, as Russia backed off its claims to Manchuria and other Japanese territories.⁸

Alperovitz also found evidence that some representatives of the military command suggested that the first atomic bomb might be used to target an agricultural area, demonstrating the power of the weapon but avoiding the massive death toll that occurred. Truman and allies opted for the urban target, knowing that there would be massive number of civilian casualties. Seven US five-star Army and Navy officers, including Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and others, felt that the use of atomic weapons was morally indefensible and unnecessary. In his memoir Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, wrote:

In the years since the Second World War, opinions on the use of atomic weapons have changed. At the time of the attack, more than 85 percent of Americans believed that the use of atomic weapons was justified, even with widespread news reports documenting the carnage. Gradually, over the course of the Cold War, trust in the government dwindled, and Americans began to reexamine the policies and actions taken by their government and presidents in previous eras. By 1991, polling indicated that a substantial but reduced majority (63 percent) still believed that the decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima was justified. By 2015, this percentage had fallen to 56 percent. It is likely that the percentage will plummet still more as the generational shift in values continues.¹⁰

The Truman administration gained a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union by utilizing the atomic bomb, but this only facilitated an arms race ending in what political scientists called “mutually assured destruction.” China, Russia, and the United States built arsenals of nuclear weapons so vast that any attempt by a nuclear power to attack one of the others would result in a counterattack that would destroy the attacking nation. By the 1980s, any nuclear attack would result in the destruction of all human life on the planet.

Whether or not the US use of atomic weapons was justified, the development of nuclear power fundamentally changed the nature of warfare among the great powers. From this point forward, it was no longer possible for the United States to engage in open war with the other great powers. Instead, the United States and allies fought with opposing powers through “proxy wars,” with Cold War powers funding smaller, localized wars in developing countries. This new era of warfare raised many new ethical and moral questions and ultimately eroded public faith and trust in the government and the military.

Conclusion

Opinions on the US use of atomic weapons in World War II and on the presidency of Harry Truman vary widely. Around half of Americans feel that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified, but this percentage has declined with each new generation. Many Americans also give President Truman high marks in the pantheon of the presidency, while others have suggested that Truman’s use of nuclear weapons makes him and other members of his administration war criminals. Perceptions of the morality of nuclear weapons have also shifted over time. During the early years of the Cold War, the vast majority of Americans supported the development of America’s nuclear arsenal and embraced the claim that this arsenal would ultimately make Americans safer. Over the years, American trust in the government and in the military has declined. Twenty-first-century opinion polling indicates that only around half of Americans approve of the nation keeping and/or using nuclear weapons against an enemy. Support for military intervention of any kind has continued to decline, but it remains strong among the Baby Boomer and Greatest Generation cohorts. As these individuals are replaced by individuals from the Generation X, Millennial, and Generation Z cohorts, it is likely that support for weapons of mass destruction will continue to decline and this may, eventually, motivate more aggressive efforts to move away from nuclear technology.

Discussion Questions

Works Used