The Manhattan Project to create nuclear bomb during the early 1940s was successful. Two bombs were created, one based on the fission of uranium-235 called “Little Boy” and a second based on the fission of plutonium-239 called “Fat Man”. Upon completion of the bombs in the summer of 1945, the U.S. President, Harry Truman was faced with making the decision of whether such terribly destructive weapons should be deployed in World War II which had been raging for years in Europe and Asia. The war in Europe ended in May of 1945 but the war with Japan in the Pacific continued.
The U.S. had driven the Japanese out of Okinawa and Iwo Jima but they still had an army of two million in their home islands. The U.S. had demanded an unconditional surrender from the Japanese government threatening “total destruction” if the Japanese refused. The Japanese did refuse but there were hints that they would consider a conditional surrender.
Truman said that his decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan was a purely military decision. It was estimated that if the United States staged an amphibious landing on the coasts of Japan over a million U.S. soldiers would be killed. Truman was dedicated to ending the war as quickly as possible to save both American and Japanese lives. Some of his advisors suggested a demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb to persuade the Japanese military of the futility of continuing the conflict. Truman decided against it because there was no guarantee that a successful test would end the war and an unsuccessful test might embolden the Japanese to keep fighting.
Some critics claimed that Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan were motivated by racism and that he would never have dropped such bombs on Europeans. Other critics suggested that Truman wanted to end the war quickly so that the Russians would not have an opportunity to invade the heavily industrialized northern Japanese islands. Considering what happened in Eastern Europe after the Russians beat back the Germans, this may have been a realistic fear. Other say that Truman wanted to intimidate the Russians and that the explosions of the atomic bombs were really the opening shots in the Cold War.
In August 6 of 1945, Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9. On August 14, the Supreme War Council of Japan surrendered unconditionally. Although great destruction had been wrought by firebombing raids over Tokyo, the sheer fury of the atomic explosions and the fact that all that destructive potential was delivered in a pair of relatively small bombs.
Truman succeeded in ending the war in Asia with the use of the atomic bombs. He also hurled the human race into the nuclear arms race and the threat of the annihilation of human civilization that continues to this day.
President Harry S. Truman:
