QUESTION: You said you did your own research on the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and you saw gaps. Would you reveal what those gaps were for those of us who are curious?
EG
ANSWER: What I discovered was that there were no specific orders from Truman. The initial authorization was given in late July 1945 while Truman was at the Potsdam Conference. There was no presidential order to drop two specific, individual attacks. Truman granted the military authority to use atomic bombs as they became available, and at their discretion. They were to target military and industrial war facilities. The timing and specific targets were left to the military, primarily to General Carl Spaatz (1891-1974), the commander of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces at that time, not Truman.
After the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, there was no high-level meeting or order from Truman to stop the process. The machinery for the second mission was already in motion. The plutonium core for the “Fat Man” bomb was flown from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico on August 7th, and the B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, took off from Tinian Island in the early morning hours of August 9th (local time) and dropped the bomb on Nagasaki at 11:02 AM.
In the days following Hiroshima, there were discussions among Truman’s cabinet members, notably Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1867-1950), who expressed growing unease about the destruction. Stimson was particularly keen on giving Japan a clearer chance to surrender and was worried about the U.S. being perceived as overly destructive. Even physicist Joseph Rotblat, left the Manhattan Project in 1944 on grounds of conscience.
Some historians, often called “traditionalists,” tend to argue that the bombs were necessary in order to save American lives and prevent an invasion of Japan. Other experts, usually called “revisionists,” claim that the bombs were unnecessary and were dropped for other reasons, such as to intimidate the Soviet Union. Many historians have taken positions between these two poles.
The “gap” I came to see was that there never was an order from Truman for a second attack. However, Truman, in his own diary and letters, expressed the horrific nature of the weapon but also a determination to end the war quickly. The prevailing belief was that the Japanese government, despite the first bomb, was not yet ready to surrender unconditionally. But that may have been with hindsight, given that 70,000–80,000 of civilians died in Hiroshima. That seemed to be an excuse to gloss over the civilian deaths some even believed was a war crime. In Nagasaki 40,000 died instantly and another 30,000 civilians from radiation poisonings.
The mission to bomb Nagasaki was never expressly authorized by Truman and it was never a primary target! Kokura was the target, but the city was obscured by smoke and haze from a conventional bombing raid on a nearby city the previous day. They made three bombing runs over the city but could not visually sight the target as per their strict orders. At best, Nagasaki was a secondary target. Sweeney, the pilot, pressed on with the mission’s core objective despite a cascade of failures that would have justified an abort. He was solely responsible for the decision to use or abandon the only other operational atomic bomb in the American arsenal at the time dropping it in the ocean. There has always been this question did Truman issue a subsequent erased stand-down order countermanding the discretion of the military.
Truman did a radio address and it seemed to be covering his ass. He said:
“The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.”
This statement was propaganda at at best highly misleading. Hiroshima was a city with a significant civilian population, though it did contain military headquarters. To me, Truman lied to the world. Shortly after the bombing of Nagasaki, he famously ordered a halt to further atomic attacks without his express permission. I believe this confirmed the discretionary gap that military made the decision not Truman. In a memo to his cabinet, he wrote, “The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, ‘all those kids.'” This is one of the clearest indications that the human cost weighed on him but he covered his ass.
In a response to a critique from religious leaders, in a letter to Federal Council of Churches (1946), Truman wrote:
“I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor… I was disturbed over the loss of life but not any more than I was over the loss of life in the attacks on the Normandy beaches… The atomic bomb ended the war and thereby saved the loss of millions of lives… It was a terrible decision. But I made it. And I made it to save 250,000 boys from the United States.“
Here, he acknowledges the loss of life but immediately contextualizes it within the broader, and bloodier, framework of total war. If we look at his private journals and later life, he occasionally expressed more somber reflections. For example, in a 1958 diary entry, he referred to the atom bomb as “the worst thing ever discovered,” and pondered the need to control it for the sake of peace. However, he never retreated from his core position that using it in 1945 was the correct decision for no politicians will EVER admit a mistake of in this case he gave discretion that should NEVER have been granted.
