Lead: On July 16, 1945 in the high desert of New Mexico, near the small village of Los Alamos, the first atomic bomb was exploded. The thing worked. Harry Truman had to decide what to do with it.

Tag: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: On the day of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, just after taking office, President Harry Truman was approached by Secretary of War Henry Stimson. The latter spoke briefly of a new weapon nearing completion, a new explosive of almost unbelievable power. Truman did not know what he was talking about. Roosevelt had kept his vice-president in the dark about a subject that was to provoke one of the earliest and most important decisions of Truman's presidency, whether to use the atomic bomb on Japan or not. As the days passed and more information was made available, Truman slowly realized that within months he would have to determine how this new weapon would be used. Scientists had solved most of the problems with the device and he had only a few weeks to make up his mind.

Winston Churchill later wrote of a conversation he had during this period in which Truman was tormented by "the terrible responsibilities that rested upon him in regard to the unlimited effusions of American blood."

Truman was also very much aware of Japanese determination to defend their homeland to the last. Though there was a peace faction in the Tokyo government which wished to end the war under certain conditions, they were in the minority. Most of the Japanese leadership was committed to a fiery response to any invasion of the Japanese home islands. They proved it at Okinawa. Since the Allied landings on April 1, 1945 the Japanese had fought with such savagery, including kamikaze attacks, that they had inflicted nearly 50,000 casualties.

Truman's advisors estimated that as many as a million U.S. casualties alone would result from an invasion of Japan. This prospect was enough to compel the president to act. When the Japanese rejected the Allied ultimatum issued from Potsdam, Germany on July 26, 1946, Truman gave his OK to use the bombs. Within the month the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been incinerated.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Christman, Al. "The Atom Bomb: Making it Happen," American Heritage of Invention and Technology 11 (1, Summer, 1995), 22-35.

Cooper, Dan. "The Atom Bomb: Making it Possible, "American Heritage of Invention and Technology 11 (1, Summer, 1995), 10-21.

Genion, William, editor. The Affects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Santa Fe: Genion Publishing, 1973.

Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can be Told. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962.

Maddox, Robert James, " The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb," American Heritage 46 (3, May/June, 1995), 70-77.

Stehling, Kurt R. "World Shaking Week in December: When the Work in Quiet Lab in Berlin and a Walk in the Snow in Sweden Opened Up the Pandora's Box of Fission," Smithsonian 4 (9, December, 1973), 88-89.

Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon and Schuster Publishing Company, 1984.

Copyright 1995 by Educational Broadcast, Inc.