Posted on 09/02/2026 10:54:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Seventy-five years ago this week, President Harry S. Truman exulted when he heard the first report that the atomic bomb he had ordered dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, by a B-29 bomber, had exploded as planned and on target, most likely devastating most of the large city.
Truman was on the ocean, returning to Washington from the Potsdam Conference in Germany, where he had secured Joseph Stalin's promise to declare war on Japan around August 10. An article in the press the day after the first atomic attack depicted Truman, his voice "tense with excitement," personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. "The experiment," he announced, "has been an overwhelming success."
Missing from this account was Truman's burst of triumphalism when the news of the bombing first reached the ship: "This is the greatest thing in history!"
Truman's official announcement, released while he was still at sea, again showed pride in America's achievement. The atomic bomb, he declared, represented "a harnessing of the basic power of the universe." America had "won the greatest scientific gamble in history." And Japan had now been repaid for Pearl Harbor "manyfold."
From that moment on, Truman rarely (some would say, never) looked back from a different angle, inevitably responding to questions about ordering two bombs dropped over Japan—from the media or in sometimes hostile letters to him at the White House—by affirming that decision, or even with what we would now call "doubling down."
He said he "didn't have any doubt" about the wisdom of the decision—unlike those he pictured as "eggheads" or "Monday morning quarterbacks."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
My dad was a drill sergeant at Camp Pendelton when the bombs were dropped. If we had gone ahead with an invasion of Japan, everyone at Camp Pendleton would have been added to the invasion force. Japan and it’s people were ready to die fighting.
Many people are unaware of the type of fighting force that was the Japanese imperial army. They were fierce fighters, would gladly sacrifice themselves, and never gave up. The war would have continued far longer than it did if fought by conventional means.
Yeah but all the reds in his administration were under orders from Moscow to create doubt and regret
Met General Tibbets in 2000 and we had a nice talk about it.
He didn’t regret it eithe.
Disregarding, for a moment, the subject of the two bombings, I have to point out that the leaflets were ubiquitous to the point that they were useless; there were cities upon which they were dropped but which had not been bombed, or which had been bombed long after the leaflet warnings.
One suspects that they were really used to be a salve for some consciences back home. ("Hey, we did warn them; they chose to ignore the warnings.")
Truman DIDN’T do ANYTHING.
FDR had all the pieces in place before he died. Truman didn’t even know the bomb existed before he was sworn in as POTUS. All of the orders bearing a presidential signature were signed by FDR. All Truman did was not get in the way.
Truman even tried to manage the bombs’ employment and was ignored. He wrote in his personal diary on 25 July (while he was at Potsdam):
“…I have told the Sec. of War Mr. Stimson to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old Capitol or the new. He & I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives…”
Nonetheless, neither target was purely or even mostly military but Truman made public statements after the first bombing showing that he persisted in believing differently, so apparently he was lied to about the nature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Truman didn’t order the bombings, and the only decisions he took went to nothing because they were ignored.
And OH BY THE WAY, the Japanese surrender wasn’t unconditional either. The Allies scrapped the original Potsdam declaration when they learned through back channels that the Japanese would never agree to anything that threatened the liberty or the traditional role of their emperor, to include charging him with war crimes. The declaration was rewritten putting the Emperor’s fate entirely in MacArthur’s hands. So the surrender instrument they signed bore the word “unconditional” but it was a negotiated uncontidionality (=BS).
I have gone from an enthusiastic backer of our employment of nuclear weapons to a guy who wonders if we went too far. I worked in the field of underground nuclear weapons testing 40 or so years ago and later worked in the Threshold Test Ban Treaty verification field as a military officer - so I have some time reviewing the true nastiness of these weapons.
Last bunch of years, I've read the histories for and against using the nukes but most of them gloss over other potential employments we could have done instead of deliberately targeting civilians:
1. The Demonstration. Notifying the Japanese government that we have a new catastrophic weapon, and we will use the first one to destroy the fleet anchorage at Hashirajima - and do it quickly before any fleet units can disperse.
2. Attack the major army headquarters for the 16th Army. It would decapitate the critical leadership and staffs to oppose our planned landings on Kyushu and would demonstrate the true power of the bomb to the Japanese leadership.
Then, when they continued to fight, we'd be more justified in attacking a true industrial center - not an "Untouched" city, filled with noncombatants, that would be used as lab for experimentation.
One of you mentioned Dresden. It as an example of how we lost our decency in our war against indecency.
I don’t know what that had to do with post 32 that was an answer to your targeting questions, but that demonstration question was answered generations ago, I didn’t realize that it still came up.
VDH has an excellent YouTube layout of the choices facing the Allies...
So you would waste a weapon, of which we only had three, where the use could be covered up by the Japanese government. This would result in no pressure being placed on them.
2. Attack the major army headquarters for the 16th Army. It would decapitate the critical leadership and staffs to oppose our planned landings on Kyushu and would demonstrate the true power of the bomb to the Japanese leadership.
See above.
The Japanese military leaders were willing to continue fighting, because they believed that our offers to let them surrender meant that we were weak, after they lost two cities.
Like most Americans you do not understand the Japanese, especially the Japanese military leadership, mentality of the time.
They were lying to, well, everybody, including themselves. They thought that if they could just hold out that the Allies would stop and go away.
And of course they were waiting to fall when they would unleash Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. A plan to release a ramped up version of Yersinia pestis on the world.
Out of the Five Great pandemics of history which resulted in a major world population drop, three were caused by Yersinia pestis.
I am ok with not allowing that to happen.
Truman’s atom bomb decisions prevented the need for the invasion of Japan. That invasion would have cost between 250,000 and 4 million American casualties and up to 10 million Japanese lives.
It would also have lengthened the war into 1947.
Truman made the right decision.
He saved millions of lives dropping the bombs on Japan. Both Allied and Japanese lives.
“””””1. The Demonstration. Notifying the Japanese government that we have a new catastrophic weapon, and we will use the first one to destroy the fleet anchorage at Hashirajima - and do it quickly before any fleet units can disperse.”””””
It was World War II, the Japanese might want to shoot that plane down rather than decide to just watch to see if it really could wipe out the fleet at the harbor.
TRUMAN MADE THE RIGHT AND CORRECT DECISION
That would have been a waste of a bomb and it wouldn't have done anything to motivate the war faction within the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War to end the war. It also most likely would not have swayed Hirohito to break the tie, which occurred after Nagasaki. Hiroshima could be quantified and it showed American resolve.
Without question. To counter that you put up 50 or so B-29s with at least 100 VLLR P-51s out of Iwo for high CAP and you cover the plane with the bomb until he gets to the Release Point.
I intentionally left JFK off my list...
Bush, I can go either way, depending on the day ot the week...😎
Another option was to continue the fire bombing.
George W was a fighter pilot, and flew the most dangerous jet we had with a high pilot death rate, he also volunteered for Vietnam but wasn’t sent.
I don’t see elected fraternity president, college rugby players who become 1960s wartime fighter pilots as soy boys.
I have never thought of 1930s farm boys who became WWII Naval academy graduates, who became post WWII submarine officers as soy boys.
I doubt their peers saw them as soy boys, and we know that they didn’t think that about George W.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.