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 ...
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“Japan had killed far more civilians and needed to be stopped from furthering their killing.”
My Dad was in the Batlle of Manila. He saw what they did there. The Japs murdered 100,000 Filipinos.
Electrons are cheap!
Please tell us your father's story!
Regards,
Those saved Japanese lives.
Despite the incredible loss of life - 150,000 to 240,000 people died from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined — but compare that to what could have happened.
The invasion of Okinawa led to the self-committed deaths of around 100,000 to 150,000 Japanese and Okinawan people.
ANd roughly 80,000 to 100,000 people died in the single deadliest firebombing raid on Tokyo
millions of Japanese civilians (forget about military men) would have died if not for the bombs.
it was the lesser evil
The argument for the Bomb relies on two suppositions:
1. Our demand for unconditional surrender was morally justified.
2. An invasion of Japan was militarily necessary.
Take away even one of the two, and it's just another act of barbarism in a war with many other acts of barbarism.
completely disagree- dropping the bomb was justified by a single one of those, especially when you factor in what we found out the Japs were doing not only to US POWs, but citizens of the lands they conquered...
There was a man who lived in Nagasaki who happened to be in Hiroshima on August 6 and survived the bomb. He returned home in time to survive the second bomb.
That we didn’t turn around and systematically destroy Russia and China was the first time in history a nation did not ‘carry out its obligation’ to take full advantage of it’s technical achievement.
First time in human history.
This act of mercy, of course, has been repaid in treachery by both countries. The ultimate ingratitude.
Is it true that Greg worked at Newsweak because his writing is so bad he was unemployable elsewhere?
They were barbaric so we had to burn them to death?
I don't see it.
we actually burned them to death when Tokyo was firebombed before hiroshima and nagasaki, yet they refused to surrender...
Imagine if the Soviets invaded Japan, and took the whole country, or even half of it. What would the world be like today?
Imagine if the Soviets invaded Japan, and took the whole country, or even half of it.
And allowed the ChiComs in.
And...? Do you dispute that either of those two conditions were met?
Regards,
We were firebombing cities up and down the islands for months before we dropped the bombs.
The entire subject of the bombs is nothing more than an annual exercise in bloviation.
EVERY President should live by that motto.
I don’t. I lost an uncle because of WWII. He was a Navy pilot. Lost at sea in the war. They could have nuked the entire damned island I would not have cared. Yeah, I am a hard @$$ when it come to losing family to a thug war-mongering empire.
I'd add Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter to the list. Execrable politicians, both of 'em, but not soyboys. Clinton and 0bama were soyboys ... Biden, by the time he became "president", had just completely lost his mind. Earlier in life as a Senator, he was a mean, vicious, nasty, vindictive political operator for his evil ideology.
I would argue that neither one of them was met.
What moral right did we have to insist that Japan agree to stop fighting so that we could impose our terms on the country?
We had complete control of the waters around the Japanese islands; by 1945, our submarines were far more effective in fighting that war than our bombers. (Was the country smart enough to bring the fight to Japan's front door suddenly going to have a stupid attack and decide we had to go into the house?)
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