07/25/2007

President Truman Sets History’s Course
By Tom Range, Sr.

Big Three

The 10-day period from July 16 to July 25, 1945 represents a watershed, a defining moment in world history.  On the 10th, at Alamogordo in the New Mexican desert, an atomic bomb was tested successfully.  Its performance exceeded all expectations. 

President Harry S Truman, in office for only three months since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, was en route to Potsdam, Germany to meet with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain and Premier Joseph Stalin of the USSR.  The Big Three were to meet to discuss plans on invading the home islands of Japan.  During the day of July 16, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson received word of the successful testing of the atomic bomb.  The news was shared immediately with the British, whose scientists had been working for years with their American counterparts on developing the bomb.  Premier Stalin was told of the super weapon but probably not its nature.  He went forward with formulating his plans for Soviet participation in the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

By July 25, this written order for the use of the atomic bomb against Japanese cities was drafted, instructing General Carl Spaatz, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces:
1. The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki.  To carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion of the bomb, additional aircraft will accompany the airplane carrying the bomb.  The observing planes will stay several miles distant from the point of impact of the bomb.
2. Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff.  Further instructions will be issued concerning targets other than those listed above.
3. Discussion of any and all information concerning the use of the weapon against Japan is reserved to the Secretary of War and the President of the United States.  No communiqués on the subject or releases of information will be issued by commanders in the field without specific prior authority.  Any news stories will be sent to the War Department for specific clearance.
4. The foregoing directive is issued to you by direction and with the approval of the Secretary of War and of the Chief of Staff, USA. It is desired that you personally deliver one copy of this directive to General MacArthur and one copy to Admiral Nimitz for their information.

On the evening of July 25, 1945 in Potsdam, President Truman confided to his diary:
"We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.  It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.
"Anyway we 'think' we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom.  An experiment in the New Mexico desert was startling, to put it mildly.  Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater 6 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower ½ mile away and knocked men down 10,000 yards away.  The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th.  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 that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.
He and 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.  I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.  It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb.  It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful…"

Regrettably, it was impossible to aim these apocalyptic weapons; the first dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and the second, and at the time the only other bomb, on Nagasaki on August 9, on only military targets.  In total 160,000 civilians were killed, either outright or by radiation at Hiroshima and another 80,000 were lost at Nagasaki.  Yet, in spite of the staggering loss of life, it is likely that even more civilians would have been lost during a sustained invasion of the islands by the allied forces, plus thousands of military personnel of both sides that would have been involved in the conflict.

There was substantial evidence of Japan's military disdain for surrendering, even if there was no hope of victory.  Invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where both military and civilian suicide were common, even further convinced the leaders of the U.S. that the speedy end of the war represented by the atomic weapons would ultimately save lives rather than carrying forward plans to invade Japan in November 1945 through March 1946.