On 8 May 1945 German representatives ratified unconditional surrender of all their armies. There was much rejoicing in Washington and other Allied capitals, but it was muted by a daunting situation in the Pacific. Japan had to be brought to surrender; however, after V-E Day, every soldier in the army wanted to come home—immediately.

GIs who had escaped with their lives from North Africa, the Italian campaign, D-day, and the Battle of the Bulge dreaded the prospect of again risking everything to subdue Japan. Fifty years and several dozen crises have dulled American memories of the pressures to end...

The most important foundation for attacks on Harry Truman’s use of atomic bombs against Japan is the claim that conventional bombing and naval blockade had brought Japan to the point of surrender by the summer of 1945, and that the Allies could just sit tight and wait. Neither atomic bombs, Soviet entry into the war, nor invasion were necessary. This “early surrender” hypothesis comes from publications of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). The USSBS was directed in Japan, and its official reports edited and controlled by Paul H. Nitze.

USSBS began as an effort by strategic bombing advocates...

Almost as important in the theology of Hiroshima cultists as the atomic diplomacy and racism doctrines is the claim that the unconditional surrender policy kept Japan from capitulating. Had this policy been repudiated, we are told, the bombs would not have been necessary. This approach enables cultists to attack Franklin Roosevelt as well as Harry Truman.

Some even extend their disapprobation to Winston Churchill, and Churchill biographer John Charmley now wants us to believe that Churchill’s rejection of appeasement and insistence on bitter-end opposition to Hitler were equally wrongheaded.¹ Mr. Charmley will not be defended here; I intend only to...

Many critics of the bomb decision believe that it was the way in which the bombs were used as much as the devastation they created that was damning. If the Japanese had seen a demonstration of the bomb’s power, and still refused to surrender, dropping another bomb on a Japanese city might have been warranted. Or if a specific warning had been given: “If you do not surrender by 5 August we will destroy Hiroshima with a new and terrible weapon”—then the Japanese could evacuate the city, saving many lives. Often associated with these approaches is the belief that...

To probe the warrant for the second bomb, one has to start with the Truman administration’s objective. Lawrence Freedman believes, correctly, the objective was to shock a weakened Japan into early surrender.¹Mere quantitative destruction was not the objective; LeMay’s B-29s were achieving that with conventional bombs, but the Japanese military continued to hold out for a final decisive battle of the homeland that would yield lenient surrender terms.

The United States had no reason to think thatoneshock would be sufficient; the Japanese military could, and did, claim that there was only one bomb, and that it was...

Thereareeasy answers to the question of this chapter from a host of commentators. No dilemma or moral ambiguity exists for them: Truman’s decision was clearly and unquestionably immoral.

John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church of New York called Hiroshima “the supreme atrocity of the ages.”² Lewis Mumford wrote in a prominent essay that “our moral nihilism has brought us down to the level of Genghis Khan, or, if that is possible, somewhat lower.”³

A commission of the Federal Council of Churches concluded, “the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible.”⁴ Dwight MacDonald, writing in his,...

By the last years of World War II, the Japanese were perceived as villains almost everywhere. The Asian and Pacific powers, some of whom (Thais, Burmese, Indonesians) had originally bought into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, were by 1945 largely alienated by Japanese cruelty and racist arrogance. The Chinese and Koreans, with long experience of Japanese brutality and clear memories of atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking, had never entertained illusions about Nippon.

In the United States, endemic Caucasian racism directed at the Japanese, coupled with outrage over the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, was intensified in January...

Overshadowing every other consideration, continuation of the Pacific War, had Truman not used atomic bombs in August, would have produced unmitigated evil. The extent of the evil would have depended on the duration of the war. Hiroshima cultists’ fanaticism blinds them to everything except the casualties from the atom. The prospect, however, was for far greater casualties, from (1) continued Japanese mistreatment of prisoners and slave laborers; (2) intensified disruption of food supplies and transportation throughout the empire; (3) continued land and sea battles with losses like that of theIndianapolis; and (4) continued conventional bombing by Gen. Curtis LeMay’s...