Truman only made the call for the first bomb; the second was dropped by the military without his input, as if they were conducting a normal firebombing or something. Afterward, he cancelled the planned bombings of Kokura and Niigata, establishing presidential control of nuclear weapons.
There is also recent debate about whether Truman was even well informed about the fact that Hiroshima was a city rather than a “purely military target”, eg see the book The Most Awful Responsibility, well reviewed by many including Richard Rhodes, as well as the excellent interview with the author by Dan Carlin.
Huh, I knew there wasn’t the sort of plan you’d naively expect where the US gov/military command observes the response of the Japanese gov/military to one of their cities being destroyed by unthinkable godlike powers and then decides what to do next. I didn’t know that president Truman literally didn’t know about/have implicit preemptive control over the 2nd bombing.
Dan Carlin recently did a Hardcore History Addendum show about Truman called Atomic Accountability. It was an interview with Alex Wellerstein who brings into question how much Truman actually knew about the location of the first bomb being dropped. Truman (possibly) thought that rulling out Kyoto (which was number one on the list), meant he was ruling out cities as targets, and didn’t know Hiroshima was a city. This seems wild, until you factor in how all the information is being fed to him, how long he’d known about the nuclear program and what the competing military interests were. Worth a listen if you’re into the topic as it’s a new perspective.
Thanks, I hadn’t seen this. I agree Truman thought Hiroshima was mostly a military base. IIRC you can see him make basic factual errors to that effect in an early draft of a speech.
Yes indeed. Wellerstein lays out the evidence from that speech in a 2018 post, and has a 2014 post offering an explanation of how Truman got that misconception in the first place. The two of those together convinced me that Truman really was confused about the fact that Hiroshima was a city full of civilians, and thought it was a military base.
The speech was a radio address the evening of August 9, after the Nagasaki bombing. Truman and others wrote and revised it in the days before that, on the ship home from Europe after the Potsdam conference. A draft says, in language which appears to be from Truman:
The world will note that the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima which is purely a military base. This was because we did not want to destroy the lives of women and children and innocent civilians in this first attack.
which is just ridiculously wrong if you know that Hiroshima is a city. (A city which had a military base, but still.)
After that draft, and before it was time to actually deliver the speech, (a) Truman sees an aerial photo of the city with its destruction, and (b) newspapers start reporting that a city was destroyed. The speech Truman delivered says instead:
The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.
Still untrue but less emphatic about it (no “purely”), and hedged with “insofar as possible” for the fact that civilians were indeed killed.
That’s a brief summary of Wellerstein’s post about the speech. For a summary of the other post: Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, thought we really shouldn’t bomb Kyoto. The brass disagreed, and kept proposing to include it on the target list. Stimson went to Truman for backup, and presumably said something about Kyoto’s cultural importance and how it was less of a military target than others. Truman agreed; but what he took from the conversation — we know this from his diary — was that the other targets on the list were purely military, full of “soldiers and sailors … and not women and children”.
I appreciated both posts. Better yet is this 2020 book chapter (paywalled but online) by Wellerstein covering both aspects. I haven’t yet read his 2025 book mentioned upthread, which covers the same material plus how Truman then reacted to his mistake by clamping down to try to ensure presidential control of nuclear weapons for the future.
There’s a potential allegory here. After events ran away from Truman (with a bombing that wasn’t what he expected, and another he didn’t expect at all), he realized there was a problem and responded effectively, making an important contribution to the world’s avoiding any further use of nuclear weapons for the next 80 years and counting. But of course that was only possible because the first mistake wasn’t of a nature that foreclosed any regaining of control.
I take Perplexity to be about 80% accurate, but this suggests the above isn’t accurate. He had signed off on multiple bombs and didn’t stop the second between the 6th and 9th when he could have.
My previous statements are technically correct, and IMO mostly make a correct point in context (that Truman had not realized, at the time, the immediate consequences of his decision), but are somewhat misleading. Thanks.
The process was still stupid, and not what Truman would have preferred. Truman was surprised and disturbed by the second bomb being dropped so quickly. But it seems like it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to anticipate and prevent this outcome, if he had been paying more attention (the same way he thought Hiroshima was a military base due to his own deficit of curiosity); I hadn’t realized that before, thanks.
Truman only made the call for the first bomb; the second was dropped by the military without his input, as if they were conducting a normal firebombing or something. Afterward, he cancelled the planned bombings of Kokura and Niigata, establishing presidential control of nuclear weapons.
...amazing.
There is also recent debate about whether Truman was even well informed about the fact that Hiroshima was a city rather than a “purely military target”, eg see the book The Most Awful Responsibility, well reviewed by many including Richard Rhodes, as well as the excellent interview with the author by Dan Carlin.
Huh, I knew there wasn’t the sort of plan you’d naively expect where the US gov/military command observes the response of the Japanese gov/military to one of their cities being destroyed by unthinkable godlike powers and then decides what to do next. I didn’t know that president Truman literally didn’t know about/have implicit preemptive control over the 2nd bombing.
Dan Carlin recently did a Hardcore History Addendum show about Truman called Atomic Accountability. It was an interview with Alex Wellerstein who brings into question how much Truman actually knew about the location of the first bomb being dropped. Truman (possibly) thought that rulling out Kyoto (which was number one on the list), meant he was ruling out cities as targets, and didn’t know Hiroshima was a city. This seems wild, until you factor in how all the information is being fed to him, how long he’d known about the nuclear program and what the competing military interests were. Worth a listen if you’re into the topic as it’s a new perspective.
The book in which Alex Wellerstein really makes the case was also released yesterday, buy it here!
Thanks, I hadn’t seen this.
I agree Truman thought Hiroshima was mostly a military base. IIRC you can see him make basic factual errors to that effect in an early draft of a speech.
Yes indeed. Wellerstein lays out the evidence from that speech in a 2018 post, and has a 2014 post offering an explanation of how Truman got that misconception in the first place. The two of those together convinced me that Truman really was confused about the fact that Hiroshima was a city full of civilians, and thought it was a military base.
The speech was a radio address the evening of August 9, after the Nagasaki bombing. Truman and others wrote and revised it in the days before that, on the ship home from Europe after the Potsdam conference. A draft says, in language which appears to be from Truman:
which is just ridiculously wrong if you know that Hiroshima is a city. (A city which had a military base, but still.)
After that draft, and before it was time to actually deliver the speech, (a) Truman sees an aerial photo of the city with its destruction, and (b) newspapers start reporting that a city was destroyed. The speech Truman delivered says instead:
Still untrue but less emphatic about it (no “purely”), and hedged with “insofar as possible” for the fact that civilians were indeed killed.
That’s a brief summary of Wellerstein’s post about the speech. For a summary of the other post: Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, thought we really shouldn’t bomb Kyoto. The brass disagreed, and kept proposing to include it on the target list. Stimson went to Truman for backup, and presumably said something about Kyoto’s cultural importance and how it was less of a military target than others. Truman agreed; but what he took from the conversation — we know this from his diary — was that the other targets on the list were purely military, full of “soldiers and sailors … and not women and children”.
I appreciated both posts. Better yet is this 2020 book chapter (paywalled but online) by Wellerstein covering both aspects. I haven’t yet read his 2025 book mentioned upthread, which covers the same material plus how Truman then reacted to his mistake by clamping down to try to ensure presidential control of nuclear weapons for the future.
There’s a potential allegory here. After events ran away from Truman (with a bombing that wasn’t what he expected, and another he didn’t expect at all), he realized there was a problem and responded effectively, making an important contribution to the world’s avoiding any further use of nuclear weapons for the next 80 years and counting. But of course that was only possible because the first mistake wasn’t of a nature that foreclosed any regaining of control.
I take Perplexity to be about 80% accurate, but this suggests the above isn’t accurate. He had signed off on multiple bombs and didn’t stop the second between the 6th and 9th when he could have.
My previous statements are technically correct, and IMO mostly make a correct point in context (that Truman had not realized, at the time, the immediate consequences of his decision), but are somewhat misleading. Thanks.
The process was still stupid, and not what Truman would have preferred. Truman was surprised and disturbed by the second bomb being dropped so quickly. But it seems like it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to anticipate and prevent this outcome, if he had been paying more attention (the same way he thought Hiroshima was a military base due to his own deficit of curiosity); I hadn’t realized that before, thanks.