by Ray Peters

Created on: November 23, 2009

On August 6, 1945, a lone Boeing B-29 Superfortress dropped a single bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. With a searing flash and a dirty, broiling mushroom-shaped cloud clawing at the sky, the entire center of the city and about 70,000 of its citizens were annihilated.

On that day, the era of living under the shadow of nuclear weapons was born. Every since, the world has had to deal with the consequences of successfully developing atomic weapons, while the United States has had the additional burden of being the only nation in history to date to use nuclear weapons in anger.

The man primarily responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and three days later, on the city of Nagasaki, was American President Harry S. Truman. And this one decision, arguable his most controversial, is still a source of raging debate.

But was Truman justified in using the bomb? Would Japan have eventually surrendered following an invasion of the Japanese home islands? Would that route have resulted in fewer casualties on both sides?

Harry S. Truman became president on April 12, 1945 with the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Truman was a practical man possessing great common sense, and although not college educated, was a savvy and experienced politician.

Soon after Truman took office, two significant events occurred. First, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, ending the bloody European campaign, and second, Truman was briefed on the Manhattan Project - the secret US program to develop a working atomic bomb.

Truman was faced with a decision no president before him had faced - to use these new weapons or proceed with an invasion of the Japanese home islands. By this time the planning for Operation Olympic was underway. Olympic was the codename for the initial amphibious assault on the island of Kyushu and was planned for November 1, 1945. Olympic was to be followed on March 1, 1946 by Operation Coronet - a massive assault on the island of Honshu where Japan's capital, Tokyo, was located.

Both operations would be enormous. Olympic would consist of the largest naval armada ever assembled and the initial landings would consist of fourteen US army divisions (approximately 140,000 men), while Coronet would be the largest amphibious operation in history utilizing 25 divisions (approximately 250,000 men). Each operation by itself was larger in scope than the Normandy landings in June of 1944 that successful invaded Nazi-held Europe.

But would this operation

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>