The Decision to Drop the Bomb
...hree days later a second bomb was dropped on Japan killing some eighty thousand people in the city of Nagasaki. Fat Man and Little Boy the code names for the two bombs that were dropped on Japan, directly and ultimately led to the end of the most horrific war ever to take place. Little do people know that until the death of President Roosevelt, Truman knew nothing about the Manhattan Project or even the “Bomb.” Only after the untimely death of Roosevelt did Truman learn about the Manhattan Project and what it did, when the Secretary of War Stimson said “ I mentioned it to you shortly after took office, but have not urged it since on account of the pressure you have been under. It, however, has such bearing on our present foreign relations . . . I think you ought to know it without further delay.”# Only now can Truman be considered in the decision to drop the bomb. By the time Truman had heard the news of a successful test of the bomb the war had been going on for almost six years; costing about three hundred thousand American lives and nearly fifty-five million lives world wide. America was poised to invade Japan, the main land of Japan was blockaded by the U.S. Navy. Firebombing of Tokyo killed eighty-three thousand and wounded forty thousand more, though devastating had little effect on the Japanese will to surrender. Estimated American casualties on the initial invasion of Japan where one million and another possible five hundred thousand securing the main land. Knowing that can we understand that if the bomb could put an end to the war the decision to drop the bomb was a must. The only man with the power to make the decision to drop the bomb would be the President of the United States, that man was President Truman. The decision must have been hard to make knowing that the bomb was excpeted to destory three square miles of the city and reach one million degrees centigrade at the center of the blast zone. “It seeme...