H199 Truman Announcement of Atomic Weapon Used on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945
Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.
Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans.
The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won.
But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brain child of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.
The Secretary of War, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details. His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive force in history they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety.
The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research.
It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.
But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.
I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.
(https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1945-statement-president-announcing-use-bomb)
1995 NPR Radio Interview with Terry Gross and Robert J. Lifton
ROBERT JAY LIFTON: The myth is - which is the official American narrative of Hiroshima - that we dropped the bomb reluctantly after great reflection only in order to save lives and end the war, and that therefore it was a good and necessary thing and that we should not in any way trouble ourselves over it.
TERRY GROSS: You trace the beginning of the official version of the story of the atom bomb and why we dropped it on Hiroshima to a press release after the bomb was dropped. Can you read an excerpt of that press release for us which you reprint in your book, "Hiroshima In America"?
LIFTON: Probably the most important part of the press release is the first sentence, which reads, 16 hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. And then the - it goes on to say, that bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It goes on to say, the Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold, and the end is not yet. Only in the third paragraph does it say, it is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
GROSS: What is so significant about the first sentence that you read about Hiroshima being an important military base?
LIFTON: Well, what's significant about that first sentence is that it's a partial truth, and that is - that really matters. Because it's true - there was a Japanese military base in Hiroshima. It was a staging area for Southeast Asia and an important one. But there was also a city of 300,000 people, and the bomb was aimed at the center of the city. It was targeted on civilians, and it was meant to destroy the city. But the press release presented it as a strictly military action, and it blamed, more or less, the Japanese for this particular event. Now, again, the Japanese bear some blame because they did initiate the war, but it's a way of exonerating America and completely militarized what was really an attack on a whole city.
GROSS: Do you have information that leads you to believe that we could have had a peace with Japan, that Japan would have surrendered had it not been for the atom bombs?
LIFTON: There's a lot of evidence of a very good possibility that Japan would have surrendered if an effort at negotiation was initiated by us or responded to by us with the condition that the emperor be maintained. That isn't just an impression that I have, or that such leading historians as Barton Bernstein and Martin Sherwin and Gar Alperovitz have - many others as well. Almost any historian who studies these materials comes to that sense of it being at least a very good possibility. And it was stated so among Truman's advisers.
For instance, Joseph Grew, who was acting secretary of state during part of that period and who knew Japan well, strongly advocated that we look into precisely that kind of negotiation because he thought that maintaining the emperor was the only condition that the Japanese were holding to. And by not doing that, we strengthened the hand of the more fanatical Japanese who didn't want to surrender under any conditions. And that position won over John McCloy, who was one of Stimson's closest advisers and also presented it to President Truman. So at the very top of Truman's advisory group, there was that advocacy and that position. Ironically, one of the things that held them back was waiting for the atomic bomb to be finished and to be ready.
GROSS: Getting back to what you describe as the myth that we've been told and that we've perpetrated about our use of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - so the myth says that we reluctantly, after great reflection, dropped the bombs. You also say that Truman's style, the buck-stops-here style, was a style that really discouraged great reflection.
LIFTON: That's right. It's impossible to undergo great reflection when you're impelled toward quick and immediate decision, often before all of the elements of the problem are clear. That makes it very hard for even one's advisers to lay out all of the considerations that one should look at in making such a decision. There wasn't a lot of reflection about using the weapon. There was intermittent thought and some discussion of the direction of negotiation about the emperor. But there was an obsession very early, even before the bomb appeared, before it was completed, with that weapon.
And everybody was waiting for the weapon, so much so that some historians have made, I think, a convincing argument that the bomb probably delayed the end of the war and cost American and Japanese lives rather than having saved them, because there was some inclination toward negotiating with the Japanese. And Truman said that might be a good idea.
But then when it was referred to his advisers, Stimson would say, well, the timing isn't right. And the timing isn't right meant that one had to wait for the bomb to appear before any such negotiation. And in that way, there were delays about ending the war that were based on waiting for the bomb and the existence of the bomb. It really shows the danger of creating an object like this and how much it can affect those who create it and contemplate its use....
Also, on the subject of the target, Evan Thomas joins the broadcast with Host Dave Davies:
So in the summer of 1945, the efforts to develop an atomic bomb are coming to fruition. The secretary of war, Stimson, knew about this. And there was discussion of, if it was to be used, what kind of target would it be? Should you drop it in the ocean? Should you drop it in an uninhabited area, you know, to demonstrate its power? Give us a sense of - there was a targeting committee - what its deliberations were like.
EVAN THOMAS: There was a targeting committee of military people, largely, and some scientists. And their big issue was to make sure that they hit the target at all. It would be nice if we could hit a port or some factories or a military base. But if you're dropping a bomb from 30,000 feet, it just wasn't that accurate. And the targeting committee decided that the best thing to do was to pick a target smack in the middle of a city. In Hiroshima, it was a bridge in the middle of Hiroshima. And, yes, Hiroshima was a military city in the sense that it had military forces there. It had ports on the outside. There was a military base there. It was still basically a civilian city. It was full of civilians.
And so the target committee decided not to take the chance of going after a military target but to drop the bomb right in the middle of the city, where they were sure they would strike it and it would set off a heck of a big bang. They did not have many regrets about that. There's no evidence of them saying, oh, my God, we're going to kill a lot of civilians. There were some civilians who worried about it. But the military, the people on the target committee - they wanted to drop that bomb, and they wanted to make sure it hit its target.
Before the bomb is dropped, there is there is a meeting at Potsdam, which is a suburb of Berlin, right? It's in Germany - defeated Germany. And out of that comes a lot of things, including a message to Japan. What was the message from the Allied leaders then?
THOMAS: The message was called the Potsdam Declaration. And it basically said, you have to surrender, or we'll destroy you, period. It didn't have a lot of particulars in it. And the Japanese got that message and rejected it summarily. They - there's a word for it, they - in Japanese. It means to treat with silent contempt.
DAVIES: Right. So the United States decides to proceed with dropping the first weapon. You note that the commander, General Carl Spaatz, insisted on a written order for this. He wasn't going to do this on some verbal command. And it's a long flight from the Marianas where this B-29 left, and it dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. It was devastating, of course. And, you know, this is a time - you know, we kind of - we're used to instant communication in our age. But in fact, it took a long - some time for the perception of this disaster, this kind of carnage, to make its way around the world and even in Japan. It's interesting where Truman hears news that the bomb had been dropped. Tell us that story.
THOMAS: Truman is on a ship coming back from the Potsdam Conference when he first learns that the bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima. And he says, this is the greatest thing in history. He's excited about it. He - at least in the mess hall with the sailors, he is enthusiastic. And he gives a pretty strong speech warning the Japanese that another one is coming their way if they don't surrender.
Now, what is Truman really thinking? That is a harder question. And I think the most interesting evidence of it - this is indirect. But on the day that Truman gives the order to drop the atom bomb, July 25, 1945, that evening he writes in his diary, I have ordered the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, and we are in agreement that the target should be purely military, not civilian - that we should kill soldiers and sailors, not women and children.
Well, what is he thinking? Because as we've mentioned earlier, the aim point of the bomb was a bridge in the middle of Hiroshima. Of course it was going to kill women and children. It did. As it happened, it killed about 10, maybe 20,000 soldiers, but 50 or 60,000 civilians - right away, instantly, including most of them women and children, because the men were off at war.
So what was Truman thinking? Well, he may have been badly briefed. That's possible. We don't really have a good record of that. But more likely, he and Stimson had decided that day to remove another city, Kyoto, from the target list, that had been on the target list. And I think that they were feeling that they had done the right thing by sparing the ancient cultural capital of Japan, therefore saving a beautiful and magnificent city. And they were, I think, in a way congratulating themselves on that. And so they chose to view Hiroshima as a military target, even though it wasn't.
This is human denial. It's kind of incredible to think that the president and the secretary of war didn't really know what they were doing. But I think under the pressure of this kind of thing, maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that the information is murky, that human denial kicks in. Still, it's hard to explain.
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