Truman's Decision to use the atomic mom

Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons has long been a controversial subject throughout the decades after he used it. Many scholars and people who surrounded the president at the time published memoirs and books about the decision to use the weapon. As years went, more works of writing and information were released which added more information to the vast knowledge we have of the decision to drop the bomb and of what the Japanese faced after the event took place. J. Samuel Walker wrote a book called Prompt & utter destruction which uses new knowledge gained about the bomb and new information the Japanese released, which Walker said, “has greatly enriched our understanding of the agonizing deliberations in Tokyo over ending the war” (ix).Walker did not take any sides in the book, however, he uses what material from the first book and new sources of information to evaluate why President Truman made his decision. The main focus of Walker’s book is to answer why President Truman used atomic bombs against Japan and open more discussion to the question “was the bomb militarily necessary or was it used primarily for political/diplomatic reasons that had more to do with impressing the Soviets than winning the war against Japan?” (xii), which Walker said the question “divided specialists” (xii).

Throughout Walker’s book, he focuses on President Truman’s choice of using the atomic bomb on Japan, Truman’s advisers who were General George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson agreed that the bomb was necessary. President Truman believed that the bomb was necessary to spare “the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers” (4). The book points out that Truman never had a “categorical choice” (5) when choosing to use the...

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...e forever by the bomb. On the Japanese side they did decline the Potsdam Declaration. Truman gave the Japanese the choice to accept but the declaration. I admired the United States for giving warning.

Walker did give some history of post-WWII, but I am particularly interested in the environmental effect of Hiroshima and how did Japan rebuild after the bomb. I think he lacked in this department when he wrote the book.

My final say is the first bomb was necessary and I thought being in American hands was the best thing at the time to have. I think the second bomb was unnecessary and I also blame the Americans for not giving ample of time for the Japanese to surrender. The Japanese did downplay the destruction of the bomb and I think this was a flaw. Lastly I thought the book should have had more on post war and onwards of the effects on both sides.