In his memoirs, President Harry Truman wrote that he and he alone made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, to achieve an end to World War II. He wanted the American people to know that it was his responsibility and that he never agonized or lost a minute of sleep as commander-in-chief.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur advised our president that to invade the Japanese home islands, it would cost 1 million allied casualties and untold millions of Japanese lives. We warned the Japanese people, with tons of air-dropped leaflets, to evacuate their six unbombed, targeted cities, two weeks prior to the horrific bombings.
Their leadership told the Japanese people to ignore the American propaganda. Although we bombed Tokyo with thousands of tons of conventional bombs, it was excluded from the target list to preserve the emperor, his palace and the Veil of Chrysanthemums.
All six cities were flown over just hours before bombing, by B-29 weather planes, which radioed back to their airbase in the Pacific, on Tinian Island, the one city with the best visibility for observation and filming that day.
On Aug. 6, 1945, over Hiroshima, 30-year-old Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., from the 509th Composite Group, flew a B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay, carrying a uranium 235 device, named Little Boy, from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The bomb dropped for 44 seconds before barometrically detonating 15,000 equivalent tons of TNT at 1,900 feet. The city was instantly vaporized.
The Imperial Japanese Command failed to concede or respond. Three days later, on Aug. 9, over Nagasaki, 25-year-old Maj. Charles W. Sweeney, from the 393rd Bombardment Squadron, flew his B-29 named Bockscar, carrying a plutonium 238 device, named Fat Man, from Hanford, Washington.
This bomb dropped for 43 seconds before detonating 21,000 equivalent tons of TNT at 1,650 feet. The city was gone and we were out of atomic bombs. Due to the slow drip-drip process of producing heavy water, it would take us six months to assemble another device.
Fortunately, like Germany, Emperor Hirohito accepted our terms of unconditional surrender. In 1948, as a result of the War Crimes Trial, we hung Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who most opposed war with the United States.
Before Pearl Harbor, he confided to the emperor his fear that war would awaken the sleeping giant and arsenal to the allies. It was Winston Churchill and MacArthur who persuaded our president to spare the life of the emperor, who would become essential to the rebuilding of Japan. Today, there are more statues of MacArthur in Japan than in our own country.
Had the invasion gone forth into 1946 or 1947, Truman wondered what he would tell our nation when they learned we had the bombs but didn’t use them. Japan had planned to sue for peace, not win the war. Millions of Americans and Japanese owed Truman an enormous debt of gratitude for saving so many lives.
Eric Duerst
Toledo
