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Nuclear Energy and the Legacy of Harry S. TrumanThe Truman Legacy Series, Volume 12

Based on the Twelfth Truman Legacy SymposiumThe Atomic Energy Legacy of Harry S. Truman

May 2014Key West, Florida

Edited byJ. Samuel Walker

Walker-NuclearEnergyHST.indb 2 12/18/15 12:43 PM

Edited byJ. Samuel Walker

logo hereVolume 12

Truman State University PressKirksville, Missouri


Copyright © 2016 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri 63501All rights reservedtsup.truman.edu

Cover art: President Truman signs atomic energy bill, August 1, 1946. Courtesy Department of Energy.

Cover design: Katie Best

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Names: Walker, J. Samuel, editor.Title: Nuclear energy and the legacy of Harry S. Truman / edited by J. Samuel Walker.Description: Kirksville, Missouri : Truman State University Press, 2016. | Series: Truman legacy series ; volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2015042881 (print) | LCCN 2015047876 (ebook) | ISBN 9781612481593 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781612481609 ()Subjects: LCSH: Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972--Political and social views. | Nuclear energy—Government policy—United States—History—20th century. | Nuclear weapons--United States--History--20th century. | Nuclear warfare—History—20th century. | United States—Politics and government—1945-1953. | Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972—Influence.Classification: LCC E814 .N83 2016 (print) | LCC E814 (ebook) | DDC

973.918092—dc23LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042881

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher.

The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48– 1992.


ContentsIllustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

General Editor’s Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixMichael J. Devine

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3J. Samuel Walker

Ending the War with Japan: The Agony of 1945 . . . . . . . . . . .8Richard B. Frank

Truman, Hiroshima, and the Morality of the Atomic Bomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48

Wilson D. Miscamble

On President Truman’s Use of the Atomic Bomb: Momentum, Timing, and General Groves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

Robert S. Norris

Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the Nuclear Arms Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76

Martin V. Melosi

Radioisotopes as Political Instruments from Truman to Eisenhower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108

Angela N. H. Creager

Triumph and Trouble in the First Temple of the Atom: The Atomic Energy Commission and the Raleigh Research Reactor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146

Thomas R. Wellock


Contentsvi

The Decision to Drop the Bomb and Truman’s Nuclear Legacy: Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178

William Lanouette

Nuclear Energy and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman: A Graphic Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195

Randy Sowell

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215


IllustrationsPresident Truman’s Diary Entry, July 25, 1945 . . . . . . . . . 194

Message from President Truman to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, ca . July 30, 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Atomic Explosion at Nagasaki, August 9, 1945 . . . . . . . . . 196

J . Robert Oppenheimer to President Truman, May 3, 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Memorandum from President Truman to Dean Acheson, May 7, 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Signing Ceremony for Atomic Energy Act, August 1, 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Atomic Explosion at Eniwetok, 1948 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

Sale of Radioisotope, August 2, 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Map of Radioisotope Shipments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Designed for Safety: The Reactor Building at North Carolina State College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Demystifying the Atom: The Control Room at North Caroliina State College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Letter and Memorandum from Lewis L . Strauss to President Truman, November 25, 1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

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Illustrations and Tablesviii

President Truman to David Lilienthal, January 31, 1950 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Gordon Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211


ix

General Editor’s Preface

Nothing in the Truman presidency remains as controversial as his deci-sion to use nuclear weapons in August 1945 to bring about the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. To present current scholarship on Truman’s action and explore the lasting impact of the world’s entry into the nuclear age, the twelfth, and final, Truman Legacy Symposium called on a range of scholars to reexamine Truman’s fateful authorization of the use of atomic weapons and assess the evolution of the military and domes-tic uses of atomic energy since Hiroshima. In addition, two survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki attended the Key West program as guests of Clifton Truman Daniel, President Truman’s eldest grandson. Setsuko Thurlow and Yasuaki Yamashita shared their personal reminis-cences (Hibakusha Stories) of survival and living with the aftermath of the nuclear bombings.

For twelve years, the Truman Library has worked closely with the Truman Little White House in Key West, Florida, to review the most recent scholarship on various aspects of the Truman administration and the enduring legacy of one of the most significant presidencies in American history. The Truman era continues to be a rich field for scholars throughout the United States and abroad, and our current policy mak-ers are clearly influenced by the critical decisions Truman made and the ambitious domestic and foreign policy agenda he set for the nation more than six decades ago. Each year, a dozen or more scholarly monographs are published by major presses on President Truman and his era, and our national leaders (including every president since Eisenhower) have quoted the “man from Independence” and cited instances of his political courage and wisdom.

The early Key West symposia were enthusiastically encouraged and supported by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) under the leadership of Archivists of the United States John Carlin and Alan Weinstein. In addition, the Truman Library Institute for National


Prefacex

and International Affairs provided significant funding and logistical assis-tance from 2001 to 2009. In recent years, however, both NARA and the board of the Institute have become more inward- looking; and conferences offering academic exploration and support for endeavors to publish new research are no longer priorities. Fortunately, the Truman Little White House and its foundation, along with Historic Tours of America and var-ious partners in Florida have picked up the slack. Furthermore, C- SPAN has invested in the Key West symposia by taping the programs for broad-cast, thereby allowing the presentations to reach a wide and diverse inter-national audience. Skilled editor Barbara Smith- Mandell of the Truman State University Press has been a thoughtful and patient partner from the very initiation of this endeavor; and the Press’s publication of the papers from each symposium, along with related essays and documents, has added to our understanding of the Truman era and its legacy.

Dr. Samuel Walker, the editor of this volume, pulled together the aca-demic component of the Key West event. Dr. Walker sought to go beyond a reexamination of President Truman’s fateful decision to authorize the U.S. military to strike Japanese targets with the new atomic weapons in order to end World War II as rapidly as possible. With the experts he assembled, Dr. Walker focused also on reviewing the legacy of that momentous deci-sion on American military and domestic affairs.

As with all the previous Key West symposia, the twelfth resulted from the outstanding efforts of many individuals. Bob Wolz, director of the Truman Little White House in Key West, and Dr. Ray Geselbracht, spe-cial assistant to the director of the Truman Library, have provided essential organizational and editorial skills from the very beginning of the series. Clifton Truman Daniel has likewise played a central role in every sym-posium and has assisted in securing funding. Historic Tours of America, under the leadership of President Ed Swift and CEO Chris Belland, pro-vided valuable logistic and financial support for all twelve symposia. Delia Rios of C- SPAN arranged the taping and production of the broadcasts that made the presentations of recent symposia available to a vast public audience. Dr. Robert Watson of Lynn University played an important role in initiating the Truman Legacy series. And, of course, dozens of folks in Key West, Florida, have assisted in providing hospitality and logistical sup-port for each symposium, beginning with the first in 2003. I am sincerely grateful to all.

Michael J. DevineIndependence, MOOctober 2014


Nuclear Energy and the Legacy of

Harry S. Truman


3

Introduction

J. Samuel Walker

Harry S. Truman’s nuclear policies and programs rank high among the most significant, controversial, and enduring aspects of his presidency. He not only authorized the use of atomic weapons against Japan in 1945 but also decided in favor of a crash effort to build vastly more powerful hydro-gen bombs five years later. He presided over the origins of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. And he took preliminary steps to make possi-ble the development of civilian uses of nuclear energy, including the wide distribution of radioisotopes for medical and other purposes and early work on the promise and the perils of nuclear power. Truman’s nuclear legacy is a subject of immense importance, and this book highlights several key aspects of the reasons for and outcomes of his decisions.

The issue that has commanded the most attention and incited the most controversy is, of course, Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb. In 1999, a poll of journalists ranked the atomic bombing of Japan as the top news story of the twentieth century, placing it ahead of the landing on the moon, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Wright brothers’ first flight, and other prominent events. The dispute among scholars over the atomic attacks is arguably the most contentious in all of American history, because of both the length of time it has raged and the intensity of the acrimony it has generated.

The controversy over Truman’s decision is centered on two fiercely competing interpretations of why the bomb was used and whether it was necessary to end the Pacific war on terms satisfactory to the United States. The traditional interpretation insisted that the bomb was necessary to avoid an invasion of the Japanese mainland that would have cost hundreds


J. Samuel Walker4

of thousands of American lives. Scholars who advanced this position gen-erally suggested that Truman faced a categorical choice between the bomb and an invasion that was forced on him by Japan’s refusal to surrender.

The revisionist interpretation that rose to prominence in the mid- 1960s took sharp exception. It held that the bomb was not necessary to win the war because Japan was teetering on the verge of surrender. In this view, Japan was seeking a way to end the war on the sole condition that the emperor be allowed to remain on his throne, presumably as a con-stitutional monarch. Truman and his advisers were well aware of Japan’s desperate straits and desire to quit the war, but they still elected to use the bomb. Among differing revisionist explanations for the atomic attacks, the predominant one is that Truman authorized the bomb to impress, and indeed, intimidate the Soviet Union in the emerging Cold War. In this view, the bomb was not used for military reasons to win the war against Japan but for diplomatic reasons in the growing rivalry with the Soviet Union.

The contrast between the two conflicting interpretations could hardly be more stark. Traditionalists regarded the bomb was absolutely neces-sary to bring a prompt conclusion to the war and save huge numbers of American lives. Revisionists claimed that the bomb was unnecessary to win the war, and many argue that it was used instead for sordid diplomatic purposes. The question of whether the use of the bomb was necessary, and by extension, justifiable and moral, has long been the focus of the highly polarized debate over Truman’s decision.

While scholars at the poles of the debate over the dropping of the bomb continue to fight this battle, sometimes in a decidedly uncharita-ble tone, other experts have moved beyond the poles, or more precisely, between the poles, to find answers to the questions surrounding the use of the bomb in a broad middle ground. Middle- grounders have found that neither the traditional nor the revisionist position is convincing in its pure form. Contrary to traditionalist assertions, for example, it is clear that Truman did not face an either/or choice between the bomb and an invasion. There were other means of ending the war, and contemporary evidence strongly suggests that American policy makers did not regard an invasion of Japan as inevitable. Several middle- grounders, with varying degrees of certitude, have suggested that victory over Japan would have been achieved before a landing became necessary (the first phase of the invasion was scheduled for November 1, 1945). Some have also expressed grave doubts that had an invasion occurred, the costs in American lives would have been in the range of hundreds of thousands, as Truman and other officials claimed after the war. This does not mean, however, that


Introduction 5

U.S. leaders were not committed to saving American lives by using the bomb to shorten the war, even if the numbers were far smaller than they cited at a later time.

The findings of recent scholarship have done serious, and perhaps fatal, damage to the revisionist position. The opening of important Japanese sources over the past several years has shown, seemingly beyond question, that Japan was not on the verge of surrender at the time of Hiroshima. The argument that Japan was actively seeking an honorable and reasonable way to end the war, a cornerstone to the viability of revisionism, has been effectively refuted. As a corollary, it is also apparent that American leaders did not believe that Japan had opted for surrender and would quit the war if only the status of the emperor was assured. Documentary sources leave little doubt that Truman and his top advisers remained deeply concerned about how the war would end and how long it would take.

In addressing the critical issue that has been at the heart of the debate over Hiroshima, scholars of a middle- ground persuasion generally agreed that the bomb was necessary to end the war at the earliest possible moment and in that way to carry out Truman’s primary goal of saving American lives. They also affirmed that he had other, subsidiary motives as well, including impressing the Soviet Union with America’s atomic might. Despite wide concurrence among middle- grounders on those mat-ters, other questions continued to stir debate. One source of division was the relative influence of the bomb and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which occurred two days after Hiroshima. Another was the effect of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Assessments of the impact of the second bomb on Japan’s leaders ranged from considerable to none whatsoever. Finally, a debate over projected casualty figures for an invasion of Japan and their influence on Truman aroused great passion among some writers.1

The articles in this book, which were originally presented at a con-ference on Truman’s nuclear legacy that was sponsored by the Harry S. Truman Little White House Foundation in Key West, Florida, shed light on important aspects of Truman’s nuclear legacy. The first three essays focus on the use of the bomb, and it is safe to suggest that they will not resolve the debate on the subject. But they contribute substantially to our knowledge of the events that led to Hiroshima and the Japanese surrender.

Richard B. Frank addresses the question of the relative weight of the atomic bomb and Soviet entry into the war against Japan. He offers the conclusion that both the bomb and the Soviet invasion were essential to convince different and not necessarily compatible elements of the Japanese leadership to surrender. The attack on Hiroshima was instrumental in forcing Hirohito to recognize that the war must end. The Soviet attack was


8

Ending the War with JapanThe Agony of 1945

Richard B. Frank

Grand Strategy: AmericanPresident Franklin Roosevelt publicly articulated the national political goal of the United States at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 as the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. As it evolved over the next two years, unconditional surrender was not simply a slogan about victory but also a policy about peace. It provided the legal authority for the extensive plans to renovate the internal structures of the Axis nations.1 Those who mistakenly regard unconditional surrender as merely a dispos-able propaganda cry fail to grasp its indispensable role in implementing the occupation reforms that fundamentally transformed Japan.2

The American military strategy forged by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in the spring of 1945 to secure that national political goal marked an unstable compromise of two conflicting visions. Those visions arose not from purely military considerations but from a question with profound political origins: What factor was most likely to undermine the will of the American people to see the war through to unconditional surrender? The U.S. Navy, led by Fleet Admiral Ernest King, had studied war with Japan since 1906. From these decades of analysis, naval officers distilled a number of principles about defeating Japan. None of these axioms was more deeply ingrained than the conviction that an invasion of the Japanese home islands represented absolute folly. Naval planners calculated that Japan would muster larger ground forces for defense than the United States could ever deploy across the Pacific and that Japan’s terrain would


Ending the War with Japan 9

negate American advantages of firepower and mobility. At the nub, naval leaders placed casualties as the factor most likely to undermine popular commitment to unconditional surrender. Thus, they advocated ending the war by a campaign of blockade and bombardment, including intense aerial bombardment by sea- and land- based aircraft.3 The U.S. Army, led by General of the Army George C. Marshall, had never invested the same intellectual capital in examining a conflict with Japan. It had, however, explored the prospect of war with Japan in the late 1930s and concluded that invasion might be necessary. Thus, when the army turned its attention to the problem of ending hostilities with Japan in 1944, it swiftly adopted a strategy of invasion of the home islands. This choice reflected the bedrock army conviction that time was the critical challenge to public support for unconditional surrender— and thus an enduring peace.4

The JCS merged these two conflicting views into a strategic plan in May 1945. The Chiefs authorized the continuation and intensification of the strategy of blockade and bombardment until November 1, 1945. At that point, the United States would launch a two- phase invasion of the Japanese homeland under the overall code name Operation Downfall. The first step, Operation Olympic, involved the Sixth Army’s seizing approximately the southern third of Kyushu, the southernmost main Japanese home island, starting on November 1, 1945. Olympic would obtain air and naval bases to support a second phase, Operation Coronet, tentatively set for March 1, 1946, involving three armies to secure the Tokyo- Yokohama region.

As the JCS pointed out in the policy paper they adopted to support this strategy, the overall Allied war aim remained unconditional surrender. This would provide the legal authority to execute the far- ranging political changes in Japan that were designed to assure that it never again posed a threat to peace. As the JCS acknowledged, however, in some two thousand years, no Japanese government had ever surrendered to a foreign power. Moreover, throughout the entire course of the Pacific war, no Japanese unit had ever surrendered. Thus, the JCS cautioned that there was no guaran-tee that the surrender of the Japanese government could be obtained, or that, even if the Japanese government capitulated, Japanese armed forces would comply with that surrender.5 Consequently, the JCS recognized that the ultimate, dire situation the United States faced was not Operation Downfall, the two- phase initial invasion, but the absence of an organized capitulation of Japan’s armed forces. In the latter case, the United States would face the prospect of defeating in detail four to five million Japanese men under arms in the home islands, on the Asian continent, and across the Pacific Ocean. This made even the potential casualties in Downfall only a down payment on the ultimate cost of the complete defeat of Japan.


Richard B. Frank10

President Harry S. Truman reviewed the invasion strategy in June 1945. He authorized Olympic— the invasion of Kyushu— but withheld sanction for Coronet. American naval and ground commanders drafted detailed plans for the invasion of Kyushu. All of these plans assumed a significant American superiority in ground and air forces at the time of the landings.6

Grand Strategy: JapaneseNew Year’s Day 1945 found Japanese military and naval leaders sober but resolute. Their entrenched attitudes toward their American adversaries had remained constant since the summer of 1941; only their goals had altered. These men had plunged Japan into war with only a rough idea as to how it might end. None of them believed Japan could physically conquer the United States, and no Japanese leader questioned the ability of the United States to produce vast quantities of matériel. But they calculated that America would be compelled to divert much of it to Europe to counter Germany and Italy. The bedrock belief shared by almost all Imperial Army officers and many Imperial Navy officers, however, was that Americans, lacking the racial purity and spiritual stamina of the Japanese populace, possessed only brittle morale. A lengthy war with increasing losses would sap American will to see the war through and force American political leaders to negotiate an end to the conflict on terms favorable to Japan. Initially, those terms would include Japanese control of resource areas in Southeast Asia and a bristling defense perimeter to protect them. By 1945, Japanese militarists viewed the attainable terms as at least the preservation of the homeland, with a political order in which their position remained dominant. They also hoped that Japan might still retain important gains on the Asian continent.7

Officers at Imperial Headquarters held a chillingly acute appreciation of U.S. intentions. Americans lacked the patience for a protracted strategy of blockade and bombardment; they therefore would surely seek to end the war quickly by an invasion of the homeland.8 That aim presented an oppor-tunity. If the initial assault could be repulsed, or even if its cost could just be made prohibitive, Japan might yet extricate itself from the war with honor. Thus, with this goal in mind, the emperor sanctioned a new strategic direc-tive published on January 20 that candidly declared that the homeland itself would be the arena for the “final decisive battle” of the war.9

Preparations for the defense of the homeland demanded new com-mands, plans, and forces. The Joint Army- Navy Air Agreement of February 6 resolved the acrimonious issue of command of aviation units. This pro-


48

Truman, Hiroshima, and the Morality of the Atomic Bomb

Wilson D. Miscamble

Anniversaries of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become occasions for moralizing condemnations of Harry Truman’s decision to use the powerful weapons. The rush to judge Truman harshly is largely based on either limited or inaccurate historical knowl-edge of the basis for his decision and of the situation he confronted. It has been aided by the unfortunate influence of some poor and misleading accounts of Truman’s actions written by Gar Alperovitz and other mem-bers of the so- called atomic diplomacy school. These historians mistakenly alleged that Truman proceeded to drop two atomic bombs on a Japan that he knew was on the verge of surrender so as to intimidate the Soviet Union in the already developing Cold War.1 This flawed interpretation has led its proponents to deem the atomic attacks immoral. Yet, to reflect well on the morality of the atomic bombs, one must comprehend the issues surround-ing the necessity of the weapons in ending the terrible war.

Subsequent to using the atomic bombs, Harry Truman always main-tained that he had taken the necessary action in order to end the war quickly and to save American lives.2 He authorized the bombs against what he took to be military- industrial targets, and indeed, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities of industrial and military significance. A num-ber of major military camps were located close to Hiroshima, including the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroka Hata’s Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima also was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military, a communications


Truman, Hiroshima, and the Morality of the Atomic Bomb 49

center, and an assembly area for troops. Nagasaki was one of the largest seaports in southern Japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wideranging industrial activity, including the production of ord-nance, ships, and military equipment. These were the targets that Truman wanted to destroy. He did not deliberately seek the destruction of innocent civilians, whom, it should be added, had been warned regularly to evacuate Japanese industrial cities.

Key advisers endorsed the wisdom of Truman’s decision. Notably, in the 1950s General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff during World War II and the great “organizer of victory,” sat for a series of interviews with his biographer Forrest C. Pogue. When asked about the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs, Marshall replied, “I think it was quite nec-essary to drop the bombs in order to shorten the war.” He explained that “what they [the Japanese] needed was shock action, and they got it. I think it was very wise to use it.”3 Marshall took no pleasure in their use, but the distinguished soldier- statesman correctly understood that the two terrible weapons had forced the Japanese surrender when it occurred.

By July of 1945 the Japanese had been subjected to months of devas-tating attacks by B- 29s. Their capital and other major cities had suffered extensive damage, and the home islands were subjected to a naval blockade that made food and fuel increasingly scarce. The Japanese military and civilian losses had reached approximately three million, and there seemed no end in sight. Despite all this, however, Japan’s leaders and especially its military clung to notions of Ketsu- Go (Decisive Battle), to the plan that involved inflicting such punishment on the invader in defense of the homeland that the invader would sue for terms. Even after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Soviet attack in Manchuria on August 8, the Japanese military still wanted to pursue that desperate option, but Emperor Hirohito broke the impasse in the Japanese government and ordered surrender. He came to understand that the atomic bomb undermined “the fundamental premise” of Ketsu- Go “that the United States would have to invade Japan to secure a decision” in the war.4 Ultimately the atomic bombs allowed the emperor and the peace faction in the Japanese government to negotiate an end to the war.5 George Marshall portrayed the matter correctly. The atomic bombs brought an end to the war in the Pacific.

Writers engaging in wishful thinking and fanciful re- creations have sought to fashion circumstances in which the A- bombs might be seen as unnecessary (and then as almost certainly wrong and immoral). Yet the painful reality that fair- minded observers must concede is that Japan most certainly would have fought on considerably longer unless the United States and its allies had accepted major changes to its Potsdam surrender


Wilson D. Miscamble50

terms. “Those insisting that Japan’s surrender could have been procured without recourse to atomic bombs,” Richard Frank noted, “cannot point to any credible evidence from the eight men who effectively controlled Japan’s destiny.”6 The Japanese scholar Sadao Asada made essentially the same point in concluding that “given the intransigence of the Japanese military, there were few ‘missed opportunities’ for earlier peace and that the alternatives available to President Truman in the summer of 1945 were limited.”7 Of course, it is clear that the United States eventually could have defeated Japan without the atomic bomb, but one must appreciate that all the alternate scenarios to secure victory— continued obliteration bombing of Japanese cities and infrastructure, a choking blockade, the fearsome invasions— would have meant significantly greater Allied casualties as well as much higher Japanese civilian and military casualties.8

Those who rush to condemn Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs must hesitate a little so as to appreciate that had he not autho-rized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thousands of American and Allied soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen would have been added to the lists of those killed in World War II. This would have included not only those involved in the planned invasions of the home islands but also American, British, and Australian ground forces in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific who expected to engage the Japanese in bloody fighting in the months preceding such assaults. Added to their number would have been the thousands of Allied prisoners of war whom the Japanese planned to execute. Could an American president have survived politically and per-sonally knowing that he might have used a weapon that could have avoided their slaughter? To complicate further the rush to judgment, one must acknowledge that Truman was most likely correct in March of 1958 when he told Tsukasa Nitoguri, the chairman of the Hiroshima City Council, that the A- bombs prevented a quarter of a million Japanese deaths in an invasion.9 Hard as it may be to accept when one sees the visual record of the awful destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese losses probably would have been substantially greater without the A- bombs. Furthermore, the atomic attacks changed the whole dynamic of the occupation of Japan. Ironically, they facilitated a quick, easy surrender and a broadly coopera-tive populace in a way that no other method of military victory could have guaranteed.

Moreover, the use of the awful weapons abruptly ended the death and suffering of innocent third parties throughout Asia. Rather surpris-ingly, the enormous wartime losses of the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Javanese at the hands of the Japanese receive little atten-tion in weighing the American effort to shock the Japanese into surrender.


62

On President Truman’s Use of the Atomic BombMomentum, Timing, and General Groves

Robert S. Norris

The subdiscipline of President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb needs fundamental reexamination. This chapter is not concerned with the traditional issues raised in the extensive literature about Truman’s deci-sion.1 These include, among other things, the morality of its use, whether it was necessary, and whether it was the first shot of the Cold War directed toward the Soviet Union. Rather it focuses on whether there was any deci-sion at all and whether the word “decision” is the appropriate word to describe what happened, and concerns the timing of the bombings and the role of General Leslie R. Groves, commanding general of the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), or Manhattan Project.

The simple fact is that Truman never made a decision to use the atomic bomb. He acquiesced in the decisions and actions of others, went with the momentum of events that culminated in the bomb’s use, and only in retro-spect, in interviews and in his memoir, did he put himself more decisively directing the use of the bomb in July and August 1945, more involvement than was actually the case.

Almost fifty years ago, two authors set out to write about the decision to use the bomb. They came to this conclusion:

There seems no doubt that by noon on Sunday, July 22, the decision had been made. What is not clear, what remains a puzzle clouded by lack of documented evidence, the passing


On President Truman’s Use of the Atomic Bomb 63

of years, the dimming of memories, is how that decision was made. Was it even made at Potsdam? Or was it perhaps made by not being made at all, by allowing the machinery already in motion to continue in the direction and on the schedule that had been set long before?2

We are no closer today to determining precisely how that decision was made, or when it was made, and for good reason. Even to use the word “decision” distorts the process by which the use of the bomb occurred. “Decision” implies thought, analysis, and discussion about a range of pos-sible courses of action, a weighing of alternatives, and then, after the delib-eration of the pros and cons of each, a choice being made. Clearly this is not what happened with regard to use of the atomic bomb.3 As General Groves said,

One detail, and it seems to me just a detail, has been discussed by writers of recent years who were familiar with the workings of the project, and that was the directive for the actual use of the weapon. They have seemed to think that there would be a formal paper on which the President of the United States wrote: “The bomb will be dropped on such and such a place after such and such a date.” That is not the way it was done.4

Of the seventy- some documents posted on a section of the Truman Library website entitled “The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb,” not one con-tains any language by Truman authorizing the use of the bomb before August 6, an odd omission.

Truman was not totally ignorant of the bomb even in the first few days after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945. After the first cabinet meeting, on the evening he became president, Secretary of War Henry Stimson asked to speak to Truman “about an immense project that was underway— a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power.” The following day, Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes provided a few details “about perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world.”5

On the morning of April 25, 1945, almost two weeks after Roosevelt’s death, Secretary Stimson and General Groves went to the White House to brief the president about the status of the bomb. Groves presented a twenty- five- page memorandum, dated April 23, to the president. Truman said he did not have time to read reports, but after some gentle urging, read it in its entirety. The information was staggering in its scale; indeed, the bomb’s far- reaching implications for the future concerned no less a matter than the very survival of modern civilization. After reading the


Robert S. Norris64

memo, Truman said he approved of what they had done; at no time did he criticize the weapon itself or plans for its use. He asked some questions, and as Groves noted later, “A great deal of emphasis was placed on foreign relations and particularly on the Russian situation.”6

In the minds of responsible officials, bombing civilians and cities was already routine. For many this was just a bigger bomb that was more effi-cient at doing its work. One plane and one bomb might do the job of hundreds of planes and hundreds of bombs.

Conceivably, the war in the Pacific against Japan might have ended before the atomic bomb was ready, as was the case in Europe. As it turned out, one bomb was ready on the last day of July 1945 and a second one in early August. They were used soon after when the weather allowed. The weather over Japan during the first few days of August was overcast and rainy. The attack plan called for visual acquisition of the target with no use of radar. Finally, on August 4, the weather was improving and the next day General Curtis LeMay gave the order for an attack on the sixth (Tinian time). The plane took off at 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, and dropped the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima at 9:15 a.m. (8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time).

It was largely through the administrative and managerial skills of General Groves that the bombs were finished when they were. While it is easy to imagine how it could have taken longer, it is hard to see how the feat could have been accomplished any more quickly.

It was clear from the outset that when there was enough material for a bomb it would be used soon afterwards. Why research, develop, and test a weapon if it was not intended to be used in war? As stated in the Manhattan District History,

Reduced to its simplest terms, the mission of the Manhattan District was to develop and manufacture atomic bombs for combat use, at the earliest possible date, and ahead of the en-emy, in order to help the United States and its Allies bring World War II to a successful conclusion with the least delay and the greatest possible conservation of life.7

In an amazing coincidence, a bomb’s worth of highly enriched ura-nium (HEU) (62 kilograms of HEU) and six kilograms of plutonium, for two quite different bomb designs, were ready on almost the same day. It could have turned out differently. For example, had the schedule been left to DuPont, the contractor at Hanford, plutonium for a test bomb would not have been ready until mid- October and a combat- ready bomb not ready until mid- November or later; had that been the case, the postwar geopolitical situation would have been quite different.


76

Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the Nuclear Arms Race

Martin V. Melosi

The nuclear arms race began with the Manhattan Project in World War II. The determination of the United States to beat Nazi Germany in devel-oping an atomic bomb was the impetus. When the United States accom-plished that task first, circumstances changed and so did the goals. More than six months prior to the surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, the Allies knew that the Third Reich had not developed a bomb.1 The possible use of the new weapon on Japan introduced different and weightier goals than simply getting to the finish line ahead of Germany. President Harry S. Truman and his advisers made a decision in the heat of battle to up the ante in destructiveness of the war, and to quickly end the conflict that engulfed the world. Such a choice had impacts well beyond the fatal days in August when inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the first casualties of a new kind of total war. The bombings and their aftermath redefined the prosecution of war and the definitions of vulnerability and security for all people.

Whether contemporaries realized it or not, the Trinity detonation— the first test of a plutonium bomb on July 16, 1945— was a dividing line in history. Scientific theory became physical reality. For many years the National Park Service hoped to make the Trinity site into a national mon-ument, but resistance came from government officials concerned about security or questions of health and safety. The area was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1965 but was open to the public only twice a year. Trinity became one of the first “nuclear landscapes” in the late


Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the Nuclear Arms Race 77

twentieth century. For historian Ferenc Szasz, “What happened at Trinity that Monday morning must go down as one of the most significant events in the last thousand years.”2

Other choices and decisions of the Truman administration, aside from stockpiling atomic bombs and using them in war, helped define their tactical and strategic role in the American arsenal and how that related to American postwar association with a new rival, the Soviet Union. The Truman administration left a legacy for the nuclear arms race that estab-lished a baseline moving forward into future generations. Between the Potsdam Conference in 1945 and the Sputnik launch in 1957, the Truman administration helped define and shape the nuclear arms race (along with their Soviet counterparts) in its early years especially. Key stages that set precedents for the nuclear arms race include (1) Truman’s mention of the Trinity test to Joseph Stalin at Potsdam; (2) the postwar debate over the U.S. nuclear monopoly; (3) the Soviets’ successful test of an A- bomb in 1949; (4) the establishment of U.S. containment policy and its initial nuclear strategy; (5) Truman’s decision to develop the H- bomb and the first test in 1952 (possibly the single most important decision in the arms race); (6) the role, or lack thereof, of atomic weapons in the Korean con-flict; and (7) Dwight Eisenhower’s New Look policy and its relationship to Truman- era nuclear strategy. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 was the symbolic beginning of a sea change in delivering nuclear warheads— from bombers to missiles. Such a dramatic shift altered the nature of nuclear warfare in levels of destructiveness, in geographic range, and particularly in time of delivery. The contributions of the Truman administration to the nuclear arms race faded as a radically new phase emerged, focusing on new strategies, a new scale, and style of defense.

Truman’s First Encounters with the BombThe Manhattan Project scientists concluded their work in July 1945. At that point, the atomic bomb, and the crucial decisions about it, passed into the hands of politicians and the military. For General Leslie R. Groves, who headed the project, the most important duty was to notify President Truman about the successful detonation and to apprise him about the delivery of bombs to the war front. On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt had died, leaving his relatively inexperienced vice president in charge of the American war effort. The former U.S. senator from Missouri was FDR’s third vice president, and had held that position less than three


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months when he was elevated to the country’s highest office. In fact, not until Roosevelt’s death did anyone inform Truman of the exact nature of the work of the Manhattan Project.3 Less than a month later, on May 8, German Admiral Karl Donitz signed the unconditional surrender doc-uments ending World War II in Europe. One day after the Trinity test, Truman arrived in Potsdam, Germany, to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The chief item on the agenda for the United States was the Pacific war against Japan.

Truman had agreed to meet with the Allied leaders on July 1, and the White House was pressuring Groves to arrange for the test of the pluto-nium bomb as quickly as possible. The president had been reluctant, and even nervous, to confer with the more seasoned leaders, who might be able to grab control of events leading up to the end of the war. Truman clearly wanted the leverage of a successful test to bolster U.S. bargain-ing power before meeting with Stalin and Churchill, and thus postponed the conference until the Trinity test could be scheduled. Even with that strategy in place, he arrived in Germany determined to coax the Soviets into participating in the defeat of Japan.4 In Truman’s first meeting with Stalin on July 17, the Soviet leader pledged to have his country enter the Pacific war on August 15. The president was relieved and presumed that he had achieved his primary goal. He believed that the Soviet promise, along with the availability of the atomic bomb, would secure a victory over the Japanese. Truman’s view of the bomb, however, grew more ambivalent as the conference proceeded. The new president was enthusiastic about the achievement, but also noted in his diary that “It seems to be the most terri-ble thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.”5

When the details of the Trinity test arrived in Potsdam, Truman appeared self- assured and more aggressive in dealing with his fellow lead-ers. Churchill later recalled that after the U.S. president read Groves’s full report on the test he was a “changed man.” The prime minister received a full description of the Trinity test on July 22, and he enthusiastically noted that the atomic bomb was “the Second Coming in wrath.” As a savvy realist, Churchill also viewed it as a potentially effective tool against future Soviet ambitions in the Far East and elsewhere.6 Truman did not tell his Soviet ally about the atomic bomb until July 24. Stalin openly reacted almost indifferently to the disclosure, but privately he was very troubled about the American advances in atomic energy and the possibility that its use of the bomb would limit his country’s options in Asia. Stalin’s lack of surprise was a result of Soviet spying within the Manhattan Project and related ventures in England and Canada well in advance of Potsdam. At least since 1940, Stalin had pushed the Soviets to develop their own bomb,


108

Radioisotopes as Political Instruments from Truman to Eisenhower

Angela N. H. Creager

In the initial years of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), radioisotopes— produced and distributed by the agency for civilian use— became political instruments in struggles over the control of the atom. Even as the atomic bomb became the currency of the Cold War, radioisotopes represented the U.S. government’s efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace. In this respect, radioisotopes were promotional tools of a new agency seeking to legitimate its civilian status. By the same token, politi-cians and journalists critical of the AEC (and of its chair, David Lilienthal) inflamed anxieties that the circulation of isotopes beyond the country’s borders would undermine national security. These concerns resulted in a yearlong embargo on AEC- produced isotopes to foreign institutions, and continued to reverberate in congressional politics and the national press into the early 1950s. In short, the nationalization of radioisotopes resulted in their politicization.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was aimed at protecting or at least prolonging the American atomic monopoly; to this end it prohibited the export of “fissionable” materials. At the same time, the bill charged the new agency with promoting civilian uses of atomic energy, authorizing the distribution of reactor “byproduct materials” (namely, radioisotopes) for peaceful uses.1 Since the 1930s, the development of medical therapies and diagnostic tools with radioisotopes had led to great demand for these


Radioisotopes as Political Instruments From Truman to Eisenhower 109

materials, but the cyclotrons that produced them could not keep pace with demand. Nuclear reactors, first constructed to generate material for atomic weapons, could. Leaders of the Manhattan Project decided that reactor- produced radioisotopes would be available for civilian institutions to pur-chase. Their announcement referred to “national distribution,” and there was also a general assumption that domestic needs were to be filled first.2 Foreign purchasers were not simply at the back of the line; they could not purchase the AEC’s isotopes at all. As one physicist reported at the end of 1946, “Although no one in this country knows of any regulations against sending isotopes to foreign users, the conviction is wide spread abroad that scientists in this country are unwilling to share their materials.”3 Access to the bountiful radioisotopes generated by the former bomb project infra-structure was entangled in the politics of national security, in which the ideals of internationalism in science vied with American suspicions of communists abroad.4

Restrictions against sending radioisotopes abroad did not come from the leadership of the Manhattan Project; the U.S. Army was inclined to share the fruits of government reactors, at least with British and Canadian wartime collaborators. The Truman administration, however, took a dim view of the prospect of continuing any nuclear exchanges after the war. In the summer of 1947, the issue of foreign distribution came to a head among the five AEC commissioners, who voted— without achieving una-nimity— to allow export. They justified their decision by appealing to the Marshall Plan, not Anglo- American military cooperation. In announcing the program, President Harry S. Truman spoke of the foreign shipments as securing “greater international cooperation in the field of medical and biological research.”5 The first shipments of radioisotopes reached foreign hospitals and laboratories in the fall of 1947.

As the Cold War intensified, conservative watchdogs of the AEC monitored the agency’s foreign radioisotope shipments with suspicion. In 1949, they alleged that shipments of isotopes to Norway and Finland were undermining national security. The commission never altered its pol-icy— in fact, the agency expanded the purview of exports to include indus-trial shipments in the early 1950s— but these shipments were featured in 1949 congressional investigative hearings of the agency as purported evi-dence of the AEC’s lax oversight. Just a few months later, the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb shattered any illusions that the U.S. could maintain its nuclear monopoly.6 In addition, the governments of Britain and Canada began selling radioisotopes to foreign purchasers, with fewer restrictions than the AEC. U.S. policy based on denying radioactive mate-rials and nuclear technology to other nations had become pointless. In


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the early 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took a new approach to American nuclear supremacy in his Atoms for Peace program, shifting the emphasis from guarding secrets to sharing technology. His depiction of radioisotopes as tools of international diplomacy, in conjunction with 1954 revisions to the Atomic Energy Act permitting greater (though controlled) access to nuclear materials and technology, finally quelled suspicions about foreign shipments.7

Two features of the politicization of radioisotopes in the immediate postwar years stand out. First is a recurrent symbolism that divided civil-ian uses from military uses along disciplinary lines, with biomedicine per-ceived as inherently civilian and physics and engineering as military. The popular perception that nuclear physics research was unavoidably related to atomic weapons development led the AEC to prioritize medical ther-apy and biological research in the export program, which the agency rep-resented as a humanitarian endeavor.8 Nonetheless, a few shipments to foreign physical scientists, especially those to countries in Russia’s sphere of influence, alarmed the agency’s congressional critics. They alleged that these radioisotopes could end up in the hands of Soviet government to further military developments, undermining American national secu-rity. Second (and related), critics of these shipments, including dissenting Commissioner Lewis Strauss, insinuated that the sharing of nuclear mate-rials in the form of isotopes was equivalent to the dissemination of nuclear information to foreign powers in a way prohibited under the 1946 Atomic Energy Act. Conservatives used anxieties about the loss of the country’s nuclear secrets to denounce the international circulation of the AEC’s radioisotopes.

The Politics of Foreign Distribution of “American” Isotopes

From the fall of 1945 to the spring of 1946, legislation over atomic energy stalled in Congress. One of the sticking points concerned the level of scientific and technical exchange that the U.S. would have with its former allies.9 President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had negotiated the so- called Quebec Agreement in 1943, enabling exchanges of technical information among the American, British, and Canadian participants in the bomb project.10 The British gov-ernment hoped to continue Anglo- American cooperation in the postwar period. Truman’s administration, however, viewed the sharing of technical information as antithetical to the American aim of maintaining a nuclear


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Triumph and Trouble in the First Temple of the AtomThe Atomic Energy Commission and the Raleigh Research Reactor

Thomas R. Wellock

In April 1950, the acting president of the University of North Carolina system sent a novel proposal to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), one that he hoped would overcome the South’s uninspiring academic history. “All too long,” he wrote, “the South has been laggard in its participation in and contribution to scientific developments. Some of us connected with universities and colleges in this area are determined to correct this situation.” He requested permission to build a research reactor at the campus of North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (NC State) in Raleigh. NC State intended to use it for radiation research and as the foundation for the nation’s first nuclear engineering program. It would be the world’s first reactor not under the control of a national government.1

NC State’s bid to build a research reactor was audacious. It was a relatively unknown and little- regarded technical school from a south-ern state so impoverished that mules were still the chief source of farm power.2 The AEC considered the technical competence of southern uni-versities as so weak that Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee established on- site training schools for its staff rather than rely on regional education programs.3 At the federal level, NC State faced many obstacles. The technical information it needed was still classified, and the AEC had no system to review the application or to offer financial assis-tance. Nevertheless, the “Raleigh Research Reactor” achieved a sustained


Triumph and Trouble in the First Temple of the Atom 147

chain reaction in September 1953 and set off an educational chain reaction as dozens of colleges scrambled to get their own reactor.4

NC State achieved this coup because its proposal helped fulfill the goals of officials in the Truman administration to promote civilian nuclear energy. It also received strong backing from southern politicians and academics anxious to transcend a backward past. The Raleigh reac-tor project opened a new market for university research reactors and provided a rationale to declassify atomic secrets just when the Soviets’ successful detonation of a fission bomb threatened to derail the drive to “free the atom” for civilian applications. It spurred interest in research reactors around the world, served as an important tool in the Atoms for Peace program, and set several precedents for the AEC’s approach to civilian reactor regulation. In tapping the expertise of the AEC’s national laboratories, NC State showed how federal support could lift southern higher education out of its doldrums and reorient part of its economy toward high technology industries.

The Raleigh reactor is also a cautionary tale. It foreshadowed the AEC’s later dilemma of how to execute a conflicting mission of promoting nuclear energy uses while striving to be an independent safety regulator. Eager to encourage reactor development, the AEC cleared many obstacles for the Raleigh reactor. It expended considerable effort to ensure that the reactor had a safe design, but it provided limited guidance on operational safety. Designed and operated by NC State’s faculty in their free time, reactor construction and operation required substantially more effort than initially recognized. Controversial leadership in the physics department created tensions among the faculty that erupted into conflict when radio-active leaks in the reactor were discovered in 1955. The conflict ended when the reactor director resigned. NC State discovered that even a small reactor demanded considerable attention to safety, adherence to proce-dures, and investment in staffing.

Postwar North Carolina— Growth and Ambition to Leave an Agricultural Past

The proposal to build a research reactor at NC State emerged from the forces that were remaking the postwar southern economy. Defense spend-ing during World War II had disproportionately stimulated the econo-mies of the South and West, but economic development was uneven, of low quality, and had not yet stemmed the exodus of southerners from


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the region. The South’s growth was mostly in its traditional lower- skilled industries even in North Carolina, the manufacturing powerhouse of the region. In 1948, for the first time more people in the Tar Heel State worked in industry than agriculture, but these low- paying jobs did not raise the standard of living. North Carolina had the third lowest per capita income in the nation.5

Higher education in the Tar Heel State was a similar mix of backward-ness and progress. Like many public university systems, North Carolina’s looked to aid in the state’s economic modernization, but it started far behind higher education in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. UNC’s acting president was not exaggerating when he lamented the “scientific poverty” of his state. In the decades prior to World War II, even the main campus at Chapel Hill could boast of graduating few notable scholars in the sciences. The region imported its scholarly talent, and southerners typ-ically headed north to get their graduate degrees.6

At NC State, North Carolina’s industrial growth represented an opportunity to step out from the shadow of Chapel Hill as a research insti-tution in its own right. In 1933, the state had consolidated engineering programs at the Raleigh campus, and UNC’s president spoke of turning the college into “the MIT of the South.” In reality, NC State and most other technical schools in the South were dominated by a “shop culture” that focused on providing foremen to local industry rather than engineers with analytical design skills. There was little research done by faculty, and the college did not begin awarding PhDs until 1948.

By the end of World War II, NC State’s administration saw an oppor-tunity for the engineering college. In 1944, the governor and industry leaders established an engineering fund to raise the salary of engineering faculty. Harold Lampe, the new dean of the engineering college, con-cluded that an upgraded physics department was essential to developing graduate programs in the college. He needed a new department chair with “industrial physics experience” who could focus the department on prac-tical research.7

Lampe’s search for the right person took him to Oak Ridge— the most industrially oriented of the national laboratories and fittingly run by Union Carbide Corporation. In the spring of 1949, he landed Clifford Beck, the director of the laboratory at the K- 25 gaseous diffusion plant. A North Carolina native with a doctorate from Chapel Hill, Beck brought to NC State an entrepreneurial recognition that by doing good for the AEC, the college could do well.8 Beck’s idea to create a nuclear engineering pro-gram and build a research reactor offered three things the AEC wanted: to spur civilian reactor construction, to produce nuclear engineering grad-


178

The Decision to Drop the Bomb and Truman’s Nuclear LegacyConcluding Remarks

William Lanouette

The essays in this volume have all profoundly advanced our understanding of two important, and still contentious, historical topics: the decision to drop the bomb, and Harry S. Truman’s nuclear legacy. In making some concluding remarks, what first comes to mind is that sign on President Truman’s Oval Office desk— “The Buck Stops Here!”— because in this volume, I have the last word. Rather than attempting to summarize the essays in this volume, instead I hope to highlight some noteworthy per-spectives about these two critical topics.

I’m grateful to have spent some time in Hungary doing research for my biography of the physicist, biologist, and arms- control activist Leo Szilard.1 Why? Well, as Hungarian historians like to say about their country’s polit-ical history, “The past is less certain than the future.” On the subject of Truman’s nuclear legacy, our history is constantly rewritten, reinterpreted, and rediscovered, and our understanding of the past continues to deepen with research and reflection.

President Truman loved reading history, but seemed uncomfortable about the way he was later said to have made it. Beginning in 1945, he first took proud credit for having used A- bombs on Japanese cities at the end of World War II. But as scholars in this text have noted, within days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled Truman was also disturbed, ambiv-alent, and conflicted— first about what had just happened, then about his own role in these historic events.


The Decision to Drop the Bomb and Truman’s Nuclear Legacy 179

I have long wondered about Truman’s A- bomb role, seeking to know how and why those bombs leveled two cities. Popular history and Truman’s own claims clearly credit him with the “decision” to drop two A- bombs on the Japanese. Sometimes anniversaries help us take stock of our own history and in 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki raised and redefined decades of controversy. To mark that milestone, the Library of Congress magazine Civilization convened a roundtable discus-sion of historians with wideranging views about “Why We Dropped the Bomb.” And, after hours of discourse, we agreed on five major reasons for why A- bombs were used on Hiroshima— and then on Nagasaki. It’s no surprise that the authors in this text raised those same reasons.2

1. To end the fighting quickly. The United States and the Allies were war- weary by the summer of 1945. Victory won against Italy and Germany in Europe still eluded them in the Pacific. Against the vicious and determined Japanese, anything was worth a try just to stop the fighting.

2. Postwar diplomacy. Truman’s new secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, and some military leaders saw the awesome weapon as a way to make the Soviet Union “more manageable”— first, by using the bomb to end the Pacific war before Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had promised to join it in mid- August; second, by coun-tering political gains the Soviets had already made in Eastern Europe.

3. Bureaucratic momentum. Fearing that Germany was working on an A- bomb, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began America’s research in 1939, and he agreed to make it a high- priority proj-ect just before Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This initiative became the Manhattan Project, a secret $2 billion effort— worth more than $20 billion today. In the end, the com-mitment to build the bomb produced a powerful impulse to use it.

4. Political justification. The impulse to use the bomb came also from American military and civilian leaders to justify all that was spent without Congress’s knowledge or approval. As one War Department aide said, “If this thing works, they won’t investigate anything and if it doesn’t work . . . they won’t investigate any-thing else.” Truman himself made this point on August 6 when he declared, “We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history— we won.”3

5. Psychological factors. After four bloody years of war, Americans in high office were eager to crush Japan and bring the boys home.


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Public feeling was running so high against the Japanese and their barbaric wartime behavior that many American leaders were in no mood to take any additional casualties. In the eyes of war- weary Americans, the enemy had become merely “Japs” who needed to be blasted and burned out of island caves and firebombed nightly in their homes.

The Civilization panel agreed on these five reasons, but most historians continue to argue about which of these reasons might have been domi-nant, or perhaps even decisive, at the time. Yet few dispute they were all influential.

But there is something missing from the historians’ list of five reasons. And that missing reason is the one that today we hear most often to explain those two atomic bombings: to save American and Japanese lives and casu-alties from an Allied invasion. Why didn’t historians in 1995 consider an invasion as a major factor, and why does it have even less importance today? As Sam Walker and others noted, when those first A- bombs fell in early August 1945, the need for a costly invasion seemed possible, but not inevi-table. America’s leaders knew something the American public didn’t: Stalin had promised President Roosevelt, at the February Yalta Conference. that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan and join the Allies three months after Germany surrendered. Germany surrendered on May 8, meaning that Stalin would likely break his neutrality pact with Japan (well before it was to expire in the spring of 1946) and attack in mid- August.

Stalin confirmed with Truman this intention and the timetable to attack Japan at their Big Three meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Potsdam in July 1945. Allied invasions weren’t planned for Japan’s south island of Kyushu until November 1945, and for the main island of Honshu until March 1946, giving Truman the confidence that once Stalin attacked Japan, the war in the Pacific could have ended well before then. In fact, at Potsdam after Stalin assured Truman he would declare war on Japan as promised, Truman jotted in his diary, “Fini Japs.”4

Thus, as we weigh the pros and cons of the atomic bombings today, it is worth recalling that in the summer of 1945, an invasion of Japan was a possibility but not an either/or alternative that many today consider it to be. One reason for the public’s continued misunderstanding of this point is the difference in knowledge within the military chain of com-mand: between the very bottom and the very top. At the bottom, soldiers in the trenches and aboard troop ships sailing to the Pacific only knew that to finally defeat Japan it would likely take both a naval blockade


Nuclear Energy and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman

A Graphic Essay

Randy Sowell


194 Randy Sowell

President Harry S. Truman was at the Potsdam Conference in Germany when he learned of the successful test of the atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. His diary entry of July 25 reflects his mixed emotions on the occasion. Deeply troubled by the creation of “this terrible bomb” and its implications for humanity, Truman was also hopeful that it could bring an early end to the war against Japan, and grateful that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union had not developed the bomb first. Insisting that the weapon would not be used against “the old Capitol or the new” (Japan’s historical capital, Kyoto, or its modern capital, Tokyo), the president also expressed his intention that “military objectives and soldiers and sailors” would be targeted, “not women and children”—a desire completely inconsistent with the actual destructive power of the atomic bomb. (President Truman’s Diary Entry, July 25, 1945, President’s Secretary’s Files, Truman Papers, Truman Library)


Nuclear Energy and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman: A Graphic Essay 195

On July 30, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson sent War Department Telegram No. 41011 to President Truman, who was still attending the Pots-dam Conference in Germany. With preparations for use of the atomic bomb against Japan almost completed, Stimson sought the president’s approval of a White House statement announcing that the bomb had been dropped on a Japanese city. That statement—the first public announcement of the exis-tence of the Manhattan Project—had been carefully drafted over a period of weeks. Truman turned Stimson’s telegram over and wrote his reply, seen here, on the back. The phrase “release when ready” in his reply did not refer to the bomb itself, but to the statement announcing its use against Japan. Truman also specified that no action be taken until August 2, the day the Potsdam Conference ended. (Message from President Truman to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, ca. July 30, 1945, George M. Elsey Papers, Truman Library)


213

Contributors

Angela N. H. Creager is the author of Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and other books on the history of science. She is Thomas M. Seibel Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University.

Richard B. Frank is the author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (Random House, 1999) and other books on the history of World War II. He received the Harry S. Truman Book Award in 2000 for Downfall.

William Lanouette is the author of Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (Scribner’s, 1992; reprint, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013). He has written on nuclear weapons and nuclear power for a wide variety of popular and scholarly publications.

Martin V. Melosi is the author of Atomic Age America (Pearson, 2013). He has published a long list of books and received several prizes for his work on environmental, urban, technological, and diplomatic history. He is a professor of history at the University of Houston.

Wilson D. Miscamble is the author of The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and two other books on the Truman era that each received the Harry S. Truman Book Award. He is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.

Robert Standish Norris is the author of Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, The Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (Steerforth


About the Authors214

Press, 2002), and other books on nuclear weapons. He has applied his expertise on nuclear weapons in positions with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists.

Randy Sowell is an archivist at the Harry S. Truman Library. He is a graduate of Wichita State University (BA, 1980; MA, 1985) and the University of Kansas (PhD, 1992).

J. Samuel Walker is a prize- winning historian and author of several books on the history of nuclear energy. They include Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan, rev. ed. (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective (University of California Press, 2004).

Thomas R. Wellock is the author of Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958– 1978 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) and important articles on the history of nuclear power safety. He is the historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.


215

AAcademy of Sciences, USSR, 82Acheson, Dean, 54, 90, 200, 210actinium- 227 isotopes, 120Aebersold, Paul, 112, 115, 121, 129,

137n43Air Force, U.S.

nuclear capsules transferred (1951) to, 91

nuclear- armed bombers and, 187as postwar military offensive arm, 85postwar war planning by, 86target choices and, 70

air power, Japanesefor Ketsu- Go on Kyushu, 22– 23for suicide attacks, 16, 24

Allen, Louis, 36Allies

on atomic bomb use in World War II, 51– 52

Krige on U.S. strategic goals for Atoms for Peace and, 173– 74n36

Alperovitz, Gar, 47n88, 48Amano Masakazu, 21American magazine, 113American Nuclear Society, 160Amersham, 127, 144n136Ames Laboratory, Iowa State College con-

sultants, Raleigh reactor review by, 164– 65

Anami Korechika, 21– 22, 28, 32, 37, 43n40Anscombe, Elizabeth, 56– 57Arao Okikatsu, 43n40Area Special Policing Units, Japanese, 17– 18

Argentina, civilian nuclear technology in, 119, 129

Argonne National Laboratory, 122, 150, 151, 154, 155

Arisue Seizo, 21, 41n21, 43n39Army, U.S., 9, 86. See also Manhattan Engi-

neer DistrictArmy Air Forces, U.S., 66, 68– 69Army Battle Casualties, 42n35Army Strategic Air Forces, U.S., 69Arnold, Henry H., 67, 70Asada, Sadao, 50, 183Ashworth, Frederick L., 68atomic bomb

as diplomatic weapon against Soviets, 103n14

doubts among creators of, 183Korean conflict and, 90– 91Soviet testing, 77, 82, 125, 152Soviet testing, U.S. radioisotopes and,

109stockpiles, 86, 90, 96, 128thermonuclear devices vs., 105n50

atomic bombing of Japancompeting interpretations for, 3– 5deaths prevented by, 50– 51Japanese overseas commanders and, 35–

36, 47n90major reasons for, 179– 80Marshall and Nimitz on Operation

Olympic and, 27redefining prosecution of war, 76

atomic diplomacy school, 48. See also diplo-macy, atomic bomb and

IndexPage references in italics indicate illustrations, and t indicates a table.


216 Index

Atomic Energy Act (1946)AEC proposes amendment (1950) to,

142n120on information with other nations, 123,

124literal reading of, NC State reactor and,

153– 55national security policy and, 149provisions, 135n11purpose for, 108Truman signing, 201

Atomic Energy Act (1954), 110, 128, 161, 166, 177n72

Atomic Energy Authority, Baruch Plan for, 81

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)atomic energy development export con-

trols and, 120– 21on authority for radioisotope exports

and, 142n120Beck joins, 165civilian uses for nuclear power and,

150– 51composition of, 192n16declassification guide, 158– 59declassifying NC State reactor and,

154– 55Eisenhower on civilian control of, 93on foreign vs. domestic isotope pur-

chases, 118– 19on H- bomb development, 88– 89, 207– 9isotope mission to South America and,

129nuclear engineering programs and,

165– 66on peaceful uses, 6– 7Power Demonstration Reactor Program,

161on radioisotope exports, 109, 126radioisotope exports discussions by,

114– 16radioisotopes for civilian use and, 111–

12on radioisotopes in early years of, 108Raleigh reactor and conflicting mission

of, 147Raleigh reactor approval by, 158, 166–

67

Raleigh reactor leak and, 175n54Raleigh reactor oversight and, 164Raleigh reactor policy changes by, 153–

55Raleigh reactor repairs and, 166, 176n70reactor operator credentials and, 177n72Reactor Safeguard Committee, 155– 58reporting requirement of, 126, 143n127secrecy of, 7, 154, 189votes on radioisotope export proposal by,

116– 17See also General Advisory Committee

Atoms for PeaceBeck and, 160civilian nuclear power and, 144n146,

144n148, 188Krige on U.S. strategic goals for, 173–

74n36in Latin American countries, 145n157radioisotopes and, 110, 127– 29Raleigh research reactor and, 147, 165–

68Atsugi Airfield, revolt at, 34Austin, Warren, 201Australia

atomic bombing of Japan and, 50radioisotope exports to, 119

Axis nations, unconditional surrender of, 8

BB- 29 bombers, 49, 91B- 52 bombers, 95Bacher, Robert F., 111– 12, 136n16Baruch, Bernard M., 81, 118Baruch Plan, 81, 202Bataan death march, 67, 75n19Beck, Clifford

declassifying NC State reactor and, 154– 55

Murray on reactor repair and credibility of, 163– 64

on purchasing a reactor, 176n62radioactive leak in reactor and, 162reactor design and, 158, 159reactor project and fame for, 159– 60reactor selection by, 157


Index 217

on reactor supervisors at universities, 167– 68

resignation of, 165on training foreign students in reactor

technology, 160– 61Belgium, reactor project in, 125– 26Berkeley Rad Lab, 116Berlin blockade crisis (1948), 53, 54Beyar, Celal, 160Bikini Atoll, testing near, 81biomedicine, radioisotopes for, 110, 116,

138n45Bissell, Clayton, 27, 45n59Bix, Herbert P., 47n88, 55Blakeslee, Edward, 159Bockscar, Groves on atomic bomb use and,

68Bohr, Niels, 115bomb shelters, U.S., 98bomber gap, 96boron- 10 isotopes, 120Brazil, isotope mission to, 129breeder reactors, 188Brereton, Lewis H., 118Britain

on atomic bomb use, 51– 52ground forces of, atomic bombing of

Japan and, 50Quebec Agreement (1943) and, 110radioisotope exports by, 127radioisotope exports to, 109, 119, 125radioisotope pricing for export and,

126– 27, 144n136See also Churchill, Winston; Harwell;

United KingdomBrookhaven National Laboratory, 151,

173n33Bundy, McGeorge, 182Bush, Vannevar, 185Butow, Robert, 28Byrnes, James F.

atomic bombing of Japan and, 182intelligence to Truman at Potsdam and,

44n46on Soviets and atomic bomb, 79, 179Truman learning of the bomb and, 63as Truman mentor, 183– 84

CCalifornia Institute of Technology, 150– 51,

152, 153Canada

medical isotope production and, 188Quebec Agreement (1943) and, 110radioisotope exports by, 125, 126– 27,

143n124, 144n136radioisotope exports to, 109Technical Cooperation Program and,

120See also Chalk River

carbon- 14 isotopes, 116, 120Casablanca Conference (1943), 8catastrophic failure, NC State reactor design

and, 157Cate, James, 69Cavendish cyclotron, 115Cavert, Samuel McCrea, 52Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 85chain of command, 68– 69, 71Chalk River (Canadian atomic energy instal-

lation), 111, 112, 117, 120Chernobyl, reactor runaway hazard and, 157China

atomic bombs and Japanese war on, 50– 51

Hirohito on new offensive in, 30Japanese overseas commanders in, Sovi-

ets and, 35U.S. atomic bomb use in Korea and, 91

China Expeditionary Army, 34Christy, Robert, 74n8Churchill, Winston

on atomic bomb political tool, 81on atomic bomb use, 54on postwar deterrence, 87Potsdam summit and, 78Quebec Agreement (1943) and, 110World War II as total war and, 55

Civil Defense Administration, 98civilian nuclear power

development of, 3Soviet atomic bomb testing and, 7state of (1949), 149– 53, 172n10Truman encouraging atomic energy for,

53– 54


218 Index

civilian nuclear power, continuedSee also North Carolina State College of

Agriculture and Engineering; radio-isotopes; Raleigh research reactor

civilians, Japanesemobilization of, 17– 19U.S. projections of Kyushu casualties

among, 20, 42n33Civilization (Library of Congress magazine),

179– 80Class I reactors, 154Cockcroft, J. D., 111code breaking. See intelligence, U.S.Cold War

atomic energy and, 83Atoms for Peace and, 128– 29civilian uses for nuclear power and, 150get- tough policy against USSR and, 84NSC- 68 on arms buildup and, 87– 88nuclear arms race and, 100See also Korean conflict; nuclear arms

raceCole, Sterling, 159Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet

(CINCPAC), 23– 24Commerce, Department of, 118, 120Communist Party, 122, 123, 124. See also

Soviet UnionConant, James, 185Congress, on Raleigh research reactor, 159.

See also specific committees ofConnally, Tom, 201Consolidated University of North Carolina,

158containment policy, U.S., 77, 85, 92,

106n69covert operations, 92. See also Cold War;

intelligence, Soviet; intelligence, U.S.Cowdry, E. V., 117, 203Craig, Campbell, 80Creager, Angela N. H., 6– 7, 172n10, 187

DDaws, Gavan, 51Dean, Gordon E., 125, 158, 211decision to bomb, controversy over, 3– 5,

71– 72. See also ending war with

Japan; momentum and timing; mo-rality of atomic bombs

Decisive Battle Educational Measures Guidelines, Japanese, 18

Defense, Department of, 85diplomacy, atomic bomb and, 80– 81,

103n14, 179, 183, 186disarmament, U.N. on, 96– 97Dogpatch. See Oak Ridge National Labora-

toryDulles, John Foster, 92, 94– 95DuPont Corp., 64– 65Durham, Carl, 160– 61

EEastern Europe, Soviet vs. U.S. interests in,

84Einstein, Albert, 184, 185Eisenhower, Dwight D.

on atomic bomb use, 51, 70, 75n29Cold War and, 92Geneva Summit (1955) and, 96national security policy under, 93– 94nuclear arms and, 6nuclear arms for Korea and, 90on training foreign students in reactor

technology, 160See also Atoms for Peace

ending war with Japanarmy and navy conflict over invasion

strategy and, 22– 27Ketsu- Go, atomic bomb and, 27– 33Ketsu- Go on Kyusu and, 13– 17Ketsu- Go vs. Operation Olympic,

19– 22Soviet intervention and, 33– 37U.S. strategy for, 8– 10

Energy, Department of, 189engineering, military use of radioisotopes

for, 110Eniwetok Atoll, as test site, 88, 202Enola Gay, 68espionage. See intelligence, U.S.Europe

Eisenhower on troop strength in, 93radioisotope exports to, 119, 125,

144n137


Index 219

radioisotope requests from, 116See also specific countries

Evans, Robley, 115

Ffallout shelters, U.S., 98famine, in Japan, 17, 41n26Farrell, Thomas, 68FBI, 113Feis, Herbert, 52Fellow Traveler. See SputnikFermi, Enrico, 184, 189– 90Fifteenth Area Army, Japanese, 14, 15Fifth Air Force, U.S., 18Fifth Amphibious Corps, U.S., 19Fifth Area Army, Japanese, 11Fifty- Seventh Army, Japanese, 15– 16Fifty- Sixth Army, Japanese, 15Finland

cancels radioisotope order, 123, 141– 42n102, 142n103

mutual defense pact with USSR, 121, 140n86

radioisotopes requested by, 121, 140n85, 140– 41n88, 141n94

radioisotopes shipped to (1949), 109U.S. checking on radioisotope use by,

139n70First General Army, Japanese, 11, 15The First Temple of the Atom, 159. See also

Raleigh research reactorforeign purchasers of U.S. radioisotopes. See

radioisotopesforeign relations, Truman on bomb and, 64,

84– 85Forrestal, James, 44n46, 85Fortieth Army, Japanese, 16Fourth Anti- Aircraft Division of Japanese

Fifty- Seventh Army, 15– 16France, experimental reactor in, 125Franck Report, 186Frank, Richard B., 5– 6, 50, 182– 83Fund for Peaceful Atomic Development,

129

GGaither, H. Rowan, Jr., 98

Gaither Report, 98– 99, 107n99General Advisory Committee (GAC)

on H- bomb development, 88– 89, 189, 190, 207– 9

on nuclear power plants, 149radioisotope exports discussions by,

113– 14See also Atomic Energy Commission

Geneva Summit (1955), 96Golden, William, 87, 141n88Gowing, Margaret, 51Gray, Gordon, 158, 159Great Britain. See BritainGroves, Leslie R.

on atomic bomb use, 63, 67, 70, 73– 74n4, 74– 75n19

atomic bombing of Japan and, 182briefing Truman on the bomb, 63– 64,

77– 78, 184chain of command in World War II and,

68– 69civilian requests for radioisotopes and,

111on end of a war, 74n15on momentum of atomic bomb project,

66plutonium for atomic bomb and, 65on postwar deterrence, 87role in the bombings, 62on Soviet Union and atomic bomb use,

68Trinity test report to Truman by, 78Truman on halting bombing and, 70– 71

HHandy, Thomas T., 69, 70Hanford, 64, 65, 185Harry S. Truman Little White House Foun-

dation, Key West, Florida, 5Hart, Thomas, 201Harwell (British atomic energy installation),

111, 112, 120, 126– 27Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi, 30Hata Shunroku, 14, 21Hayashi Saburo, 22, 37, 43n40hazard reports, 156helium- 3 isotopes, 120


220 Index

Herring, George, 85Hersey, John, 55Hevesy, George, 116Hickenlooper, Bourke

on AEC fellowships and Communist Party, 122

anticommunism, radioisotope exports and, 121, 123– 24, 141n94

Strauss and, 137n33See also Joint Committee on Atomic

EnergyHiranuma, 37Hirohito, Emperor

Big Six deadlock and, 29Frank on atomic bomb use and, 60n6Ketsu- Go on Kyusu and, 17personal intervention in deadlock over

surrender and, 37reasons for capitulating, 30– 31, 31– 32,

181, 182– 83Hiroshima (Hersey), 55Hiroshima bombing

Americans on date for, 181directive for, 69effects of, 5Ketsu- Go and, 11marking fiftieth anniversary of, 179order for, 64press release on, 195Stalin on, 82as target, 48– 49, 70

Hitchcock, William, 55Hitler, Adolf, 31, 55, 85Hokkaido, 11, 31, 71, 181Honshu, 11, 180Hull, John E., 27hydrogen bomb (H- bomb)

building of, 3development of, 88– 90, 210– 11nuclear arms race and, 77Strauss on Soviets and, 207– 9U.S. tests, 96

IIceland, radioisotope exports to, 120Ida Masataka, 45– 46n64

Imperial Army, Japaneseaircraft for suicide attacks, 16, 24Big Six and, 28ending World War II strategy of, 10– 11Ketsu- Go on Kyusu and, 11, 14, 15– 16,

17, 41n26See also specific units

Imperial General HeadquartersArea Special Policing Units under, 17– 18divisions for Kyushu and, 41n21equipment and supplies on Kyushu for

Ketsu- Go and, 16– 17homeland mobilization programs of, 11Manchuria written off by, 31Soviet intervention, end of war and, 29

Imperial Navy, 10– 11, 16, 28, 34India, civilian nuclear technology in, 125–

26, 145n157Indianapolis, USS, 65intelligence, Soviet, 78– 79, 82intelligence, U.S.

Cold War and, 92Japanese buildup at home and, 22, 23–

24, 44n46Japanese capitulation and, 37on Japanese military disagreement on

peace, 45n59U.S. radioisotope exports and, 119

intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 94, 97– 99, 100

Interim Committee, 73n3, 183, 186, 192n16

intermediate- range ballistic missile (IRBM), 95, 98

International Atomic Energy Agency, 127, 144n140

International Cancer Research CongressSão Paulo, Brazil (1954), 129St. Louis (1947), 117

International Declassification Conferences (1949 and 1950), 154

invasion of Japan. See Operation Olympiciodine- 131 isotopes, 116, 119Iowa State College, Ames Laboratory, 164–

65iron isotopes, 120, 122Iwo Jima, 13– 14, 66


Index 221

JJadwin, Edwin, 70Japan

Americans on date for surrender of, 181brutality against prisoners of, 67, 74–

75n19civilian mobilization in, 17– 19domestic morale, overseas commanders

and, 35– 36, 47n90ending World War II strategy of, 10– 13history of surrender by, 9imperial institution preservation in, 28planned U.S.- led invasion of, 9, 10, 15,

40n3, 66potential invasion of, atomic bombing

and, 180– 81war prolonged by, 55– 56See also atomic bombing of Japan; specific

cities and regions; specific military units and leaders

Java, atomic bombs and Japanese war on, 50– 51

Jeffries, Zay, 185Johnson, Edwin, 201Johnson, Louis, 210Joint Army- Navy Air Agreement, Japanese

(Feb. 1945), 10– 11Joint Army- Navy Committee on the Japa-

nese Air Forces, 23Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)

approves Japanese invasion, 40n5on atomic weapons if USSR entered

Korean war, 90nuclear arms for Korea and, 91on Olympic as unwise, 24on unconditional surrender, 8– 9war planning by, 85– 86

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 122, 123, 141n93, 189, 201

Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 24Joliot- Curie, Frédéric and Irène, laboratory,

123, 124

KKagoshima Bay, as U.S. target, 15kamikazes, 13, 16, 24Kanto. See Tokyo

Kasai Yukiko, 18Kawabe Torashiro, 34, 37Kazakhstan, Soviet testing atomic bomb

in, 82Keller, Morton, 55Kennan, George F., 99Kennedy, John F., 128Ketsu- Go (Operation Decisive or Decisive

Battle)atomic bombs and, 33, 49ending the war and, 28– 33Hirohito as advocate of, 30Operation Olympic vs., 19– 22plan for, 11– 13

Khrushchev, Nikita, 96, 97Kido Koichi, 28, 30, 37, 47n90, 60n6King, Ernest J., 8– 9, 23, 26– 27, 44n46, 69Kirkpatrick, Elmer E., 203Kokura, as atomic bomb target, 69, 70Konoe Fumimaro, 30, 37Korea

atomic bombs and Japanese war on, 50– 51

Soviet seizure of positions in, 31Korean conflict (war), 77, 90, 187Krige, John, 144n146, 173– 74n36Kumamoto Division District, Ketsu- Go on

Kyusu and, 16Kuril Islands, Soviets and, 31, 71Kurume Division District, Ketsu- Go on

Kyusu and, 16Kwantung Army, 31, 46n71Kyushu

Allied invasion plans for, 180invasion, Marshall on atomic bombs

and, 52Ketsu- Go and, 12, 13– 17Ketsu- Go vs. Operation Olympic on,

19– 22U.S. intelligence on buildup on, 22,

23– 24, 44n46U.S.- led invasion of, 9, 10, 40n3

LLaika (dog), 97Lampe, Harold, 148, 151, 152– 53, 162Lanouette, William, 7


222 Index

Latin America, civilian nuclear technology in, 129, 145n157

Lauritsen, Charles, 115Lawrence, E. O., 116Leahy, William D., 26, 44n46, 51, 69Leffler, Melvyn, 82LeMay, Curtis E., 64, 86– 87, 90, 95, 187Lewis, W. B., 111Libby, Willard, 161, 165Liberty magazine, 113Lilienthal, David E.

on AEC critics, 136n25on civilian uses for nuclear power, 149–

50, 188confirmation hearings, 112– 13on Eniwetok atomic tests (1948), 53Hickenlooper and Strauss on, 124Joint Committee on Atomic Energy

hearings and, 123political debates over atomic energy and,

111on radioisotope exports, 113, 114resigns from AEC, 125on secrecy costs, 154Z Committee and, 210

Lindemann, Frederick A., 184Little Boy bomb, 64, 65Los Alamos National Laboratory, 154, 158,

185, 186

MMacArthur, Douglas

on atomic bomb use, 51on atomic bombs for Korean War,

90– 91fitness to command, Stimson on, 45n56food aid in 1946 and, 41n26Marshall on casualty estimates by, 20– 21on Operation Olympic projections, 26

Magic, 23– 24, 44n46. See also intelligence, U.S.

ManchuriaJapanese overseas commands in, Soviets

and, 35Ketsu- Go and, 11Soviet invasion (1945) of, 5, 31, 46n71,

181

Soviets move bombers (1951) to, 91Manhattan Engineer District (MED) (Man-

hattan Project)on countries requesting isotopes, 136n18declassification committee of, 149doubts among scientists working on,

183, 184– 86, 197– 99infrastructure transferred to AEC, 111–

12Marshall on further atomic bombing

and, 27mission of, 64nuclear arms race and, 76on radioisotopes for purchase, 109reactor safety and, 157Truman briefed on work of, 77– 78

Marshall, George C.on atomic bombing necessity, 49atomic bombing of Japan and, 182on battlefield use of atomic bombs, 52intelligence to Truman at Potsdam and,

44n46on Japanese buildup for homeland

defense, 25– 26on Soviets and atomic bomb, 79on unconditional surrender, 9

Marshall Plan, 109, 114, 117, 188martial law, Japanese militarists on civil-

ians and decision- making and, 29, 45– 46n64

Martin, Joseph, 91Matsutani Makoto, 43n40maximum credible accident, 156McMahon, Brien, 124, 126, 201McMahon bill (Act) (1946), 111, 201medical isotope production, 6– 7, 110, 116,

138n45, 188Melosi, Martin V., 6, 187Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab), Chi-

cago, 185, 186middle- ground interpretation, for atomic

bombing of Japan, 4– 5Millikin, Eugene, 201Minuteman, 106n86Miscamble, Wilson D., 6, 81, 181, 182Miyazaki, as U.S. target, Japanese on, 14– 15


Index 223

momentum and timingGroves in spring/summer 1945 on,

66– 71Soviet intervention and, 71uranium delivery from Oak Ridge and,

65morality of atomic bombs

British allies on, 51– 52condemnation of Truman and, 55lives saved and, 48– 49, 50– 51Truman on least harm and, 57– 58U.S. military leaders on, 49U.S. religious leaders on, 52war prolonged by Japan leaders and,

55– 56World War II as total war and, 54– 55

Murray, Raymond, 163– 64, 166, 175n59, 176n62

Murray, Thomas E., 53, 190

NNagai Yatsuji, 43n40Nagasaki bombing

Americans on date for, 181casualty estimates, 196directive for, 69effects of, 5marking fiftieth anniversary of, 179as target, 48, 49, 70Truman halting bombing after, 53, 71

National Academy of Medicine, Buenos Aires, 119

National Historic Landmark, Trinity as, 76– 77

National Institute for Medical Research, London, 119

National Resistance, Japanese, 13National Resistance Manual, Japanese, 13National Science Foundation, 166, 176n62National Security Act (1947), 85National Security Council (NSC), 85, 87–

88, 93, 210– 11national security policy

postwar, atomic and hydrogen bombs and, 83

radioisotope exports and, 109– 10National Volunteer Corps, Japanese, 13

Navy, U.S., 8– 9, 40n3, 86Nazi Germany, 76, 82NC State. See North Carolina State College

of Agriculture and Engineeringnegative temperature coefficient, reactor

runaway hazard and, 157New York Herald Tribune, 115New York Times, 123, 124New Yorker, 55New Zealand, radioisotope exports to, 119Newman, Robert, 51, 56– 57Newsweek, 160Nichols, Kenneth D., 112Niigata, as atomic bomb target, 69, 70Nimitz, Chester, 23, 24, 25, 26– 27Norris, Robert S., 6, 182North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO), 94, 124North Carolina, postwar ambitions of,

147– 49North Carolina State College of Agriculture

and EngineeringAEC on nuclear program growth at, 161consultants review reactor at, 164– 65nuclear engineering program proposed

for, 146– 47as Oak Ridge feeder school, 151– 53radioactive leak in reactor at, 162,

175n54reactor building at, 159, 205reactor project and fame for, 159– 60,

206Safeguard Committee review process

and, 156– 57See also Raleigh Research Reactor

Norwayradioisotopes shipped to (1949), 109reactor project in, 125– 26

Norwegian Defense Establishment at Kjeller, 122, 123, 141n95, 142n108

NSC- 68, 87– 88, 99nuclear arms race

from bombers to missiles, 96– 99Cold War and the bomb and, 83– 88hydrogen bomb and, 88– 90Korean War and, 90– 92origins of, 6, 76– 77


224 Index

nuclear arms race, continuedpostwar U.S. nuclear monopoly and,

79– 81scientists on controls for, 184– 85Soviets get the bomb, 82– 83

nuclear engineering programsAtoms for Peace and, 165– 66first, at NC State, 151, 152– 53See also radioisotopes; Raleigh research

reactornuclear nationalism, U.S., 79– 81nuclear power, 188– 89nuclear reactors, technical information on,

128– 29Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S., 189nuclear victimization, Asada on, 183Nucleonics, 158– 59

OOak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, 151Oak Ridge National Laboratory

consultants, Raleigh reactor review by, 164– 65

doubts among scientists working at, 185, 186

engineering shortage and, 151foreign nationals at Isotope School of,

126foreign requests for radioisotopes (1947)

to, 116NC State reactor design and, 158NC State training for, 160radioisotope exports and, 117, 125, 127,

135n12radioisotope sales by, 203Reactor Safeguard Committee and,

173n33on- site training schools for, 146– 47, 151Thomas on security system at, 113,

136n25occupation of Japan, Big Six on, 29Okamura Yasuji, 34Okinawa, 13– 14, 17, 66Operation Coronet, 9, 10Operation Decisive. See Ketsu- GoOperation Downfall, 9, 43n41Operation Greenhouse, 211

Operation OlympicJapan invasion under, 9Ketsu- Go vs., 19– 22MacArthur on projections for, 26Marshall and Nimitz on atomic bomb-

ing and, 27as unwise, Nimitz on, 23– 24

Operation Sandstone, 202Oppenheimer, J. Robert

bomb design and, 74n8bomb responsibility and, 184, 197– 99on declassifying nuclear fission informa-

tion, 149on developing an H- bomb, 88– 89on radioisotope exports, 124Strauss and, 188Truman and, 54, 61n23See also General Advisory Committee

oxygen- 18 isotopes, 120

PPacific war

atomic bomb and Soviet involvement in, 79

Potsdam summit on, 78See also atomic bombing of Japan

pain threshold, U.S. estimates of, Japanese bargaining and, 20

Parsons, William S., 68Patent Office, U.S., atomic energy patents

and, 113Patriotic Citizens (or Volunteer) Fighting

Corps, Japanese, 18Pearson, Drew, 112Pentagon

on atomic bomb use in Korea, 91nuclear arms for Korea and, 90See also Joint Chiefs of Staff

Peru, radioisotope exports to, 119Philippines, 17, 50– 51phosphorus- 32 isotope, 115, 116, 119, 120physics, military use of radioisotopes for,

110physics department, NC State

Beck as chair of, 148– 49questioning Beck as supervisor of, 163–

64


Index 225

reactor built as extracurricular activity for, 162

reactor project and fame for, 159– 60Safeguard Committee review process

and, 157Pike, Sumner T., 111– 12, 136n16, 139n70,

144n137Pitzer, Kenneth, 152– 53plutonium, for atomic bomb, 64– 65, 72Pogue, Forrest C., 49political tool, atomic bomb as, 80– 81, 179pool reactors, 174n36. See also water boiler

reactorsPortugal, radioisotope exports to, 120positive temperature coefficient, reactor

runaway hazard and, 157Potsdam Declaration, 30, 37, 49– 50Potsdam summit

intelligence to Truman at, 44n46Soviet nuclear research and, 82Trinity test and, 78Truman on atom bomb testing during,

194Power Demonstration Reactor Program, 161power reactors, regulation of, 177n73preventive war, LeMay on strategic bombing

and, 87Princeton University consultants, Raleigh

reactor review by, 164– 65private industry. See civilian nuclear powerpsychological factors for atomic bombing,

179– 80. See also racismPublic Law Number 30, 18Purnell, William, 68

QQuebec Agreement (1943), 110

RRabi, Isidor, 189– 90Racing the Enemy (Hasegawa), 30racism, 67, 179– 80Radchenko, Sergey, 80radio intelligence. See intelligence, U.S.radioactive isotopes. See radioisotopesradioactive leaks

in Raleigh research reactor, 162

routine operational, 156, 157– 58radioactive material release hazard, 156radioactivity, as Cold War threat, 83radioisotopes

Atoms for Peace and, 127– 29conclusions, 129– 30destinations and complications regard-

ing, 119– 25distribution in competitive foreign mar-

kets, 125– 27foreign shipment destinations of, 204introduction to, 108– 10medical, industrial, agricultural, and

research applications for, 6– 7politics of foreign distribution of, 110–

19Radium Center, Copenhagen, Denmark,

119Raleigh research reactor

AEC and repairs to, 166, 176n70AEC promoting/regulating conflict and,

189approval of, 158Atoms for Peace era and, 165– 68consultants review operations of, 164– 65declassification and, 154– 55, 206dedication of and radioactive leak in,

161– 62proposal for, 146– 47, 152radioactive leak in, 162– 63, 175n54,

175n59Reactor Safeguard Committee on, 205

reactor runaway hazard, 156, 157Reactor Safeguard Committee (AEC), 154,

155– 58, 173n33, 205reactors

AEC approval process for, 155– 56AEC stimulating demand for, 172n10declassified list of, 154research vs. power types, regulation of,

177n73types, in U.S., 188See also Raleigh research reactor

religious leaders, U.S., on atomic bomb use, 52

research reactors, regulation of, 177n73. See also Raleigh research reactor


226 Index

Research Triangle, creation of, 166revisionist interpretation, for atomic bomb-

ing of Japan, 4, 5Roosevelt, Franklin D.

on atomic bomb use, 74n4on atomic bomb value, 80– 81death of, Truman learns of atomic bomb

and, 63proposal on nuclear arms control to, 185Quebec Agreement (1943) and, 110Szilard and Einstein letter of concern

to, 184on unconditional surrender, 8World War II as total war and, 55

Rosenberg, David, 86, 93Roth, Herman, 159routine operational radioactive leaks, 156,

157– 58Russell, Bertrand, 87Russell, Richard, 201

Ssafety regulation, AEC, Raleigh reactor and,

147Sakhalin Island, 71, 181Sanada Joichiro, 15, 21Satsuma Peninsula, as U.S. target, Japanese

on, 14, 15saturation bombing, in World War II, 55Science magazine, 186The Scientific Worker, 121scientists

Manhattan Project, doubts among, 184– 86

private U.S. radioisotope sources for, 137n43

radioisotope exports and, 117radioisotope exports to, 119– 20See also physics department, NC State

Second General Army, Japanese, 11, 14, 48Seeman, L. E., 27Senate Appropriations subcommittee,

122– 23Sherman, Forrest, 24Sherwin, Martin J., 184Shibushi Bay, as U.S. target, Japanese on,

14– 15

Shikoku, 11, 24Shōwa Tennō dokuhakuroku (Hirohito), 29,

30Shunroka Hata, 48Simpson, William L., 203Sixteenth Area Army, Japanese, 14, 15, 16,

41n21, 41n24Sixth Army, U.S., 9Smyth, Henry DeWolf, 122, 124Smyth Report, 116, 138n52, 141n92sodium- 24 isotopes, 115South Africa, radioisotope exports to, 119South America, civilian nuclear technology

in, 129, 145n157Soviet Union

AEC export controls and, 121atomic bomb testing by, 7, 77, 82, 125,

152atomic bombing and Japan invasion by,

71atomic stockpile (1950), 90atomic stockpile (1955), 96to declare war on Japan, 180declares war on Japan, 181diplomatic relations with, atomic bomb

use and, 68, 80– 81, 179intervention, Japanese surrender and,

33– 37intervention after atomic bombings, 29,

47n88missile gap with U.S. and, 97– 98mutual defense pact with Finland, 121,

140n86naval forces, Manchurian invasion and,

31nuclear arms race with, 3nuclear reactor in, 125radioisotope exports by, 127radioisotope exports to, 120targets in, 106n85Truman on bomb and, 64U.N. disarmament debates and, 97U.S. fears of radioisotope exports and,

114, 116U.S. radioisotope exports and, 118– 19

Spain, radioisotope exports to, 120Sputnik, 77, 97, 98


Index 227

Sputnik II, 97spying. See espionageStalin, Joseph

Cold War and U.S. demonization of, 85death of, 92nuclear research support by, 82– 83Potsdam summit and, 78Truman on Trinity test to, 77on U.S. monopoly of atomic bomb,

80– 81war of nerves by, 90Yalta Conference and, 180

starvation, in Japan, 17, 41n26State, Department of, 90, 91, 117, 121– 22stigmatization, Tannenwald on second

pathway of, 96Stimson, Henry L.

on atomic bomb use, 57briefing Truman on the bomb, 63– 64,

184chain of command in World War II and,

69postwar Japanese casualty figures of,

42n33press release on Hiroshima bombing

and, 195target choices and, 70Truman learning of the bomb and, 63

Strategic Air Command (SAC), 85, 86– 87, 90, 98

Strauss, Lewis L.AEC service by, 111– 12on atomic energy equipment exports,

121, 122on civilian uses for nuclear power, 188on declassifying nuclear fission informa-

tion, 150on H- bomb development, 89, 95, 189,

207– 9Hickenlooper and, 123– 24, 137n33qualifications, 136n16on radioisotope exports, 110, 114, 116,

118, 124– 25, 138n52, 139n62on Technical Cooperation Program, 120on training foreign students in reactor

technology, 161suicide attacks, 13, 16, 24

sulfur- 35 isotopes, 116surrender, Suzuki cabinet proposal on, 30.

See also unconditional surrenderSuzuki Kantaro, 28, 29, 30, 32– 33, 37Sweden, reactor project in, 125– 26Sweeney, Charles W., 68Switzerland, reactor project in, 125– 26Szasz, Ferenc, 77Szilard, Leo, 178, 184– 86

TTaft, Robert A., 112Tannenwald, Nina, 96Target Committee, 70Technical Cooperation Program, 120Teller, Edward, 89, 95, 155, 189Temple of Atom. See Raleigh research reac-

torTerauchi Hisaichi, 34, 36thermonuclear devices, definition of,

105n50. See also hydrogen bombThirty- Sixth Army, Japanese, 15Thomas, J. Parnell, 113, 136n25Thor (intermediate- range ballistic missile),

95Tibbets, Paul W., 68Tinian, 64, 65, 69Togo Shigenori, 28, 33, 37tokko tactics, Ketsu- Go and, 13Tokyo

fire- bombings, FDR and, 55Hirohito on inadequate defenses of, 32Ketsu- Go and, 11, 12U.S. intelligence on buildup around,

23– 24U.S.- led invasion of, 9as U.S. target, Japanese on, 14

Toyoda Soemu, 28traditional interpretation, for atomic bomb-

ing of Japan, 3– 4Trinity test, 65, 76– 77, 78, 82tritium, 120, 126Truman, Harry S.

on atomic bomb value, 80– 81authorizing atomic bombing, 48– 49, 69,

181– 82on casualties and politics, 21


228 Index

Truman, Harry S., continuedon civilian uses for nuclear power, 149–

50, 187– 88commander in chief authority chal-

lenged, 187foreign policy perspective of, 85on halting bombing, 70– 71on H- bomb development, 89– 90, 95on his nuclear legacy, 178invasion of Japan strategy and, 10learns about atomic bomb, 63– 64, 74n5,

194moral code of, 57nuclear arms for Korea and, 90nuclear weapons strategy and, 86on Oppenheimer and blood on hands,

54, 61n23, 186, 200postwar Japanese casualty figures of,

42n33Potsdam summit and, 78press release on Hiroshima bombing

and, 195on radioisotope exports, 109, 113,

117– 18radioisotope exports and, 109Ultra/Magic materials delivered at Pots-

dam to, 44n46Tsukasa Nitoguri, 50Turkey, radioisotope exports to, 120216th Division, Japanese, 16typhoons, Japanese on U.S. invasion and, 15

UUltra. See intelligence, U.S.Umezu Yoshijiro, 28, 31, 37unconditional surrender, American strategy

on, 8– 9, 40n2. See also Potsdam Declaration

Union Carbide Corporation, 148, 172n8United Kingdom

medical isotope production and, 188radioisotope exports by, 125, 126,

143n124Technical Cooperation Program and,

120See also Britain

United NationsAtomic Energy Commission, Baruch

Plan presented to, 81Beck, Atoms for Peace and, 160General Assembly on disarmament

conventions, 96– 97on nuclear disarmament, 84U.S. radioisotope exports and, 118

United Statesamphibious assault on Kyushu assess-

ment by, 19– 22, 42n35armed forces, atomic bombing of Japan

and, 50atomic stockpile (1950), 90atomic stockpile (1960), 128ending World War II strategy of, 8– 10Kyushu defense and, 32Kyushu terrain analysis by, 14medical isotope production and, 188not using atomic bomb, domestic poli-

tics and, 67, 74n16postwar debate on nuclear monopoly

of, 77radiolabeled compounds produced by,

127, 144n135Technical Cooperation Program and,

120U.N. disarmament debates and, 96– 97

universities, early nuclear reactors at, 147, 171n4

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 150– 51, 152, 153

University of Chicago, 154University of Southern California, 150– 51,

152, 153uranium

East German, Soviet research and, 82foreign countries as source for, 113, 114highly enriched, 64– 65, 72missing from Argonne National Labora-

tory, 122for research vs. bomb- making, 153Technical Cooperation Program and,

120Urey, Harold C., 185– 86Uruguay, isotope mission to, 129


Index 229

VVenezuela, isotope mission to, 129Vietnam, atomic bombs and Japanese war

on, 50– 51Volunteer Enlistment Law, Japanese, 18Volunteer Fighting Units, Japanese, 18

WWalker, J. Samuel, 180, 182Walker, Martin, 97Wallace, Henry, 53, 71, 183war crimes trials, Big Six on jurisdiction

over, 29war planning, postwar, 85– 86Warren, Shields, 129water boiler reactors, 157, 158. See also pool

reactorsWaymack, William W., 111– 12, 136n16weapons

for Japanese civilians, 18for Ketsu- Go, 16

weapons of mass destruction, 84, 104n27weather, atomic bomb use and, 64Weigley, Russell, 79Wellock, Thomas R., 7, 189Whyburn, William, 166Wigner, Eugene, 203Willoughby, Charles A., 23Wilson, Carroll, 112Wilson, Robert R., 185World War II

American strategy to end, 8– 10Japanese strategy to end, 10– 13as total war, old morality and, 54– 55See also Pacific war

YYalta Conference, 180Yokohama, U.S.- led invasion of, 9Yonai Mitsumasa, 28, 30, 36– 37Yoshizumi Masao, 21– 22

ZZ Committee, 210– 11


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