Essay: Why did the Truman administration decide to drop the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945?

“I had made the decision," wrote Truman in 1955 about the drop of the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. During a meeting with Anthony Eden, about one month after becoming president, he said: “I am here to make decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong I am going to make them”[1]. That is why as well, Truman titled his first part of his memoirs, “Years of Decisions, 1945”. Truman had a strong conviction that the presidency was a job that required choices, often difficult, and that he would not avoid his responsibility. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States dropped on the city of Hiroshima the first of the only two nuclear bombs ever employed against human population, killing more than 115 000 people, probably as many as 250 000 according to the highest estimates. Three days later, on the date the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, a second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, bringing the death toll to 200 000 dead and 300 000 wounded. After the war, the bombings raised a series of ethical and historical questions about the causes, circumstances and motives that prompt Truman to take this decision. The official explanation provided by President H. Truman himself in his memoirs and strongly backed by the American public and many politicians in the wake of the war, insisted that the only issue was that of obtaining unconditional Japanese surrender without further unnecessary loss of American lives. However, a different perspective based on more recently declassified documents was raised by so-called “revisionist” historians. In their view, the use of the atomic bomb hid other motives and was not necessary as the Japanese leadership was already defeated and on the verge of surrendering.

The justification for using the atomic bomb was that it ended the war, or at least ended it sooner and thereby saved countless American and