The Soviet Menace

In the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb, an eyewitness documented the scene with hand drawings.
(Photo by Sharkey, taken at the Peace Museum in Hiroshima August 2010)

The US had been working on the development of an atomic bomb since 1940.  It was a complex and expensive project (code-named Manhattan Project) that involved scientists that had come to the US from many European countries (Wikipedia, 2011).  The US feared that Nazi Germany could develop an atomic weapon before they did.  President Roosevelt was more concerned with having the bomb, than with using it.  After President Roosevelt died, President Truman included using the atomic bomb in his war plans, especially since the Soviet Union was now at war with Japan, and a Soviet victory could expand its power over Asia (NuclearFiles.org).  After the first attack, President Truman threatened Japan of more attacks to come if the unconditional surrender was not signed (History, .com).   The Soviet Union had played an important role in defeating Germany, and the United States was worried about possible future Soviet influence in Europe and Asia, so President Truman, despite Japan's offers for a conditional surrender, decided to show the world and the Soviets in particular how powerful America was.  Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, was in charge of the Manhattan Project (History.com), and he decided that dropping the first bomb (Nicknamed "Little Boy") on Hiroshima would bring about Japan's unconditional surrender before Japan could arrange with the Soviet Union negotiations for a conditional surrender.  It was also Stimson's decision to drop "Fat Man" on Nagasaki after three days, to speed up events. Stimson believed that an atomic attack on Japan would save the lives of American soldiers by bringing about a quicker resolution to the war, and at the same time would show the Soviets how powerful America was (Tataki, 1996).  As we mentioned before, though, in August 1945 Japan was already very close to surrender, it was just working out the details of a conditional surrender versus an unconditional surrender.  Japan was no longer a threat to the US, but the Soviet Union was becoming one, so the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were meant as a warning to the Soviets more than a final nail in Japan's coffin:  they did not save millions of American lives, but instead cause death, pain and suffering for generations of Japanese. Dropping the bomb was not a unanimous decision.  Many of the scientists who had worked in the Manhattan project opposed its use.  Albert Einstein had urged President Roosevelt to build the bomb, but he said he did not believe President Roosevelt would have ever used it (History.com). Ten years later, on his deathbed, Einstein still felt that his support for the bomb was the worst mistake of his life (Wikipedia, 2011).  General MacArthur, the commander of the allied forces in the Pacific, did not know about it until a few hours before the attack, probably because he would have been against it, since he considered it unnecessary from a military point of view (Tataki, 1996 and Cousin, 1988).

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
(Photo source: Wikimedia Commons--public domain)