On April 12, 1945, wheelchair-bound, four-term president, Franklin Roosevelt, who had guided the country through the Great Depression and WWII, unexpectedly died at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia, vaulting Vice-President Harry Truman into the President’s seat. A World War I Field Artillery veteran, former Missouri farmer, men’s clothing store owner, county judge and Senator, Truman had only been Vice President for three months upon Roosevelt’s death. Interestingly, Truman had not sought Roosevelt’s VP spot in the 1944 presidential election, but Democratic party leaders believed that Truman was a better choice than FDR’s former VP, Henry Wallace, to gain the important Midwest votes in the election against Republican Thomas Dewey. Pundits dubbed Truman’s selection as VP, “The Second Missouri Compromise.” On May 7, 1945, World War II concluded in Europe with the German unconditional surrender to Allied military representatives at Reims, France. Two weeks earlier, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had retreated into a bunker in downtown Berlin and shot himself, thereby avoiding the hangman’s noose that was seeking his neck. The Nazi dream of a “Third Reich” of racial purity and harmony, intended to last 1,000 years, was crushed in twelve years. However, its wake left millions dead in central and eastern Europe, and a completely ravaged European landscape.

Meanwhile, the Pacific Theatre of World War II against the Empire of Japan continued to rage. America was war weary after four years of battle in both Europe and the Pacific, and Truman was faced with the mandate to conclude the war with Japan. As Truman entered the presidential office in Washington the day after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, he was called aside by Secretary of War Henry Stimson who advised him that the United States was in the process of building “the most destructive weapon in history, a top-secret atom bomb.” As Vice-President, Truman had suspected that something important was being developed in the war plants, but Roosevelt had never shared any such information with Truman. Truman was stunned by the magnitude and power of the bomb. Perhaps no president in American history faced as enormous a decision as Harry Truman as to the reality of using an atomic bomb to end the war against Japan. The final decision rested with President Truman, and he confided to his wife Bess, “The weight of this decision is unbearable and I would wish it on no one.”

As history chronicles, nuclear bombs were dropped on mainland Japan in August 1945, not once, but twice, Hiroshima on the 6th and Nagasaki on the 9th. The Nagasaki bomb was originally scheduled for the industrial city of Kokura, but heavy cloud cover over Kokura resulted in Nagasaki being the alternate site.

Speculation and discussion over the use of the bombs has been a point of interest over the past 80 years, with various viewpoints being offered. It is interesting to note that shortly after the bombings the American public was close to being split on the use of the bombs. A poll conducted by Fortune in December 1945 found that 54% of Americans agreed with Truman’s decision, while 46% disagreed.

Although by May 1945 the Japanese army and navy had been obliterated by allied forces, the Japanese put up ferocious resistance as the Americans neared the Japanese mainland. An unconditional surrender overture had been sent by America to Japan, but was flatly rejected by the Japanese because it meant the possible arrest and execution of the Emperor, a god-like deity in the eyes of the Japanese.

Truman and his advisors then weighed a number of options to force a Japanese surrender. One option was a US naval blockade of Japan, preventing Japanese access to air and seaborne resources, essentially choking the Japanese economy, which was already in the throes of a severe food shortage. Because the Navy was short-handed ships after the long Pacific war, and there was no telling how long a blockade would take to force the surrender of a nation that was willing to fight to its death, this option was rejected. A second option on the table was an all-out military invasion of the Japanese homeland islands. While this option had some support among Truman’s advisors, he balked at the estimate of 200,000 American casualties in such an invasion. In his eyes the war had already cost far too many American lives, and he wasn’t interested in the possibility of losing more. So, Truman demurred on a Japanese mainland invasion to end the war.

The third option, use of atomic bomb power, then came to the forefront in the decision facing Truman, a decision with vast repercussions worldwide. The late Cal-Berkeley professor Ronald Takaki, an internationally recognized scholar and acclaimed fellow of the Society of American Historians, authored a probing and perceptive account of the factors involved in Truman’s decision to unleash atomic bombs over Japan. Titled, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb (1995), Takaki suggests the decision was made within a larger context than just ending the war against Japan, other factors being the concern of post-war Russian expansion in Europe and Asia, and American anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination in the Pacific basin.

While the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did indeed end the war against Japan, Truman’s decision was also related to the reality post-war Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe and Asia. Truman confided to Secretary of State, James Byrnes, ” … the use of the bomb might impress Russia with America’s military might and frustrate and contain the Soviet Union’s ambitions, and strengthen America’s policy toward Russia.” Truman and key advisors were in agreement that Russia would be America’s main antagonist in the post-World War II world and a show of American military power to the Soviets was deemed important at that time.

The war against Japan also held racial overtones. In the book, War Without Mercy (1986), author John Dower presents the idea that, “America considered the Japanese an inferior race, consisting of demons and savages. The Japanese, meanwhile looked upon America as degenerate and soft, and a threat to the Japanese culture and way of life.” Pearl Harbor was the powder keg that erupted feelings between Japan and America from mutual dislike to intense racial rage and hate for the enemy. Japanese bombs ignited the war at Pearl Harbor; American bombs concluded the war on mainland Japan. The official Japanese surrender occurred on September 2, 1945, on the decks of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

In his published memoirs after the war, Harry Truman stated, “Let there be no mistake about it, the decision of where and when to use the atomic was up to me.” Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States made perhaps the most gut-wrenching decision in American presidential history and never questioned himself on the action. History looks to the past and, for good or bad, the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 are part of America’s historical past.