An early biography of Harry Truman quoted the former president as reminiscing that he had enjoyed the most wonderful childhood “imaginable.” The biographer noted that the remark was appropriate insofar as Truman had almost certainly imagined it. A similar observation might be made about the Truman of Alex Wellerstein's excellent new book: although the 33rd president confessed to shouldering the “most awful responsibility” when he made the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there had actually been no decision to make. Writes Wellerstein: “There was no such moment of deliberation and definitive decision by anyone, and certainly not Truman. The use of the atomic bombs was an accumulation of dozens of smaller decisions, as well as an assumption made by nearly everyone involved in the planning that the weapon would be used” (p. 308, emphasis in original).Wellerstein's thesis is neither as new nor as revelatory as the jacket hype would indicate. When the Marxist historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in 1969 about the nuclear bomb decision, he said merely that “mechanism prevailed.” Thus, the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan in August 1945 was—to borrow a term from political science—“overdetermined”: there were sound military, diplomatic, and even domestic political reasons to use the weapon, and almost no one spoke in opposition. As Wellerstein points out, a poll in December 1945 showed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans believed the nuclear bombs should not have been used, and nearly a quarter of those surveyed wished there had been time to drop “many more of them before Japan had a chance to surrender” (p. 109).What is new and important in The Most Awesome Responsibility is the evidence that Wellerstein has dredged up from a careful reading of original sources and documents—many declassified only recently. These materials shed light on the thinking that led to the dropping of the nuclear bombs, even if the task of analyzing this reasoning is better left to the psychologist than the historian. Certainly, the announcement that Truman drafted after the bombing of Hiroshima, describing the target as “purely a military base . . . because we did not want to destroy the lives of women and children” (p. 90) seems, today, a sign of willful self-deception. At least 90 percent of the victims of Hiroshima were civilians.However, Truman's confusion about the casualties at Hiroshima is at least partly explained, Wellerstein argues, by the fact that, from the very beginning, planning for use of the nuclear bomb “included a target description . . . deliberately worded to imply the target was a military base, and did not involve ‘wholesale killing of civilians” (p. 55, emphasis in original). Pointedly, the word “city” was almost never used. When the Hiroshima strike order describing the target as “an ‘Army’ city” was sent to Potsdam, where Truman was meeting with other Allied leaders in late July 1945, the document was, Wellerstein claims, subsequently “recovered and destroyed—a sign of its perceived sensitivity” (ibid.).If the president remained ignorant of the planning for actual use of the nuclear bomb, it was not only, or even primarily, because he was incurious. Those orchestrating the “precision bombing” of Japan with conventional munitions had already deployed an Orwellian array of euphemisms to describe the process. The bombs landed not on cities per se, but on “industrial and strategic targets concentrated in the urban areas” (p. 31, emphasis in original). The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 incinerated fifteen square miles of the city and killed perhaps 100,000 people. “Under such conditions,” Wellerstein argues (p. 30), “there was no way the bombers would be able to target anything more ‘precise” than the entire city itself.”Truman's initial lack of understanding about the nuclear bombings and their result abruptly ended when photographs and casualty figures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki arrived at the White House. The president immediately gave orders that no additional nuclear bombs were to be used without his explicit authorization. As Truman privately confessed to a Cabinet member, he did not like the idea of killing “all those kids” (p. 105).Truman's credulous acceptance of military planning is understandable, but more puzzling—and disturbing—is Secretary of War Henry Stimson's role in the nuclear bombings. The 78-year-old Stimson kept a wartime diary that dramatically revealed his growing concern about the indiscriminate effects of such alleged “precision bombing.” Particularly disturbed by the firebombing of Tokyo—“which was very far from that”—Stimson asked General Henry (“Hap”) Arnold, the architect of the air campaign, whether efforts were being made to limit deaths among the civilian population. Arnold answered that “they were trying to keep it down as far as possible.” “This was a blatant lie,” Wellerstein observes (p. 51). Although Stimson eventually succeeded in getting Kyoto removed from the target list—the destruction of a city with such cultural and religious significance would, he feared, irretrievably embitter the Japanese—there was a bizarre and even schizophrenic quality to his selective blindness to the consequences of strategic bombing.The Most Awful Responsibility also gets into the custody battle that immediately followed Japan's surrender. Advocates of air power, lobbying for an independent air force after the war, hoped to gain physical possession of the nuclear weapons, as well as the authority to decide on their use. Truman steadfastly resisted such pressure, not wanting “to have some dashing Lieutenant-Colonel decide when would be the proper time to drop one” (p. 170). Ultimately, a compromise was reached, giving the military possession of the bombs, but without the nuclear cores, which would remain in possession of the civilian Atomic Energy Commission and could be released only upon the president's authorization.Wellerstein also provides new, detailed information about the numerous times that use of nuclear weapons was considered during the Korean War. Ironically, it was not some dashing lieutenant-colonel but General Douglas MacArthur who finally tested the principle of civilian authority over the bomb. Frustrated at being denied the chance to use the nuclear bombs, MacArthur talked about sowing a swath of Cobalt-60 across North Korea—a kind of radioactive cordon sanitaire—to keep Chinese troops from crossing the border. Truman's firing of MacArthur put a prompt end to the general's insubordination. Not until 1951, and because of the setbacks in Korea, did Truman allow nine of the bombs’ nuclear cores to be shipped to the military—but “under the strictest orders not to use them.” 315Overall, Truman appears a sympathetic figure in Wellerstein's estimation—“so plainly human, pulled here and there by the forces of history, by the things he knew and did not know, and by his conscience” (p. 317). Truman's legacy, however, is that the president alone makes the decision of whether, when, and how to use nuclear weapons. Wellerstein concludes: “We still use the system that Truman set up, but we do not live in the conditions that created the system or under the same assumptions. . . . We should feel free to reevaluates these issues according to the specifics, and fears, of our own times.”
Gregg Herken (Thu,) studied this question.