Wars and Battles
Hiroshima and the Atomic Bomb
The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb - 1945

The decision to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August, 1945, has been debated ever since. President Harry S. Truman concluded that the bomb would shorten the war and save many American lives. On the small, volcanic island of Iwo Jima, the United States had taken 26,000 casualties, including 6,800 deaths.

According to declassified documents dating to the time, projections for an invasion of the mainland of Japan in Operation Downfall ran to a million American casualties. In this context, destroying two medium-sized Japanese cities could be regarded as the lesser of two evils.

In early August, the Japanese government was deeply divided on the question of further resistance. The War Party insisted that Japan could still mount a successful defense of its mainland. Although time might have produced a surrender without the bomb, American preparations for the invasion were proceeding apace. It would have been impossible to turn the timetable on and off while waiting for a Japanese answer.

In fact, although the destruction wrought by the atomic bombs was instantaneous and spectacular, it was not completely outside the scale of wartime experiences. The fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo had been intended to inflict death on a vast scale. In each case, deaths were numbered in the tens of thousands.

Finally, there is the simple fact that the Manhattan Project had cost about two billion dollars. The internal logic of such a massive investment is that the product must be used. The decision to drop the bomb belonged in some sense to Harry S. Truman as president, but in effect, the die had been cast years earlier with the decision to produce it.

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