], Documents 1A-C: Report of the Uranium Committee, National Archives, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227 (hereinafter RG 227), Bush-Conant papers microfilm collection, Roll 1, Target 2, Folder 1, "S-1 Historical File, Section A (1940-1941).". and offer details on potential protection (protective clothing against a uranium bomb includes rubber and any kind of insulation against electricity). For Trumans recognition of mass civilian casualties, see also hisletter to Senator Richard Russell, 9 August 1945. Initialed by President Roosevelt (VB OK FDR), this may have been the closest that he came to a formal approval of the Manhattan Project. [30]. Possibly not wanting to take responsibility for the first use of nuclear weapons, Army Air Force commanders sought formal authorization from Chief of Staff Marshall who was then in Potsdam. Stalin considered various dates to schedule an attack. [59a]. The museum has justfinished a massive renovation of the museum and its exhibitions, the first major renovation in more than 20 years and the largest since the museum opened its doors in 1957. The killing of workers in the urban-industrial sector was one of the explicit goals of the air campaign against Japanese cities. President Franklin Roosevelt called the attack a day which will live in infamy, and the American people were shocked and angered. [70]. Concerned that President Roosevelt had an overly cavalier belief about the possibility of maintaining a post-war Anglo-American atomic monopoly, Bush and Conant recognized the limits of secrecy and wanted to disabuse senior officials of the notion that an atomic monopoly was possible. Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan because analysts and the president thought fewer lives could be lost if we dropped the atomic bomb, instead of island hopping to Japan. The translations differ but they convey the sticking point that prevented U.S. acceptance: Tokyos condition that the allies not make any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler., Papers of Henry A. Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa (copy courtesy of Special Collections Department). [26]. The war was finally over. Schaffer,Wings of Judgment, 143-146. [46]. According to Herbert Bix, for months Hirohito had believed that the outlook for a negotiated peace could be improved if Japan fought and won one last decisive battle, thus, he delayed surrender, continuing to procrastinate until the bomb was dropped and the Soviets attacked.[52]. [35]. Officially named AN602 hydrogen bomb, it was originally intended to have a . The non-specialist staff sent to observe these effects, their biased premise, and the markings on the documents all suggest that the report was from the beginning meant to anticipate and align with Stalins intention to downplay the importance of the United States atomic bomb while pushing the Soviet Unions own nuclear project forward. The embassy teams included GRU members Mikhail Ivanov and German Sergeev in August, and TASS correspondent Anatoliy Varshavskiy, former acting military attach Mikhail Romanov, and Naval apparatus employee Sergey Kikenin in September. The intention was to force Japan to surrender, thus avoiding a long war in the Pacific. The original desire of the United States government when they dropped Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not, in fact, the one more commonly known: that the two nuclear devices dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki were detonated with the intention of bringing an end to the war with Japan, but instead to intimidate the Soviet . 60 inches in diameter and 128 inches long, the weapon weighed about 10,000 pounds and had a yield approximating 21,000 tons of high explosives (Copy from U.S. National Archives, RG 77-AEC), Taken at Tinian Island on the afternoon of August 5, 1945, this shows the tail of the Enola Gay being edged over the pit and into position to load "Little Boy" into the bomb bay. The target would be a city--either Hiroshima, Kyoto (still on the list), or Niigata--but specific aiming points would not be specified at that time nor would industrial pin point targets because they were likely to be on the fringes a city. In these entries, Meiklejohn discussed how he and others in the Moscow Embassy learned about the bombing of Nagasaki from the OWI Bulletin. Entries for 10 and 11 August cover discussion at the Embassy about the radio broadcast announcing that Japan would surrender as long the Emperors status was not affected. The weekly illustrated magazine Asahi Graph also published a brief article on August 25 titled What is an atomic bomb?. Upon becoming president, Harry Truman learned of the Manhattan Project, a secret scientific effort to create an atomic bomb. The United States, along with other countries, criticized Japanese aggression but shied away from any economic or military punishments. Hiroshima and Nagasaki represent the point of no return in the history of world politics: they mark the dramatic culmination and end of the war, while symbolizing the beginning of an era of nuclear fear. Also important to take into account is John Dowers extensive discussion of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in context of the U.S. fire-bombings of Japanese cities inCultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq(New York, W. Norton, 2010), 163-285. To what extent were senior officials interested in looking at alternatives to urban targets? Interested readers will continue to absorb the fascinating historical literature on the subject. The combination of the first bomb and the Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Tokyos surrender. 4 (copy from microfilm), General Groves prepared for Stimson, then at Potsdam, a detailed account of the Trinity test. A U.S. War Department photograph of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing, undated. [74]. [45]. Bix, Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War,Japan Focus. It is quite apparent that the United States did, in fact, drop the two atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively for the . They caused terrible human losses and destruction at the time and more deaths and sickness in the years ahead from the radiation effects. Nevertheless, his diary suggests that military hard-liners were very much in charge and that Prime Minister Suzuki was talking tough against surrender, by evoking last ditch moments in Japanese history and warning of the danger that subordinate commanders might not obey surrender orders. A directive (right), written by Leslie Groves , approved by President Truman, and issued by Secretary of War Henry Stimson and General of the . After the first minute of dropping "Fat Man," 39,000 men, women and children were killed. Sean Malloy, `A Very Pleasant Way to Die: Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan,Diplomatic History36 (2012), especially 523. Barton Bernstein and Richard Frank, among others, have argued that Trumans assertion that the atomic targets were military objectives suggested that either he did not understand the power of the new weapons or had simply deceived himself about the nature of the targets. In this memorandum, Norstad reviewed the complex requirements for preparing B-29s and their crew for successful nuclear strikes. [41], RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File 5e (copy from microfilm), An elated message from Harrison to Stimson reported the success of the Trinity Test of a plutonium implosion weapon. National Archives and Records Administration, Newspaper clipping, Japanese planes destroy US fleet at Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1945, Excerpts of Franklin Roosevelts speech to Congress, December 8, 1941, Excerpt of Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, July 26, 1945, Letter from Henry Stimson to Harry S. Truman, April 24, 1945, Letter from Harry S. Truman to Richard Russell, August 9, 1945, Translation of leaflet dropped on the Japanese, August 6, 1945, Petition to the President of the United States, July 17, 1945, Minutes of meeting held at the White House, June 18, 1945. In contrast to Alperovitzs argument that Forrestal tried to modify the terms of unconditional surrender to give the Japanese an out, Frank sees Forrestals account of the Sato-Togo exchange as additional evidence that senior U.S. officials understood that Tokyo was not on the cusp of surrender. [49], Joseph E. Davies Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, box 19, 29 July 1945, Having been asked by Truman to join the delegation to the Potsdam conference, former-Ambassador Davies sat at the table with the Big Three throughout the discussions. [64]. Atomic Bomb Dbq; Atomic Bomb Dbq. Drawing on sources at the National Archives and the Library of Congress as well as Japanese materials, this electronic briefing book includes key documents that historians of the events have relied upon to present their findings and advance their interpretations. Searle, `It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers, 118. Seventy years ago this month, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. Within a few days Japan surrendered, and the terrible struggle that we call World War II was over. Noteworthy publications since 2015 includeMichael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry, eds., The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Sheldon Garon, On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the United States Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in the Second World War, Past and Present 247 (2020): 235-271; Katherine E. McKinney, Scott Sagan, and Allen S. Weiner, Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76 (2020); Gregg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood and America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (New York: The New Press, 2020); Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020); Neil J. Sullivan, The Prometheus Bomb: The Manhattan Project and Government in the Dark (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2016); Alex Wellerstein; Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming, 2020), a memoir by a Hiroshima survivor, Taniguchi Sumitero, The Atomic Bomb on My Back: A Life Story of Survival and Activism (Montpelier, VT: Rootstock Publishing, 2020), and a collection of interviews, Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020). For discussion of the importance of this memorandum, see Sherwin, 126-127, and Hershberg, James B. Conant, 203-207. [9], RG 77, Correspondence ("Top Secret") of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, file 25M. Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog. 35+ YEARS OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACTION, FOIA Advisory Committee Oversight Reports, a helpful collection of archival documents, on-line resources on the first atomic test. Plainly he was troubled by the devastation and suffering caused by the bombings, but he found it justifiable because it saved the lives of U.S. troops. For useful discussion of this meeting and the other Target Committee meetings, see Norris, 382-386. Included are documents on the early stages of the U.S. atomic bomb project, Army Air Force GeneralCurtis LeMays reporton the firebombing of Tokyo (March 1945), Secretary of War HenryStimsons requestsfor modification of unconditional surrender terms,Soviet documentsrelating to the events, excerpts from the Robert P. Meiklejohn diaries mentioned above, and selections from the diaries of Walter J. When the Foreign Minister met with the Emperor, Hirohito agreed with him; he declared that the top priority was an early end to the war, although it would be acceptable to seek better surrender terms--probably U.S. acceptance of a figure-head emperor--if it did not interfere with that goal. For Stimsons article, see The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,Harpers194 (February 1947): 97-107. [Editors Note: Originally prepared in July 2005 this posting has been updated, with new documents, changes in organization, and other editorial changes. The HarryS. Truman Library and Museum is part of the Presidential Libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration,a federal agency. Augusta, Truman learned about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and announced it twice, first to those in the wardroom (socializing/dining area for commissioned officers), and then to the sailors mess. 76 (copy from microfilm), Physicists Leo Szilard and James Franck, a Nobel Prize winner, were on the staff of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, a cover for the Manhattan Project program to produce fuel for the bomb. Judgment at the Smithsonian(New York: Matthews and Company, 1995), pp. [48]. [56] Groves also provided the schedule for the delivery of the weapons: the components of the gun-type bomb to be used on Hiroshima had arrived on Tinian, while the parts of the second weapon to be dropped were leaving San Francisco. Early in the morning of August 9th Manchuria was invaded by the Soviet Union. According to Hasegawa, Hirohito had become convinced that the preservation of the monarchy was at stake. Moreover, he may not have known that the third bomb was still in the United States and would not be available for use for nearly another week. Source: U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD, Record Group 373, Defense Intelligence Agency, Aerial Film, U.S., Army Air Force. Library of Congress . The World Wide Web includes significant documentary resources on these events. An importanton-line collection focuses on the air-raids of Japanese cities and bases, providing valuable context for the atomic attacks. Open Document. For casualty figures and the experience of people on the ground, see Frank, 264-268 and 285-286, among many other sources. Why we dropped the Atomic Bomb The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 was a definite turning point in the Pacific War of World . Thanks to Alex Wellerstein for the suggestion and the archival link. The bomb would be dropped in the citys center. As to how the war with Japan would end, he saw it as unpredictable, but speculated that it will take Russian entry into the war, combined with a landing, or imminent threat of a landing, on Japan proper by us, to convince them of the hopelessness of their situation. Lincoln derided Hoovers casualty estimate of 500,000.