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Directions: for each of the readings, highlight/underline and label in the margin when you find the facts that will help you answer the questions and complete the tasks.

Harry Truman: Foreign Policy Questions / Tasks: 1. What was the Manhattan Project? 2. What happened at Potsdam? 3. Why was Truman disappointed at Potsdam? 4. Why was Truman worred about the Soviet Union in 1945? 5. What was the Truman Doctrine? 6. What was the Marshall Plan? 7. What was Truman’s position on the creation of the state of Israel? 8. What was the Berlin Airlift? 9. Why was 1949 a significant year? 10. What is the important of the 38th parallel in the Korean War? Early in the 20th century, scientists demonstrated that the nucleus of an atom could decay in some circumstances, which accounted for the radiation emanating from such naturally radioactive materials as radium and uranium. They also showed that the radiation came from individual nuclei that shed protons and neutrons, becoming a different isotope. By 1942, with World War II under way and widespread U.S. fears that Germany would develop nuclear weapons first and change the course of the war, a group of scientists encouraged the American government to launch a major program to develop a new type of bomb based on the fission process, called an atomic bomb. The resulting effort, known as the Manhattan Project and led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, was given high priority and almost unlimited funding to design and build the world's first atomic bomb. To reduce the risk of failure, the project simultaneously developed two types of bombs based on the radioactive isotopes of either uranium 235 or plutonium 239. The project was started under president Franklin D. Roosevelt. As his Vice President, Harry Truman knew nothing of the development of the atomic bomb. Truman learned about the atomic bomb soon after becoming president in April 1945. He agonized over whether to use the weapon against the Japanese. To do so might end the war quickly and minimize American casualties, but thousands of Japanese civilians would die. In June, a committee appointed by the president recommended using the bomb, though by June the bombs were not complete.

At the same time that scientists were working toward the successful testing of a bomb, Truman met in Potsdam with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to discuss the state of postwar Europe. Under Stalin, the Soviets had militarily imposed communist regimes in

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several eastern European states. Truman believed that if he and Stalin met face to face, he could convince Stalin to withdraw from eastern Europe. Truman was wrong. Even after Truman hinted about the atomic bomb, which had been successfully exploded on July 16, 1945, Stalin refused to budge. America's president did not know that the Soviets were developing an atomic weapon of their own. The conference at Potsdam had two purposes. The three leaders issued an ultimatum to Japan in which they warned them to surrender unconditionally or be destroyed. Additionally, the conference divided up Europe by recognizing Soviet control of eastern Europe, dividing Germany, and further dividing Berlin. Truman returned to the United States and focused on the war with Japan. Japan refused a demand for unconditional surrender. Truman went forward with his plan to drop the atomic bombs. On August 6, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a Japanese industrial center, completely destroying the city and killing an estimated 70,000 people. Three days later, the U. S. dropped a second bomb, destroying the city of Nagasaki and killing another 39,000 Japanese citizens. Finally, on August 14, Japan surrendered. Circumstances, however, allowed Truman little time for celebration. Communists controlled Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and East Germany and the President's advisors made it clear that the Soviets would keep expanding their influence -- by force, if necessary. In early 1946, tensions over the Soviet presence in Iran neared the boiling point. Truman, convinced that the Soviets planned to use oil-rich Iran as the staging area for an expansion into the Mediterranean, asked the newly formed United Nations to intervene. "Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making," Truman wrote. "I'm tired [of] babying the Soviets." He sent the U. S. S. Missouri to the eastern Mediterranean, delivering a clear message that he would oppose Soviet aggression in the region. Still, the Soviets lingered. On March 12, 1947, Truman addressed Congress to request $400 million in emergency aid for Turkey and Greece, which faced internal and external communist threats. In his speech, the president stated "I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." Congress agreed with the president and overwhelmingly approved the aid. The policy came to be known as the Truman Doctrine. Now, Truman turned to Western Europe. Two years after the war's end, Europe's democracies lay in ruins. Mass starvation -- and the potential for a Soviet-led communist revolution -- threatened. In June 1947, using his new secretary of state, George C. Marshall, as pitchman, Truman proposed that the United States and Western Europe cooperate in creating the a $13 billion U. S. aid package that would help democracy rebuild.

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Hungary's shift to communism in May boosted the plan's fortunes, as did the idea that the Europeans would spend most of the money on goods made in America. Congress approved interim aid to Europe in December, and signed off on the Marshall Plan the following spring. But by then, communists were in control of Czechoslovakia. As he worked to build a defense against communism, Truman faced a crisis of conscience in the Middle East. Jews who had fled to Palestine to escape the Holocaust now demanded a Jewish state. Truman sympathized, but he knew that the formation of Israel would result in an immediate attack by Arab states that could threaten much of the world's oil supply. Jewish Americans lobbied Truman to create a safe haven in the Middle East; the president's former business partner, Edward Jacobson, petitioned Truman in person. When Israel declared statehood on May 14, 1948, Truman recognized it immediately. Meanwhile, in Germany, Stalin tried a risky gamble. On June 18, 1948, communist forces responded to economic help to West Germany by cutting off land access to West Berlin, isolating the democratic city within communist East Germany. Truman responded quickly with a massive airlift of supplies to the beleaguered Germans. The Berlin airlift lasted nearly a year, and the Soviets eventually backed down. In July 1949, Truman further solidified Europe by joining Western nations in a mutual defense pact known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. But the move was offset by two shocking developments later that year: The communist victory in China, and the successful testing of a Soviet atomic bomb. The Russians and the Chinese formed a mutual defense alliance in early 1950. In mid-June of that year, war broke out in Korea. Since the end of World War II, Korea had been divided into two nations, Soviet-backed North Korea and American-backed South Korea. On June 24, 1950, North Korea attacked its southern neighbor in an attempt to unify Korea under communism. Truman rose to the challenge, immediately sending weapons to South Korea and ordering American planes to bomb the North. When it appeared that South Korea would crumble, Truman asked the United Nations to form a U. S.-led intervention force. Fearful that the conflict would precipitate atomic holocaust, Truman hoped for a rapid victory. It did not come. The combat-hardened North Koreans overwhelmed the inexperienced U. S. troops, and by the end of July, 4,000 Americans were dead. Truman then approved a bold invasion plan prepared by General Douglas MacArthur. The invasion succeeded. North Korea retreated above the 38th parallel, and it seemed the war was won. But at that point, Harry Truman made one of the most costly foreign policy decisions of his presidency. Communist China had promised it would enter the war if UN troops pushed beyond the 38th parallel. But a confident Truman nevertheless allowed MacArthur to move above the 38th parallel and towards China's border. In November, 250,000 Chinese soldiers crossed the North Korean border, and overwhelmed the U.N. force.

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MacArthur requested permission to use nuclear weapons and to attack the Chinese mainland. Truman refused, and the Chinese advance continued. The president's popularity nose-dived, especially after he fired MacArthur. Americans had grown tired of war. But soon, the tide began to turn. By March 1951, the Americans had pushed the Chinese and the North Koreans back to areas above the 38th parallel. Peace talks began in July. When a weary Harry Truman left office in January 1953, peace had still not been achieved. From the time he entered the White House until the time he left it, Harry S. Truman was engaged in a constant war. He fought diplomatically, financially, and militarily. When he left the presidency, the lines of the Cold War were firmly drawn, and the apparatus for fighting that war, atomic weapons, international spy agencies, and growing defense budgets, were well established. Websites Used: http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com/library/searches/searchdisplay.aspx?entryid=300375&t=atomic+bomb&nav=non http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/HIS122NotesP2.html http://history.sandiego.edu/ gen/WW2Timeline/potsdam.html http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/atomic/atomic-photocredits.html

http://www.worldhistory.abc-clio.com/library/searches/searchdisplay.aspx?entryid=3003&fulltext=potsdam&nav=non http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com/library/searches/searchdisplay.aspx?countryid=undefined&relateddisplay=true&nav=non&fulltext=manhattan%20project&entryid=248001 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/sfeature/sf_foreign.html http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/BERLIN_A/BAPIC_27.HTM http://maps101.com/Application/Catalog/Product.aspx?cid=30&pid=689

Battle of Okinawa Questions / Tasks: 11. How was Okinawa a litmus test for the invasion of the main Japanese islands? (Look up litmus

test – it’s the non-science definition.) 12. Describe the battle on the southern end of the island. 13. What does the reading describe resistance as fanatical? 14. What is the link between the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Battle of Okinawa? Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, which form the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. In the spring of 1945, it was the site of the largest and final confrontation between the United States and Japanese imperial forces during World War II. The Americans hoped to capture the island so it could be used to stage raids against the Japanese mainland. In addition, since the islanders on Okinawa had come under Japanese authority at the turn of the 20th century, their reaction to Americans going ashore would provide some indication of what landings on the main Japanese islands might be like. If the civilians resisted with the same tenacity that the Japanese soldiers had shown throughout the war, Americans would know that capturing Japan would cost vast numbers of lives. After a month long aerial and naval bombardment, Gen. Simon B. Buckner and his 180,000 soldiers and marines began landing on the western shore of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. Those forces were pitted against 130,000 defending troops under Japanese general Ushijima Mitsuru, the bulk of whom were entrenched in the island's southern quarter, where the rugged terrain and commanding position of Shuri Castle provided excellent defensive positions. The northern three-

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fourths of the island was lightly defended, primarily by the Okinawan civilians, and was in U.S. hands in less than three weeks. At the southern end of the island, the battle became agonizingly slow, and huge numbers of soldiers died for gains of mere yards. The Japanese, having dug into caves and bunkers, ambushed every U.S. force, and well-placed artillery made tanks almost useless. U.S. soldiers had to dig out the Japanese position by position, usually using flamethrowers or explosive satchel charges. Many Japanese died that way or killed themselves, but for the first time in the war, a fairly large number of Japanese surrendered. Off shore, Japanese resistance was fanatical and included kamikaze attacks by aircraft and boats on U.S. naval vessels. The aerial attack was most effective, with the U.S. navy losing 33 ships sunk and more than 350 damaged. The largest Japanese battleship, the Yamato, sailed on a suicide mission but was destroyed by torpedo planes before it could get into range of the U.S. fleet. After three months of severe fighting, the Americans finally prevailed on June 21, 1945 at a cost of 13,000 dead and 37,000 wounded. Approximately one-third of the island's population died (some 150,000 people), and the entire Japanese garrison was wiped out. The tenacity of the Japanese forces convinced President Harry Truman to drop the atomic bomb on Japan rather than invade and suffer potentially horrendous losses. Battle of Okinawa. (2015). In American History. Retrieved May 16, 2005, from http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/ Directions: For the next three articles, underline the reasons that the United States should have dropped the atomic bombs in August, 1945. Highlight the reasons against dropping the bombs. (You may choose how you differentiate, but make sure they are clear.)

Hiroshima arguments rage 60 years on

On the 60th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, new questions are being asked about whether it was necessary to drop the atomic bomb - and whether the bomb was really responsible for the Japanese surrender. Historians will never fully agree on the answers. And the children born of fathers who might otherwise have been sent to invade Japan in 1945 often wonder if they should not be grateful that the bomb was used, first on Hiroshima on 6 August and then against Nagasaki.

Churchill likened the explosions at the time to the "Second Coming in wrath". US President Harry Truman also recognised their significance. When he was told of the successful test of the atomic bomb - and then took the decision to use it with no warning - he wrote in his diary: "We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark."

The opinions of mankind since then continue to be divided as to why the decision was taken. The orthodox view is that Truman dropped the bomb because the only real alternative was an

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invasion of Japan. A continuation of the fire-bombing campaign would not, it was held, bring about a Japanese capitulation because the Japanese army was ready to fight to the end. Foremost in Truman's mind was the prospect of huge American losses.

Truman wrote: "I asked General Marshall what it would cost in lives to land on the Tokyo plain and other places in Japan. It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost at a minimum a quarter of a million American casualties."

In his biography of Truman, David McCullough says that plans for an invasion were real. "Nor, it must be stressed, was there anything hypothetical about preparations for the invasion - on both sides - a point sometimes overlooked in later years," he wrote. "Truman had earlier authorised the Chiefs of Staff to move more than one million troops for a final attack on Japan. Japan had some 2.5 million regular troops on the home islands."

But was enough done to try to negotiate a Japanese surrender? The Allied position was that Japan had to surrender unconditionally, as Germany had.

A former US ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph Grew, recommended that it should be made clear to the Japanese that they could still keep their emperor. This, he felt, would enable negotiations to proceed and maybe even succeed. But the furthest the Allies went, in a declaration issued at Potsdam, was to offer the Japanese people the right to choose their government. This implied that the emperor could remain, but the language did not state this specifically, and simply said Japan must have "a peacefully inclined and responsible government".

The declaration was ignored by the Japanese government, which was itself divided. Even the supporters of negotiations could not agree on the terms and the hardliners kept on adding more demands. Now, a new book offers the most radical re-interpretation of these events. In Racing the Enemy, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, professor of history and director of the Center for Cold War Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, blames both Stalin and Truman for not doing more to negotiate a surrender.

He also claims that it was the Soviet entry into the war against Japan, just after Hiroshima, which really worried the Japanese and which made them give up. Mr Hasegawa says that Stalin rejected peace feelers put out by Japan because he was determined to win spoils from joining the war. And, he suggests, the Americans ignored the feelers - which they knew about from breaking Japanese codes - because they did not like them.

Truman refused to modify the "unconditional surrender" demand because he wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor, courted popularity at home and needed to demonstrate strategic power. Thus, Mr Hasegawa claims, opportunities were lost. The myth that it was only the atom bomb which could have ended the war was invented in order to assuage "Truman's conscience and ease the collective American conscience". Mr Hasegawa argues that the hard-line Japanese leaders were not overly concerned about the destruction caused by the atom bombs since American conventional bombers could cause the same - and indeed worse - damage anyway. War Minister Korechika Anami

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contemplated defeat with equanimity and compared the potential destruction of Japan to the withering of a flower.

What alarmed the Japanese, Mr Hasegawa says, was the Red Army. According to this theory, Japan gave up because it could not accept that Soviet troops might take part in an invasion and occupy part of the homeland, given the history of conflict with Russia in the past.

This interpretation goes against the version as expressed, for example, by American historian Richard B Frank in his 1999 book, Downfall. Mr Frank concluded: "It is fantasy, not history, to believe that the end of the war was at hand before the use of the atomic bomb."

He examined the effort by the Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to open a negotiation with Moscow. This, he pointed out, was so feeble and uncertain that it was even scorned by Japan's ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato. Sato wrote a scathing series of telegrams to his superiors highlighting the empty nature of the Japanese offer. The Americans knew how empty all this was from reading the exchanges between Togo and Sato.

As for the potential impact of an offer to retain the emperor, Mr Frank argues, Foreign Minister Togo himself told Ambassador Sato that an interpretation of surrender terms to include such an assurance would not be enough. Indeed, ministers like Anami were adding conditions to the end, including a refusal to have Japan occupied at all.

Mr Hasegawa's view that it was the Russians, not the bomb, that forced the surrender is also unlikely to be accepted by the traditionalists. This is because, while it is true that the bombs did not persuade Anami and his cohorts to give up arguing for resistance, they did lead to the crucial intervention of Emperor Hirohito. He mentioned them in his decisive address to his Cabinet, so they certainly had an effect on him. And it was that address that brought even Anami to heel, though the war minister contemplated a coup and duly killed himself soon afterwards.

The arguments will go on. At a conference organised by Greenpeace in London to mark the 60th anniversary, Professor Mark Selden of Binghamton University in New York argued that strategic considerations lay behind Truman's decision.

"There was a belief that dropping the bomb could accelerate the end of the war in ways that would greatly strengthen the American strategic position in Asia," he said. "This was in fact a race with the Russians. The bomb was to announce to the world American superiority. It would also stop any Russian advance against Japan and create a situation, as happened, in which the US would dominate the occupation of Japan."

David McCullough argues for a more down-to-earth interpretation of Truman's motives. "How could a president, or the others charged with responsibility for the decision, answer to the American people if... after the bloodbath of an invasion of Japan, it became known that a weapon sufficient to end the war had been available by midsummer and was not used?" BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Hiroshima arguments rage 60 years on. (2005, August 3). Retrieved May 1, 2006, from

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4724793.stm

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The Case Against the Atomic Bombing

Critics of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings say that it is barbaric and a crime against humanity to target civilians with such a devastating weapon. They note that 95% of the people who were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were civilians. According to Japanese estimates in the wake of the bombing, some 75% of those immediately killed died as a result of burns, either from "flash burns" caused by the heat of the blast or from burns from fires sparked by the blast. Many more died later from effects of the radiation, including radiation sickness (also called acute radiation syndrome) and cancer.

"My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages," Admiral William Leahy, Truman's chief of staff, said. "I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Some argued that the U.S. could have achieved the same result by dropping the bomb on less-populated areas, demonstrating its power without the loss of life.

Critics also accuse the U.S. of having a double standard— its government, they say, would have condemned as immoral the use of an atomic bomb by any adversary. "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them," said Leo Szilard, a scientist who played a major role in the creation of the atomic bomb but who was a vocal critic of using atomic bombs against Japan.

Many critics also say that the bombings were not necessary. They point out that by 1945, Japan was already militarily devastated, and was putting up token resistance by midyear. "In April we knew they were beginning to try to surrender. They were already defeated in every sense. We were bombing their cities without any opposition. The Japanese were making airplane gasoline out of acorns. So we knew that they were on their last legs," says historian Gar Alperovitz. General Dwight Eisenhower, who succeeded Truman as president, held a similar view. "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing," he said in a 1963 interview with Newsweek.

Opponents also point to a 1946 report by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, requested by Truman to study the damage done by U.S. air attacks. The report stated that Japan had made the decision to end the war much earlier in the year. The survey concluded:

It cannot be said...that the atomic bomb convinced the leaders who effected the peace of the necessity to surrender. The decision to seek ways and means to terminate the war, influenced in part by the knowledge of the low state of popular morale, had been taken in May 1945 by the Supreme War Guidance Council. Like supporters of the bombings, critics

point to decoded communiques to bolster their arguments. They say the decoded messages showed that as early as April and May 1945, Japan was in the process of going through a neutral mediator to make peace overtures, and argue that the U.S. should have given those efforts a chance to succeed. They also point out

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that in the months leading up to the bombings, Japan was trying to get the Soviet Union—which, before entering the war against Japan, had maintained a neutral stance with that country—to participate in peace negotiations.Even the Emperor supported peace at any price, critics of the bombing contend. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers. We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war," Hirohito said at a June 22 meeting of the Supreme War Council.

And even if Japan were not on the verge of surrendering, critics say, there were other means to bring an end to the war. Some argued for the planned mass invasion of the Japanese home islands to proceed. Others argued in favor of continuing the naval blockade, "Operation Starvation," and disrupting supply lines. "The effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines and other essential materials," said Admiral. Ernest King, U.S. chief of naval operations.

Some critics argued for continued conventional air raids. They said that the air raids, more than any other military tactic, had devastated Japan. Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, points out that on March 9-10, 1945, 300 B-29s bombed Tokyo, killing 100,000 people and burning 16 square miles of the city; further raids by U.S. B-29s later in May obliterated 56 square miles of Tokyo (one half the total area of the city). Former Japanese Premier Fumimaro Konoye noted, "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Others say that it was the entry of the Soviet Union, which had the largest army in the world, into the war against Japan—not the atomic bombings—that finally convinced Japan that they could not win. "Japanese die-hards...had acknowledged since 1941 that Japan could not fight Russia as well as the United States and Britain," historian Ernest May wrote in a 1995 article in Pacific Historical Review.

Yet other critics say that Japan would have readily surrendered if the allies had only agreed that the emperor would remain on the throne, which is what was agreed to in the end anyway, they note. Former U.S. President Herbert Hoover (1929-33) suggested to Truman, "I am convinced that if you, as president, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan—tell them they can have their emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists—you'll get a peace in Japan—you'll have both wars over."

Other critics were concerned with the ramifications of using an atomic bomb in battle. Szilard warned that dropping the bomb would spark an arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Szilard said he was concerned "that by demonstrating the bomb and using it in the war against Japan, we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries."

Finally, some accuse the U.S. of ulterior motives in dropping the bomb. Some cite revenge for the Pearl Harbor attack, while others claim racism against the Japanese. Yet others say it was done for political reasons; either to justify the $2 billion ($20 billion in 1990 dollars) spent on the project to develop the bomb, or as the only way to obtain Japan's unconditional surrender, because the political cost of accepting anything less was too high. http://www.2facts.com/icah_story.aspx?PIN=haa00001010&term=Atomic+Bombing+of+Hiroshima+and+Nagasaki

The Case for the Atomic Bombing

Supporters portray the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as a necessary means of ending the war with the fewest American lives lost. By shocking and demoralizing the Japanese troops

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and government through use of the bomb, they reason, the U.S. brought about a quicker surrender than would have occurred through conventional warfare. "Having found the bomb, we have used it. We have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans," Truman stated after the Hiroshima bombing. Indeed, upon hearing about Hiroshima, 2nd Lt. Paul Fussell, a 21-year-old who had been serving in France at the time and was anticipating being sent to Japan for final invasion, remarked, "We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all." Fussell later became a well-known author.

Supporters at the time estimated that ending the war through the use of the atomic bomb would save thousands--perhaps even hundreds of thousands--of American lives by eliminating the need for a large-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland. Truman's military planners estimated that as many as 50,000 U.S. troops would be killed and more than 100,000 wounded in the first 30 days of such an invasion, with the total number of American deaths possibly surpassing 100,000. Truman later put that estimate at half a million troops, while Churchill said the lives of one million troops had been saved.

But it was not just the lives of U.S. soldiers that were spared, proponents note. They contend that the Japanese civilian death toll would also have been higher if Truman had instead decided to continue with the conventional bombing of Japanese cities and/or a naval blockade, which was causing starvation. They say that it also brought quicker liberation to people being held by Japan in concentration camps, including hundreds of thousands of Westerners.

Saving lives was not the only reason the U.S. needed to bring the war to a quick conclusion, some supporters say. They contend that it was important to end the war to prevent the Soviets from expanding their influence in the region. The Soviet Union was developing a growing sphere of influence, and some worried that, through entering the war against Japan and having a say in the partitioning of the defeated territories, the Soviets could gain a large foothold in the region. "I was not willing to hand over to the Russians the fruits of a long and bitter and courageous fight, a fight in which they had not participated," Truman wrote in his diary. Using the atomic bomb ended that threat, and also served as a show of U.S. strength to the Soviet Union, supporters assert.

Supporters also dispute assertions that Japan was close to surrendering. In fact, they say, the indications were that Japan was preparing to fight to the end. They refer to fierce Japanese resistance at Okinawa just weeks before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. They also point to statements by Japanese militarists in power that Japan would fight to the last man. For instance, Kantaro Suzuki, who was appointed premier in 1945, stated that his government intended to "fight to the very end...even if it meant the deaths of one hundred million Japanese."

Furthermore, proponents assert, despite being on the verge of defeat, Japan refused to accept unconditional surrender because that would entail the removal of the emperor from his throne, overturning centuries of tradition. At Potsdam, the Allies had made clear that they would accept no less than unconditional surrender, proponents note.

Supporters point to intercepted and decoded diplomatic and military communiques to show that Japan would not have accepted unconditional surrender. They say that in one such communique, Japan's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, wrote to Soviet foreign affairs commissar Vyacheslav M. Molotov, "The Pacific War is a matter of life and death for Japan, and as a result of America's attitude, we have no choice but to continue the fight....It has now become clearly impossible for Japan to submit. Japan is fighting for her very existence and must continue to fight."

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Some critics of the bombing also point to the communiques to support their arguments, claiming that they show evidence of peace overtures. But despite some communiques showing such overtures by civilian leaders, supporters note, any peace agreement had to be approved by the Japanese cabinet, which was filled with militarists who categorically rejected unconditional surrender. Richard Frank, a World War II historian, notes that while the messages showed Japanese officials making peace overtures, "not a single one of these men...possessed actual authority to act for the Japanese government."

Supporters of the use of the atomic bombs also note that the decoded military communiques showed an increased buildup on Kyushu, the site of the allied invasion planned for November. The buildup proves that despite being on the verge of defeat, Japan would continue to put up fierce resistance, which would have resulted in the loss of many American lives, they argue. The prospect of heavy resistance at Kyushu also made the invasion option untenable, proponents of the atomic bombing say.

Some people, including some Japanese, have suggested that the bombings helped bring about the end of the war by giving the Japanese a way to surrender unconditionally without losing face. The Japanese government could tell the people that Japan simply could not defeat an enemy with nuclear weapons, they note. Hisatsune Sakomizu, Japan's chief cabinet secretary in 1945, called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war."

Others point out that, compared with other damage done during the war, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were not so devastating. They note that 600,000 Germans and 200,000 Japanese had been killed in Allied air raids prior to Hiroshima.

Furthermore, some proponents contend, the U.S. did not target "civilians" with the bombs, as critics claim. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, they assert, because of bases and military factories located there. They also note that Japan fought a "total war," in which everyone in Japan was involved in the war effort, whether fighting or working in factories and military facilities. "It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians," wrote Father John Siemes, a philosophy professor at Tokyo Catholic University, in his personal account of the Hiroshima bombing.

Overall, supporters say, deadly though it was, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the best possible option. Theodore Van Kirk, navigator on the Enola Gay during the Hiroshima mission, addressed the question of how he felt about his role in the bombing in a 2005 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. "I'm not proud of all the deaths it caused, and nobody is," he said. "But how do you win a war without killing people?" http://www.2facts.com/icah_story.aspx?PIN=haa00001010&term=Atomic+Bombing+of+Hiroshima+and+Nagasaki