The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age

President Truman only received partial and misleading information ahead of the atomic bombing of Japan, according to this sensational account from historian Wellerstein (Restricted Data). Truman believed that the target would be a purely military one, Wellerstein provocatively argues, pointing out that Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes on his briefings with the president never indicate that he informed Truman civilians would be killed, and that a “sample” bombing announcement given to Truman named “Nagasaki Naval Base” as the target, which he would not have realized was a city. As Wellerstein points out, Nagasaki was not actually being considered at this time—instead, Gen. Leslie Groves was pushing for Kyoto, and Stimson was defending it because he’d honeymooned there. Wellerstein highlights how strange it is that behind-the-scenes wrangling over destroying a major city was happening even as Truman was hearing about a “naval base.” Moreover, a journal entry of Truman’s from this period unequivocally states that military personnel would be targeted; he continued asserting that no civilians had been killed up until reports of the Hiroshima death toll began to break, Wellerstein notes. Most shockingly, the author posits that Truman was so uninformed that he “almost certainly had no clue that another atomic bomb was about to be dropped.” It’s a remarkable act of reading between the lines and a dark warning about how decisions unfold in the halls of power. (Dec.)