The code of bushido - “the way of the warrior” - was deeply ingrained.
Bushido and KamikazeĪs Japan’s desperation worsened, the ferocity of the fighting intensified. US and Allied forces prepared for a difficult and costly invasion of the Japanese islands. Nevertheless, the war threatened to drag on into 1946. The US Navy and the Army Air Forces had cut off Japan’s supply lines. B-29s from Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were striking the Japanese homeland regularly, systematically destroying the industrial cities on Honshu and Kyushu. In 1945, the war had finally come home to Japan. The eventual military outcome of the Pacific war had been effectively sealed since the US took the Marianas in 1944, but the Japanese refused to accept defeat. The war ended in Europe on V-E Day, May 9, but Japan fought on. In the Pacific, the toll from each successive battle rose higher. When Truman became President in April 1945, US casualties were averaging more than 900 a day. It consumed the nation’s energies and resources to an extent never experienced before or since. World War II would eventually cost the United States more than a million casualties. To understand the decision, it is necessary to examine the circumstances and the options as Truman saw them in the summer of 1945. For the next fifty years, however, Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb would be questioned again and again, and the retroactive judgment would often be harsh. The unconditional surrender of Japan followed on August 15. Another B-29, Bockscar, dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki August 9. On Truman’s orders, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima August 6. He regarded the atomic bomb as a weapon - an awe-some one, to be sure - but still a weapon to be used.
The question before him was how to end the war and save lives. Truman said later that he had no great difficulty in reaching the decision.
Once it was proved to work, Truman would consult with allies and advisors, but the decision on whether to use it would be his. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, briefed President Truman in detail on the secret of the atomic bomb. Twelve days later, on April 25, 1945, Stimson and Maj. Stimson had spoken to him briefly and told him that the United States was working on a weapon of extraordinary power. On the day he assumed the presidency at the death of Franklin D. As Vice President, Harry Truman had not known about the development of the atomic bomb.