Harry S. Truman Wrong Decisions

President Harry S. Truman faced one of the most difficult decisions in history after succeeding President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he suddenly passed on April 12, 1945. Even though the Allies had won the war by the end of April when Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, the US was still engaged in the war in the Pacific. After General Douglas MacArthur led a fierce and victorious campaign of island-hopping through the Pacific up to the islands of Iwojima and Okinawa, the ultimate decision of whether to invade Japan or utilize the newly created atomic bombs to end the war was presented to Truman. Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs was the right choice as it ended the war immediately without

The bombs were dropped only three days apart without further hesitation of using Fat Man as the US only had two atomic bombs available and had to deceive Japan into believing they had a large stockpile available at their disposal. The total death count of 200,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were enough to cause Emperor Hirohito to announce a cease-fire and surrender to the US on August 15, 1945. In his Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, Hirohito discussed how the atomic bomb forced him to surrender out of concern for the security of humanity: "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization" (Wikipedia). It was apparent that Japan was unwilling to surrender even after 65 cities had been obliterated by incendiary carpet

She was among the hundreds of thousands of Japanese that looked to the Americans as savages who brought innocent civilians into the war. Despite having obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the necessary action for the US in order to end the war. The Japanese initiated the war with the US on December 7, 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor. At a press conference in 1975 in Tokyo, Hirohito responded to questioning about Hiroshima by stating, "It's very regrettable that nuclear bombs were dropped and I feel sorry for the citizens of Hiroshima, but it couldn't be helped because that happened in wartime" (Wikipedia). All laws and precedents of war had been broken by every country in World War II already. The carpet bombing of residential and metropolitan locations, the 30 million deaths in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the Holocaust, and the other horrific casualties of the war were no more justified than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the end, the means of death were more atrocious, but the number of causalities was dwarfed in comparison to casualties suffered in Europe and the Soviet