Overview On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima (“Harry S Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”). A second atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, ending World War II (“Harry S Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb”). This decision made by President Harry S. Truman has been widely discussed and is viewed as controversial because of the death toll and whether or not the usage of nuclear weapons was necessary. Narrative The year was 1945. President Harry S. Truman hears of the success of the Manhattan Project, the code name for the American effort to design and build an atomic bomb (“The Manhattan Project”). Though the project is successful, Truman is not at all joyous. He knows of the capacity of the decision he was to soon to make. The capability of ending war with Japan was in his grasp, but achieving it would involve the usage of the most terrible weapon ever known to man (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”). …show more content…
For him, the choice whether or not to use his atomic weapon, he felt, would be the most difficult one of his life. He decided to send an Allied demand to the Japanese calling for an unconditional surrender. He saw to it that though it read that refusal would result in total destruction, it did not mention anything about the possession of any weapons of mass destruction (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”). Soon after, he got word that the Japanese had rejected the United States’ unconditional surrender. However, some still felt that a conditional surrender was