Truman Vs American Atomic Bomb

It is no doubt that politics evolve, as do the political leaders of our world and their individual viewpoints. Particularly their viewpoints on major global topics like use of the atomic bomb, and all other weapons of mass destruction. Out of all of the difficult decisions presidents are required to make, President Bush and President Truman had two of the hardest and handled them both in inevitably controversial ways, however these decisions shared both similarities and differences that affected the opinions on the use of all mass destruction weapons. In 1945 to 1953 Harry S Truman was president of the United States. During his first days as president he was forced to make the difficult decision on whether or not to drop America’s atomic bombs

was going to war with Iraq because of the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism and President Truman dropped two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both President Truman and President Bush had to organize decision making processes to determine the fate of their actions. Truman quickly realized Russian scientists and perhaps the Germans and others may be in the race of developing their own type of atomic weapon, so he knew he had to act fast. With the help of his administration, the effects and statistics of bombing the Japanese were made apparent. Truman was influenced by the sole fact that one atomic bomb on an arsenal would not be much different from the effect caused by any Air Corps strikes. Secretary of State, Joseph Grew, was also responsible for influencing President Truman to drop the atomic bomb. He stated “without a military occupation of Japan, it is only under military government that conditions might be created favorable to the generation of those forces which, in the light of experience elsewhere,

In the late 40’s and early 50’s scientists had a fair idea of the power the atomic bomb, particularly after the Trinity test. As far as the Little Boy weapon they didn’t have any more than a rough estimate of the explosive yield. They knew it would be in the area of about 20 kilotons but that was about it. Today, modern nuclear weapons, such as the United States' B83 bombs, use a similar fission process to what was used in the 1950’s atomic bombs, but they are immensely more powerful and there is way more knowledge about the effects on the ecosystem and radiation effects. As a result, of the what we know about the bombs, opinions have altered and today atomic bombs are to be used in an absolutely critical situation and as a last result