re: #253 HappyWarrior

I really don’t envy Truman for the position he was in at all. I think an invasion would have been much worse not just for the American serviceman but also for the Japanese civilian.

It would have been difficult for Truman to make the decision NOT to use the bomb. Given the rudimentary knowledge of radiological effects, especially in the long term, it did not seem fundamentally different from the mass fire bombings that had been US policy in the Pacific War since the preceding March. As far as Truman and the leadership knew, the atomic bomb was just a more efficient means of achieving the same result. Casualties were in fact lower than in the Tokyo fire-bombing of March 9-10, 1945.

Six years of “total war” had brutalized the entire world.