TRUMAN’S CAR PULLED UP to the White House South Gate a few minutes past 11 p.m. on August 7. Waiting for him outside in the night was a small group of staffers: Matt Connelly, Eben Ayers, and Bill Hassett. “The president stepped out,” recalled Ayers, “looking fit and somewhat tanned from the ship voyage.” Truman pumped handshakes, then headed into the White House, where cabinet officials—the new faces of the Truman administration—were waiting to greet him in the Diplomatic Reception Room. The new Treasury secretary, Fred Vinson, was there, along with the new attorney general, Tom Clark, the new secretary of labor, Lewis Schwellenbach, and others. The president was exhausted—the trip had lasted exactly one month and one day almost to the minute—and he desired a cocktail.
“Come on up to the room,” he said.
The group followed him to his second-floor study. Truman spotted his piano. He sat down and played a few bars, then he dialed Mrs. Truman to let her know he had gotten home safely (she was leaving Independence to return to Washington the following day). By this time, the drinks were poured.
Staffers and cabinet men were intensely curious about the Russians, and Truman regaled them with stories of Stalin’s giant limousine and Molotov’s distemper. Someone asked how much drinking had gone on at Potsdam, and Truman wove tales of the epic procession of toasts, particularly at the Russian dinner. Churchill consumed the most alcohol, but there was no excessive drinking, Truman assured everyone.
During the whole of this conversation that night in the White House, the bomb never came up, as the subject was so raw, it seemed inappropriate in this relaxed state to touch upon it. Recalled Ayers many years later: “Now, that may seem strange—it does to me now—but I don’t think anybody mentioned it.”
Finishing his drink, Truman came to the following conclusion regarding Potsdam: he was happy to be home, and he would be just fine, he told his audience, if he never stepped foot in Europe again.
///
After weeks of inactivity, the West Wing came alive the next morning, August 8. At Truman’s 9 a.m. staff meeting, Charlie Ross handed out boxes of Russian cigarettes. The smokes were curious-looking filterless cardboard tubes with a small bit of tobacco wrapped in paper at the end. Now the bomb dominated the discussion. Truman knew that public relations would be key to how the world responded to Hiroshima, and he felt that the pope should be contacted. He had no idea how to get ahold of the Vatican, nor did anyone else present. After the staff meeting, Stimson arrived at the president’s office with aerial photographs of Hiroshima, along with further reports of the bomb’s wrath.
From the pictures, Hiroshima was unrecognizable as a city. As Stimson recalled in his diary on this day: “[Truman] mentioned the terrible responsibility that such destruction placed upon us here and himself.”
As for Japan, it was imperative that the situation be handled just the right way, Stimson said. “When you punish your dog you don’t keep souring on him all day after the punishment is over,” he said. “If you want to keep his affection, punishment takes care of itself.” It was the same with Japan, Stimson figured. “They naturally are a smiling people and we have to get on those terms with them.” Easier said than done, both men agreed.
Meanwhile the story of the atomic bomb was just beginning to transfix the world. Over four square miles of Hiroshima was gone, from a single blast. The flash of the bomb was seen 170 miles from ground zero. Aerial photos appeared in newspapers, as did the first reports from within Japan. Tokyo radio reported that “practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure.” Crewmen aboard the Enola Gay gave their first interviews.
“The crew said, ‘My God,’ and couldn’t believe what had happened,” said weaponeer William Parsons. “A mountain of smoke was going up in a mushroom with the stem coming down. At the top was white smoke but up to 1,000 feet from the ground there was swirling, boiling dust.” General Carl Spaatz, one of the army air forces’ top officials, called the atomic bomb “the most revolutionary development in the history of the world.”
Soon after Stimson’s departure from Truman’s office on the morning of August 8, the president received word from the Moscow embassy that, as of this day, the Russians considered themselves at war with Japan. The Red Army was set to push across the borders of Manchuria. Truman contacted Charlie Ross, who called reporters in from the press gallery for a quick conference. Newspapermen crowded into the Oval Office at 3 p.m., and Leahy and Byrnes also attended.
Someone shouted, “Welcome home!”
“I am glad to be here,” Truman said. “The finest place in the world, the United States is!” He smiled for pictures, then said, “Is everybody here?”
“I think they’re all in, Mr. President,” said Ross. “Yes, they’re all in.”
“I have only a simple announcement to make,” Truman said. “I can’t hold a regular press conference today; but this announcement is so important I thought I would call you in.” He paused, then said with great emphasis, “Russia has declared war on Japan! That is all!”
The newsmen roared and applauded, then pushed out through the narrow doors as fast as they could.
Truman spent the afternoon catching up. He signed the United Nations Charter on August 8. (On this same day, the Allies signed the London Agreement, which officially set the stage for the war crimes trials at Nuremberg.) He had been gone a long time, and with Bess also absent from the White House, he had bills stacked up on his desk, many for White House groceries. He sat at his desk writing out no fewer than a dozen checks from a special White House account he had opened at Hamilton National Bank. He owed the Metropolitan Poultry Company $5.03, and the General Baking Company $1.44. As he signed these checks, he had no idea that a new attack wave of B-29s was gunning for Japan on this day, with a second atomic bomb.
///
Soviet forces reported at a million strong charged into Japanese-occupied Manchuria on August 8. Ambassador Harriman cabled to inform Truman that he had met with Stalin and Molotov regarding the details. Harriman also informed Truman that he had discussed the bomb with Stalin. The Soviet dictator admitted that his country had already been working on an atomic weapon, but “had not been able to solve” the conundrum of splitting atoms yet. The Soviets did not have a bomb, but it was only a matter of time.
Stalin made his intentions in the Far East all too clear: he was interested in “war trophies.” Harriman reported directly to Truman: “[Stalin] indicated that some of the Japanese properties, including the shares of some Japanese enterprises, should be considered as Soviet war trophies in areas occupied by the Red Army.” Stalin was going to take possession of everything he could.
Truman had already made up his mind: under no condition would he allow the Soviets to occupy any piece of Japan.
On the day the Soviets attacked Japanese strongholds in Manchuria, another wave of B-29 Superfortresses pounded targets on Japan’s mainland. More B-29s flew over Japanese cities dropping leaflets, which rained down on terrified civilian populations. This paper read in part, “America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet. We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man . . . We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland.” It asked Japanese citizens to “petition the Emperor to end the war.”
Before sunrise in the South Pacific on August 9 (it was still August 8 in Washington), a task force of B-29s took flight to deliver the Fat Man bomb on Japan. Truman was aware that a second bomb would be employed, but he gave no direct order for this mission. There was no button pushed, no paper trail that connects the president directly to Fat Man. William L. Laurence of the New York Times was embedded with a crew on this mission.
“We are on our way to bomb the mainland of Japan,” he wrote while aboard one of the B-29s that morning.
The weapon was loaded in the belly of Bockscar, a Superfortress named after the ship’s pilot, Captain Frederick C. Bock of Greenville, Michigan. (Bock did not actually fly the airplane on this mission, however.) Fat Man weighed 10,800 pounds, and utilized the same gun mechanism and fissile material used in the Trinity test shot in New Mexico, so there was little doubt that it would be just as explosive. The weapon was painted mustard yellow and had signatures of members of the crew that had assembled it, along with an acronym on its steel nose: JANCFU, for “Joint Army-Navy-Civilian Fuckup.” Laurence reported: “I watched the assembly of this man-made meteor during the past two days, and was among the small group of scientists and Army and Navy representatives privileged to be present at the ritual of its loading in the Superfort last night, against a backdrop of threatening black skies torn open at intervals by great lightning flashes. It is a thing of beauty to behold, this ‘gadget.’ In its design went millions of man-hours of what is without doubt the most concentrated intellectual effort in history.”
The Bockscar made three runs over its primary target, Kokura. The citizens of that metropolis had no idea that cloud cover saved tens of thousands of their lives on this morning. The pilot—Major Charles Sweeney of North Quincy, Massachusetts—turned to the secondary target, Nagasaki, arriving over that city at minutes before 11 a.m. local time. The Bockscar was at 29,000 feet when it released the bomb. A cameraman captured the blast on film, preserving this dark moment in black-and-white celluloid. There is no sound to the footage, only imagery. The blast looks as if the earth had popped like a balloon and released a belch of smoke from deep within. The mushroom cloud is all that can be seen; there is no picture of the fury below it.
Truman later wrote of Nagasaki, “This second demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb apparently threw Tokyo into a panic, for the next morning [August 10] brought the first indication that the Japanese Empire was ready to surrender.”
///
At 7:33 a.m. on August 10 in Japan, monitors recorded the following broadcast over Radio Tokyo:
The Japanese Government today addressed the following communication to the Swiss and Swedish Governments respectively for transmission to the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union . . . The Japanese Government is ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam, July 26, 1945, by the Heads of Government of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler. The Japanese Government hopes sincerely that this understanding is warranted and desires keenly that an explicit indication to that effect will be speedily forthcoming.
By 9 a.m. in Washington, Truman had Byrnes, Leahy, Stimson, and Forrestal in his office to discuss procedure. The president went around the room and asked each man for his opinion. What the Japanese appeared to be offering was not unconditional surrender. As so many in the Truman administration had predicted, the fate of the emperor was the question that separated war from peace.
Leahy and Stimson had no compunction about allowing the emperor to remain. If anything, he would be useful in engendering peace among the citizenry. Byrnes was less sure; he believed the United States should dictate all the terms. Forrestal brought forth the wisest plan; he suggested a reply in which the Allies could accept Japan’s terms, if these terms were spelled out further so that the Potsdam terms could be clearly accomplished. In other words, the emperor could remain if he surrendered unconditionally.
Over the next hours Byrnes wrote out a reply while Truman attended to his usual, grueling list of meetings. The president sat uncomfortably through fifteen-minute sessions successively with Congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana, Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington, and Senator Joseph O’Mahoney of Wyoming. Truman had five-minute blocks scheduled each with the ambassadors of South Africa, El Salvador, Panama, and Guatemala, one after the other. Finally, at 1 p.m., Byrnes appeared with his draft of the reply, which Truman and Leahy tugged on while eating lunch.
The president was nearly a half hour late for a 2 p.m. cabinet meeting. Truman took his now usual place, with his back to the windows looking out over the White House Rose Garden. Byrnes read aloud Japan’s full statement (which by now had arrived via diplomatic channels through the Swiss legation). Then he read aloud the draft reply to the Japanese. In the middle of it, he paused. Remembered Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, who was sitting at the table: “Byrnes stopped while reading the proposal and laid special emphasis on the top dog commander over [Emperor] Hirohito being an American. They were not going to have any chance for misunderstandings as in Europe.” The United States alone would deal with the Japanese. There would be no zones of occupation, no Soviet or British control.
Still, the reply to the Japanese needed approval from Britain, China, and the USSR. Truman interjected to say that the Americans would not negotiate with the Russians on this matter. Stimson said that the Russians were likely to delay in any response to a draft reply to the Japanese, so the Red Army could push as deep into the Far East as possible before surrender was accomplished.
General Groves had communicated to the War Department on this day, saying the next bomb would be ready for delivery after August 17 or 18. But now, in the cabinet meeting, Truman said that he was ordering an end to the atomic bombing. He could not stomach the idea of wiping out another 100,000 people, of killing “all those kids,” he said to his cabinet.
As for unconditional surrender, Truman knew there was no way to please everyone. Many Americans wanted the Japanese emperor charged with war crimes and prosecuted to the fullest, as was happening with top Nazi officials. The White House mailroom was clogged with letters from citizens who hoped Truman would follow this course; they wanted to see the emperor executed. Truman had received a missive from Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, who asked that the United States continue bombing until the Japanese “beg us to accept unconditional surrender.” Russell believed “the vast majority of the American people” thought the emperor “should go,” and that “if we do not have available a sufficient number of atomic bombs with which to finish the job immediately, let us carry on with TNT and fire bombs until we can produce them.”
(To this, Truman responded: “I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless it is absolutely necessary . . . My objective is to save as many American lives as possible but I also have a humane feeling for the women and children of Japan.”)
The final draft reply to Japan went out through State Department channels that afternoon of August 10 to the embassies in London, Moscow, and Chungking. It did address the issue of the emperor, reading, in part: “From the moment of surrender, the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms . . . The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”
The reply attempted to satisfy all those Americans who demanded unconditional surrender, while allowing the Japanese the right to retain their emperor, and thus, for peace to follow.
That night, all of Washington was abuzz. “Rumors flew, switchboards jammed, reporters chain-smoked—and the hottest story in the world, the end of the war—lay tantalizingly just out of reach,” recorded one reporter. “Head-men of the government filed in and out of the White House. Hordes of jumpy reporters milled about, waiting tensely for the word that would send them to tell the world that it was all over.”
Truman went about his business. Throughout his political career, he had shown a remarkable talent to exude poise during moments of extraordinary excitement and stress—but never more than now. As one reporter noted, he was “the calmest man in town.”
///
As the world awaited news of peace, the atomic bomb loomed over the public consciousness. Citizens in every civilized country struggled to understand what the bomb was, how it worked, and what it meant for the future of humanity.
Many were insisting that these unmasked secrets of the universe were destined to change the world for the better. “The real significance [of atomic energy] does not lie in the fact that this new bomb has accomplished an almost incredible feat of destruction,” wrote Canada’s Munitions Minister C. D. Howe. The “unbelievably large amounts of energy” unlocked by atomic scientists could now be “made available for practical use.”
Others were sure that the world was coming to an end. Wrote the Reverend Robert Gannon, a religious leader and president of Fordham University, “Our savage generation cannot be trusted with [atomic science] at all. It is a triumph of research, but unfortunately it is also a superb symbol for the Age of Efficient Chaos.”
The most prevalent emotion was awe—amazement that the natural world could possess such furious powers, and that humans had figured out how to harvest them, whether for good or evil. The story of how this came about would rivet generations to come. As Truman himself said in his statement about the bomb: “We have spent more than two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and we have won.”
Clark Clifford, a White House lawyer and a rising star in the Truman administration, was in his office when he learned of the first atomic bombing. “My initial thought upon hearing the news,” he wrote, “was as simple as that of most other Americans: the war would be over sooner than we had suspected . . . I knew too little at first to suspect the larger truth: that we had entered an age in which warfare would never be the same—that, in fact, the development of nuclear weapons would turn out to be the most significant event of the century.”
On the night of August 10, one day after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and just hours after the reply to Japan had been sent out to London, Moscow, and Chungking, Prime Minister Attlee and his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, agreed to the terms set out in Byrnes’s draft to Japan, with minor adjustments. Their communiqué arrived in Washington at 9:48 p.m. Washington time. Churchill also phoned the American embassy in London to express his approval. The following morning, at 7:35, an aide brought Truman China’s reply. Chiang Kai-shek also agreed to the wording of the document. Which left only the Soviets.
Byrnes, meanwhile, received two cables from Harriman, who had met with Stalin and Molotov in the Kremlin regarding the matter. Stalin was “skeptical” of the Japanese peace feeler, since it did not meet the terms of unconditional surrender, and “the Soviet forces, therefore, were continuing their advance into Manchuria . . . [Stalin] gave me the definite impression that he was quite willing to have the war continue.” Later Harriman cabled Truman again. At 2 a.m. Moscow time, the Soviets agreed to the terms of surrender, under one condition: “The Allied Powers should reach an agreement on the candidacy or candidacies for representation of the Allied High Command to which the Japanese Emperor and the Japanese Government are to be subordinated.”
Stalin wanted a Russian general to represent his country in the surrender process, and he wanted his country to share in the occupation of Japan, even though the Soviets had been in the war for less than one week. Harriman informed Stalin that the U.S. government would never agree to such a clause. A “most heated discussion” followed, Harriman recorded, and the Soviets backed down, approving the wording of the response to Japan. On August 11, the United States sent the finalized reply to Japan through the Swiss government. Also on August 11 Truman informed the Allies that General Douglas MacArthur would be the supreme commander over Japan and alone would represent the Allies in the surrender process.
No word arrived from Tokyo the next day—August 12, which marked the four-month anniversary of Roosevelt’s death. These four months had stunned the world. The New York Times on August 12: “Victory was already assured when President Roosevelt died. Since then two of the mightiest empires of the world have collapsed. History has recorded the decline and fall of empires before, but never with such rapidity. During these four months events that once covered years, even centuries, were consummated in weeks and days . . . Surely the revolutionary changes wrought during this period are such that it is safe to say that a new era in mankind’s history is beginning.”
But what kind of world would this new era usher in? Even before Japan replied to the new surrender demands of August 11, new threats of war surfaced in the East. In China, communist forces were taking advantage of Japan’s collapse. Communist troops under Mao Tse-tung were demanding that Japanese troops surrender to them, so that they could acquire the Japanese weapons. Truman’s ambassador to China, Patrick Hurley, warned the president that, if this were allowed to occur, a “fratricidal war” in China “will thereby be made certain.” Public opinion held that “nothing short of a miracle could prevent the collapse of the government of China,” Hurley noted.
China was on the brink of civil war and communist revolution.
Meanwhile the Soviets had other territorial goals in the Far East. On August 11 a State Department official in Moscow, Edwin Pauley, sent a top-secret cable to Truman and Byrnes following troubling conversations he had engaged in with representatives of Stalin’s government. “Conclusions I have reached thru [sic] discussions . . . lead me to the belief that our forces should occupy quickly as much of the industrial areas of Korea and Manchuria as we can.” Truman concurred. The following day the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent General MacArthur orders regarding China and Korea: “The President desires that such advance arrangements as are practicable be made to occupy the Port of Dairen [in China] and a Port in Korea immediately following the surrender of Japan if those ports have not at that time been taken over by Soviet forces.”
With Japan’s military rule disintegrating, a power vacuum was forming in the Far East. Even before the Japanese surrender, the race was on for control of China and Korea.
On August 12, the four-month anniversary of Roosevelt’s death, Edward R. Murrow offered a point of view over CBS Radio regarding the war’s end: “Secular history offers few, if any, parallels to the events of the past week. And seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.”
///
At 6:10 p.m. on August 14, in his State Department office, Jimmy Byrnes received a messenger from the Swiss chargé d’affaires, who came bearing the document all the world had been waiting for: Japan’s acceptance of the surrender terms. Byrnes moved quickly to the White House to deliver the document to Truman. Bess had returned to Washington, and at seven o’clock that night, when newsmen pushed into Truman’s office to hear the announcement, she was in the room. The air felt charged with excitement. This war that had killed tens of millions of soldiers and civilians—the worst catastrophe that had ever struck the human race—was over. Certainly in the minds of all those in the Oval Office, the right side had won.
Klieg lights nearly blinded the president as he stood up from behind his desk, holding a document in his right hand. He had Byrnes and Leahy sitting on his right, and Cordell Hull—FDR’s longtime and highly respected secretary of state—sitting on his left, so that Roosevelt would have a presence in the room. Cabinet officials stood in a row directly behind Truman. Newsreel cameras were rolling as he began his statement.
“I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese Government,” Truman said. He paused to say that Charlie Ross would be handing this document out, so there was no need for reporters to be taking notes down word for word. He continued, “In reply to the message forwarded to that Government by the Secretary of State on August 11, I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.”
He went on to announce General MacArthur’s role as supreme allied commander over Japan, and that the proclamation of VJ-day would await the signing of the official surrender documents.
When he was done, reporters sprinted out of his office, and the news of Japan’s surrender began to spread across the globe.
Truman had no more appointments on August 14. Outside the White House, in Lafayette Square, crowds had long since begun to gather, for the news of surrender had legs. It had already crisscrossed all of Washington and beyond. By the time Truman had finished his press conference to announce the end of the war, the crowd outside the White House gates had reached some 75,000-strong, almost triple the capacity of the baseball stadium where the Washington Nationals played. Police were attempting to maintain order—to no avail. People stood atop their automobiles, while dozens of others honked their car horns. Military officers danced jigs in the streets. A man with a blond woman on his arm, a highball in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, meandered through the throng drunk, while another reveler did the same, wearing a turban made out of ticker tape. From inside the White House, Truman could hear the crowd chanting.
“We want Harry! We want Harry!”
The more time that passed, the larger the crowd grew, and the louder the chanting.
“WE WANT HARRY! WE WANT HARRY!”
The sun had begun to set when Truman appeared on the White House lawn, with Bess. MPs and secret service men sprinted around wildly trying to figure out how to keep the president safe. Truman made a V symbol for victory with his hand, flashing it at the crowd, which responded with deafening roars. Even Bess, as uncomfortable as she had proven to be in the public eye, could not keep the pleasure from illuminating her face. Remembered one man present: “[Truman] was on the White House lawn pumping his arms like an orchestra conductor at tens of thousands of cheering Americans who suddenly had materialized in front of the mansion.”
After a few minutes Truman went back inside the White House, so he could call his mother and personally deliver the news: World War II was over. (“That was Harry,” ninety-two-year-old Mamma Truman said after hanging up. “Harry’s such a wonderful man . . . I knew he’d call.”) Then Truman called Eleanor Roosevelt. “I told her,” he later recalled, “that in this hour of triumph I wished that it had been President Roosevelt, and not I, who had given the message to our people.”
Outside the crowds kept chanting Truman’s name, so he went out into the hot August night again and stood on a patio observing, with Bess on his arm. It was, in the words of one reporter present, “the wildest celebration this capital ever saw.” At the center of it all were Harry and Bess.
Truman had studied enough history to put this moment in context. The United States had provided soldiers and a great majority of the tools of war that destroyed Nazism and saved Europe. The United States had defeated a Japanese military intent on dominating all of the Far East. In the eyes of the world, this was America’s finest hour. Never before had the United States achieved such prestige. What Truman did not know at this moment was this: never would the United States achieve such prestige again.