Nagasaki

Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian and professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, wrote a long thread today on BlueSky about the bombing of Nagasaki on this, the 81st anniversary of that day. It provides a number of points from his 2025 book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age. 

I recommend the whole thread, but his key points are that Truman was read-in only generally on the bombing of Hiroshima, that he didn't understand Hiroshima was a civilian target, and particularly that the bombing of Nagasaki was not at Truman's behest. Wellerstein also provides detail to show there was not enough time for Japan's military leadership to respond to the bombing of Hiroshima before the bomb fell on Nagasaki. 

The U.S. military planned to drop multiple bombs on Japan, he says, and the only constraint was the weather, which led to the very close spacing of the two bombs, just a few days apart. 

Truman, for his part, issued an order on August 10 to stop dropping atomic bombs on Japan. As Wellerstein puts it, "That is the most 'proactive' thing he did regarding the atomic bomb in WWII."

I don't believe I was ever taught that in school.

I think this is significant, because Nagasaki is often framed in "strategic" terms by laymen, journalists, and experts. That is an after-the-fact gloss on it. At the time, it was done because the military felt they could do it, and wanted to do it. Truman was thoroughly out of the loop....

The consequence of all of these misunderstandings is, I think, at the root of both his August 10 order (which he told his cabinet was about avoiding further Japanese civilian lives lost), and his later centralizing of nuclear use authority in the personage of the President.