The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  Things came to a head when Allied leaders gathered in Potsdam, a suburb of bombed-out Berlin. The target date for the first atomic bombing was less than a month away. Truman arrived on July 15, nervously anticipating his first meeting with Churchill and Stalin. Reports poured in confirming the Japanese desire to quit if allowed to surrender conditionally. The evidence that top U.S. officials recognized the signals emanating from Tokyo is unassailable. Truman unambiguously characterized the intercepted July 18 cable that stated, “Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace” as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.”88 Forrestal wrote about “evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war,” Stimson about “Japanese maneuverings for peace,” and Byrnes about “Japanese peace feelers.”89 In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, OSS official and later CIA head Allen Dulles recalled, “I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo—they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and the constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.”90 The Pacific Strategic Intelligence Summary for the week of the Potsdam meeting reported, “it may be said that Japan now, officially if not publicly, recognizes her defeat. Abandoning as unobtainable the long-cherished goal of victory, she has turned to the twin aims of (a) reconciling national pride with defeat, and (b) finding the best means of salvaging the wreckage of her ambitions.”91 As the head of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section, Colonel Charles “Tick” Bonesteel, recalled, “the poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton.”92

  Truman’s principal reason for going to Potsdam, he claimed, was to make sure the Soviets were coming into the war as promised. Knowing that their entry would deliver the final crushing blow, he rejoiced when Stalin reassured him, writing in his diary on July 17, “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.”93 The next day, Truman wrote to Bess, “We’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed!”94

  Truman had one more card to play, but the timing had to be precise. Stimson understood that. He wrote in his diary on May 15 that the bomb was a crucial diplomatic tool but that it wouldn’t be tested before Potsdam: “We think it will be shortly afterwards, but it seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy without having your master card in your hand.”95

  Truman had pushed the start of the summit back two weeks and hoped the bomb would be tested before negotiations with Stalin began. Oppenheimer confessed, “we were under incredible pressure to get it done before the Potsdam meeting.”96 It turned out, from Truman’s perspective, to be worth the wait.

  On July 16, while Truman was touring Berlin and preparing for the next day’s meeting with Stalin, scientists exploded the first atomic bomb in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Trinity test exceeded expectations. Given the enormous power of the 18.6-kiloton blast and the brightness of the sky, some scientists feared they had indeed set the atmosphere on fire. Oppenheimer said that a phrase from the Bhagavad Gita flashed through his mind: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” Deputy Director Kenneth Bainbridge put it more simply: “Now we’re all sons-of-bitches.”97

  Groves cabled the preliminary results to Stimson, who rushed to brief Truman and Byrnes. They were elated. On July 21, Groves sent a much fuller and more dramatic report, which stated, “The test was successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of anyone.” Groves estimated the energy released to be equivalent to 15 to 20 kilotons of TNT, an amount that so far exceeded anything previously achieved that it was almost inconceivable. Stimson read it to the president and secretary of state. Along with Groves’s report came one by Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, who described a “strong, sustained awesome roar which warned of doomsday.”98 When Churchill read this report, he exclaimed, “this is the Second Coming in Wrath.”99

  Truman, Byrnes, and Groves believed they now had a way to speed Japanese surrender on U.S. terms without Soviet help and thereby deny the Soviet Union the promised territorial and economic concessions. Stimson observed, “The President was tremendously pepped up by [the report] and spoke to me of it again and again when I saw him. He said it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence.”100 Truman, who had allowed Churchill and Stalin to dominate the early sessions, now rode roughshod over the proceedings. Winston Churchill described the scene at the next plenary session: “I couldn’t understand it. When he got to the meeting after having read this report he was a changed man. He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting.”101 McCloy too noted the role the bomb played in bucking up Truman’s confidence: “Throughout it all the ‘big bomb’ is playing its part—it has stiffened both the Prime Minister and the President. After getting Groves’ report they went to the next meeting like little boys with a big red apple secreted on their persons.”102

  Though never able to stand up to his father or Boss Pendergast or the other bullies, Truman could now stand up to Stalin himself. If, as was said, the revolver made all men six feet tall, the successful atomic bomb test made the diminutive Truman a giant who towered over the world’s most fearsome dictators. But Truman’s public bravado masked a deeper understanding of the world he was about to usher in with the use of the atomic bomb. He wrote in his Potsdam diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”103 Unfortunately, Truman’s apocalyptic forebodings did not impel him to seek alternatives as the day of reckoning approached.

  Unlike the other principal decision makers—Truman, Byrnes, and Groves—Stimson did have serious misgivings about using the atomic bomb. He referred to it as “the dreadful,” “the terrible,” “the dire,” “the awful,” and “the diabolical.” He considered it not merely a new weapon but “a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe . . . that might even mean the doom of civilization . . . it might be a Frankenstein which would eat us up.”104 He tried repeatedly to convince Truman and Byrnes to assure the Japanese about the emperor. But trying to convince them was an exercise in futility. When Stimson complained to Truman about being ignored on this point at Potsdam, Truman told his elderly, frail secretary of war that if he didn’t like it, he could pack his bags and go home.

  At Potsdam, Stimson informed General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander, that the bomb’s use was imminent. Eisenhower reacted strongly. He described his response in a Newsweek interview: “So then he told me they were going to drop it on the Japanese. Well, I listened, and I didn’t volunteer anything because, after all, my war was over in Europe and it wasn’t up to me. But I was getting more and more depressed just thinking about it. Then he asked for my opinion, so I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”105 Eisenhower told historian Stephen Ambrose that he had expressed his opposition directly to Truman and his top advisors. Historian Barton Bernstein finds reason to doubt Eisenhower’s account, but General Omar Bradley supports Ike’s version.106

  Now that the bomb had been successfully tested, Truman, Byrnes, and Stimson no longer welcomed the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, which would entitle the Soviets to the concessions Roosevelt had promised at Yalta. Churchill observed on July 23, “It is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan.”107 Byrnes acknowledged, “Neither the President nor I were anxious to have them enter the war after we had learned of this successful test.” He explained to his assistant Walter Brown that he was “hoping for time, believing that after [the] atomic bomb Japan will surrender and Russia will not get in so much on the kill.”108 For Truman and his adviso
rs, the way to accomplish this seemed obvious: use the atomic bomb. Truman spelled it out: “Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland.”109

  Before the conference ended, Truman sidled up to Stalin and casually mentioned that the United States had developed a “new weapon of unusual destructive force.” Unaware that Soviet intelligence had kept Stalin informed of the Manhattan Project, Truman was surprised by his seemingly disinterested response and wondered if Stalin had grasped what he was telling him. Stalin understood far more than Truman realized. He knew that the test had been scheduled. Now he concluded that it had succeeded. He immediately phoned Soviet security and Secret Police Chief Lavrenti Beria and berated him for not having known that the test had occurred. Andrei Gromyko reported that when Stalin returned to his villa he remarked that the Americans would use their atomic monopoly to dictate terms in Europe but that he wouldn’t give in to their blackmail.110 He ordered Soviet military forces to speed the country’s entry into the war, and he ordered Soviet scientists to pick up the pace of their research.

  Stalin and Truman with Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. While at Potsdam, Truman and his advisors learned of the successful Trinity test of the atomic bomb. Now armed with the new weapon and hoping to deny the Soviets promised territorial and economic concessions, Truman, Byrnes, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson no longer welcomed the Soviet Union’s entry into the war in the Pacific.

  Truman never issued a direct order to drop the bomb. At Potsdam, on July 25, he approved a directive signed by Stimson and Marshall ordering that the atomic bombs be used as soon after August 3 as weather permitted. He knew there was little chance that the final Potsdam Declaration, which contained neither a significant modification of surrender terms, a warning about the bomb, or notice of Soviet entry into the war, would be accepted by Japan. Still, it is important to note that contrary to later claims by Truman and Stimson, the authorization was given before, not after, the Japanese rejected the Potsdam Declaration. Truman did not invite Stalin to sign the declaration, even though Stalin came intending to sign it and even brought a draft of his own. Stalin’s signature would have notified the Japanese that the Soviet Union was about to come into the war. The absence of his signature encouraged the Japanese to continue their futile effort to gain Soviet assistance in securing better surrender terms while the hours ticked off until the bomb was ready to use.

  Truman’s behavior at Potsdam reinforced Stalin’s belief that the United States intended to end the war quickly and renege on its promised concessions. During the conference, he told Truman that Soviet troops would be ready to attack by the middle of August. Soviet Chief of Staff Aleksei Antonov informed his U.S. counterparts that the actual start date was more likely the end of the month. Stalin ordered Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevski to prepare to invade ten to fourteen days earlier.111

  Although Truman always took responsibility for the decision, Groves, who had drafted the July 25 memo, contended that Truman didn’t really decide; he simply acquiesced. “As far as I was concerned,” he wrote, “his decision was one of non-interference—basically, a decision not to upset the existing plans. . . .” “Truman did not so much say ‘yes’ as not say ‘no.’ ” Groves described Truman scornfully as “a little boy on a toboggan.”112

  Truman left Potsdam on August 2. The following day, Byrnes’s assistant wrote in his diary, “Aboard Augusta/President, Leahy, JFB agrred [sic] Japas [sic] looking for peace.”113 Truman also wanted peace. But first he wanted to use the atomic bomb.

  General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Pacific and the second-highest-ranking active-duty officer in the U.S. Army, considered the bomb “completely unnecessary from a military point of view” and became both angry and depressed when he learned that the United States was about to use it. He held a press conference on August 6, before the bomb drop was announced, and told reporters that the Japanese were “already beaten” and that he was thinking about “the possibilities of a next war with its horrors magnified 10,000 times.”114

  On August 6, at 2:45 A.M., three B-29s took off for Japan from the island of Tinian in the Marianas, 1,500 miles away. The lead plane, the Enola Gay, carried the uranium bomb, Little Boy, which exploded at 8:15 A.M. with a yield now estimated at 16 kilotons of TNT. Hiroshima’s approximately 300,000 civilians, 43,000 soldiers, 45,000 Korean slave laborers, and several thousand Japanese Americans, mostly children whose parents were interned in the United States, were just beginning their day. The target was the T-shaped Aioi Bridge, near the center of the city. Hiroshima, despite its port and Second General Army Headquarters, had not been considered a priority military target for earlier bombing. The bomb totally destroyed an area extending approximately two miles in all directions. Watching the city of Hiroshima disappear horrified the Enola Gay’s crew members. The pilot, Paul Tibbets, who named the plane after his mother, described the scene below: “The giant purple mushroom had already risen to a height of 45,000 feet, 3 miles above our own altitude, and was still boiling upward like something terribly alive. Even more fearsome was the sight on the ground below. Fires were springing up everywhere amid a turbulent mass of smoke that had the appearance of bubbling hot tar.”115 On another occasion, he reflected, “If Dante had been with us on the plane, he would have been terrified. The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire.” Tail gunner Bob Caron called it a “peep into hell.” Copilot Robert Lewis wrote in his flight log, “My God! What have we done?”116

  Pilot Paul Tibbets (center with pipe) with his crew and the Enola Gay.

  Radioman Abe Spitzer watched from the accompanying plane, the Great Artiste, and thought he was hallucinating. He provided the most graphic and terrifying description of what crew members witnessed and one worth quoting at length:

  Below us, spread out almost as far as I could see, was a great fire, but it was like no ordinary fire. It contained a dozen colors, all of them blindingly bright, more colors than I imagined existed, and in the center and brightest of all, a gigantic red ball of flame that seemed larger than the sun. Indeed, it seemed that, somehow, the sun had been knocked out of the sky and was on the ground below us and beginning to rise again, only coming straight up toward us—and fast.

  At the same time, the ball itself spread outward, too, until it seemed to cover the entire city, and on every side the flame was shrouded, half-hidden by a thick, impenetrable column of grey-white smoke, extending into the foothills beyond the city and bursting outward and rising toward us with unbelievable speed.

  Then the ship rocked again, and it sounded as if a giant gun—some large artillery or cannons—were firing at us and hitting us from every direction.

  The purple light was changing to a green-blue now, with just a tinge of yellow at the edges, and from below the ball of fire, the upside down sun, seemed to be following the smoke upward, racing to us with immeasurably fast speed—although, we at the same time, though not so quickly—were speeding away from what was left of the city.

  Suddenly, we were to the left of the pillar of smoke, and it continued rising, to an estimated height, I later learned, of 50,000 feet. It looked like a kind of massive pole that narrowed toward the top and reached for the stratosphere. The scientists later told us they believed the pole was as much as four or five miles wide at its base and a mile and a half or more wide at the top.

  As I watched, hypnotized by what I saw, the column of smoke changed its color, from a grey-white to brown, then amber, then all three colors at once, mingled into a bright, boiling rainbow. For a second it looked as though its fury might be ending, but almost immediately a kind of mushroom spurted out of the top and traveled up, up to what some say was a distance of 60,000 or 70,000 feet . . . the whole column seethed and spurted, but
the mushroom top shot out in every direction, like giant waves during an ocean storm.

  Then, quite suddenly, the top broke off the column, as if it had been cut away with a sharp blade, and it shot still further up; how far I don’t know; nobody did or does; not even the pictures show that, and none of the apparatus could measure it exactly. Some said it was 80,000 feet, some 85,000 feet, some even more. . . . After that, another mushroom, somewhat smaller, boiled up out of the pillar.117

  Spitzer heard someone say, “I wonder if maybe we’re not monkeying around with things that are none of our business.”118

  The view from the ground was very different and far more harrowing. At the hypocenter, where temperatures reached 5,400° F, the fireball roasted people “to bundles of smoking black char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away.”119 Tens of thousands were killed instantly. An estimated 140,000 were dead by the end of the year and 200,000 by 1950. The United States officially reported that only 3,242 Japanese troops were killed. Among the casualties at Hiroshima were approximately a thousand American citizens, mostly second-generation Japanese-Americans, and twenty-three U.S. prisoners of war, some of whom survived the blast only to be beaten to death by bomb survivors. Several U.S. prisoners of war were killed by the bomb.