In August of 1945 nuclear weapons were exploded upon the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Following the bombing of the cities the Japanese immediately surrendered to the Allied Nations. The cost of the war was devastating. Never has there been such destruction brought down by a simple blast of splitting atoms. Killing as many as 240,000 Japanese citizens, the dropping of the bombs became one of the most written about contemporary historical topics (Hiroshima & Nagasaki, 3). In the 50s and the 60s, the traditional view of the bombing was that the bomb was a solely military action that avoided the loss of as many as a million lives in the upcoming invasion of the island of Kyushu. Therefore, President Truman had deliberately chosen to bomb a not-so-heavily populated city and an important military site for the Japanese. However, statistics showed that Hiroshima was at the present-time the most heavily populated area with civilians more so than of army soldiers and sailors. Thus, President Truman's monumental decision to drop the bombs was developed from a complex background. While Truman emphasized that the bombings were the result of military reasons, clearly there were the influences of the political, diplomatic issues and many other pressures that enforced his decision.
             Truman did believe that the bomb would be used specifically for military use. He knew of the ferocious fighting currently taking place in the Pacific, and naturally had a desire to minimize what he felt would inevitably be a long, bloody struggle. "And adding even more pressure from a military standpoint came when a second invasion was discussed (Rhodes)." The invasion would require risking several American soldiers to fight a violent fight against the Japanese on mainland Honshu. Thus, it seemed that military pressures lied most heavily on Truman's mind. After the dropping of the bombs President Truman quoted in The New York Ti...