Transcript: Chapter 15

NARRATOR: August 6, 2:45 A.M. -- the Enola Gay, carrying a four-ton atomic bomb, was heading out over the Pacific Ocean toward Japan.

Some would later argue that Japan might have been forced to surrender without the bomb. The president might have warned the Japanese with a demonstration bomb, might have blockaded their islands until they surrendered, might have assured the Japanese that they could keep their Emperor. Truman would later say that to end the war quickly without invading Japan, the bomb had to be used -- and he used it.

8:15 A.M. -- The atomic bomb dropped clear of the Enola Gay. Forty-three seconds later, it exploded over Hiroshima.

Harry Truman was eating lunch when he was handed a decoded message, "Results clear-cut; successful in all respects." Truman reacted immediately: "This," he said, "is the greatest thing in history."

GEORGE ELSEY: The crew burst into applause and cheering when he announced this will end the war. Since most of the crewmen were anticipating that they'd have to go out and engage with the Japanese, you can see why there was great glee on the part of the crew, the officers, everyone, everyone present.

NARRATOR: That afternoon, Truman issued a warning to the Japanese government.

ARCHIVAL FILM OF TRUMAN ON CAMERA: "If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a reign of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

NARRATOR: Two days later, Secretary of War Stimson showed the president aerial photographs of Hiroshima. Truman did not yet know that the atomic bomb had killed more than 80,000 men, women, and children and that tens of thousands more would die from radiation sickness in the days and years to come.

ALONZO HAMBY: You see these pictures of Hiroshima just leveled for almost as far as the eye can see. Clearly he's distressed by that.

NARRATOR: He told Stimson, "This places a terrible responsibility upon myself and upon War Department." Three days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, but still, there was no word of surrender.

August 9, 11:00 A.M. -- a second atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese seaport of Nagasaki. In 1/10 of one-millionth of a second, the city was destroyed. Another 40,000 people were killed.

ALONZO HAMBY: Truman had not been any limitation on the use of the second bomb. Essentially after he signs the order at Potsdam, it's all on automatic pilot and, unless he changes his mind, up to the military.

NARRATOR: The day after Nagasaki was destroyed, Truman took the authority to use the atomic bomb back from the military and placed it once again in his own hands.

August 14 -- The simple reason Truman always gave for using the atomic bomb was to end the war and save lives. Now after nearly four years, Japan surrendered. The war was over.

Years later, Truman would often say that he never brooded over his decision to drop the bomb.

"Once a decision was made," he wrote later, "I didn't worry about it afterward."

ALONZO HAMBY: Time and again, Truman claimed, "I never lost a minute's sleep. Ah, I never felt any regret. I did what had to be done."

But clearly, this was a somewhat more upsetting event than he let on.

NARRATOR: The day after the bomb fell on Nagasaki, Truman had told his cabinet that "the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible." He hated the idea of killing "all those kids."

BARTON BERNSTEIN: You can never feel comfortable about killing 100,000 or more people. And I'm sure that was true for Harry S. Truman, who fought vigorously always to deny it.

ROBERT LIFTON: He wasn't a man who could allow self-questioning. He wasn't a man who could allow reflection. He could never take in fully what he had done and what that meant for the world. Here was a good man, a loving man, who made a decision to use the cruelest weapon in human history on a densely populated city and spent the rest of his life justifying that decision.

NARRATOR: "I made the only decision I ever knew how to make," Truman wrote. "I did what I thought was right."

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