It was a quick decision on his part as the first
successful atomic bomb test took place on July 16, 1945,
and the first actual use of the bomb was against Hiroshima on August
6, a mere three weeks later. There was not much debate in the US
government about whether or not the bomb would be used against
Japan.
Over the previous two years, the US had been
invading Japanese held territory island by island, and, under the Code of Bushido,
Japanese soldiers refused to surrender. This led to bloody, long battles with US
forces, and Truman felt the Japanese army and population would fight even harder on the
Japanese home islands. So some say he decided to drop the bomb to save American lives,
which would have been lost in the invasion, and Japanese lives as
well.
There is a school of thought that also suggests
Truman wanted to scare the Soviet Union. The Cold War was more or less already underway
by this time, and Truman had hinted at the existence of an atomic bomb program when he
met with Stalin at Potsdam in 1945. So some argue he dropped the bomb in order to
discourage the Soviets from taking more territory after the war. All it did was lead to
an arms race where the USSR developed its own bomb program within four
years.
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