The Most Awful Responsibility :: Photographs

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vice-President-elect Harry S. Truman, and Vice-President Henry Wallace together in a car in November 1944, just after the election. Source: NARA.

Damage assessment for Operation Meetinghouse, the March 10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo that was undertaken by General Curtis LeMay on his own authority. Even LeMay’s report, which crowed about the “superior” results achieved by the new firebombing tactics, felt the need to emphasize in the report that “the object of these attacks was not to bomb indiscriminately civilian populations,” but rather to “destroy the industrial and strategic targets concentrated in the urban areas” of Tokyo. Source: JapanAirRaids.org.

On the day of Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Truman was hastily found and sworn into office as the new President. Roosevelt’s cabinet looks on, including (from far-left) Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace, and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. Source: NARA.

James Byrnes, Harry Truman, and Henry Wallace at Roosevelt’s funeral. Source: NARA.

Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman, and their diplomatic and military advisors at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945. Source: NARA.

The first photograph of the first atomic bomb detonation at Trinity, July 1945. The black spots are holes burned in the film stock by the heat of the bomb. One observer described it afterwards: “It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately.” Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Joseph Stalin shaking hands with Secretary of State James Byrnes at Potsdam Conference, with Truman to his right. Truman later inscribed on back of this photo: “This is the place I told Stalin about the Atom bomb, which was exploded July 16, 1945 in New Mexico. He didn’t realize what I was talking about!” Source: NARA.

Map of Kyoto, Japan, with a circle added around a detonation point (the Kyoto train station roundhouse) indicating the expected area that would be damaged by an atomic bomb. This file was developed by the military prior to the use of the atomic bomb, and included in materials meant to justify the use of the atomic bomb against Kyoto, which they were continuing to lobby for up until the “strike order” against Japan was finalized on July 25, 1945. Source: NARA.

Detail of the ground zero from the previous map of Kyoto.

Detail of the “tentative draft” of the final atomic bombing strike order, ca. 24 July 1945, in which Nagasaki was finally added — by hand — to the list of atomic bombing targets. “When Kyoto was ruled out, we added Nagasaki,” General Groves explained in a later interview. Source: NARA.

Truman onboard the USS Augusta, traveling home from the Potsdam Conference, working on his speech to Congress that would be eventually delivered on August 9, 1945. In this speech, Truman refers to Hiroshima as a “military base.” Earlier drafts added the word “purely” before military. Source: NARA.

General Leslie Groves and General Curtis LeMay, two engineers of city destruction. Groves led the Manhattan Project, while LeMay was the commander of the 20th Air Forces and the mind behind the firebombing campaign against Japan. “I have sought to slaughter as few civilians as possible,” LeMay later wrote in his memoirs. Source: NARA.

One of the only photographs of the mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, taken by S/Sgt. Robert Caron, the tail gunner of the B-29 Enola Gay. Another crew member wrote in his log: “It seems impossible to comprehend. Just how many Japs did we kill? I honestly have the feeling of groping for words to explain this or I might say ‘My God what have we done.’ If I live a hundred years I’ll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind.” Source: Library of Congress.

On the morning of August 8, 1945, Harry Truman received a report from Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the damage done to Hiroshima by the atomic bomb, while reporters were allowed to photograph them. This may have been the first time that Truman unambiguously learned that Hiroshima was a city, and not “purely” a military base. Source: Getty Images/Bettmann.

The Hiroshima damage reconnaissance photograph that Truman was shown on August 8, 1945. This was the first good aerial photograph of the city that the Army Air Forces were able to make, as the clouds of smoke from the atomic bomb attack obscured it prior to this point. Source: NARA.

While Hiroshima did have military facilities, it was primarily a city, and over 90% of the casualties would be non-combatants. Japanese photographer Yoshito Matsushige took what were some of the only pictures made of the damage on the actual day of the bombing, on the ground. Most of the people in this photograph are students from the Hiroshima Girls’ Commercial High School and the Hiroshima Prefacture Daiichi Middle School, who had been mobilized to make firebreaks. (School attendance records proved to be valuable data for later US attempts to reconstruct the mortality curve of the bombing.) Matsushige took only five photographs that day. When asked, years later, why so few, he replied: “I understand why you ask me why I did not take more pictures, but in reality it was very difficult. When I set my camera at somebody who was asking for help I could not really push the shutter.” Source: Atomic Photographers.

This map, from a postwar report created by the US Army Air Forces, shows the level of destruction rained down on Japanese cities over the course of World War II, mostly in 1945. Most of these attacks were B-29 firebombing attacks, but the atomic bombing attacks are included as well. Each Japanese city is accompanied by the name of an American city of comparative size, as well as a percentage of the city that was destroyed. This map should be understood as a form of bragging, and an argument for an independent Air Force, and a pushback against the idea that the atomic bombings were particularly “special,” or necessary for ending the war — they were deliberately under-emphasized in the scale of the full bombing campaign. Source: Report of the commanding general of the Army Air Forces to the Secretary of War, no.3 (November 1945).

The cover of TIME magazine for December 31, 1945, announcing Truman as the “Man of the Year.” The cover itself reflects the odd framing of the article written in support of Truman: that Truman was only the “Man of the Year” because of the atomic bomb, and that he was otherwise unworthy. The cover, painted by illustrator Boris Artzybasheff, shows a symbolic representation of the atomic bomb knocking Truman off of his own TIME magazine cover. Source: TIME magazine.

Parts of a postwar Mark III atomic bomb non-nuclear assembly. The early US nuclear stockpile consisted entirely of unassembled “parts” such as these. When members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff visited Los Alamos in June 1948, one of the generals asked: “When are you going to show us the real thing? Surely this laboratory monstrosity is not the only type of atomic bomb we have in the stockpile?”

The plutonium sphere for the core of the third, unused atomic bomb. This is one of the only photographs available of an actual plutonium pit, of the same kind used in the Trinity “Gadget” and the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, which could be inserted into the non-nuclear assembly of an atomic bomb to render it whole. This particular core became known informally as the “Demon Core” after two experimenters perished in separate criticality accidents in August 1945 and May 1946. Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The “Able” shot of Operation Crossroads, summer of 1946. The highly-publicized test was considered a disappointment by onlookers whose expectations had been perhaps raised too high by accounts of the Trinity test. Truman had at one point hoped to attend, but did not. Source: Library of Congress.

Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Bernard Baruch, and Senator Brien McMahon confer on the control of atomic energy in June 1946. Source: Truman Library.

Truman signing the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 on August 1, 1946, establishing the Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian organization which took over the US nuclear infrastructure created by the Manhattan Project. Behind him (L-R) are Senators Tom Connally, Eugene Millikin, Edwin Johnson, Thomas Hart, Brien McMahon, Warren Austin, and Richard Russell. Source: US Department of Energy.

Frame from a newsreel in which Truman talks with the members of the new Atomic Energy Commission, including David Lilienthal, its chairman. Source: NARA.

The casing of a Mark IV atomic bomb. The Mark IV was the “next generation” of atomic bomb, developed as a replacement for the complicated Mark III (Fat Man) bomb. Along with improvements to its ballistics and assembly, it was also designed so that the non-nuclear components and the nuclear components could be much more easily combined, through a removable hatch on the front. This allowed the “custody” split between the military and civilian agencies, imposed by Truman, to be physically realized without hampering US nuclear capabilities unduly. The Mark IV began deployment in 1949. Source: USAF.

A compilation of two views of a ballistic test casing that was made as part of the Soviet atomic bomb program. While the Soviets did have access to espionage data, they still needed to do a considerable amount of development work themselves to catch up to the Americans. Source: Rosatom.

A map of the probable location and time of the first detected Soviet atomic bomb test, compiled by the United States Weather Bureau by working backwards from known detections of the radioactive debris. The actual test location was in Kazakhstan, on the northern boundary of the red (70% probability) part of the diagram. Source: NARA.

The Los Alamos security badge photo of the physicist Klaus Fuchs, who was revealed in February 1950 to have been a Soviet spy during the Manhattan Project. Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Starting in the late 1940s, and continuing into the 1950s, the Strategic Air Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed ever more elaborate nuclear war plans and target lists. This map was used during a SAC Commander’s Conference in April 1950 to illustrate the 123 targets in the war plan “OFFTACKLE,” with the dark discs indicating the targets on which they had “target material” for planning strikes, and the blank discs indicating “areas which will require pre-strike intelligence.” Source: Presentation by the Strategic Air Command, Commanders Conference, United States Air Force, at Ramey Air Force Base (25-27 April 1950), NARA, copy in the Brill Weapons of Mass Destruction collection.

This map shows day six of operation “OFFTACKLE,” a Strategic Air Command plan for a full-scale “general” war with the Soviet Union, in April 1950. Day 6 (E+6) was the first day of “OFFTACKLE” that would use atomic bombs, as the bombs and forces would need to be deployed to the European theatre first, as SAC did not actually physically possess the weapons (to their frustration and antagonism with Truman). The limited range of American bomber aircraft required the use of overseas bases. This map illustrates how bomber forces based in the United Kingdom would be utilized to strike targets in the USSR. Source: Presentation by the Strategic Air Command, Commanders Conference, United States Air Force, at Ramey Air Force Base (25-27 April 1950), NARA, copy in the Brill Weapons of Mass Destruction collection.

A grainy, dark photograph of the aftermath of the crash of a B-29 bomber at Fairfield-Suisun Air Base in August 1950, which resulted in the death of General Robert F. Travis. The overloaded B-29 was ferrying the first of 10 Mark IV non-nuclear assemblies to a new deployment in Guam, but crashed shortly after takeoff. The crash, and the subsequent detonation of the Mark IV’s high explosives, killed 19 people. The Guam deployment never replaced the lost weapon. Source: USAF.

General Douglas MacArthur and Truman met for the first and only time at Wake Island in October 1950 to discuss the Korean War. Truman wrote in his notes that MacArthur met him “with his shirt unbuttoned, wearing a greasy ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for twenty years.” MacArthur told the president that “victory was won in Korea.” This would prove premature. Source: Truman Library.

A B-29 bombs a target during the Korean War. The use of SAC B-29s by the Far East Air Forces was a source of constant tension between SAC and MacArthur’s Far East Command. LeMay later griped that The animosity of SAC toward FEAF is summed up in LeMay’s later claimed that the lesson of the Korean War was “how not to use the strategic air weapon.” Source: National Museum of the United States Air Force.

President Harry S. Truman in his office with British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall standing behind them. Attlee had rushed over after loose remarks to the press by Truman were interpreted as indicating that the President was considering using nuclear weapons in Korea. Truman went further than his advisors recommended, telling Attlee that “he would not consider the use of the bomb without consulting with the United Kingdom.” When Attlee pressed him to put this into writing, Truman replied “that if a man’s word wasn’t any good it wasn’t made any better by writing it down.” Source: Truman Library.

In early 1951, elements within the US military establishment began to seriously push for the possible use of atomic weapons in the Korean War in a “tactical” fashion. Truman’s personal lack of interest appears to have stopped these efforts before they rose to a high level. The seriousness of the endeavor is reflected in some of the studies done at the time. This photograph was included as part of an analysis by the Operations Research Office of the consequences of using a 40 kiloton atomic bomb against Taegu air base as an illustration of what could be done for North Korean bases. ORO, based out of Johns Hopkins University, compiled its study based on spending many months in Korea, working with the Far East Air Force. Source: L. H. Rumbaugh, J. B. Green, S. H. Turkel, and H. W. Brackney, Tactical Employment of Atomic Weapons, ORO-R-2 (FEC), (September 1951), copy provided by the Nautilus Institute for International Studies.

A high-speed camera captures the initial moments of the fireball from the “Mike” test of Operation Ivy, November 1952, and the trails of lightning briefly created by the explosion. The “Mike” test was the first detonation of a hydrogen bomb, with a yield of over 10 megatons of TNT equivalent. Truman was unsure about whether the test should go forward as planned, because of its proximity to the 1952 presidential election. After the election, he ordered that president-elect Eisenhower be briefed on the test’s results, but he otherwise strove to keep it secret. Truman had given the order to proceed with building the hydrogen bomb, but he did so reluctantly, telling a colleague that “it is not an easy thing to order the development of a weapon that will kill ten million people.” Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

On January 15, 1953, Truman gave a televised “farewell address” to the nation. In it, he repudiated the notion that the United States could use its atomic bombs as a means of winning the Cold War: “We are not made that way. We are a moral people. … Starting an atomic war is totally unthinkable for rational men.” He received a private criticism from a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, who argued that atomic weapons were no different from other means of waging war. On his last day in office, Truman wrote him a private response: “I rather think you have put a wrong construction on my approach to the use of the Atomic bomb. It is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them by the wholesale.” Source: Truman Library.

This graph shows the US nuclear stockpile size between 1945-1960, and the proportion of weapons in the physical custody of the military (black; Manhattan Engineer District and later the US Air Force) or civilian (white; the US Atomic Energy Commission) agencies. After the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 went into effect in early 1947, Truman repeatedly and deliberately denied the military nearly all access to actual nuclear weapons. The single exception — a transfer of 9 nuclear cores to the Department of Defense in April 1951 — is discussed at length in the book. The contrast with Eisenhower is shown in part to illustrate the dramatic difference in policies. Source: Author, compiling data from several official sources (see book).