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August 8, 1945: President Truman meets with his Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and gets the first damage reports from Hiroshima, and newspaper headlines blared a message of ghastly destruction. For the first time, Truman invokes his "terrible responsibility."pic.twitter.com/vsoBFjC4PQ
Those have read my blog will know that I think this is a demarcation date in Truman's understanding and relationship to atomic weapons — prior to this, I don't think he understood that Hiroshima was a city, and that the victims would be mostly civilians.
He also, it is worth noting, appears to have had no awareness that a second atomic bomb would be dropped on Japan in only a few hours. Unlike the Hiroshima attack, he was given no warning of its imminence, and I suspect he thought another bomb wouldn't be ready for another week.
What is the difference between ignorance and plausible deniability?
I don't think he had any interest in denying it. In any case, he never did deny it — to the contrary, he asserted more responsibility than probably was necessary (he would eventually claim to be much more involved in the process than he actually was).
An interesting contrast with his meeting with Oppenheimer with the (if I recall) apocryphal presentation of a handkerchief for Oppie to blot out his unmanly tears?
My own interpretation of Truman's beef with Oppenheimer on this was that he didn't want to share the blame or responsibility; Truman chose to take it all for himself (rightly or wrongly).
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