Alex WellersteinVerified account

During this meeting, the bombing of Nagasaki happens (11am Japanese time). The news is brought to them during the meeting. It does NOT seem to affect the conversation in any strong way — the opinions they have prior to learning about Nagasaki don't change.

This is why historians tend to say that Nagasaki wasn't that important; there's no evidence of change. Could it have added to existing convictions? Maybe. Can we re-run history without it, to see what happens? Obviously not. But it doesn't seem to have done much at that meeting.

Hence there are even historians who think that the Hiroshima bombing was necessary, but Nagasaki was not. The "after the fact" justification of the two bombs, as an aside, has nothing to do with why Nagasaki happened when it did.

The original plan was to wait until August 10th (after the August 3rd plan for Hiroshima) before the second bomb — a solid week between them. As it was, it was only 3 days. Nagasaki got moved up because of weather considerations, just as Hiroshima had been moved down.

And it is just worth noting that while the Hiroshima bombing was very carefully planned, considered, etc., Nagasaki was — as I mentioned before — something of an afterthought. Truman was not informed about it happening; I don't think he really knew.https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1027546489302798337 …

Is this why now only presidents have launch authority? How could Truman not have known about Nagasaki?

1) On use authority, that's a BIG question, one that I'm currently doing new work on. It's completely related to this, yes. Truman's reaction to WWII was to hold nuclear use questions very tightly thereafter.

2) On Nagasaki: almost all focus, rhetorical and strategic, was put on the first use of the bomb. (Which makes a lot of sense.) All discussions were about that. Practically none were about later bombs. There was only one point when Truman asked about the schedule of future bombs—