WASHINGTON: Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima next week has reignited an emotive debate over former US president Harry Truman's epoch-making decision to drop the first atomic bomb.
On April 25, 1945, thirteen days after Franklin Roosevelt's death thrust Truman into the White House, the strained new commander-in-chief got a startling top secret briefing.
"Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city," war secretary Henry Stimson said in a hand-delivered memo.
Until that moment, Truman had no idea about the Manhattan Project to build the world's first atomic bomb -- despite being Roosevelt's vice president and a former senator who made his name investigating wartime defense contracts.
Within four months, the atomic bomb had been successfully tested, targets had been selected, "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing an estimated 214,000 people, and Japan's Emperor Hirohito had surrendered.
The speed, circumstances and repercussions of Truman's decision remain contentious.
That is true not least in Japan, where a majority of Obama's hosts still believe the mass bombing of civilians was unnecessary and perhaps even a crime.
Meanwhile commentators nervous that Obama's trip is tantamount to an admission of guilt, have urged him not to apologize.
"When Mr Obama visits Hiroshima on May 27 he should place no distance between himself and Harry Truman," wrote Wilson Miscamble, a Notre Dame University history professor.
"Rather he should pay tribute to the president whose actions brought a terrible war to an end."
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