Who Really Made the Decision to Drop the First Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima?: Was It President Harry S. Truman or His Advisors, the Chief Executive or His Team of Technical Experts?

THE POTSDAM DECLARATION The last of the World War II summit meetings was held in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam in July 1945, ten weeks after Germany’s surrender. Out of this came the Potsdam Declaration, a joint proclamation of the United States, Great Britain, and China issued on July 26, 1945, which stated that now that Germany had been “laid waste . . . the full application of our military power . . . will mean the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.” It then called “upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” Tokyo did not respond, perhaps because the Japanese mistook this simply as wartime propaganda.