How Did President Truman's Decision To Drop The Atomic Bombs On Japan?

Section A Plan of Investigation

I have always felt very strongly opposed to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. While reading The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, I came across a chapter that focused on ‘atomic diplomacy’ and was immediately interested. I was surprised by the complicated politics of the decision and the people, government officials, military leaders, and scientists, who all had a role to play in this major event of history. I was particularly intrigued by James Byrnes, the Secretary of State in Truman’s cabinet, who the authors seemed to indicate heavily impacted Truman and his decision to use the atomic bomb. Thus, the purpose of this investigation is to evaluate to what extent James Byrnes, the Secretary of State in Truman’s cabinet, influenced President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan by analyzing published works from historians. Section B Summary of Evidence

Many of the sources describe Byrnes’ strong influence on President Truman. Historian

The purpose of this book is to research and analyze how, why, and by whom the decision to use the atomic bomb was made in order to inform the public. The value of this source is that the author has written numerous academic papers in the past including another book: Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The analysis given also has the benefit of being written when a larger amount of sources are open to the public including access to primary sources that were previously closed to research. However, after checking one of the sources cited in the book, I found that Alperovtiz had misrepresented one of the sources that he used (see appendix). Although this raises the question of how accurate the narrative actually is, I believe that it is fairly reliable and thoroughly