Clifton Truman Daniel, the eldest grandson of Harry Truman, came to the Moberly auditorium last Thursday, a week from August 6th (today), the date 81 years ago that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He told us many funny stories about his grandfather, and considering the age of the audience (at 70 we were on the younger side of this grey headed group), and the content of the evening, it was as if we were transported back to a more innocent time in the 1950’s. Good ole’ give ‘em hell Harry was back with us. We heard of his car trip to Washington, how he got out of mowing the lawn, and of his attempts to keep the grandchildren from watching cartoons by reading to them from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Clifton quickly provided the usual explanation of the dropping of the bombs: it saved half a million lives, it brought the war to an end, and it was the only option. Mostly we all felt the warm glow of innocent days gone by, and enjoyed hearing about the Missouri President.
After the program he asked for questions or comments, and some told of personal association with the Trumans, or relatives who remembered the Trumans in Independence. No one really broached or disagreed with the narrative on the bombs, though one older gentleman noted the numbers killed in the fire bombings in Tokyo exceeded the deaths due to the bombs. This was a patriotic crowd, some of whom had friends and loved ones who had gone off to war. I was happy not to break the spell of the evening and to leave, but Faith had a different idea. She wanted to talk to Clifton personally, and I must say, I did not. But we got in line, and made our way to Clifton, who strategically stayed up on the stage. At our turn, Faith explained to him, that her father had been stationed in Japan after the war and that they had returned as missionaries, so she grew up in Japan. Clifton said he had spent more time in Japan than any other foreign country, and he had met many times with hibakusha – those who survived the bomb. He had met Setsuko, famous for her anti-nuclear advocacy, and other survivors who spent their life speaking out against nuclear arms. Faith has a soft voice, and was a bit emotional as they traded stories, and Clifton drew closer and closer and knelt down, till he was only a few inches from her face. They had clearly connected.
So, I felt free to ask my one question, about his grandfather’s reaction to the bombs. I explained, I had heard reports, that he said he never lost a minute of sleep over the decision, or alternatively, that the dropping of the bombs haunted him. I wanted to know which was true. By the time I had finished posing the question, Clifton had stood up on the stage, and was backing away. He responded, “He never said that.” He then repeated the propaganda we all know. “If anything, he knew he would save lives.” Clifton distanced himself, up and away from us and my question, much like his grandfather had distanced himself from the issue. It was obvious I had touched a nerve, and the conversation was over. I had not meant to be provocative and the strong reaction surprised me. Our warm evening with the Trumans was over.
The strange thing in Clifton’s reaction, was that his grandfather’s standard answer was that he never lost any sleep over the issue.[1] Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell say in their book, that the metaphor of sleep was his best known reaction. “As early as 1959, he declared, as he did many times subsequently, that “I never lost any sleep over my decision.”[2] Sleeping soundly was his way of saying he felt justified in doing what he had done. In 1959 he told an enormous twelve-hundred-student “class” at Columbia University that the bomb was just like an ordinary artillery weapon, that the Japanese had deserved it, that he had lost no sleep over the decision, and that, if necessary, he would make the same decision.[3] Of course the weapon was not ordinary, and Truman would say as much himself in describing it later, and to say the Japanese “deserved it” gets at the revenge in using the weapons. The women and children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even in Truman’s more thoughtful statements, did not deserve it, but the tendency was to demonize the race.
Sleep was a lifelong concern for Truman; the losing of it or getting it. He had trouble with insomnia and anxiety, especially when younger, but then when he did sleep, he would boast as to how quick he could do it. To sleep quickly was for him, metaphorically and literally, a sign of moral steadfastness, which he connected with his energy, and overall self-confidence. As Truman told Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, “Don’t you ever lose any sleep over the fact that you planned and carried out that mission. It was my decision. You had no choice.”[4] He wanted Tibbets and the world, strangely even those in Hiroshima to whom he would convey similar sentiments, to lose no sleep.
A Japanese doctor from Hiroshima asked him by letter about his glib answers; “Why didn’t you have conscience enough to avoid using such means as to completely destroy humanity and human civilization?” Not losing sleep, indicates a lack of both consciousness and conscience. “Do you consider it a humane act to try to justify the outrageous murder of two hundred thousand civilians of Hiroshima, men and women, young and old, as a countermeasure for the surprise attack?” The doctor artfully weaves throughout his letter, an implied lack of awareness, that the well-slept Truman glibly willing to drop more bombs, should have not been guilty of. His letter went on to ask, “Do you consider your country which having manufactured the atomic bomb, was aware of its explosive power, and could anticipate the formidable destruction, be excused, just because it is a conqueror, for the crime of the first, the most cruel, and the largest scale manslaughter that has ever taken place in the history of mankind?”[5] Maybe the whole country should have been more awake. Truman did not respond, though they had been corresponding about a possible visit to Hiroshima. Imagine the response, “I did not lose any sleep,” in this context. To say he lost no sleep, would be a confirmation of his lack of conscientious morality.
The message was, let’s not think about it. The decision is done, we saved lives, and we can now move on and distance ourselves from such considerations. In other words, Clifton’s reaction to my question was a physical enactment of his grandfather’s recommendation. My question was little more than, did Truman think about what he had done or did he not think about it? To move beyond sleep, to thought, implies consideration, and consideration itself is problematic, whether deep consideration or no consideration. What Clifton was resisting was what his grandfather resisted, and that was to express regret. To say he regretted it had too many implications for all the lives lost needlessly and for his poor decision. Good sleep, no regret, is the message.
The insistence on good sleep was to hide just how troubled Truman may have been. As Lifton and Mitchell note, “There is evidence that Truman never ceased to be preoccupied with his decision. Tom Clark who had been his attorney general, told of visiting Truman in a Kansas City hospital four or five months before his death. Though told to stay only briefly, Clark remained for about 45 minutes, during much of which Truman defended his dropping the bomb.”[6] The old man spent some of his final conversations on the subject over which “he lost no sleep.” Lifton and Mitchell also record Truman’s private discussion, which may be the only occasion upon which he expressed regret about using the bomb. Former White House photographer Joe O’Donnell told them that in 1950 he accompanied Truman on his trip to Wake Island to meet with General Macarthur. Truman strolled along the beach with O’Donnell who dared to ask if Truman had any “second thoughts” about the decision to drop the bomb. “According to O’Donnell Truman quickly replied, ‘Hell yes!’ and then added, somewhat cryptically, ‘I’ve had a lot of misgivings about it, and I inherited a lot more, too.’”
What he may have meant about his “inherited misgivings” is not clear, but several, including Eisenhower had tried to warn him off of using the bomb. Eisenhower, according to his daughter, was deeply disturbed by even the prospect, and he thought it unnecessary, as he confided to his diary: “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”[7] As he goes on to write, “I had been conscious of depression and so I voiced (to Sec. Of War Stimson) my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” He reiterated on multiple occasions that he thought they were on the verge of surrender. “It was my belief that Japan was, at this very moment, seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.'”[8] They wanted to surrender and it was unnecessary to hit them with that “awful thing.” At Potsdam, he conveyed his unsolicited advice to Truman. In the PBS documentary, American Experience, Samuel Rushay (the Presidential Archivist) maintains Eisenhower said to Truman at Potsdam, among other things, “Mr. President, I don’t think it is necessary to use the bomb.” The overwhelming testimony is that the majority of military men were against it.
Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, though inconsistent, had not wanted to use the bomb. He thought Truman should consider backing down on his demand for unconditional surrender. William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, Henry Arnold, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Admiral Halsey, Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, Major General Curtis LeMay, who had innovated new weaponry in the fire bombings of Tokyo, all opposed the bomb. Congressman Stewart L. Udall thought the bomb prolonged the war by delaying immediate negotiations. He says, “I have come to view the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that August as an American tragedy that should be viewed as a moral atrocity.”[9] This may be what he “inherited.”
Some may have spoken more strongly with hindsight, but Truman was made aware of options. Far from a foregone conclusion, those who understood the situation most intimately, considered it a “war crime,” a “holocaust,” a “barbarity,” and “a return to the dark ages,” in their various descriptions. They thought the Japanese were defeated, and talk of the loss of a half-million lives in an invasion was an estimate they knew was wildly exaggerated. Also, it did not take into account that with the bomb, there was to be no invasion. It was not simply a matter of invade or drop the bomb, as invasion was taken off the table as an option, as soon as the bomb was available. It was a matter of negotiation before or after dropping the bomb.
Truman, may have been carried along by events, by the huge investment in the bomb, by the foregone conclusion of making it means using it, and by the manipulations, lies, and prodding of Leslie Groves, the general in charge of seeing the project to completion, but it was not, as some have contended that no decision was ever made. Truman made the decision, and he wanted that to be clear, and he also resisted any show of feelings of regret, any note of self-condemnation. He would become infuriated when asked about regret or ethical responsibility in the mass killing, itself a sign he had thought about it.
Truman was threatened by any reflection on the atomic bombings and would sometimes attack even those who were sympathetic to him. In response to a historian (sympathetic with dropping the bomb), who nonetheless said that the bombing did not end the war and that the Japanese would have surrendered within a few months even without the bomb, Truman wrote one of his most vitriolic letters, which he never sent. He says, “You write just like the usual egghead. The facts are before you but you would like to garble them. The instruction of July 25th, 1945 was final. It ended the war. Now if you think of any other, ‘if’ ‘as’ and ‘when’ eggheaded contemplations bring them out. It is a great thing that you or any other contemplator ‘after the fact’ didn’t have to make the decision. Our boys would all be dead.”[10] Truman did not appreciate “egg heads” or “contemplators,” and never considered deep deliberation a quality he wanted to be known for. He wanted to be seen as a man of action who makes decisions. Deep reflection of any kind may slow down masculine action. His famous sign, “The Buck stops here,” conveyed that he decided.
As Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace noted, “Truman was exceedingly eager to agree with everything I said. He also seemed eager to make decisions of every kind with the greatest promptness. Everything he said was decisive. It almost seemed as though he was eager to decide in advance of thinking.”[11] Even in his own self-reflection he wanted to do away with doubt or hesitation. He consistently limited the flow of information, which his own advisors were already surreptitiously doing. Knowledge of the destructiveness of the bomb, that it was actually a chemical weapon and not just another standard weapon (as he often said), were things he knew, and resisted. He cut off the flow of information, in his own mind, so that he acted and spoke quickly, on less knowledge than he was aware of. He knew of radiation sickness, he knew the Japanese were ready to surrender, he knew of the moral issues at hand, but these were not things he wanted to contemplate too deeply.
Truman was more complicated than he may have wanted to either appear or be. He had grown up surrounded by women, with a protective mother, and close female friends. This did not make him openly sensitive, but eager not to be seen as a “sissy” or a “crybaby” (his favorite put downs). As a child, due to his bookishness, his piano playing, his refusal of sports due to his thick glasses, he was, in his own estimate, “a sissy.” His closest friends, two female cousins and his mother, doted on him and his mother had hoped he would be a girl, and seemed to instill that wish. Due to his eye trouble, she had bred caution into him. Truman, says, “I was afraid my eyes would get knocked out if there was too much of a rough and tumble play.”[12] The child that admittedly ran from fights, and who considered himself a sissy, became overly pugnacious, in constant pursuit of a felt lack of masculinity. “He was bedeviled by the image of being just a ‘little man’ who could not be expected to act significantly on the world, and he needed to see himself as acting quickly, boldly, and above all, decisively.”[13]
Alonzo Hamby, in his biography, presents Truman as an overachiever, who spent his life attempting to demonstrate a confidence, he did not possess. He was insecure and his pugnacious exterior was meant to cover that.[14] He was unsure of himself, as a sickly child, and certainly as a new president, following the God-like Roosevelt. Military endeavor and then political success were his dream, by means of which he could put off this perceived inadequacy. He read military history and thought of himself as a military hero after serving in WWI. His female cousins, his best friends, referred to him as Horatio. Mostly, however, he was engaged in a war with himself, as is expressed in one of his characteristic statements: “I want peace and I’m willing to fight for it.”[15] The peace that eluded him, he sought to bring about through greater success and power. He wanted to be seen as a decisive leader, and the metaphor of not losing sleep was part of the image he sought to portray, one of being in control. He found crybaby eggheads, moralists, sensitive types, as repulsive.
The scene from the film about Robert Oppenheimer, when the scientist confronts Truman about his own guilty conscious captures this. When Oppenheimer and Dean Edgerton (Under Secretary of State) came to the oval office in November 1945, Oppenheimer wanted to convey his agitation about the atomic danger. He blurted out, “Mr. President I have blood on my hands,” at which he started wringing his hands, as if to get the blood out. Truman had him quickly escorted out of his office, and tells Dean Atchison to never bring that “crybaby” around again. He would repeat the story on several occasions, mocking Oppenheimer’s weakness, wringing his hands in imitation. This sort of eggheaded-emotion was exactly what he could not stand and wanted nothing to do with. He would refer to Oppenheimer thereafter, as the “crybaby scientist.”[16] He would take responsibility, he would be the one with “blood on his hands” to save the nation. The sacrifice was great, but he was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands. Truman was eager to distance himself from Oppenheimer and his troubled conscience, or his cross-bearing responsibility. He preferred outward performance, moving up and away, from even the possibility of thinking about such things.
It is little wonder that he felt “jubilant” or “elated” with the biggest bomb ever made and he felt a new confidence in negotiating with Stalin. One of his advisors describe Truman and Churchill, upon receiving news of the bomb at Potsdam, “Like little boys with a big red apple secreted on their person.”[17] The Japanese seemed to recede as a threat, and he began to realize Stalin and the Russians, were the real threat. Observers noted he began, even at Potsdam, to move from military, to political imagery, in regard to the bomb. He said of the Russians, “I’ll certainly have a hammer on those boys.” He was now confident of exercising control over the Russians. The war was won in his mind, as he felt a new capacity to control events with Japan.
According to Lifton and Mitchell, “To keep the self functional a man like Truman needs power surges. He received just that when he gave his first presidential speech to Congress and mentioned his commitment to unconditional surrender.”[18] He felt it again with the bomb. He considered it the “greatest thing in history” and when news reached him of the destruction of Hiroshima, he said it was the “happiest” announcement he ever made.[19] As the psychologist Lifton indicates, killing is the greatest feeling of empowerment, serving feelings of immortality and even omnipotence. Killing hundreds of thousands might explain Truman’s descriptions of absolute “happiness,” and “elation.” “His fears combined, strangely and tragically,” with what Lifton and Mitchell refer to as a “bomb centered omnipotence.”[20] Truman, like many connected to the project, felt the power of the bomb.
For Truman it was the solution to the war, to his political success, and to his personal struggle. The bomb seemed to “enable one to do everything – to solve and transcend all immediate problems, bring about instant victory as well as control of the future, and offer those who used it a deity’s dominion and immortality.”[21] That Truman would use the bomb became evident as he was drawn to its power. Omnipotent-like power as opposed to a seeming weakness, which he feared more than anything, must have played into his decision. As he said, this was “the greatest thing in all of human history,” and he had unleashed it. Of course, he could sleep comfortably, so long as he did not stop to consider the source of his new happiness. To think of the moral responsibility, which Truman did on occasion, was to lose his happiness.
As he saw evidence of the destruction in Hiroshima, he spoke of “the terrible responsibility that such destruction placed upon us here and himself.”[22] He went from elated awe to self-doubt and feelings of dread. His life-long headaches returned. On August 10th, the day they decided on surrender terms, he told Henry Wallace he “had bad headaches every day.” Wallace asked, “Physical or Figurative?” Truman said, “Both.”[23] In spite of his supposed good sleep, Truman suffered and would agonize over this decision for the rest of his life, which only points to his humanity. We would question the inhuman callousness of one who was not troubled, who did not lose sleep.
Truman had several coping mechanisms to avoid being overwhelmed with guilt. His “good sleep,” his supposed decisiveness, were not simply a public ploy, but a personal mode of surviving self-condemnation. He was not hesitant to lie to himself and to others. When a friendly Democratic politician asked if “jubilation” over the death of innocents was appropriate, Truman immediately falsified his response, to say he meant he was jubilant over Russia having entered the war. Later when asked about his glib answer over any feelings of guilt, Truman also revised the nature of his not lost sleep. He said, “I lost plenty of sleep but not over saving Japanese lives. I lost sleep worrying about our boys and it broke my heart when just one of our soldiers, sailors or marines died.”[24] The metaphor breaks down, but so does Truman’s various answers. He would lose sleep and get emotional only on the right topic, and the loss of Japanese lives was not usually that topic.
The problem is that Truman’s good sleep meant, as he reiterated many times, that he would do it again. “A favorite phrase was. ‘I’d do it again’ (1956) or ‘I would not hesitate to drop the A-bomb again’ (1965).” Deep sleep meant no reconsideration but commitment to a correct decision. Dropping bombs was justified and might be the way to go in the future. He said as much in connection to Korea, where he considered dropping the bomb again. No president, other than Dwight Eisenhower, has questioned the decision, so that being president can now be equated with a ready willingness, when necessary, to use the nuclear option. The people of Hiroshima, those peace activists attempting to stop nuclear proliferation, were more disturbed by this unthinking response than by the original decision to drop the bomb. “As much as they deplored the weapon and viewed it as criminal some expressed understanding of how it might be used under the pressure of war. But to speak more or less detachedly of using it again was to dismiss what victims had been subjected to and reject human lessons of the weapon.”[25] Sleeping soundly through future deployment of the weapon seems inhumanly callous, yet that is also implied in his good conscience. He did it once and would do it again.
Atomic diplomacy, on the order of Truman, is now the background to any international conflict. At this moment Donald Trump, who has threatened the use of nuclear weapons and is engaged in a war in Iran to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is acting in the wake of this story. Truman’s good sleep has meant entry into the cold war and nuclear proliferation to at least nine countries, with others eager to obtain their own weapons. Those nations who have the weapon feel empowered to act unilaterally. Putin, Netanyahu, Kim, and Trump, embody the Truman doctrine in regard to the atomic option. The willingness to commit genocide, or perhaps bring on world destruction by deploying nuclear arms, is now the unspoken qualification for the highest office. Truman was not unaware of this possible legacy.
In his farewell speech from the presidency, he spoke of the “stakes in our search for peace,” as they’re “immeasurably higher than they have ever been before” and that we are in danger of digging our own grave and that of our own society in this new age of destructive power. He describes “the war of the future would be one in which man would extinguish millions of lives at one blow, demolish the great cities of the world, wipe out the cultural achievements of the past and destroy the very structure of a civilization that has been slowly and painfully built up through hundreds of generations.” He concludes that “such war is not a possible policy for rational men.”[26] But his words came too late, and his actions in allowing unfettered testing and deployment are irreversible.
The problem with his overstated confidence, his sound sleep, is more than his personal issue, as this simple-minded decision making is the light in which nuclear arms proliferated. If the primary concern is to cut short the destructive understanding which has gripped the world, there is a great deal at stake in seeing through the façade, not just of Truman, but of the decision he made. By seeing through the “inevitable nature of it,” the seeming lack of choice, and realizing there were many choices, many possibilities, this may open up deeper consideration of present options. Many elements went into creating what many still cannot clearly see for what it was. Racism, vengeance, self-righteousness, lack of empathy or even its possibility, created a blindness, and the next time we are thrust into this situation we can expect the same blindness to recur. If we can examine the cause of the blinding scapegoating, recognize it when it comes over us, and seek a larger or different perspective, that may be all that can be asked. But if we are comfortable in our self-justifications, in not losing sleep, then we are doomed.
[1] The question as to whether he said he never lost any sleep, is not debatable, in spite of Clifton’s strong reaction. He had in fact said something like this many times. It is true there are versions of it that he may not have said, (he apparently never said, I slept like a baby, which was the way the press summarized his usual statement) but his standard line was in regard to sleep.
[2] Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima: Fifty Years of Denial (Diane Publishing Co, 1995) 176.
[3] Robert H. Ferrell, INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, XCII (June, 1996). 0 1996, Trustees of Indiana University.
[4] Fifty Years of Denial, 176.
[5] Fifty Years of Denial, 178.
[6] Fifty Years of Denial, 184.
[7] From the Diary of Eisenhower, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/38.pdf.
[8] Diary.
[9] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/38.pdf
[10] Fifty Years of Denial, 178-179.
[11] Fifty Years of Denial, 126.
[12] Fifty Years of Denial, 196.
[13] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.
[14] Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
[15] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.
[16] Fifty Years of Denial, 168.
[17] Fifty Years of Denial, 154.
[18] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.
[19] Fifty Years of Denial, 169.
[20] Fifty Years of Denial, 161.
[21] Fifty Years of Denial, 161.
[22] Fifty Years of Denial, 169.
[23] Fifty Years of Denial, 152.
[24] Fifty Years of Denial, 175.
[25] Fifty Years of Denial, 175.
[26] Fifty Years of Denial, 192.
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