ing food supplies would have been allocated to the military forces leaving the civilian population to starve. This would have lead to a massive amount of deaths due to starvation amongst the civilian population. This strategy would have lead only to the death of civilians and not weakened the Japanese military or brought Japan closer to surrender. The side effects of atomic weaponry had not been discovered at the time that Truman gave the order to drop the bomb over Hiroshima. Scientist and military personnel who knew about the atomic bomb were not aware of its radiation side effects. Therefore President Truman was also unaware of these effects when he made the decision to drop the bombs. This is very important because the atomic bomb was seen just as a really, really big conventional bomb. With the information that Truman had been given, dropping an atomic bomb was much like a conventional bombing raid. The atomic bomb provided tactical advantages in addition to its awesome political power. "But the atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon." (p.99) Only one plane needed to be fuelled, crewed and maintained. The risk of being shot down was drastically lower that of a squadron of planes needed to wreak the same amount of havoc. We now know of the deadly lasting effects of atomic weaponry, but these side effects were unheard of during the war. To Truman in the military aspect the atomic bomb was no different than ordering a squadron of bombers to level Hiroshima with firebombs. It must be stressed that to Truman the bomb did not fall into the military taboo of chemical weapons or poising wells, but instead appeared to be a very powerful conventional bomb. Before the bombs had been dropped the Japanese government was at a standstill over matters of peace. The roughly equal civilian and military parties were locked in a struggle over surrender. T...
