sire on Truman's part to drop the bomb to gain an upper hand against Russia. In hindsight it appears as if there existed five major alternatives to the dropping of the atomic bombs: a non-combat demonstration, a modification of the demand for unconditional surrender, a pursuit of "Japanese peace feelers," (31)awaiting Soviet entry into the war and lastly continuing conventional warfare--aerial bombing of cities and naval blockade. Nevertheless, the first two of these are arguably the most realistic, and therefore my discussion will be limited to the first two only. A non-combat demonstration would have entailed either dropping the bomb in a desolate area with international observers or the dropping of the bomb on an unpopulated area of Japan. This alternative was brought up twice, once on 31 May 1945 at the Interim Committee Lunch and again in the Frank Committee report on 11 June 1945.(32) The recommendation by the Scientific Panel (presided over by the four principal physicists involved in the Manhattan Project--Fermi, Lawrence, Compton and Oppenheimer) was to use the bomb only in "direct military use."(33) This recommendation was collectively embraced by Stimson, Truman, Byrnes and others because they feared that the bomb might turn out to be a "dud" and thus prove counterproductive toward intimidating the Japanese, and also because there was a severe limit to the materials on hand; as Stimson later wrote "we had no bombs to waste."(34) Thus this alternative was not pursued, for the logistical obstacles were thought to be difficult to overcome, and Allied military and political advisors were not sure the observers would be allowed to report the demonstration to the Japanese Emperor accurately. The second alternative to dropping the bomb would have been to modify the American demand for the unconditional surrender so as to guarantee the continuance of the Japanese emperor. It was believed by many American officials that this was the s...
