Harry Truman's Most Agonizing Call

Ever since the 1960s, revisionist historians and religious leaders have condemned President Harry S. Truman’s use of the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan in August 1945. However, in “The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan,” the Rev. Wilson D. Miscamble, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame, writes, “There was not an easily available and appropriate option that would have met the serious political and moral objections of many later critics of Truman’s decision.” Not only does Father Miscamble’s research exonerate Truman, but it lays a seedbed for questions about the contemporary use of nuclear weapons where, until now, even the angels have not dared to tread.