From The Buck Starts Here: The bombing of Hiroshima

(Today marks the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the first use of a new weapon, the atomic bomb, at the order of President Harry S. Truman. A segment of a chapter from my book The Buck Starts Here: Harry S. Truman and the City of Lamar, notes that event.)

The White House released President Truman’s message 10 a.m. central time Monday, August 6 1945:

Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima … It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city.

We shall destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.

If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.









Truman was returning from meeting with England’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, and Russian Premier Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference when he received official notification by dispatch that the bombing mission had been successful.

He shared the news with the men serving on the Augusta as he made his way home by sea.

“Keep your seat, gentlemen,” Truman said, waving the dispatch. “I have an announcement for you.

“We have just dropped a bomb on Japan, which has more than 20,000 tons of TNT. It was an overwhelming success.”

After the applause from men who realized that the end of the war was close to being a reality, Truman left to begin spreading the word to each area of the ship.

The word was spread across the nation with immediacy by radio and by special editions of newspapers, with the news of the atomic bomb spread across the top of page one in banner headlines with much larger font than usual.

The New York Times headline displayed in three lines across the top of page one read, “FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN; MISSILE IS EQUAL TO 20,000 TONS OF TNT; TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF A ‘RAIN OF RUIN’ “

Southwest Missouri’s leading afternoon newspaper, the Joplin News Herald, used bold capital letters at the top, as well as a term that while used commonly grew to be seen a racist pejorative by later generations- “ATOMIC BOMB USED ON JAPS”

Eight days later, following a second atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered.

Arthur Aull’s Lamar Democrat did not exactly follow the lead of the New York Times or even the Joplin News Herald with its page one coverage of the end of the war.

Rather than a banner headline across the top of the page, Aull, who normally had one-column headlines written in bold capital letters, but the same size as the regular copy, made an exception for the momentous occasion and spread a headline over two columns- “A VICTORY NEVER BEFORE EQUALED IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.”

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The Buck Starts Here: Harry S. Truman and the City of Lamar is available in paperback and e-book from Amazon at the links below: