A very good friend of mine, a history teacher, amd I used to have a running battle over Truman's use of the atomic bomb. I argued that given the time and the context of the decision, Truman had no choice. Ken argued that the sole purpose was a political decision to scare the Russians. Both views are not necessarily contradictory. The reading I've done about both Japanese and American views indicates a certain ambivalence, but clearly the average GI was scared shitless of a proposed invasion of the Japanese homeland given the fierce defense of Iwo Jima, Tarawa, and Okinawa, not to mention Kamikaze attacks. One has only to read the comments of Admiral Halsey et al to understand the depth of racial hatred of the Japanese and the fear-mongering that had been engendered (often deliberately) but also the result of evidence of barbaric practices, to sympathize with the political pressure and debacle that would have resulted if the US had invaded Japan at the loss of even a few lives had he not used a weapon of this magnitude. (At the time they weren't even sure it would work.)
It must be acknowledged that I think the use of the bombs was horrific and hard to justify, but trying to put myself in Truman's shoes and with the information he had at that time, it's hard to see how he could have made any other decision. General LeMay's (who really should have been charged with being a war criminal)deliberate fire bombing attacks on Japanese cities had been horribly effective at leveling Japanese cities which were constructed of very flammable materials. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were virtually the only cities left.
This book is actually a collection of essays on a variety of topics, but the one about the atomic bomb was the most controversial. It had appears in the The New Republic (August 26 and 29, 1981), pp. 28-30.] This title essay is as much a critique of books like Gray's The Warriors, which Fussell argues "]is meditation on modern soldiering, gives every sign of remoteness from experience.
Division headquarters is miles behind the places where the soldiers experience terror and madness and relieve these pressures by sadism."
There is a nice collection of essays critiquing Fussell's position at http://www.uncp.edu/home/berrys/courses/hist102/hist102_docs_abomb.pdf
It's a discussion that should continue to haunt us.
Fussell has written a great deal about our mythic view of war [b:The Great War and Modern Memory and Wartime Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War.
