People
HARRY S. TRUMAN
(President of the United States, 1945-1953)
People > Administrators
Harry Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. He grew up in rural Missouri and following graduation from high school worked at an assortment of clerical jobs, eventually moving to the family farm near Grandview, Missouri. During the First World War, he was elected an officer of his National Guard unit, and in 1918 he saw combat in France. After the war, he opened a men's haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri, but, with the subsequent failure of his business, he entered local politics. In 1934, he became the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate and handily defeated the Republican incumbent, Roscoe C. Patterson. In 1940 he was narrowly reelected to the Senate. 
Senator Truman earned a national reputation investigating charges of corruption and incompetence at defense installations. In March 1941, the Senate formed the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, headed by Truman and informally known as the Truman Committee. The committee's investigations briefly brought Truman into contact with the Manhattan Project, although he did not realize it at the time. In June 1943, the committee began making inquiries about land acquisition near Pasco, Washington, for what would become the Hanford Engineer Works. For reasons of military security and to head off any unwanted publicity, General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Engineer District, had Secretary of War Henry Stimson ask Truman to eliminate the site from his investigations. Truman agreed, with the understanding that Stimson would assume full responsibility for project activities. In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his surprise running mate for the upcoming election, replacing Henry Wallace as Vice President. Truman was never brought into Roosevelt's inner circle of advisers, however, and his tenure as Vice President was a remarkably quiet one. Prior to Roosevelt's sudden death on April 12, 1945, Truman was not aware that the Manhattan Project existed. 
On April 25, 1945, Stimson and Groves fully briefed the new President on the atomic bomb project. They traced the history of the Manhattan Project, summarized its status and detailed the timetable for testing and combat delivery. Stimson also discussed postwar control of the bomb, noting that the United States could not retain its present advantage indefinitely. One week later, Stimson met with Truman again, asking that the President appoint an advisory group to recommend proper use of atomic weapons during the war and develop a plan for postwar atomic policy. Stimson called the group the "Interim Committee" because after the war Congress would probably want to form a permanent commission to supervise, regulate, and control the atom. Over the next several months, Truman would hold ultimate responsibility for making hard decisions on use of the bomb and post-war considerations. Input from the Interim Committee was essential, but Truman also would rely heavily on the counsel of his Secretary of War. Stimson, as the historians Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson have noted, "more than any other man… was in a position to influence the advent of nuclear energy." Truman made the decision, based on advice from the Interim Committee and Stimson, to drop the atomic bomb on Japan without warning prior to his meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, at Potsdam in mid-July. He also had decided to tell Stalin, if the opportunity arose, that the United States was working on the bomb and intended to use it against Japan. Following the successful Trinity test of the plutonium device on July 16, which buoyed his confidence and hardened his resolve toward the Soviet Union, Truman on July 24 approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a "new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin, who through Soviet espionage and unbeknownst to Truman was well aware of the atomic bomb, replied that he was glad to hear it and hoped that it would be used against Japan to good effect. The following day, a directive, written by Groves, approved by Truman, and issued by Stimson and General of the Army George Marshall, ordered the Army Air Force's 509th Composite Group to attack Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki (in that order of preference) as soon after August 3 as weather permitted. The United States dropped the untested uranium bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and three days later a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. Japan announced its willingness to surrender the following day, and Truman ordered that no further atomic attacks be made while negotiations to finalize the surrender took place. Truman's decision to drop the bomb effectively ended the war. As the president of post-war America, Truman oversaw the largely unsuccessful initial efforts at international control of the atom and the more successful efforts at domestic control. Failing to reach an agreement with Stalin, he secured the central role atomic weapons were to play in postwar military strategy by expanding the production of fission weapons and, in 1950, by approving the development of the hydrogen bomb. This was made possible with the creation of a civilian Atomic Energy Commission-successor to the wartime Manhattan Engineer District-that strictly controlled the domestic atom, developed and built new weapons, and made the first fledgling efforts at peaceful uses of the atom. Deciding not to run for reelection in 1952, Truman retired from public life. He died on December 26, 1972, at the age of 88. To view the next people section of the Manhattan Project, proceed to Scientists.
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The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include the following. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972), 342-47, 360-61, 363-65, 369-72, 380-94, 401-6, quote on Stimson on p. 347; Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), 335, 337. For Truman and the post-war atom, see Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield, 1947-1952: Volume II, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972). For biographical information and chronologies, see the web site of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library at http://www.trumanlibrary.org. The photograph of Truman with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Wallace is courtesy the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The rest of the photographs are courtesy the Truman Presidential Library & Museum.