Truman as President

The US Air Force bombed Japan regularly. One fire bomb raid alone on Tokyo (a city mostly made of wooden buildings) in March 1945 killed 80,000 civilians in a huge firestorm. Yet Japan would not agree to the Allies' peace terms: immediate surrender without any negotiations ('unconditional surrender').

President Roosevelt died in April 1945. He had seen Germany defeated, but not Japan. The new president, Truman, believed an invasion of Japan would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Also, Truman did not trust the Russians as much as Roosevelt and he was worried about the spread of Communism in Europe and in the Far East. He wanted to end the war as quickly as possible to stop the further spread of Communism.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 54