Prompt & Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan
Rating
The Pequod Review:
J. Samuel Walker was the former historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but his short book Prompt & Utter Destruction has none of the defensiveness or evasion one might expect from a quasi-establishment figure. At its core, the book aims to evaluate whether Truman was justified in his decision to detonate atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Walker’s conclusion is ambiguous, as he shows somewhat persuasively that while the bomb hastened the end of World War II, Japan was likely to surrender soon anyway — and therefore the number of American soldiers' lives saved was probably only in the thousands rather than tens or hundreds of thousands.