http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=12169
The American Presidency Project
Harry S. Truman
XXXIII President of the United States: 1945-1953
93 - Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima
August 6, 1945
SIXTEEN HOURS AGO an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
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.
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. 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.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=12165
The American Presidency Project
Harry S. Truman
XXXIII President of the United States: 1945 - 1953
97 - Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference.
August 9, 1945
My fellow Americans:
I have just returned from Berlin, the city from which the Germans intended to rule the world. It is a ghost city. The buildings are in ruins, its economy and its people are in ruins.
Our party also visited what is left of Frankfurt and Darmstadt. We flew over the remains of Kassel, Magdeburg, and other devastated cities. German women and children and old men were wandering over the highways, returning to bombed-out homes or leaving bombed out cities, searching for food and shelter.
War has indeed come home to Germany and to the German people. It has come home in all the frightfulness with which the German leaders started and waged it.
The German people are beginning to atone for the crimes of the gangsters whom they placed in power and whom they wholeheartedly approved and obediently followed.
The results of the Berlin conference have been published. There were no secret agreements or commitments--apart from current military arrangements.
And it was made perfectly plain to my colleagues at the conference that, under our Constitution, the President has no power to make any treaties without ratification by the Senate of the United States.
I want to express my thanks for the excellent services which were rendered at this conference by Secretary of State Byrnes, and which were highly commended by the leaders of the other two powers. am thankful also to the other members of the American delegation-Admiral Leahy and Ambassadors Harriman, Davies, and Pauley--and to the entire American staff. Without their hard work and sound advice the conference would have been unable to accomplish as much as it did.
The conference was concerned with many political and economic questions. But there was one strictly military matter uppermost in the minds of the American delegates. It was the winning of the war against Japan. On our program, that was the most important item.
The military arrangements made at Berlin were of course secret. One of those secrets was revealed yesterday, when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.
The Soviet Union, before she had been informed of our new weapon, agreed to enter the war in the Pacific. We gladly welcome into this struggle against the last of the Axis aggressors our gallant and victorious ally against the Nazis.
The Japs will soon learn some more of the other military secrets agreed upon at Berlin. They will learn them firsthand--and they will not like them.
