The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese to initiate United States entrance into the war, just four years before, was still alive on the minds of many Americans. President Harry Truman had many alternatives at his disposal for ending the war: invade the Japanese mainland, hold a demonstration of the destructive power of the atomic bomb for Japanese dignitaries, drop an atomic bomb on selected industrial Japanese cities, bomb and blockade the islands, wait for Soviet entry into the war on August 15, or mediate a compromised peace. Operation Olympia, a full scale landing of United States armed forces, was already planned for Kyushu on November 1, 1945 and a bomb and blockade plan had already been instituted over the Japanese mainland for several months.
After Japanese leaders rejected the Potsdam Declaration, President Truman authorized use of the atomic bomb anytime after August 3, 1945. On the morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Destroying over 60 percent of the city, 70,000 residents died instantaneously. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. Over 20,000 people died instantly. In the successive weeks, thousands more Japanese died from the after effects of the radiation exposure of the blast.
