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of nuclear weapons would be powerful enough to discourage the Japanese from continuing the fight. Moreover, even if the bombs did shorten the war and thus keep American soldiers alive, that benefit ‘may be outweighed by the ensuing loss of confidence and wave of horror and repulsion’ the world would feel if the bombs were dropped. The huge expense for the Manhattan Project, mentioned to Szilard by Byrnes, did not require the bombs’ use; the American public would understand ‘that a weapon can sometimes be made ready only for use in an extreme emergency’, and that nuclear weapons were in this category. The ‘compelling reason’ to build the weapon had been the scientists’ fear that Germany might be building one too, but that was no longer an issue. Above all, using the bomb against a Japanese city would so shock the world as to make future control of nuclear weapons unlikely. The bomb was ‘something entirely new in the order of magnitude of destructive power’. Given that, the way forward was to arrange a demonstration of the weapon in ‘the desert or [on] a barren island’, to which representatives from all nations, including of course Japan and the Soviet Union, would be invited. If the Japanese saw the awful power of the bomb, they might surrender. If the Russians and others saw that the Americans had the bomb but were too merciful to use it, they might be persuaded to place nuclear weapons work under international control.31

Military and government officials either remained unaware of the Franck Report or ignored it. Still, dissent continued. A gas diffusion engineer named O. C. Brewster got a letter through to Stimson on 24 May in which he insisted that, if the United States dropped the bomb, ‘we would be the most hated and feared nation on earth’. George Harrison, Stimson’s special assistant, wrote to his boss on 26 June of scientists’ concerns about the bombs’ use leading to a nuclear arms race. In July, Szilard tried again, circulating at the Met Lab a petition calling on the government to refrain, ‘on moral grounds’, from using the bomb against Japanese cities. He got fifty-three signatures at first, then toned down his language slightly and gained seventeen more. But he could not win over the Lab’s chemists, nor could he persuade Oppenheimer or Edward Teller, both at Los Alamos, to sign. (Oppie refused even to circulate the document.) The petition went through channels to Groves, who sat on it until 1 August, when he sent it to Stimson. President Truman, who had been in Potsdam and was then returning home aboard ship, never saw it.32

There were also several high-ranking doubters, men involved in atomic-bomb decisionmaking, who shared, perhaps independently, the scientists’ concerns about dropping the bomb on Japanese cities, or who had different concerns that nevertheless brought them to some of the same, troubled conclusions. With Barton J. Bernstein, we can probably dismiss the postwar statement of wartime opposition to using the bomb made by Dwight Eisenhower. Bernstein casts similar doubt on post facto remarks criticizing the attacks by three of the four members of the 1945 Joint Chiefs of Staff: Admiral Ernest King, Army Air Force General Henry Arnold, and Admiral William Leahy, the chairman of the chiefs whose 1950 memoir, incongruously endorsed by Truman, described the use of the bomb as barbaric. The fourth member of the JCS, George Marshall, did privately urge Stimson, on 29 June, to confine use of the bomb to a genuinely military target. When the administration instead agreed to target Hiroshima and other cities, Marshall kept his counsel. Joseph Grew, the Undersecretary of State and former Ambassador to Japan, urged Truman in late May to signal the Japanese that even in surrender they could retain control of their political system, meaning that the office and the person of the Emperor would be preserved. Grew’s proposal came in the aftermath of the latest firebombing attack on Tokyo; the atomic bomb lurked only in shadow form behind his argument to the President. Truman sent Grew off to see Stimson and several