For Hiroshima Day, 2010

If all a person had available to him/her was the commonplace, revisionist history, one would never even know that a number of influential American military figures were adamantly opposed to dropping Atomic weapons on civilian populations. Dwight Eisenhower, for example. But Harry Truman was teased incessantly as a child. He was small, and almost blind without his glasses. Little Harry was called a "sissy" on a daily basis (true story.) By nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman conveyed to a skeptical American populace, still reeling over the loss of the "magisterial" Roosevelt, that he truly was in command. It only cost several thousand lives to demonstrate Truman could be "tough as nails," and also make Stalin think twice about messing with Imperial America.
The US Air Force was quite prepared to drop a third nuke; only the Japanese surrender obviated that distinct possibility.