The anniversary last month of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan once again raised the question of whether nuking Japan was necessary, not to mention sane or moral. We usually hear that it saved the lives of half a million or a million U.S. soldiers. Bush the First once said that the bombs “spared millions of American lives.” But not even Truman went into the millions. I recently came across an audio recording of Truman speaking after the first bomb was dropped. Note here that he says “thousands and thousands” not “millions and millions.”
For more on Truman and the atomic bombs, see Ralph Raico.