Coming To Terms With Truman

WHEN HARRY TRUMAN BECAME PRESIDENT, he resigned his position as grand master of the Missouri masonic lodge, and my grandfather replaced him. My father, a green lawyer hanging around, asked the new president what he least liked about the job. No privacy I can't even take a leak alone. Give 'em hell harry, ever blunt. I was a high school senior on Christmas break when Truman died. I drove three hours, stood in line all night outside the Truman library, freezing, and was rewarded by spending three minutes walking around the flag draped honor guarded elevated casket, while my flashcube camera failed utterly. To me, it was worth it. My mother, correctly, thought I was crazy. the actual problem was that I was seventeen. she offered to save me a trip and take me downtown to a mortuary to view as many caskets as I wanted, but I politely declined. She could never show me one with a dead president inside. In graduate school a professor asked the seminar members to assess whether Truman's legacy was rising or falling within the historical profession. Ascending, I asserted. He corrected me. In the nineteen eighties, it seemed, harry was losing esteem. but not now. Now, he is ascending, and has risen to number six on layman's and scholar's lists. The most recent book "The Accidental President" by A.J. Baime, is a good read, but doesn't offer much new scholarship. Truman is well documented. It may be that the definitive work on harry S. Truman has not yet been written. In the Truman library, there is a section devoted entirely to the nuclear bombing of Japan. Visitors are invited to put their thoughts in writing. opinions vary widely; there is no consensus. I wrote that both bombs were unnecessary, that during the summer of 1945 the Japanese government was communicating with the Russian military, seeking a way of approaching the Americans concerning possible surrender terms. I wrote that by august 1945, the Japanese military was entirely destroyed, and that the reason for the bomb was to convince the Russians not to enter the war against Japan, and to announce to the world America's intention to dominate it after the war's end. And I wrote that Truman was well aware of all of this, as indicated in his diary. Baime offers nothing other than the conventional rationale for the atomic bombs, disappointingly. I love and admire Truman, partly because of his abrasive honesty, partly because he was born only a few miles from where I grew up. Much as I malign him for dropping the bombs, for failing to complete the New Deal, and for igniting the cold War with an irrational fear of communism, I admire Truman because he was confronted with a set of circumstances and adverse responsibility unparalleled in human history, and he had no choice but to do something. I admire him for doing something............THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS SITE WITH YOUR FRIENDS!