Introduction
One of the most hotly debated topics in international politics and, indeed, the whole of human history, is the American use of the atomic bomb to bring an end to the fighting in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Central to this debate is the question of motivation: what was it that caused President Harry S. Truman to employ what he himself called “the most terrible bomb in the history of the world” in bringing the Japanese to heel?

The most obvious answer is, of course, to expedite the end of the second World War by securing Japan’s surrender. The most common defense of the use of the bomb was that it saved the much-touted “half a million American lives” that would have been ended in an American invasion of the Japanese archipelago. Truman said, “The atom bomb was ‘no great decision’…It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness…It was a purely military decision to end the war.” However, goings-on in international politics, and especially in times of war, can only very rarely be explained away with such a simplistic, surface-level argument. There are always underlying motives to be considered, and these can be few or many, trenchant or vague.

In the case of the use of the bomb, possible motivations are many, and they are vague. It is difficult for one to put their proverbial finger squarely on a single argument and say, “Yes. That’s the one. That’s why they did it”. Given our hindsight, we know the outcome of the decision - on the morning of August 6th, 1945, the B-29 bomber known as the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan. We know that it detonated at 8:16 am, “after a forty-three-second fall to an altitude of 1,900 feet over the courtyard of the Shima Hospital, 550 feet south-east of the Aioi bridge aiming point” .We know of the devastation that followed, but the catalyst for the decision is still under scrutiny, and for good reason.