Letter from Harry S. Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt

TRUMAN HARRY S. TRUMAN INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI August 7, 1959 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: I found a book in our public library, and I assume it is avail- able everywhere, It is by George Fischer and carries the title Soviet Opposition to Stalin: A Case Study in World War II. The book was published in 1952 by the Harvard Univer= sity Press. Mr. Fischer's statement of the situation to which you referred in your letter and about which I wrote you the other day covers the program very well. It seems that these deserters were ordered returned through the terms of the Yalta Agreement, and they were. As I told you, I never agreed to return the prisoners from Red China to be slaughtered after the difficulty in Korea, but such a surrender agreement was made after I left office, and I do not know what ever became of those people. 1 have been reading a lot of articles on the atomic bomb and why we dropped it. Mrs. Pearl S. Buck has written an article, part of which is published in the August, 1959. issue of the Reader's Digest. Hanson Baldwin, too, has talked on the sub- ject, but the men who were on the ground doing their jobs share my opinion that their lives and the lives of a half million other youngsters were saved by dropping the bomb. I read an article only this morning about the man who actually dropped the bomb, and he feels as I do. I cannot recall ever hearing these other sob-sisters remember Pearl Harbor and the murders committed there by the Japanese. I can see no reason for their double standard of morality. Sincerely yours Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt 202 56th Street West berrythmin New York 19, N. Y.