Press Release, Letter from Former President Harry S. Truman to Tsukasa Nitoguri, Chairman of Hiroshima City Council

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO THE PRESS, RADIO AND TELEVISION The following letter was written March 12, 1958, by former President of the United States Harry S. Truman to Hon. Tsukasa Nitoguri, Chairman of the Hiroshima City Council, Hiroshima, Japan, in reply to the resolution passed by the Hiroshima City Council protesting Mr. Truman's recently televised comments on the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Dear Mr. Chairman: Your courteous letter, enclosing the resolution of the Hiroshima City Council, was highly appreciated. The feeling of the people of your city is easily understood, and I am not in any way offended by the resolution which their city council passed. However, it becomes necessary for me to remind the City Council, and perhaps you also, of some historical events. In 1941, while a peace conference was in progress in Washington between represent- atives of the Emperor of Japan and the Secretary of State of the United States, rep- resenting the President and the Government of the United States, a naval expedition of the Japanese Government approached the Hawaiian Islands, a territorial part of the United States, and bombed our Pearl Harbor Naval Base. It was done without provocation, without warning and without a declaration of war. Thousands of young American sailors and civilians were murdered by this unwar- ranted and unheralded attack, which brought on the war between the people of Japan and the people of the United States. It was an unnecessary and terrible act. The United States had always been a friend of Japan from the time our great Admiral succeeded in opening the door to friendly relations between our two countries. Our sympathies were with Japan in the war between Russia and Japan in the early 1900's. The President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, intervened and brought about a peace settlement. But in the 1930's Japan joined the Axis Powers, and when the Hitler regime in Ger- many and Mussolini's government in Italy were defeated, Japan was left alone. From Potsdam in 1945, before Russia declared war on Japan, Great Britain, China and the United States issued an ultimatum suggesting that Japan join the Germans and Italians in surrender. This document, sent to the Japanese Government through Sweden and Switzerland, evoked only a very curt and discourteous reply. Our military advisers had informed Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain, TREMAS "NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE"