ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the decision-making process was defective on three separate issues: on whether or not to use the bomb at all; on when it should be used; and on how many should be used. The decision-making structure reflected, and facilitated, the momentum by which the development of the bomb was to be converted into the employment of the bomb. The need to solve the problem was sufficient vindication of the bomb and the solution, in turn, forestalled subsequent debate about employment. The timing of the second bomb was, in consequence, determined by operational factors in conjunction with a policy for ending the war that had never been explicitly endorsed at the highest political levels in Washington. The first of the Hiroshima axioms endures then in the notion that any decision to employ nuclear weapons will be a strategically rational one made on the basis of complete information and effectively implemented under full political tutelage.
