June 9, 1962 - Former President Truman (pictured on his birthday last month) went on the radio today to brand as a lie a Soviet propaganda charge that he had initiated the nuclear arms race. The wartime Commander in Chief replied to a Moscow radio broadcast that said the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary and inhuman. The broadcast had also said that the bombings were undertaken to intimidate revolutionaries and to influence Soviet decisions on the peace. “The whole thing is nothing but a big lie,” Mr. Truman said in a broadcast over the Mutual Broadcasting System. “The bombs were dropped after Japan had been warned that we had discovered the greatest explosive in the history of the world, and then we asked them to surrender. They did not do it.” Mr. Truman recalled that the U.S. and its allies — other than the Soviet Union — were preparing at that time an invasion of Japan by 1 million men that would have cost 250,000 American dead and many more wounded, and an equal or greater loss to the Japanese. The late General George C. Marshall, wartime Chief of Staff, disclosed in a 1959 interview that D-Day for the invasion of Japan was to have been Sept. 23, 1945.
