August 7th: 'the terrific news of the atomic bomb'
In 1945, nineteen year old Margetta Hirsch Doyle reflected on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Today we return again to one of my favourite diarists, Margetta Hirsch Doyle. I’ve previously featured one of her journal entries from June 21st, 1943, and another one from July 11th, 1945.
Margetta went to William & Mary college at the time of the diary entries that are available in digitised form. Today’s entry comes from 1945 (about a month after the last diary entry of hers that I shared), so she was 19 when she wrote this. The diary she used is a five year diary, but she just used it for a year and wrote on the full page for each day.
On this day, August 7th 1945, we find Margetta reflecting briefly on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which had happened on the 6th.
The world is all astir over the terrific news of the atomic bomb which has wiped out a Jap city - 20 000 times more powerful than TNT! - Its possibilities stagger the imagination.. like something out of Buck Rogers!1
Mother and I went to Brooklyn to the Alben to see “Those Endearing Young Charms” with Robert Young - and then I stopped in at the hospital.
I was sposed to meet Eleanor Heyer but through a mixup I came on home instead and invited Gloria over. Then when mother came home we were surprised to see that she had Dr Jim Goodman with her.
He’s a good guy and we had much fun talking and dancing. Glory and I taking turns with Jim. A pleasant change!
A letter from Freddie
Although she doesn’t quite say it in so many words, I’d interpret Margetta’s reporting of the atomic bombings as reflecting a favourable opinion. If she did indeed support the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she would be part of the vast majority of Americans at the time; as political scientist David Michael Smith writes:
In August 1945, shortly after the atomic attacks on Japan, a Gallup Poll found that 85 percent of the U.S. public approved of President Harry Truman’s decision to use this uniquely destructive new weapon. Only 10 percent disapproved. Popular opinion at the time was shaped by the Truman administration’s insistence that this action was essential for ending the war and saving U.S. lives, and by widespread racial animus toward the people of Japan.2
Smith describes a gradual decline of support for the decision to use the atomic bomb, which was already becoming visible in public polls and surveys from September 1945 onwards and continues to this day (or at least to 2020, when his article was published).
See here for some scans and transcripts of Margetta’s diaries.
In The Doyle Diary Project, a group of students transcribed Margetta’s 1944 diary and added helpful contextual notes to it - definitely worth a read!
Buck Rogers is a science fiction comic strip which first appeared in U.S. newspapers in 1929 (later adapted into a TV series)
David Michael Smith, ‘Public Opinion on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings since 1945’, Peace Review. A Journal of Social Justice 32:2 (2020), pp. 342-349, p.342.