August 7, 1945

Harry S. Truman

White House releases Truman's statement announcing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

The most consequential White House announcement of the day was released in Washington — while the president who approved it was aboard a cruiser in the Atlantic.

6 August 1945: the statement goes out

The announcement is commonly dated 7 August — the listing's date — but contemporary records place it on 6 August 1945; the 7th appears in newspapers and in accounts of when Japanese officials absorbed the news, because of publication schedules and time zones.

President Harry S. Truman was aboard USS Augusta returning from the Potsdam Conference when Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed him the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. A statement in Truman's name — drafted and approved before he left Germany — was then released to reporters in Washington, not delivered live from the cruiser.

What the world was told

The statement publicly identified the weapon as an atomic bomb, claimed explosive power of more than 20,000 tons of TNT, opened by looking back exactly sixteen hours to the strike, and threatened further attacks if Japan did not accept the Allied surrender terms.

With its release, the Manhattan Project and the existence of an operational atomic bomb became public knowledge. Radio carried the warning; minutes after Truman received confirmation aboard Augusta, the ship's own radio was carrying bulletins based on his Washington statement.

Reading the statement carefully

The text described Hiroshima as an 'important Japanese Army base' — wording that should not be mistaken for a description of an exclusively military target; Hiroshima was a populated city, struck at about 8:15 a.m. local time on 6 August.

Japanese authorities learned from foreign broadcasts that Hiroshima had been attacked with an atomic weapon. This event is the announcement after the bombing — Truman's earlier targeting and authorization process is a separate story.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1945-08-06.

What the sources leave uncertain

Contemporary records date the statement August 6, not August 7. August 7 appears in newspapers and in accounts of when Japanese officials absorbed the announcement because of publication schedules and time-zone differences.
Film exists of Truman reading the prepared text aboard Augusta, but the official announcement was the written statement released in Washington; it was not a live shipboard address initiating the news.