Before sunrise in the South Pacific on August 9 (it was still August 8 in Washington), a task force of B-29s took flight to deliver the Fat Man bomb on Japan. Truman was aware that a second bomb would be employed, but he gave no direct order for this mission. There was no button pushed, no paper trail that connects the president directly to Fat Man. William L. Laurence of the New York Times was embedded with a crew on this mission. “We are on our way to bomb the mainland of Japan,” he wrote while aboard one of the B-29s that morning.
