From the East – May 2021

Greetings Brethren,

May marks the anniversary of the birth of our 33rd President, Harry S Truman on May 8th 1884. He was also a 33rd degree Mason and a Grand Master of Missouri during his 64 active years in the craft. Like both his grandfathers before him, he took his brotherhood very seriously and was known as “a very good lodge man.”

Starting life as a farmer’s son and a farmer himself he became a Mason at the young age of 21 in 1909. He enlisted as a private in 1905 and rose through the ranks serving his unit well while at the same time demonstrating wise investment of their accounts and was discharged as a Major, his battery firing the last shot of WW I. After the war he opened a men’s clothing store, “the shirt shop” as he called it. Unfortunately it folded and with no money and no home his future looked bleak. Yet in only 23 years this penniless ex-haberdasher would shine and be acknowledged as the leader of the free world out maneuvering both Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.

Throughout his life he was recognized for his Mason like “generous principles” and for his integrity and selfless concern for others. His honesty as a Missouri “judge”, which is more equivalent to what we know as a county freeholder, was as uncommon then as now and made him a popular choice for governor or senator. He chose senator which led to his selection as VP candidate since Roosevelt needed someone on his ticket from the Midwest. Ivy League Roosevelt held his brother Mason in contempt as being an uneducated hayseed farmer and the two rarely met. Truman was seldom seen in the White House and he knew nothing of the Manhattan project until two weeks after he assumed the Presidency unlike Joseph Stalin who was getting constant progress notes from spies.

He enjoyed a warm relationship with Brother David Eisenhower but he had troubles with Brother Douglas MacArthur who had difficulty accepting directions from his commander-in-chief (yes history does repeat). Despite it being an extremely unpopular move, President Truman had the courage to do the right thing and fired Brother MacArthur having once said “I am here to make decisions, and whether they are right or wrong I am going to make them.” Such examples of his integrity ultimately earned him an 87% approval rating exceeding that of FDR. He continued to keep a hand written framed note on his desk from Brother Mark Twain, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Certainly the hardest decision he was faced with was the decision on using the atomic bomb against Japan. It was his decision alone to make and as “the buck stops here” he never considered passing it off to a “bipartisan committee” to study. Given the choices of a blockade and starving the people, invading and losing one million men and even more Japanese, or use the bomb and lose 20 to 50 thousand civilians he felt the burden most acutely. Many including Einstein and also Oppenheimer who oversaw its development were against its use. The famous picture of Hiroshima taken afterwards appears starkly hellish and one at first wonders how anyone could approve its use. But the picture is deceptive and the facts tell a different story. At the start of the Manhattan project, a commission studied the effects of using the bomb. As we did not know if the A-bomb would really work and we had only two which were both of different designs that we could not mass produce, it was realized the bombs only military use was purely psychological must be used as a surprise as quickly as possible. The thought was to shock the war lords into the idea that thousands dropping from the sky would be unsurvivable. In fact, after the first, the Japanese warlords still wanted to continue to the last person standing. Only after the second did the Emperor decide enough was enough. He did not know we had no more to drop. The next night would have marked the return to incendiary bombs with the loss of 50 to 100 thousand lives every night as before, much more than from the atomic bombs.

As for the picture, look closely and you will notice trees, street signs, electric poles and stone buildings still standing. Later study by the military showed much of the destruction came not directly from the bomb but when the shock turned countless stoves on their sides the paper and wood houses around the factories set the city on fire. Although he confessed to his wife it was the hardest decision he ever had to make as president, it saved millions of lives on both sides and thankfully therefore many of us are here today and able to read of it. And now you know the rest of the story.
It is noteworthy that while MW Brother Truman lived a productive life for 89 years, he almost was lost at 64 in 1950. Two assassins tried to shot him outside of Blair House but he was saved by his friend, advisor and secret service agent Brother Leslie Coffelt who gave his life to save his President, Brother Harry.

For further reading see “Truman” by D. McCullough

Fraternally,
Larry Vernamonti WM