war. Indeed, he was frustrated by Harvey Hollister Bundy, his colleague from the Food Administration days, who kept Strauss away from information regarding the Manhattan Project. At the end of the war, when the first atomic bombs were ready for use, Strauss advocated to Forrestal dropping one on a symbolic target, such as a Japanese cedar grove near Nikkō, Tochigi, as a warning shot. In subsequent years Strauss would say in interviews, "I did my best to prevent it. The Japanese were defeated before the bomb was used." After the war, Strauss was the Navy's representative on the Interdepartmental Committee on Atomic Energy. Strauss recommended a test of the atomic bomb against a number of modern warships, which he thought would refute the idea that the atomic bomb made the Navy obsolete. His recommendation contributed to the decision to hold the mid-1946 Operation Crossroads tests, the first since the war, at Bikini Atoll. Atomic Energy Commission member In 1947, the United States transferred control of atomic research from the U.S. Army to civilian authority under the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In October 1946, in advance of the commission actually coming into being, Strauss was named by President Truman as one of the first five Commissioners, with David E. Lilienthal as the chairman. Strauss had been recommended for a position on the body by Vice Admiral Paul Frederick Foster, a long-time friend for whom Strauss had earlier provided contacts in the business world (and who had subsequently helped Strauss get his active duty assignment). In their initial discussion about the appointment, Strauss noted to the New Deal-supporting Truman that "I am a black Hoover Republican." Truman said that was of no matter, since the commission was intended to be non-political. Strauss, who had briefly returned to work at Kuhn Loeb after the war, now exited the firm altogether in order to comply with AEC regulations. Once there, Strauss became one of the first commissioners to speak in dissent from existing policy. In the first two years there were a dozen instances, most having to do with information security matters, in which Strauss was in a 1–4 minority on the commission; in the process he was increasingly perceived as stubborn. One of Strauss's first actions on the AEC was to urge his fellow commissioners to set up the capability to monitor foreign atomic activity via atmospheric testing. In particular, he