General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: No Choice: Why Harry Truman Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Japan [View all]malchickiwick
(1,474 posts)Adm. William Leahy, President Trumans Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.
in being the first to use it, we
adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
More?
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan
Adm. William Bull Halsey Jr., Commander of the US Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946 that the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment
. It was a mistake to ever drop it
. [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, for his part, stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives
He later publicly declared
it wasnt necessary to hit them with that awful thing.
Even the famous hawk Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
Sauce: https://www.thenation.com/article/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/