Admiral Leahy (One of the most senior Admirals in the Pacific War, Commander of the Joint Chiefs):
It is my opinion 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. . . .My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had 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
Dwight D. Eisenhower (You probably know who he is)
I 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. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.”
J. Samuel Walker (chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it
Japan didn't need to be nuked twice to kowtow to the U.S they were ready to surrender, and would have likely immediately done so if the U.S promised that they would keep their emperor (which later did, partially because he was useful in countering Japanese communism). The motivations to drop the bombs were far more motivated by post-war geopolitical concerns on countering the Soviet Union, then by military necessity.
Admiral Leahy (One of the most senior Admirals in the Pacific War, Commander of the Joint Chiefs):
Dwight D. Eisenhower (You probably know who he is)
J. Samuel Walker (chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
Japan didn't need to be nuked twice to kowtow to the U.S they were ready to surrender, and would have likely immediately done so if the U.S promised that they would keep their emperor (which later did, partially because he was useful in countering Japanese communism). The motivations to drop the bombs were far more motivated by post-war geopolitical concerns on countering the Soviet Union, then by military necessity.
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