The Atom Bomb

It has been 60 years since the atom bombs and so let us look at what the military leadership of WWII had to say about the dropping of the bombs....

General Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Here is what the Commanding General of Allied armies in Europe said recalling his being told of the determination to use the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Secretary of War Stimson met with General Eisenhower to tell him of the decision to use the Atomic Bomb...

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so 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'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
"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." Moreover, Leahy continued, "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."

Admiral "Bull" Halsey:
"the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment." The Japanese, he noted, had "put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before" the bomb was used.

General Douglas MacArthur: (as told by his aid Norman Cousins)
"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

The Author: Me
It would be nice to believe in the pretended justification that American and Japanese lives were actually saved by the use of the bombs. However there is very little evidence of this. The Atomic bombs were warning signs, not to Japan, but to Soviet Russia. It is ironic that the scientists that asked Truman to demonstrate the bombs basically got what they wanted, albeit on live targets.

Happy 60th Birthday Fatman and Littleboy.