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    Hiroshima/Nagasaki: is/was the majority view that Japan had been willing to surrender without need f Archived Message

    Posted by Jim_Carlucci on March 25, 2023, 2:24 am

    Hiroshima/Nagasaki: is/was the majority consensus that Japan had been willing to surrender without need for atomic bomb strikes?

    Have just read this in the Asia Pacific Journal - and must admit I was quite surprised at the extent of (majority) opposition that existed at the highest levels of the US military and government to the use of and need for the atomic bomb strikes:

    "General Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, recalled a visit from Secretary of War Henry Stimson in late July 1945: “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.’” Eisenhower reiterated the point years later in a Newsweek interview in 1963, saying that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
    "In fact, seven out of eight top U.S. military commanders believed that it was unnecessary to use atomic bombs against Japan from a military-strategic vantage point, including Admirals Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, William Halsey, and William Leahy, and Generals Henry Arnold and Douglas MacArthur. According to Air Force historian Daniel Haulman, even General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the air war against Japan, believed “the new weapons were unnecessary, because his bombers were already destroying the Japanese cities.”
    "One day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, General MacArthur’s pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, noted in his diary: “General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this ‘Frankenstein’ monster. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa.”
    "Admiral Halsey, Commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, testified before Congress in September 1949, “I believe that bombing – especially atomic bombing – of civilians, is morally indefensible. . . . I know that the extermination theory has no place in a properly conducted war.”

    "Admiral Leahy, Truman’s chief military advisor, wrote in his memoirs: “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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”

    (Source Asia Pacific Journal
    https://apjjf.org/2021/20/Kuzmarov-Peace.html)

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