This narrative that nuclear bombs saved US lives is missing one important fact - the war could have ended in May 1945 thus saving many more. But the US rejected Japan’s early surrender offers, as Japan wanted to retain their emperor as head of state. See: https://mises.org/library/hiroshima-myth https://twitter.com/austdef/status/1289714097429200897
General Eisenhower had urged President Truman not to use the atomic bomb: "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing … to use the atomic bomb to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime."
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the Emperor.
Commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral.
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz stated "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war."
Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, stated the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a "toy and they wanted to try it out…." He further stated, "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it."
Adm. William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote 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.”
Even the famous ‘war 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.”
American intelligence had broken the Japanese codes, and so the US administration knew the Japanese government was trying to negotiate surrender through Moscow.
If the Confederate battle flag can come down in South Carolina, we can perhaps begin to ask ourselves more challenging questions about the nature of America’s global power, and what is true and what is false about why we really dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
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