Third Fleet, testified before Congress in September 1949, “I believe that bombing – especially atomic bombing – of civilians, is morally indefensible. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa.” 4Īdmiral Halsey, Commander of the U.S. Rhoades, noted in his diary: “General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this ‘Frankenstein’ monster. One day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, General MacArthur’s pilot, Weldon E. 2 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.” 3 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. 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.” 1 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. to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to induce Japanese leaders to surrender. Most Americans then and now believe that it was necessary for the U.S. On September 2, 1945, V-J Day, Japanese officials aboard the USS Missouri formally surrendered to the United States, ending the Second World War. Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, September, 1945 Keywords: Atomic bomb, Truman, Hirohito, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Stimson, Soviet Union. Abstract: This article assesses the evidence for claims that the dropping of the atomic bombs were essential for securing Japan’s surrender and offers an alternative interpretation.
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