Most of the stuff quote from the LaRouche site is lifted from "The making of the Atomic bomb" by Richard Rhodes which I read some while ago but there is other commentary as well.
One might expect the military people to be in favour of dropping the bomb on Japan but this is what
Eisenhower writes in his autobiography
Quote:I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.... The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During the 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, 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.'
General
MacArthur, until his death, insisted that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had
Quote:
no military value whatsoever.
And Adm. William
Leahy
Quote:
"Truman told me it was agreed they would use it, after military men's statements that it would save many, many American lives, by shortening the war, only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time."
After the war the Strategic Bombing Survey (1946) examined the destruction caused in Japan by a combination of the blockade and the incessant conventional bombing and concluded that
Quote:Japan would likely have surrendered in 1945 without atomic bombing, a Soviet declaration of war, or an American invasion.
From Henry
Stimson's diary
Quote:I was a little fearful that before we could get ready, the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength.
And so began the cover up and the mythology
Quote:At the time Stimson was working on his memoirs, being assisted by Harvey Bundy's son, McGeorge Bundy. The two now readily undertook the task of providing the "cover-up" for the atom bomb decision.
Harvey Bundy himself had drafted a number of "pointers" that he felt should be included : namely, that the bomb decision was primarily ordered with the thought that it would save American lives; that no major person in authority thought that Japan would surrender on terms acceptable to the Allies; that the Interim Committee had rejected targets "where the destruction of life and property would be the very greatest"; that the committee had discussed "intensively" whether the bomb should be used at all; and that the committee had also considered the possibility of a demonstration prior to its use in war. In particular he wanted to downplay any inference that the bomb played any role in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.
Groves underlined the basic lie :
Quote:that the dropping of the bomb shortened the war by months and saved many human lives.
