President Truman misled the American people into thinking that Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were military targets. The reason for the bombing is that the Soviet Union had acceded to an Anglo-American request to enter the war against Japan the very day that Nagasaki was bombed. The bomb’s successful testing in July 1945 made Soviet participation unnecessary. One year earlier, the head of the Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb, General Leslie Groves, had told Nobel Prize winner Joseph Rotblat that “the main purpose of the bomb was `to subdue the Russians.’”[1]
Most Americans are unaware of the anti-nuclear bomb perspective of World War II’s Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, Five-Star Fleet Admiral of the U.S. Navy and Chief of Staff to the President William D. Leahy, and Commanding General of the United States Army Air Force Henry H. Arnold—among others. Eisenhower wrote, “… I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him [Stimson] 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.” Leahy concluded, “… [T] he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … [I]n 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 this fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” Arnold reflected, “…[I]t always appeared to us that atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” His assessment was backed up by upper-class Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, whose Third Fleet made the final sea assault on Japan’s home islands. In 1946, Halsey publicly stated, “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment.” The Japanese “had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before” the bombs were dropped. In retrospect, William D. Hartung writes, “the use of a second atomic weapon against Nagasaki just three days later seems like an act of gratuitous cruelty on a monumental scale.” Gordon Thomas concludes, “…the bombing of Hiroshima, without doubt, the greatest war cime…” Skull and Bones’ Stimson (Bones 1888) overruled them all.[2] Sixty-two years later, the Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kuyuma stated that the reason Washington dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities was to keep the Soviet Union out of the war. He was quickly forced to resign for being honest.[3]
[1] Martin Rees, Our Final Hour, A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in this Century—On Earth and Beyond (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 38. This admission merely confirmed what had been absolutely demonstrated earlier in the definitive work on the atomic mass killings by Gar Alperovitz in his The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of An American Myth(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
[2]Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of An American Myth, 544. See also Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy. Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005); Leo Maley III & Uday Mohan (Director of Research for the Nuclear Studies Institute, American University), “Not Everyone Wanted to Bomb Hiroshima,” History News Network, November 5, 2007; William D. Hartung, “Did We Miss the Lesson of Nagaski?” History News Network, August 13, 2007. Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness. The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse (New York: Bantam, 1989), 357.
[3] Kana Inagaki, “Japan Defense Chief Quits in Gaffe,” Associated Press, July 3, 2007.