workingclasshistory:

On this day, 6 August 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians, despite knowing that Japan was about to surrender. Numerous senior US military officials confirmed that the bombing was unnecessary to defeat Japan, however at the end of World War II the US wanted to issue a warning to its eastern bloc “allies”. General Dwight D. Eisenhower explained: “Japan was at the moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of ‘face’. It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Admiral William D. Leahy, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated “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. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was taught not to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” And the US Strategic Bombing Survey determined that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” More US responses here: https://libcom.org/history/1945-us-responses-atomic-bombing-hiroshima-nagasaki https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1182383758613439/?type=3