“A large part of the Japanese Navy was already on the bottom of the sea. The combined Navy surface and air force action even by this time had forced Japan into a position that made her early surrender inevitable.
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagaski was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
“My own feeling is that being the first to use it (the atomic bomb) we had adopted an ethical standard common to the Barbarism of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children”
(Admiral William D. Leahy I Was There, p. 245.)
Related Categories
War: 1941. World War II