Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe and one of the architects of the
successful campaign against Germany, was one of the dissenters. After the war, Eisenhower recalled his position
in 1945, asserting that “
Japan was defeated and… dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.†Eisenhower’s objection was, in part, a moral one; as he noted, “I thought 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.
It was my belief that J
apan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of
'face.'" Eisenhower recalled that his objection found an unreceptive audience with Secretary of War Henry
Stimson. In Eisenhower's own words, Stimson was “deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the
reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.â€
In a separate document,
Stimson himself concurred with Eisenhower’s conclusion that
there was little active American attempt to respond to Japan’s peace feelers to prevent the use of the atomic weapons:
“No effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb.â€
The year after the Japanese surrender, the U.S. government released its own Strategic Bombing Survey, an effort
to assess the effectiveness of dropping bombs on civilian populations, including the firebombs used in Europe
and the Pacific, and the atomic weapons detonated over Hiroshima and Tokyo (see Primary Source U.S. Strategic
Bombing Survey [1946]). Its findings suggested that the bombs were largely superfluous, and that Japan’s
surrender was all but guaranteed even without the threat of invasion. “
Based on a detailed investigation of all
the facts,†the SBS concluded, “and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it
is the Survey's opinion 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.â€
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