Atomic Bomb -- Japan Was Ready To Quit

Bill Dietrich's article, "Fifty years From Trinity," continues the propaganda by omission that has characterized U.S. media coverage of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and its aftermath.

The "official line" has been that the Japanese would resist fanatically any invasion of their country with high U.S. casualties as a result. However, a report issued by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in 1946 concluded, "Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, 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."

The Japanese were beaten. They had sent peace feelers through at least three channels. President Truman was aware of these facts. Yet the bomb was dropped. One of the reasons for this savagery must have been the impetus to use a weapon that had never really been used against "live people." Most likely though, the bomb was dropped in the first shot of the Cold War, to impress the Soviet Union that the U.S. would run the post-war world.

Whatever scenario one accepts - a terrorist bombing of civilians to force the government to peace terms or a slaughter to make a political point - the bombings were a war crime, no less so than the Japanese butchery in Nanking. Indeed, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II remarked ". . . the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan . . . In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

Clearly, at least some of the U.S. senior military and scientific community were adamantly opposed to this monstrous weapon. It's long overdue that the U.S. media stop repeating the cliches justifying the use of nuclear weapons. Michael Dedrick Seattle