Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Worth reading: The Voice of Hikabusha

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Contrary to conventional opinion today, many military leaders of the time — including six out of seven wartime five-star officers — criticized the use of the atomic bomb.

Take, for example, Adm. William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs 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.” Moreover, Leahy continued, “[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 that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

From Not Everyone Wanted to Bomb Hiroshima by Leo Maley III and Uday Mohan

Howard Zinn wrote this article in The Progressive in 2000.