Con
Notes:
Joint Chiefs of Staff never formally studied decision to drop bomb, never recommended the President to drop the bomb or not
Every top U.S. Military leader said bomb was unnecessary
Use of bomb had no assistance in the war, Japanese were already defeated
Decision to use bomb was made at a political, not military level
First bomb was unnecessary experiment
There was not one target in East Asia worth blowing up
Idea was proposed to the Secretary of the Navy that the bomb should be demonstrated to the Japanese so that they had an idea of what they were facing
War would have been over in two weeks without the dropping of the bomb
Quotes:
“In official internal military interviews, diaries and other private as well as public materials, literally every top U.S. military leader involved subsequently stated that the use of the bomb was not dictated by military necessity.”
“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….” – Admiral William D. Leahy, Presidents Chief of Staff
“In being the first to use it, we…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.” – Admiral William D. Leahy, Presidents Chief of Staff
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan….” – Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet
“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment….It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it….It killed a lot of