https://consortiumnews.com/2023/08/09/atomic-bombings-were-needless-ww-iis-top-us-brass/
An excerpt:
Those who attack this mythology are often reflexively dismissed as unpatriotic, ill-informed or both. However, the most compelling witnesses against the conventional wisdom were patriots with a unique grasp on the state of affairs in August 1945 — America’s senior military leaders of World War II.
Let’s first hear what they had to say, and then examine key facts that led them to their little-publicized convictions:
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General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that 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 Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
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Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon… 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.”
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Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb… The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
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General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
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Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
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Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Putting out feelers through third-party diplomatic channels, the Japanese were seeking to end the war weeks before the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945. Japan’s navy and air forces were decimated, and its homeland subjected to a sea blockade and allied bombing carried out against little resistance.
. . . We like to think of our system as one in which the supremacy of civilian leaders acts as a rational, moderating force on military decisions. The needless atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — against the wishes of World War II’s most revered military leaders — tells us otherwise.
Embrace of Sinister Principle
Sadly, the destructive effects of the Hiroshima myth aren’t confined to Americans’ understanding of events in August 1945. “There are hints and notes of the Hiroshima myth that persist all through modern times,” State Department whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren said on “The Scott Horton Show”.
The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with U.S. actions abroad, whether it is women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.
Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it is right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians. Whether the harm is inflicted by bombs or sanctions, it is a philosophy that mirrors the morality of al Qaeda.
The difference between nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs is only a matter of power plants carefully controlling the rate of fission. Bombs release energy almost instantly; power plants release it over a much longer period, and do so with graphite rods carefully placed and adjusted to control the rate of fission.
Cancer and other harm: Yes, people died of radiation poisoning after the Japanese bombings. Yes, the cities are inhabited now; the levels of radiation are no longer of any real concern. FYI, there is still detectable and in some areas dangerous radiation from the Fukushima disaster in the areas surrounding that plant.
As for chernobyl:
~ Dr. Chris Busby, Deconstructing Nuclear Experts, March 2011
Also:
British Journal of Radiology published Rationale for using multiple antioxidants in protecting humans against low doses of ionizing radiation in 2005 (with 85 references). It includes, among other things, the following information:
You said "I haven't heard how or why the chain reaction simultaneously ceases" --
It DOESN'T, which is why radioactive (and chemically poisonous as well) waste is an issue from power plants, uranium mining and processing, etc. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than new rods used in power plants but still radioactive enough to be a health hazard to soldiers and civilians alike in areas where DU is used.
As for why the chain reactions in bombs cease, it's because the materials are no longer compressed together in tight contact, which is necessary for the chain reaction to continue. Only a small amount can fission before that happens.
Much comes down to which sources of information should be trusted. I'll admit I haven't read or compared the works of Wade Allison, George Monbiot or Chris Busby. But recent years have led me to question large swaths of what structured media presents as truth, including purportedly scientific media. And in revisiting the original stories of the atomic bomb, I find it more likely that both bombs were large-scale firebombings, similar to Dresden, leveraged into a very big lie. This does not discount the existence of large and powerful bombs, nor of large electricity-producing plants (which are also operated in government-controlled secrecy), nor smaller plants that are safe enough and small enough for submarines in port but too dangerous for the cities where they dock.
Because it's impossible to prove a negative, my reasoning is based on circumstantial evidence. Obviously if an atomic weapon explodes tomorrow in an observable place I'd be proven wrong. But 80 years without a repeat, despite media discussion of increasingly miniaturized and increasingly portable nukes, amidst multiple wars and conflicts including those in nuclear-equipped zones and countries (India-Pakistan; Ukraine; Israel), strains credulity. The constant media hammering of the danger, contrasted against the fact that it has never materialized, invites skepticism.
I find the alternate explanation that it's a psyop to be more convincing. A plane named Boch's car dropping a bomb named Fat Man represented a message to Japan that the Trans-Siberian railway (with its boxcars) would soon deliver Soviet (fat country) troops was to give them the choice of being occupied by the US or by the USSR. As a tool of propaganda, the atomic bomb is peerless and has been used ever since.
For the most part it's all rather abstract and meaningless in our daily lives except as a question of what to fear and whom to trust. I researched enough to find alternate explanations for the bombings and significant examples of the bomb used as propaganda. But people are rarely persuaded unless they convince themselves. If you're interested I'll drop a link to the place that got me started down this route.
(I really got started after seeing that half the medical press was based on deceit, but for the sake of the nuclear topic, the medical stuff was just the primer.)