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Today’s evidence shows that the United States government acted about as Machiavellian as any government ever has.  While American boys were fighting and dying on the islands surrounding Japan, the American government was playing chess with world, especially Eastern Asia.  The United States government, including Roosevelt and Truman, knew the trajectory of Japanese surrender sentiments as they unfolded.  The Japanese only wanted to preserve their emperor, and would fight to the last man to do that, which all U.S. diplomats knew it quite well.  The United States, throughout the period of Japanese exploration of surrendering, continually stressed that surrender had to be "unconditional."  The only condition that the Japanese wanted by May of 1945 was to retain their Emperor, and our government knew it.[232] The underlying reasons for stalling Japanese attempts to surrender appear to be several:

1. The revenge for Pearl Harbor theme;

2. The United States government was playing chess with the Soviet Union, and its eye was firmly on what the post-war world would look like, with the defeat of Japan an inevitability that the policymakers were already looking far beyond; the United States government wanted to limit the Soviet Union's influence in Eastern Asia after the war, especially in China;

3. The atom bomb was the "ace in the hole" that the United States was eagerly waiting to play; it would be a demonstration of power to the Soviet Union that they could not ignore; the desire to demonstrate the bomb before the world was calculated to have maximum impact on the Soviet Union.

4. Using such a horrific weapon on the Japanese was logical, given the hatred that Americans held for the Japanese, a hatred that far exceeded American animosity toward the Germans, for instance; undoubtedly, racist sentiments had much to do to with it, in the most racist nation of all time.

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Nagasaki was probably a human experiment.  A different kind of bomb was used at Nagasaki, a plutonium bomb, which worked completely differently than the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima, never detonated before it was dropped on Nagasaki.  The Trinity test was with a plutonium bomb, but the Nagasaki one was being dropped from a plane.  They almost did not drop the Nagasaki bomb because cloud cover obscured the target, but they did not want to "waste" the bomb by dropping it into the ocean or taking it back home, so they dropped it miles from the target.  It was an experiment, used on human beings, for almost no reason other than seeing if it would work.  Nagasaki happened three days after Hiroshima, not giving the Japanese time to digest it.  There was no pressing need to rush things in the wake of Hiroshima, other than keeping the Soviets from gaining too much influence in Eastern Asia.

Here is a sampling of opinion by men who are obviously not revisionist scholars, and what they thought of dropping the atomic bombs.

"…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - Dwight Eisenhower.[248]  Eisenhower was the leader of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II and President of the United States in the 1950s.

"It is my opinion 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening.  My own feeling was that in 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."  - William Leahy.[249]  Leahy was the Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

On May 28, 1945, Herbert Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly:

"I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."[250]

On August 8, 1945, two days after Hiroshima was bombed, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."[251]

Herbert Hoover was the U.S. President from 1929 to 1933.

Douglas MacArthur's biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan:

"...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand(ed) that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.'  MacArthur was appalled.  He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it.  Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign.  Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."[252]

Norman Cousins consulted for General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan.  Cousins wrote, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed."  He continued, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted.  What, I asked, would his advice have been?  He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.  The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."[253]

Douglas MacArthur was Dwight Eisenhower's counterpart in the Pacific, in charge of the Allied troops fighting Japan during World War II.

Those men are not a bunch of hippies who grew up during the Vietnam War.  There were many, many others with positions similar to those men who were appalled by dropping the bombs on Japan.  Here is one example of what might have been, but was ignored in the rush to use the bomb.

"On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Under Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bard the previous day was given to Secretary of War Henry Stimson.   The memorandum stated in part,

"'Following the three-power [July 1945 Potsdam - Ed.] conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender.  It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

"'I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program.'  He concluded the memorandum by noting, 'The only way to find out is to try it out.'"[254]

Albert Einstein would later say,

"I made one great mistake in my life - when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them."[255]

George Kennan, one of the most fervent Cold Warriors, wrote the following, in "A Christian's View of the Arms Race,"

"(T)he readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings - against people whom we do not know, whom we have never seen, and for whose guilt or innocence is not for us to establish - and, in doing so, to place in jeopardy the natural structure upon which all civilization rests, as though the safety and perceived interest of our own generation are more important than everything that has ever taken place or could take place in civilization: this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, and indignity - an indignity of monstrous dimensions - offered to God."[256]

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in 1946, commissioned by Truman himself, concluded that the Japanese would have surrendered by the end of 1945, even if they were not invaded, even if the Soviet Union had not declared war, and even if the atomic bombs were never dropped.

These are not very controversial issues, but the United States has never apologized for its monstrous behavior, not just to Japan, but to the world.  Being the world's most powerful nation means never having to say you are sorry, no matter how atrocious your behavior.  As with the Gulf War, as with annihilating America's natives, as with Vietnam, as with Yugoslavia, this nation has never performed the introspection of asking itself why we did it, what was glorious about it, what those people did to deserve our genocidal violence, etc.  As long as we never perform that introspection and no greater power stunts our violence, we will continue to do it.