This story may assuage the conscience of the air museum visitor, but it is largely myth, fashioned to buttress our memories of the good war. By and large, the top generals and admirals who managed World War II knew better. Consider the small and little-noticed plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy that accompanies the replica of Little Boy, the weapon used against the people of Hiroshima: In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Trumans political advisors overruled the military in determining the way in which the end of the war in Japan would be approached. Furthermore, contrary to the popular myths around the atomic bombs nearly magical power to end the war, the Navy Museums explication of the history clearly indicates that the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.
Indeed, it would have been surprising if they had: Despite the terrible concentrated power of atomic weapons, the firebombing of Tokyo earlier in 1945 and the destruction of numerous Japanese cities by conventional bombing had killed far more people. The Navy Museum acknowledges what many historians have long known: It was only with the entry of the Soviet Unions Red Army into the war two days after the bombing of Hiroshima that the Japanese moved to finally surrender. Japan was used to losing cities to American bombing; what their military leaders feared more was the destruction of the countrys military by an all-out Red Army assault.
The top American military leaders who fought World War II, much to the surprise of many who are not aware of the record, were quite clear that the atomic bomb was unnecessary, that Japan was on the verge of surrender, andfor manythat the destruction of large numbers of civilians was immoral. Most were also conservatives, not liberals. Adm. William Leahy, President Trumans Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There 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. in being the first to use it, weadopted 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.
the belief that it ended the war is a lie told to deny the fact a war crime took place and many innocent lives were lost pointlessly.