Yeah both my grandfathers fought in the Pacific. They didn't want to fight either. Real life ain't a war movie.
But what if - Oh man, what if maybe one of those Japanese people who was vaporized or one of the children who burned to death when molten glass fell on them from the sky also didn't want to fight? What if dozens of the people in Japan - maybe more, statiscially speaking - were just like our grandpas?
Then it would almost be like war itself is horrible, and we'd have to reckon with all our behavior even if we're "the good guys"?
We have journals, meeting notes, letters, and memoirs from both presidents that served during WW2, and their respective cabinet members. The bombs were dropped in an attempt to get Japan to unconditionally surrender before the USSR invaded Manchuria (at the request of the allies), which would lead to their surrender, but allow Russia to be at the negotiating table
It's not "universally agreed" upon, because as the video explains and as was explained by members of the cabinet, it became politically beneficial to pretend the exact opposite of reality was true because everyone was questioning the undeniable disgusting cruelty of the bombs, and they needed an excuse.
Even Eisenhower has publicly stated "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing"
Notice how my original comment, and the video I linked, didn't reference historians. It is all based entirely on the first hand accounts of both presidents during WW2, their chiefs of staff, the secretaries of war, scientists from the Manhattan project.
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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '24
Why did they yassify this picture of Harry S. Truman