"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 alr

"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." -- Admiral Leahy “I voiced to him 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.’” The urgency of the program was to get the bombs out the door before their target surrendered either to the USSR or unconditionally. The only thing needed to arrange a surrender much sooner was to give the government some way to rationalize it as not an 'unconditional' surrender even if the terms were the same. McArthur et al weren't as evil as the Japanese command, but they weren't that far off.