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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’.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Serious numbers of migrants arrived in Massachusetts from 1630 - 1640. Roughly 21,000. By 1700 they had become 91,000. Their immediate priorities: having families, building farms, forming towns, and building institutions Old England never developed on local levels. But the new Americans didn’t just reproduce the country they left. They built institutions England didn’t yet have.
Year 1 — a seagoing vessel launched at Medford, 4 July 1631. The shipwrights had been sent out in 1629, ahead of the fleet.
Year 4 — representative government. Elected deputies sitting in the General Court.
Year 6 — Harvard. £400 voted for “a schoale or colledge.”
Year 8 — a printing press, the only one in British North America. Glover died on the voyage out; his widow Elizabeth moved the operation to Cambridge and got it running.
Year 10 — the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in America.
Year 11 — the Body of Liberties, read aloud at every General Court.
Year 12 — the 1642 law: every ...
