Atomic Bombing Quotes

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.

We had won many pacific islands where the Japanese fought to the death rather than surrender …. We had killed 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night. It destroyed the city but as far as we could tell it had no effect on their morale. We had to shock the Japanese into surrender.

In Nagasaki, American planes did drop warning leaflets - but not till Aug. 10, a day after the city was bombed.

Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.

The police chief of Hiroshima welcomed me eagerly as the first Allied correspondent to reach the city.

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were there not innocent civilians there? We are simply taking the rules of engagement that you have invented and turning them back against you.

The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time.

The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit.

Japan is the only country in the world which suffered from the scourge of nuclear weapons.

Pearl Harbor was not as cruel as the atomic bombing. The atom bomb wiped out everything: people in church, children in kindergarten, even their dogs and cats. Pearl Harbor was terrible, but not as bad as that…. I think that the atomic bombings rank with the Holocaust as the greatest crimes against humanity in this century...

The world has gone back a half a millennium in its conduct of international relations in time of war…. no nation has to bear a greater blame for this than our own ….As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of us think it was shameful. Are we Christians? We act like pagans.

To me, nuclear weapons are the secret crisis of our time. Frankly, everyone needs to reread John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.'

I am concerned about the area bombing in Japan for two reasons: First, because I do not want to have the United States get the reputation for outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready, the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon (the atom bomb) would not have a fair background to show its strength.

The first bomb so far as our government knew had not had any impact on the Emperor or the Japanese war cabinet—nor did we have any other indication that their minds were changing with respect to the war.

I'm only seven, although I died In Hiroshima long ago, I'm seven now as I was then - When children die, they do not grow.

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are 'among the most unspeakable crimes in history.' I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

Subsequently, the Japanese people experienced a variety of vicissitudes and were involved in international disputes, eventually, for the first time in their history, experiencing the horrors of modern warfare on their own soil during World War II.

My piece in One World or None was the description of the effect of a single atomic bomb on New York City.

What regrets I have about being a party to killing and maiming thousands of Japanese civilians this morning are tempered with the hope that the terrible weapon we have created may bring the countries of the world together and prevent further wars.

Hiroshima had a profound effect upon me.

Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved.

We dropped two bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the name of the plane that delivered the weapons was the Enola Gay. Do you know why? Because we wanted them to know that they were about to get boned in the ass.

The most racist, nastiest act by the USA, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away men, women, and children.

We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.

Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars.