Important quotes about the atomic bomb

There are voices which assert that the bomb should never have been used at all. I cannot associate myself with such ideas. ... I am surprised that very worthy people—but people who in most cases had no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves—should adopt the position that rather than throw this bomb, we should have sacrificed a million American and a quarter of a million British lives. —Winston Churchill, leader of the Opposition, in a speech to the British House of Commons, August 1945

“The Japanese code of Bushido—’the way of the warrior’—was deeply ingrained. The concept of Yamato-damashii equipped each soldier with a strict code: never be captured, never break down, and never surrender. Surrender was dishonourable. Each soldier was trained to fight to the death and was expected to die before suffering dishonour. Defeated Japanese leaders preferred to take their own lives in the painful samurai ritual of seppuku (called hara kiri in the West). Warriors who surrendered were deemed not worthy of regard or respect” -Unamed Air Force account

If the atomic bomb had not been used, evidence like that I have cited points to the practical certainty that there would have been many more months of death and destruction on an enormous scale. -nuclear physicist Karl Taylor Compton, who worked in the Manhattan Project, in a defensive article.