World Battlefronts, THE WAR: Short Cut?

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Now that Japan had felt the blast of the first atomic bomb (see U.S. AT WAR), how long would the war go on?

War Secretary Stimson merely said that the new weapon would "prove a tremendous aid" in shortening the conflict. The men in the know—the scientists racing for the secret of atomic energy, the very few military men who were aware of the race—had said that the winner would have the power to win this war and all wars. Now the U.S. had the power, and had it in combat quantities.

The first bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima (pop. 344,000) and its great quartermaster depot raised a great, mushrooming cloud of dust and smoke which no reconnaissance camera could pierce. It was no propaganda flash in the pan. General "Tooey" Spaatz and his new chief of staff, Major General Curtis LeMay (see below), were ready with the atomic wherewithal to give Japan the awful rain promised by President Truman. That rain was bound to make the war shorter than it would have been. But how much shorter?

One part of the answer was unknown and unknowable: would, or could, the Japanese continue to resist until each of their cities had been atomized, and then fight on the beaches, in the fields and the hills, and in their countless caves, until every sacred acre had been physically conquered?

Before the new weapon appeared, the biggest brass in Washington had feared that the U.S. public was being fed too much optimism about a quick end of the war. Now, the chances for a quick end were brighter than ever. But, as a matter of sense and duty, the fighting commanders had to assume that Japan would have to be invaded. Any earlier, easier end to the war would be a bonus. Sound military minds could hope for it. But they dared not count on it.