IKE: "the Japanese were ready to surrender & it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing"

[WI_DEM]

6. you have to recall, too, that Eisenhower was the allied commander in Europe not the Far East

Eisenhower had clear views on what became one of the most controversial decisions that a President has ever made, authorizing the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He expressed his ideas in July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference, a meeting between President Harry S. Truman, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was replaced by Prime Minister Clement Atlee because of the results of the British elections. After news of the test in the New Mexico desert of the first atomic bomb reached U.S. officials at the beginning of the conference, Eisenhower told Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the bomb was unnecessary, as Japan was on the verge of surrender. Eisenhower also feared that the first use of atomic weapons in combat would tarnish the image of the United States at the very moment that its prestige was at an all-time high. But Truman accepted the counsel of other advisers, who, unlike Eisenhower, had been at the center of discussion about the war in the Pacific, and authorized the Army Air Forces to drop whatever bombs were available—then two—as soon as possible.

http://millercenter.org/president/eisenhower/essays/biography/2