Admirals Ernest King and William Leahy argued that a more hermetic maritime blockade than the one in place during the summer of 1945, coupled with more intense bombing and naval gunfire, would have forced surrender within a reasonable time. Leahy called the atomic bomb "an inhuman weapon to use on a people that was already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [We Americans] had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." A scattering of high-ranking officers — none from infantry units — agreed.
