As the Baltimore put to sea that evening from Pearl Harbor, Admiral Leahy collected his thoughts and committed them to his diary. General MacArthur, he observed, “seems to be chiefly interested in retaking the Philippines,” and had not yet given much thought to the endgame in the Pacific. But both MacArthur and Nimitz had expressed agreement in principle that “Japan can be forced to accept our terms of surrender by the use of sea and air power without an invasion of the Japanese homeland.”87 In the long run, Leahy believed, this consensus of the two theater commanders—that an invasion of Japan
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