A British corporal of Fourteenth Army in Burma, George MacDonald Fraser, noted: “It is now widely held that the dropping of atomic bombs was unnecessary because the Japanese were ready to give in…I wish those who hold that view had been present to explain the position to the little bastard who came howling out of a thicket near the Sittang, full of spite and fury, in that first week of August. He was half-starved and near naked, and his only weapon was a bamboo stave, but he was in no mood to surrender.”
