The first person to collect Social Security benefits, Ida Mae Fuller, paid a total of $24.75 (equivalent to $494 in 2023) in Social Security taxes over a period of three years.
During her retirement, Fuller collected a total of $22,888.92 (equivalent to $497,793 in 2023) in Social Security benefits.
Suppose that you are interviewing me now. Suppose that you ask, “If you had had the incendiary bombs in your stockpile, the ones you asked for and didn’t get, would you have flown more incendiary missions against Japanese targets, just as fast as you could mount them?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think those attacks would have been as effective as the first series which occurred in March?”
“Yes. Probably even more so. The destruction and demoralization in Japan was being rapidly accelerated. Had increased like cube root.”
“Do you think that by relying solely on incendiary attack, you could have knocked Japan out of the war, thus precluding any invasion of the Japanese homeland until after the collapse came?”
“Yes. I think it could have happened.”
“Then it would have been possible to force Japan out of the war, and thus end the conflict, without actually employing atomic weapons?”
“It might have been possible.”
I don’t want to be a Monday morning quarterback. Never did. I’ll say again: I think it might have been possible.
The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945
You got an actual reference for that statement?
I’ve actually read his autobiography, and as I recall his opinion on whether the war could have been ended without those two bombs, perhaps via blockade, was that it “might” have been possible.