The US naval blockade had strangled the Japanese war economy which had 30 per cent unemployment, real wages at just 10 per cent of pre-war levels and 22 million homeless from Allied bombing. General Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project saw that ‘Russia was our enemy and the [Manhattan] Project was conducted on that basis’. US military dissidentsI am far from sure that the US military dissidents against the bomb were wrong. I even directed that plans be drawn up for a possible peaceful occupation without further military operations.’ The atomic bombing of Japan was not a military and ultimately merciful necessity but a mostly cynical, mushroom-cloud-shaped message to Moscow.