‘The rules of civilized warfare’: Scientists, soldiers, civilians, and American nuclear targeting, 1940 – 1945

Abstract

This essay explores the evolution of American nuclear targeting during World War II. Initial discussions in Washington focused on the use of the bomb against a military target. The assumption that cities would be the primary target for the atomic bomb apparently originated at Los Alamos in 1943 – 44, largely as a result of technical concerns related to the delivery and functioning of the weapon. Some high-level officials in Washington voiced reservations about the use of nuclear weapons against primarily civilian targets. Ultimately, the accumulated momentum of previous technical decisions and a desire to use the bomb as quickly as possible for military-diplomatic reasons convinced the President and his advisors to overcome reservations about targeting Japanese cities and civilians.

Key words:

• nuclear targeting
• atomic bomb
• World War II

Notes

¹Estimated Japanese casualties caused by the two bombs vary widely. For immediate fatalities, I have used estimates provided by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), which cites 70,000 – 80,000 deaths at Hiroshima and 35,000 dead and 5,000 missing at Nagasaki. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 1946), 3, 15. The USSBS numbers, which were only rough estimates to begin with, would certainly be higher if they included later deaths as result of radiation sickness and other injuries caused by the bombs. For a summary of the varying estimates of deaths caused by the two bombs see, Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the “Decision”’, The Journal of Military History 62/3 (July 1998), 565 – 6, n.43.

²Paul M. A. Linebarger, ‘Memorandum for Colonel Buttles: Identification of Atomic Bomb Targets as Being Military in Character’, 9 Aug. 1945, Paul M. A. Linebarger Papers Prepared During World War II, Vol.5, Hoover Institution Archives on War, Peace and Revolution, Stanford, CA (hereafter Linebarger Papers).

³Ibid. Linebarger did not specify which ‘high authority’ in the War Department had made this request.

⁴ Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry Truman, 1945 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 1961), 97. Emphasis added.

⁵Lauris Norstad to Carl Spaatz, 8 Aug. 1945, box 21, Carl T. Spaatz Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC. (Hereafter Spaatz Papers).

⁶The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, microfilm edition (Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilm Corp. of America), 10 Aug. 1945 (Hereafter Wallace Diary).

⁷Spaatz Diary, 11 Aug. 1945, box 21, Spaatz Papers.

⁸Henry L. Stimson, ‘The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb’, Harper's Magazine (Feb. 1947), 97 – 107. For more on the history of the Harper's article see Bernstein, ‘Seizing the Contested Terrain: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb’, Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993), 35 – 72; James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Stanford UP 1993), 279 – 304; Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press 2002), 531; Kai Bird, The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms (New York: Simon & Schuster 1998), 90 – 100; Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Knopf 1995), 448 – 71. The 1947 article was later reprinted in slightly expanded form in Stimson's memoirs (with Bundy as an acknowledged coauthor). Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper 1948), 612 – 33.

⁹Stimson, ‘The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb’, 105.

¹⁰Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II (Princeton UP 1966), 4, 47, 192.

¹¹The following memoirs address the targeting decision, at least obliquely: Henry H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper & Brothers 1949), 492, 485, 588 – 91; Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: Norton 1952), 621; Harry S. Truman, Years of Decision (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1955), 417, 419 – 21, 426; Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper 1962), 263 – 76; Arthur H. Compton, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (New York: OUP 1956), 237 – 9. Groves offered the most detailed discussion of targeting, though like most accounts it focused almost exclusively on the period from spring 1945 onward. There was also some discussion of targeting in the major official histories produced after the war. The Manhattan Engineer District, The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington DC: Government Printing Office 1946), 6 – 7; Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (eds.), The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume Five, The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki (Univ. of Chicago Press 1953), 721, 725; Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr, The New World, 1939 – 1946 (University Park,: Pennsylvania State UP 1962), 253, 358, 360, 365. As with the memoirs, all of these official histories focus almost exclusively on the period from spring 1945 through the use of the bomb in Aug. Hewlett and Anderson mention the May 1943 recommendation of the Military Policy Committee to use the bomb against a military target (p.253), but do not address the discontinuity between that early advice and the eventual decision to use the bomb against a city.

¹²Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1948), 483 – 4; Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953 – 1956: The White House Years (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 312; William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: McGraw-Hill 1950), 441 – 2. Gar Alperovitz has made much of the military criticism of the bomb in Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (London: Pluto Press 1994), 14 – 15, 54 and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 319 – 65. For a more critical take on Eisenhower's postwar statements see Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Ike and Hiroshima: Did he Oppose It?’, Journal of Strategic Studies 10/3 (Sept. 1987), 377 – 89; Robert James Maddox, Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press 2004), 4.

¹³P.M.S. Blackett, Fear, War, and the Bomb (New York: McGraw-Hill 1949), 139. The British edition of Blackett's book was published a year prior to the American edition cited above.

¹⁴The most prominent contemporary ‘revisionist’ work critical of Truman's decision is Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. In his most recent work, Alperovitz discusses the issue of targeting and morality, but his focus remains, as it was with Atomic Diplomacy, the more general question of Truman's motives in choosing to use the bomb and the possible alternatives to combat use. Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 53 – 4, 523 – 7. Another prominent revisionist work, Martin J. Sherwin's A World Destroyed, pays only slight attention to the targeting question, locating it primarily in the context of postwar diplomacy. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies (Stanford UP 2003), 229 – 31. The bomb's ‘orthodox’ defenders have also largely ignored the specifics of the targeting question, focusing instead on the military and diplomatic necessity of using nuclear weapons in order to end the war with Japan. Truman defender Robert James Maddox emphasizes the role of the bombs in shocking the Japanese into surrender, a variation on the original argument set forth in the 1947 Stimson essay. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 30 – 1. Other defenders of Truman's decision have indirectly addressed the moral concerns over city targeting by citing Japanese atrocities: Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing: Michigan State UP 1995), 131; Newman, Enola Gay and the Court of History (New York: Peter Lang 2004), 144, 146; David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster 1992), 439. None of the major works by either ‘orthodox’ or ‘revisionist’ historians have addressed the targeting question in depth, confining any discussion of targeting almost entirely to the period of spring-summer 1945. For a good survey of the literature on the atomic bomb decision see, J. Samuel Walker, ‘The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update’, Diplomatic History 14/1 (Winter 1990), 97 – 114 and Walker, ‘Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground,’Diplomatic History 29/2 (April 2005), 311 – 34. On the Enola Gay dispute see Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Englehardt (eds.), History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Henry Holt 1996); Philip Nobile (ed.), Judgment at the Smithsonian (New York: Marlowe 1995); Michael J. Hogan, ‘The Enola Gay Controversy: History, Memory, and the Politics of Presentation’, in idem (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory (Cambridge, UK: CUP 1996), 200 – 32.

¹⁵Walker, ‘The Decision to Use the Bomb’, 106. For examples of the ‘moral threshold’ argument with respect to the atomic bomb see Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare (Princeton UP, 2003), 270, 288; Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 380; Robert P. Newman, ‘Hiroshima and the Trashing of Henry Stimson’, New England Quarterly 71/1 (March 1998), 22, 31; Lawrence Freedman and Saki Dockrill, ‘Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock’, in Dockrill, From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941 – 1945 (New York: St. Martin's Press 1993), 196; Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1987), 341.

¹⁶On the eventual embrace of area bombing by the USAAF late in the war see Conrad Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Air Power Strategy in World War II (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press 1993), 108 – 42. As Crane notes, however (p.9), to the end of the war most AAF field commanders rejected area bombing. Curtis LeMay, who enthusiastically presided over the fire bombing over Tokyo, was the exception rather than the rule among AAF commanders in World War II.

¹⁷Otis Cary, who had been involved with the Target Committee during the war, wrote several articles discussing targeting in general and the decision to spare Kyoto specifically. Otis Cary, ‘The Sparing of Kyoto: Mr. Stimson's “Pet City”’, Japan Quarterly 22 (Oct./Dec. 1975), 337 – 47; Cary, ‘Documents: Atomic Bomb Targeting – Myths and Realities’, Japan Quarterly 26/4 (Oct./Dec. 1979), 506 – 14. Though political scientist Leon V. Sigal's 1988 work Fighting to a Finish is primarily focused on the politics of war termination in the United States and Japan, he also perceptively examines the question of nuclear targeting. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish: The Politics of War Termination in the United States and Japan, 1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1988), 169 – 70, 175 – 6, 181, 185, 190 – 1, 197 – 8, 214. As with Cary, Sigal focuses entirely on decision-making in Washington from spring 1945 onward in discussing the targeting question. Arjun Makhijani traced the story back to May 1943 in a pair of brief articles in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists but again kept the focus centered entirely on events in Washington. Makhijani, ‘“Always” the Target?’Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 51/3 (May/June 1995), 23 – 7; Makhijani, ‘Nuclear Targeting: The First 60 Years’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59/3 (May/June 2003), 60 – 5. Robert S. Norris addressed nuclear targeting in his biography of Leslie R. Groves, again focusing almost exclusively on the period from May 1945 through the use of the weapon in Aug. Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 377 – 88. Finally, Barton J. Bernstein has touched on the targeting question in several articles, though without sharply focusing on the issue. Bernstein, ‘Truman and the A-Bomb’, 547 – 70; Bernstein, ‘Reconsidering the ‘Atomic General’: Leslie R. Groves’, Journal of Military History 67/3 (July 2003), 883 – 920; Barton Bernstein, ‘Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking About Tactical Nuclear Weapons’, International Security 15/4 (Spring 1991), 149 – 73.

¹⁸Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, ‘Memorandum on the Properties of a radioactive “Super-bomb”’, 19 March 1940 in Robert Serber, The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb, edited with an introduction by Richard Rhodes (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1992), 81.

¹⁹Frisch and Peierls conceded that even if used underwater in a port, it was still possible that there would ‘great loss of civilian life by flooding and by the radioactive radiations’. Ibid., 81 – 2.

²⁰Leslie R. Groves, ‘Policy Meeting’, 5 May 1943, Correspondence (‘Top Secret’) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942 – 46, National Archives microfilm publication M1109, file 23 (Hereafter Groves ‘Top Secret’).

²¹Despite some claims to the contrary (Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 184; Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 334), I have found only a single contemporary mention of possible use against Germany after May 1943: a July 1943 memo from Conant to Bush suggesting that the bomb might be used in retaliation in case the Germans used radioactive poisons against Allied troops. Conant to Bush, 8 July 1943, Bush-Conant File Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1940 – 45, Records of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Record Group 227, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1392, file 10 (Hereafter Bush-Conant).

²²Groves, ‘Policy Meeting’, 5 May 1943, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 23. This recommendation has been noted by other scholars. See Hewlett and Anderson, New World, 253; Makhijani, ‘“Always” the Target?’, 23 – 7. Robert Maddox notes the decision to focus on Japan, rather than Germany, but neglects to mention that the initial recommendation of the Military Policy Committee also highlighted a military target. Maddox, Weapons for Victory, 25.

²³Barton J. Bernstein briefly discussed the underwater weapons program in Bernstein, ‘The Making of the Atomic Admiral: “Deak” Parsons and the Modernizing of the U.S. Navy’, Journal of Military History 63/2 (April 1999), 418; Bernstein, ‘It's History – The Quest for an Atomic Torpedo’, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1997, A19. Also see David Hawkins, Project Y: The Los Alamos Story, Part I: Toward Trinity (Los Alamos National Laboratory 1961), 196.

²⁴Al Christman's Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1998) is a brief, celebratory biography.

²⁵William S. Parsons to J. Robert Oppenheimer, 17 Nov. 1943, ‘Performance of Gadget, as Estimated Oct. 28, 1943’, Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives, Los Alamos, NM (hereafter LANL), copies acquired by author through a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

²⁶Ibid. Oppenheimer and the other physicists were less sanguine about the possible effects of the bomb when used in a shallow harbor. In shallow water, they estimated that shock damage to ships might be limited to a 300-yard radius. However, they did suggest that additional damage might be inflicted in harbors ‘due to flow of water’.

²⁷Parsons to Oppenheimer, 17 Nov. 1943, ‘Performance of Gadget, as Estimated Oct. 28, 1943’.

²⁸Parsons to Ordnance Group Leaders, 22 Nov. 1943, LANL. The possibility of placing the bomb in a torpedo apparently received very serious consideration at least through the end of 1943. See also, Parsons to Ordnance Group Leaders, 27 Dec. 1943, LANL.

²⁹Oppenheimer to Parsons, 27 Dec. 1943, ‘Design Schedule for Overall Assemblies’, LANL.

³⁰Ibid.

³¹Details of these events are drawn from Parsons' handwritten notations dated 30 Dec. on Oppenheimer's 27 Dec. memorandum.

³²Parsons to Conant, 3 Jan. 1944, Bush-Conant Papers, file 146.

³³Low-level theoretical work on an underwater bomb continued until at least Feb. 1945 but without the accompanying engineering work needed to design an actual underwater weapon. On 1 Feb. 1945, physicist William G. Penny informed Parsons and Oppenheimer that after investigating the matter he had concluded that ‘the case for water delivery against capital ships is weak, and it is recommended that the gadget be not used in this way’. Parsons to William G. Penny, ‘Damage to Capital Ships’, 1 Feb. 1945, LANL. This conclusion, however, was reached long after the Ordnance Division had shifted its resources to work on an air burst weapon. Further studies on this subject were apparently shelved until the 1946 ‘Crossroads’ tests, where the ‘Baker’ shot dramatically highlighted the effectiveness of the bomb against capital ships in even a shallow underwater detonation.

³⁴Parsons to Groves, 19 May 1944, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5F. Emphasis added.

³⁵509^th Composite Group, Mission Planning Summary, 2, n.d. [c. Aug. 1945], Records of the 509^th Composite Group, Air Force Historical Records Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, microfilm reel B0679 (hereafter 509^th Mission Planning Summary). Also see Groves to Marshall, ‘Atomic Fission Bombs – Present Status and Expected Progress’, 7 Aug. 1944, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 25M.

³⁶Parsons to Groves, 25 Sept. 1944, William S. Parsons Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC Hereafter Parsons Papers.

³⁷James Conant, ‘Findings of Trip to L.A. July 4, 1944’. – , file 3; Conant, ‘Report on Visit to Los Alamos, Aug. 17, 1944’, Bush – Conant, file 86.

³⁸Gregg Herken, Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (Stanford UP 2000), 21 – 2; Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York: Henry Holt 2002), 364, n.79.

³⁹Norman F. Ramsey to W. S. Parsons, ‘Matters for Discussion by Military Use Committee’, 18 May 1944, LANL.

⁴⁰Parsons to Groves, 25 Sept. 1944, Parsons Papers.

⁴¹Ibid. I have been unable to identify the ‘high and responsible’ sources at Los Alamos that Parsons refers to in this document.

⁴²Ibid. Emphasis in original.

⁴³Ibid.

⁴⁴Oppenheimer to Groves, 6 Oct. 1944, M.E.D. Papers, National Archives College Park (document courtesy of Barton J. Bernstein).

⁴⁵Bush and Conant to Stimson, 30 Sept. 1944, Harrison-Bundy Files Relating to the Development of the Atomic Bomb, 1942 – 46, Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1108 (hereafter Harrison-Bundy), file 69. Hereafter ‘Harrison-Bundy’.

⁴⁶Bush, ‘Memorandum of Conference with the President’, 24 June 1943, Bush-Conant, file 10.

⁴⁷Hyde Park Aide Memoire, 19 Sept. 1944, Harrison-Bundy, file 3.

⁴⁸Parsons to Purnell (via Groves), 12 Dec. 1944, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5D.

⁴⁹AAF Target Committee members included: Brig. Gen. Lauris R. Norstad, Col. William P. Fisher, Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Dr David M. Dennison, and DrRobert Stearns. MED representatives were: Dr John von Neumann, Dr R. Bright Wilson, Dr William Penny, Dr Norman F. Ramsey, Col. Lyle E. Seeman, and Maj. Jack Derry (who wrote the summary notes after each meeting).

⁵⁰Jack Derry, ‘Notes on Initial Meeting of the Target Committee’, 27 April 1945, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5D.

⁵¹Derry, ‘Summary of Target Committee Meetings on 10 and 11 May 1945’, Groves, ‘Top Secret’, file 5D.

⁵² Ibid; Norstad to Director, Joint Target Group, 28 April 1945; Director, Joint Target Group to Norstad, 5 May 1945, both in Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5D.

⁵³Derry, ‘Minutes of Third Target Committee Meeting – Washington, 28 May 1945’.

⁵⁴Kyoto was selected as the best initial target because its inhabitants were ‘more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon’. Derry, ‘Summary of Target Committee Meetings on 10 and 11 May 1945’.

⁵⁵Groves and Stimson briefed the President on the bomb on 25 April though Truman confidant (and soon-to-be Secretary of State) James F. Byrnes had informally informed the President of the project's existence shortly after he was sworn in.

⁵⁶Groves, ‘Report of Meeting with The President’, 25 April 1945, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 20.

⁵⁷For more on Stimson's conception of ‘industrial civilization’ see the Henry Lewis Stimson Diaries (microfilm edition), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale Univ. Library, New Haven, CT, 27 Feb. 1933. Hereafter Stimson Diary. Also see Stimson, Democracy and Nationalism in Europe (Princeton UP 1934), 79.

⁵⁸Stimson, ‘Speech Delivered by the Chairman of the American Delegation, Henry L. Stimson at the Plenary Session of the Conference, London, Feb. 11, 1930’, Stimson Diary.

⁵⁹Stimson Diary, 5 Sept. 1944.

⁶⁰Stimson Diary, 5 March 1945.

⁶¹Stimson to Truman, 16 May 1945, Stimson Diary.

⁶²Ibid.

⁶³Diary of John J. McCloy, 21 May 1945, John J. McCloy Paper, Amherst College Archives, Amherst, MA (hereafter McCloy Diary).

⁶⁴Ibid.

⁶⁵Arthur Page, ‘Objectives’, [outline for draft of Presidential address] 25 May 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 74.

⁶⁷John J. McCloy, ‘Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945, 11:45 AM’, Henry Stimson's Safe File, National Archives II, College Park, MD (hereafter ‘Safe File’), Box 12, ‘S-1’.

⁶⁶See, for example, ‘General Marshall's conference today’, 15 Nov. 1941, Larry Bland (ed.), The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Vol.2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1986), 676 – 8; George C. Marshall, ‘Memorandum for the Secretary of War, Subject: Bombing of Dresden’, 6 March 1945. The Papers of George C. Marshall, Pentagon Office, Selected, Box 84, file 25, George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, VA.

⁶⁸Leslie R. Groves Diary, 30 May 1945, Papers of Leslie R. Groves, Box 3, RG 200, National Archives College Park, College Park, MD (hereafter Groves Diary).

⁶⁹Stimson Diary, 30 May 1945.

⁷⁰Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 275; on Stimson and Kyoto, see Cary, ‘The Sparing of Kyoto’.

⁷¹Groves, ‘Memorandum to General Norstad’, 30 May 1945, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5D.

⁷²Ibid. Emphasis added.

⁷³The Diary of Henry H. Arnold, 31 May 1945, Arnold Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscripts and Records Division, Washington DC (hereafter Arnold Diary).

⁷⁴Regular members of the Interim Committee included Stimson, Assistant Secretary of War George Harrison (who chaired Committee meetings in Stimson's absence), Bush, Conant, the President's personal representative (and soon to be Secretary of State) James F. Byrnes, Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton, Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard, and MIT President and OSRD Chief of the Office of Field Service Karl T. Compton.

⁷⁵For varying accounts of this lunch discussion see Compton, Atomic Quest, 238 – 9; Ernest O. Lawrence to Dr. Karl K. Darrow, 17 Aug. 1945, E. O. Lawrence Papers, box 28, folder 20, Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, Berkeley (hereafter Lawrence Papers). Also see Hewlett and Anderson, New World, 358.

⁷⁶Lawrence to Darrow, 17 Aug. 1945.

⁷⁷Gordon Arneson, ‘Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting’, 31 May 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 100.

⁷⁸Derry, ‘Minutes of Third Target Committee Meeting, 28 May 1945’.

⁷⁹Ibid.

⁸⁰Ibid.

⁸¹Historian Robert Newman, a strong supporter of the decision to use the atomic bombs against Japanese cities, has conceded that the outcome of the 31 May meeting might well have been different had Marshall been present that afternoon. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, 85.

⁸²Derry, ‘Minutes of Third Target Committee Meeting – Washington, 28 May 1945’.

⁸³Michael Sherry has reached a similar conclusion regarding Stimson and the bomb. Sherry, Rise of American Air Power, 295.

⁸⁴Arneson, ‘Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting’, 31 May 1945. For examples of the ‘shock’ argument see, Hewlett and Anderson, New World, 358; Freedman and Dockrill, ‘Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock,’ 193; McCullough, Truman, 395.

⁸⁵Leon Sigal has made a similar observation, though he does not trace the story back to Los Alamos. Sigal, Fighting to a Finish, 191.

⁸⁶Group leader Paul Tibbets later emphatically asserted that ‘the AIMING POINTS did not have to be cleared with anyone. Such matters were my responsibility.’ Paul Tibbets to Dr Barton J. Bernstein, 18 June 1998. Personal communication, copy given to author by Dr Bernstein.

⁸⁷Scientific Advisory Panel, ‘Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons’, 16 June 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 76. Lawrence apparently argued for the demonstration in subsequent meetings of the Scientific Advisor Panel. Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, 134; Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Four Physicists and the Bomb: The Early Years, 1945 – 1950’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Science 18/2 (1988), 235; Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Knopf 2005), 299.

⁸⁸On Ralph Bard's dissent see Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 225 – 7.

⁹⁰Ibid.

⁸⁹Stimson Diary, 6 June 1945.

⁹¹Ibid.

⁹²This document was reproduced in Cary, ‘Documents: Atomic Bomb Targeting – Myths and Realities’, 511.

⁹³Groves, ‘Memo to Files’, 14 June 1945, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 25.

⁹⁴This information on Kokura is drawn from a target information sheet found in the Groves ‘Top Secret’ papers, file 25.

⁹⁵McCloy, ‘Memorandum of Conversation with General Marshall May 29, 1945, 11:45 AM’.

⁹⁶Harrison to Stimson, 21 July 1945, War 35987, Harrison – Bundy, file 64.

⁹⁷Stimson Diary, 21 July 1945.

⁹⁸Truman Diary, 25 July 1945, reproduced in Dennis K. Merrill (ed.), Documentary History of the Truman Administration, Vol. 1, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan (Bethesda, MD: Univ. Publications of America 1995), 156

⁹⁹Stimson, ‘Memorandum for the President: The Conduct of the War with Japan’, enclosed in Stimson to Byrnes, 16 July 1945, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale Univ. Library, New Haven, CT (hereafter Stimson Papers).

¹⁰⁰Stimson Diary, 17, 24 July 1945. For discussion of Byrnes' motives at Potsdam, see David Robertson, Sly and Able: a Political Biography of James F. Byrnes (New York: Norton 1994), 391, 412 – 13, 417 – 19, 435 – 6.

¹⁰¹Arnold Diary, 22, 23 July 1945; Arnold, Global Mission, 589.

¹⁰²Col. Jack Stone's mission to Washington was outlined in a cable from Marshall to Handy, 22 July 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 64.

¹⁰³Arnold Diary, 24 July 1945; Arnold, Global Mission, 492, 590 – 1.

¹⁰⁴Handy to Marshall, 24 July 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 64.

¹⁰⁶Truman Diary, 25 July 1945, Merrill, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan, 156.

¹⁰⁵Arnold Diary, 25 July 1945; Kyle Notes, 25 July 1945, Stimson Papers.

¹⁰⁷Henry Wallace Diary, 10 Aug. 1945. For more evidence on Truman's postwar qualms about the use of the bomb see Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 462 – 70.

¹⁰⁸For claims that Truman was untroubled by the use of the bomb prior to Hiroshima see Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy, 52, 285; Alperovitz, Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 527; Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945 – 1953 (Palo Alto: Stanford UP 2002), 92; Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb (Boston: Little, Brown 1995), 9 – 10, 99 – 100, 146.

¹⁰⁹See the July 1945 target sheets in Groves, ‘Top Secret’, file 25 and Jack Stone to Henry Arnold, ‘Groves Project,’ 24 July 1945, Groves, ‘Top Secret,’ file 5.

¹¹⁰Stimson Diary, 15 May 1945; Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 400.

¹¹¹Stimson, ‘Notes for Diary’, 23 July 1945, Stimson Papers.

¹¹²Marshall to Handy, 25 July 1945, Harrison – Bundy, file 64.

¹¹³509th Mission Planning Summary, 41, 46.

¹¹⁴Messages number 1005 and 1007, Spaatz to Handy, 31 July 1945, Groves, ‘Top Secret’, file 5D. Barton J. Bernstein discussed this issue in ‘Doomsday II’, New York Times Magazine, 27 July 1975, 22, 28.

¹¹⁵Pasco to Spaatz, 31 July 1945, Groves, ‘Top Secret’, file 5D. Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War (New York: Knopf 1980), 3. See also, Robert Karl Manoff, ‘American Victims of Hiroshima’, New York Times Magazine, 2 Dec. 1984.

¹¹⁶Harlow W. Russ, Project Alberta: The Preparation of the Atomic Bombs for use in World War II (Los Alamos, NM: Exceptional Books 1990), 57.

¹¹⁷Craven and Cate, eds., The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, 721, 725; Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 657, n.41; Bernstein, ‘Reconsidering the “Atomic General”’, 904.

¹¹⁸US Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 8, 41. The yield estimate is from John Malik, The Yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Explosions (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratory 1986), 1.

¹¹⁹509th Mission Planning Summary, 46.

¹²⁰On the Nagasaki aim point, see 509th Mission Planning Summary, 50; Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 343, 345; Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 666, n.84 – 5; Fredrick Ashworth, ‘Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki’, United States Naval Institute Proceedings 84/1 (Jan. 1958), 17; Fred J. Olivi, Decision at Nagasaki: That Mission That Almost Failed (self published 1999), 124, 150; John Coster-Mullen, Atomic Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man (self published 2003), 75.

¹²¹Malik, Yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Explosions, 1.

¹²²Groves, ‘Memorandum to the Chief of Staff [Marshall]’, 10 Aug. 1945, Groves ‘Top Secret’, file 5B.

¹²³Spaatz to Norstad, 10 Aug. 1945, Spaatz Papers, box 21.

¹²⁴Handwritten notation by Marshall on Groves, ‘Memorandum to the Chief of Staff [Marshall]’, 10 Aug. 1945.

¹²⁵Stimson, ‘Memorandum of Conference with the President, Aug. 8, 1945’, Stimson Papers.

¹²⁶Wallace Diary, 10 Aug. 1945.

¹²⁷Truman to Richard B. Russell, 9 Aug. 1945, Merrill, Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan, 210.

¹²⁸Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 324.

¹²⁹Bernstein, ‘Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki’, 150.

¹³⁰Spaatz Diary, 11 Aug. 1945; Telecon Conference, 14 Aug. 1945, Spaatz Papers, box 21, ‘Aug. 1945 – Personal’.

¹³¹David Allen Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945 – 1960’, International Security 7/4 (Spring 1983), 3 – 71.