The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 7 | Issue 14 | Number 2 | Article ID 3114 | Apr 04, 2009

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Four Days in May: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Usethe Atomic Bomb

Sean Malloy

Four Days in May: Henry L. Stimsonand the Decision to Use the AtomicBomb

Sean L. Malloy

Among the myriad controversies surroundingthe American use of nuclear weapons againstJapanese cities in August 1945 is the seeminglysimple question of exactly when PresidentHarry S. Truman decided to use the bomb. Theclosest thing to a presidential directiveregarding use was an order dispatched on July25, 1945 from Acting Army Chief of StaffThomas T. Handy to General Carl A. Spaatz,commander of the United States Army StrategyAir Forces. The directive, personally approvedby Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson,authorized the delivery of the “first specialbomb as soon as weather will permit visualbombing after about 3 August 1945. . .” Thebomb was to be used on one of four targetcities (a list that included Niigata and Kokuraas well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and nofurther orders were required for the use ofadditional bombs, which were to be “deliveredon the above targets as soon as made ready bythe project staff.” [1] But while this directivewas almost certainly discussed with thepresident before its approval, Truman neversigned this or any other order with respect tothe use of the atomic bomb against Japan. More significantly, the order was itself theproduct of an extended series of discussionsand decisions that in some cases went backmonths or even years prior to the summer of1945. While significant as a link in the chain ofoperations that culminated in the atomic

bombings of August 6 and 9, historians mustlook beyond the July 25 directive to understandexactly when and how Truman committed tothe use the bomb.

Piecing together when (and why) Americanleaders decided to use the bomb requires us toabandon the simplistic notion that Trumanconfronted a binary choice between use andnon-use. There is no evidence that any high-level American authorities ever considered thequestion of whether to use the atomic bomb. The “A-bomb-or-invasion” binary that has soenraptured some historians was simply not aquestion that Truman (or Roosevelt for thatmatter) ever directly addressed. WhatAmerican leaders did discuss extensively, andsometimes heatedly, were the questionsassociated with how, where and when to usethe bomb. Should it be used against Germanyor Japan? What targets within those countriesmight be appropriate for such a weapon? Should there be a warning or demonstrationfirst? How might the bomb be integrated intoAmerican diplomacy with respect to both alliesand enemies? What implications might its usehave for the postwar period? Fully addressingthis complicated series of choices is beyond thescope of this essay. Instead, I draw here frommy larger work on Stimson and the A-bombdecision to explore two important questionsthat shaped the context of use: the integrationof the bomb into a larger diplomatic strategyaimed at securing Japanese surrender and thechoice of targets within Japan. Key decisionson both of these questions were made over aperiod of four days in Washington from May28-31, 1945. In both cases, Secretary of WarStimson was an important (but by no means all-

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determining) figure.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (withmilitary aid Col. W. H. Kyle)

Born in 1867, only two years after the end ofthe American Civil War, Stimson had devotedmuch of his life to public service. A respectedRepublican statesman, he had a reputation forbipartisan service to his country. Prior toserving as secretary of war to Roosevelt andthen Truman from 1940-1945, he had workedunder Herbert Hoover as secretary of state andhad been a presidential emissary to Nicaraguaand governor general of the Philippines underCalvin Coolidge. His stint in the WarDepartment from 1940-1945 was his second,having previously served as secretary of warunder William Howard Taft. But while he had along association with the military (one thatincluded service as a fifty-year-old volunteer inthe American Expeditionary Force duringWorld War I), Stimson hated war. Hisfundamental conservatism, rel igiousconvictions, strong commitment to the rule of

law (instilled by his mentor, the famousAmerican lawyer and international jurist ElihuRoot), and the sobering experience of WorldWar I, led him to devote much of his career topreventing or at least containing the violenceunleashed by war. He was particularly anxiousto avoid violence against civilians. Thus whilehe strongly supported American entry intoWorld War II as necessary to check the evil of alawless Nazi regime, he simultaneously worriedthat the indiscriminate use of force in pursuit ofvictory would sow seeds of bitterness andhatred, undermining the foundations of anypeace that followed. [2]

It was in the context of this overlapping set ofmilitary, diplomatic, and moral concerns thatStimson confronted the atomic bomb in thewake of the Nazi defeat in May 1945. Havingbeen absorbed in the massive task oforganizing victory in Europe, it was not untilMay 28, 1945, upon returning to Washingtonfollowing a ten-day working vacation at hisLong Island estate, that he felt prepared totackle the issue that would dominate theremainder of his tenure in office. “I have madeup my mind,” Stimson confided to his diary, “tomake [the atomic bomb] my primary occupationfor these next few months, relieving myself sofar as possible from all routine matters in theDepartment.”[3]

Decoupling the Diplomatic Track withJapan

The first of the overlapping A-bomb-relatedquestions that Stimson confronted following hisreturn to Washington on May 28 involvedJapan. Prior to 1945, discussions about thediplomatic implications of nuclear fission hadfocused almost exclusively on the Soviet Unionand Great Britain. Indeed, for most of the war,Stimson had paid comparatively little attentionto the Pacific theater. In February 1945,following a meeting with Marshall on “thecoming campaign against Japan,” Stimsonconceded that “I have never studied it or

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thought over it in the way that I had over thewar in Europe.”[4] But starting in early 1945and accelerating with the end of the war inEurope, Stimson and other Americanpolicymakers faced a decision on how tointegrate the atomic bomb into their diplomaticand military calculations regarding Japan.[5]

After the war, Stimson and other defenders ofthe A-bomb decision insisted that they hadfaced a stark choice between a costly invasionof the Japanese home islands and the use of thebomb against Japanese cities.[6] In spring1945, however, it was not certain that either aninvasion or atomic bombs would be necessaryto compel surrender. The Imperial JapaneseNavy had virtually ceased to exist following theBattle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. Americansubmarines were strangling and isolatingJapan’s home islands while Army Air Forcesbombers gradually reduced its cities to ashes. Japan’s increasingly precipitous militarydecline did not necessarily mean that surrenderwas imminent. The brutal battle for Okinawa(the last stepping-stone on the path to thehome islands) from April to Japan’s defeat onJune 23, 1945, proved that Japanese resistancecould still be quite fierce. But even as thefighting on that island raged, some in theTruman administration were pondering acombination of threats and promises that mighthasten Japanese surrender and achieve vitalAmerican war aims through diplomatic means.

The stated policy of the Truman administrationwas that the United States would acceptnoth ing less than Japan ’s to ta l andunconditional surrender. Truman had inheritedthis formula from Roosevelt, who had publiclyproclaimed Allied war aims to include “anunconditional surrender by Germany, Italy andJapan” following a meeting with Churchill atCasablanca in January 1943.[7] In practice,however, Roosevelt ’s own record onunconditional surrender was mixed. While hehad insisted on applying that formula to NaziGermany, Italy had been allowed to negotiate

terms in September 1943 that fell short ofunconditional surrender. The question inspring 1945 was whether similar flexibilityought to be granted to Japan if doing so mightexpedite the end of the war and save Americanand Allied lives.

During a review of American military strategyin the Pacific on April 25, 1945, the Joint Chiefso f S t a f f ( J C S ) r e c o m m e n d e d t h a t“‘unconditional surrender’ should be defined interms understandable to the Japanese, whomust be convinced that destruction or nationalsuicide is not implied.”[8] Several weeks later,Stimson received a “rather dramatic andradical” memorandum from his former boss, ex-president Herbert Hoover, warning that aninvasion of Japan would be disastrous andsuggesting that the United States shouldinstead offer a clear set of surrender terms. Hoover's memorandum echoed ongoingdiscussions within the Army General Staff andthe War Department's Operations Division(OPD) on clarifying or perhaps abandoningunconditional surrender. By the end of May,civilian leaders in both the War and StateDepartments, including Undersecretary ofState Joseph Grew and Stimson deputy John J.McCloy, had determined to bring this questionto the highest levels of the U.S. government.[9]

When Stimson arrived back in Washington onMay 28, McCloy presented him with amemorandum urging a reconsideration of thepolicy of unconditional surrender. McCloyasserted that “Japan is struggling to find a wayout of the horrible mess she has got herselfinto” and urged that the United States avoidseeking to impose a “Carthaginian” peace. Onthe subject of unconditional surrender, McCloyconveyed his belief that the United States couldlikely “accomplish everything we want toaccomplish in regard to Japan without the useof that term.” Failure to clarify and perhapssoften American terms might “hold them off tothe point where we go on digging them out ofcaves at considerable cost to ourselves when

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our important objectives can be won withoutthis attrition.”[10]

On the same day, Grew (then acting assecretary of state while Edward Stettinius wasattending the San Francisco Conference)suggested an even more specific change in U.S.policy. In a meeting with Truman, Grew, theformer Ambassador to Japan, advised that the“greatest obstacle to unconditional surrenderby the Japanese is their belief that this wouldentail the destruction or permanent removal ofthe Emperor and the institution of theThrone.” Grew understood that the institutionof the emperor was the one unifying element ofthe Japanese political and military structure,“without which surrender will be highlyunlikely.”[11] Suggesting that a recent seriesof devastating attacks on Tokyo inflicted byAmerican bombers offered a fortuitous momentto issue such a clarification, Grew pleaded for astatement guaranteeing the postwar status ofthe emperor. According to Grew's later accountof the meeting, the president indicated that“his own thoughts had been following the sameline” but asked the acting secretary to clear theproposal with Stimson, Army Chief of StaffMarshall, and Secretary of the Navy James V.Forrestal.[12] The result was an informalconference of the president's chief military anddiplomatic advisers in Stimson's Pentagonoffice on May 29, 1945.

Stimson, motivated by a desire to end the warquickly and entirely uninterested in dictatingthe form of the postwar Japanese government,was sympathetic to calls for modifyingAmerican surrender terms. From the outset ofAmerican participation in the conflict, he hadsought to balance the goal of “completevictory” with that of shortening the war andthus reducing both the loss of life and theburden of reconstruction that would face thevictorious Allies.[13] And though he hadinsisted on the importance of Germany'sunconditional surrender, the secretary of wareagerly embraced compromises far short of

that formula when it came to Hitler's partnersand vassals.

The first example of Stimson's flexibility onsurrender terms came early in the war, prior tothe public formulation of the unconditionalsurrender doctrine. During the course of theNovember 1942 landings in North Africa,Stimson strongly supported the deal struck byGeneral Dwight D. Eisenhower with AdmiralJean Francois Darlan, commander-in-chief ofthe Vichy military forces. The so-called Darlandeal, under which the former Vichy commanderwas granted political authority over FrenchNorth Africa in exchange for an agreement notto oppose the American landings, producedhowls of outrage in the United States and GreatBritain. To Stimson, however, the Darlan dealaccurately reflected the priorities of the Alliedwar effort. Germany, not Vichy France, was themain enemy, and continental Europe, not NorthAfr ica, was the important theater ofoperations.[14] The secretary of war supportedthe Darlan deal as a way to save American livesand hasten the end of the war.

Even after Roosevelt publicly proclaimed theunconditional surrender formula, the secretaryof war was still eager to seek compromiseoutside the special case of Nazi Germany if itmight shorten the war. Stimson repeatedlywarned Roosevelt regarding what helaconically referred to as the danger of “toomuch unconditional surrender on Italy.” Thatnation posed little military threat by itself, and“the people of the United States,” Stimsonobserved, were not “interested the least littlebit in taking a great part in the politics ofItaly.” During the secret negotiations betweenAmerican representatives and Italian MarshallPietro Badoglio, the secretary of warrepeatedly voiced support for a deal thatallowed Italy a conditional surrender.[15]

Stimson’s willingness to compromise with Italyand Vichy France reflected his judgment thatthe pursuit of victory needed to be tempered

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with an appreciation of the dangers ofprolonged warfare to the fragile foundations ofwhat he termed “industrial civilization” aroundthe world. The secretary of war approachedthe problem of Japan in general and theemperor in particular with the same calculationin mind. Following any surrender, the UnitedStates would have to disarm Japan’s militaryand seize many of its former bases in thePacific in order to guard against any future actso f aggress i on . Beyond those bas i crequirements, he saw no need to engage in thesort of extensive reconstruction andrehab i l i ta t ion tha t the A l l i es wereimplementing in occupied Germany. Stimsonhad never at any point in his career believedthat the elimination of the emperor or theemperor system was necessary to checkJapanese militarism. In the dying days of thewar in the Pacific, he explicitly opposed anyattempts to remake “the government of [Japan]as a whole in any such manner as we arecommitted in Germany. I am afraid we wouldmake a hash of it if we tried.”[16]

At the meeting on May 29 including Marshall,Forrestal, Grew, and State Department FarEast expert Eugene Dooman, Stimson “wasinclined to agree with giving the Japanese amodification of the unconditional surrenderformula without the use of those words.” Heindicated, however, that “the timing was wrongand this was not the time to do it,” a sentimentwith which Marshall voiced agreement.[17] Stimson and Marshall's opposition carried theday, and the meeting adjourned without anyfurther action taken on the question ofsurrender terms for Japan. This delay turnedout to be highly significant in shaping thecontext of the bomb’s use. Deliberations onsurrender terms continued sporadically in theaftermath of this meeting, but by tabling theissue until an unspecified later date, Stimsonand Marshall had decoupled the diplomatictrack from discussion about the use of theatomic bomb at a crucial moment. In May-June1945, American leaders made important

decisions about both the use of the bomb andthe invasion of the Japanese home islandswithout ever pausing to consider theirminimum acceptable definition of victory.

Why did the secretary of war advise a delay inconsidering a modification of Americansurrender terms in May 1945? It was not anynewfound commitment to the principle ofunconditional surrender. The day after theMay 29 meeting, Stimson wrote to Marshalland explicitly endorsed McCloy's suggestionthat the United States should back away frominsisting on an unconditional Japanesesurrender.[18] In the weeks that followed,Stimson explicitly spoke in favor of allowing theJapanese to retain the emperor. Why, then, didhe counsel delay at the crucial meeting on May29?

Grew's account of the reasoning reason behindthis delay was cryptic, recording simply that“for certain military reasons, not divulged, itwas considered inadvisable for the President tomake a statement just now.”[19] Stimson laterclaimed that he favored a delay because “wewere having considerable trouble with theJapanese in the land campaign on Okinawa andsome of us were afraid that any publicconcession at that time might have been takenas an indication of weakness.”[20] But none ofthe contemporary accounts of the May 29meeting, including Stimson’s diary, mention thefighting on Okinawa as a reason for delaying arestatement of American terms. Instead wehave a vague reference (in Grew’s diary) to“certain military reasons, not divulged.”[21] There was nothing secretive about the ongoingfighting on Okinawa and hence no reason foreither Stimson or Marshall to offer such anelliptical response if this had been theirprimary concern. Moreover, even if such fearshad made Stimson and Marshall hesitate toissue an immediate public statement on theemperor, there was no reason not to reach aninternal consensus on the issue, agreeing on arevised set of terms that Truman could present

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when the time and tide of battle appearedfortuitous.

After the war, Grew and several of his formerState Department colleagues were stillfrustrated and puzzled by the outcome of theMay 29 meeting on surrender terms. Doomanprivately blasted St imson's postwarexplanations for the delay, characterizing themas “disingenuous” and “sinister.”[22] After adiscussion with Grew in 1947, former StateDepartment official William R. Castle (who hadworked under St imson in the Hooveradministration) confided his own suspicions: “Iwonder whether Stimson, with Marshall,wanted the [the] war to continue long enoughto give them a chance to try out the atom bombon Japanese cities. The more I think of thatperformance the more I feel that it wasindefensible as well as brutal.”[23] Hoover,without directly commenting on Stimson’s rolein the process, privately confided that “[t]heuse of the Atomic bomb, with its indiscriminatekilling of women and children, revolts mysoul.” But while neither Grew, Castle, norHoover had any way of knowing it, Stimsonwas, in fact, far from eager to use the bomband ultimately made a last-ditch effort behindthe scenes to secure surrender without the useof this terrible new weapon.[24]

The real explanation for Stimson’s seeminglycurious performance on May 29 was hiscontinuing uncertainty over how, exactly, tointegrate the atomic bomb into Americandiplomacy. “It was an awkward meeting,” thesecretary of war confided in his diary, “becausethere were people present in the presence ofwhom I could not discuss the real feature whichwould govern the whole situation, namely S-1[the atomic bomb].”[25] Preoccupied with awide range of issues relating to the use of thebomb and the shape of the postwar world,Stimson assumed that a formal decision onclarifying and perhaps softening surrenderterms could wait until the bomb was closer toreadiness. Once the bomb was tested and ready

for use, he would presumably have a betteridea of how to integrate this new weapon withdiplomatic approaches to Japan.

According to McCloy, the secretary understoodthat the May 29 decision to delay a restatementof Amer ican terms “on ly postponedconsideration of the matter for a time . . . forwe shall have to consider it again preparatoryto the employment of S-1.”[26] What Stimsondid not appreciate was how difficult it would beto revisit the diplomatic track with Japan afterthe technical and military decisions about howto use the bomb were made in the days thatfollowed the May 29 meeting. Ultimately, delaywould contribute to a tragedy that thesecretary of war would later regret.

“The Targets Suggested . . . Have BeenDisapproved”

Having decided to temporari ly tableconsideration of surrender terms on May 29,Stimson and Marshall dismissed the rest of thegroup while they stayed behind (with McCloytaking notes) to discuss more practical mattersrelated to the use of the bomb. In considering“Japan and what we should do in regard to S-1and the application of it,” Stimson and Marshallreturned to a set of questions about use of thebomb that they had deferred in the early yearsof the American nuclear project. One of thesubjects they discussed that afternoon wasnuclear targeting and the mass killing ofJapanese civilians.[27]

Stimson was acutely sensitive to the dangers ofindiscriminate force in the pursuit of victoryand consistently objected to the intentionalkilling of civilians. With respect to the atomicbomb, however, Stimson had joined Rooseveltin embracing its wartime development whiledeferring potential difficult questions about itsuse (including the question of targets) until theproject was closer to fruition.[28] As a result,discussions of nuclear targeting prior to May1945 had been almost entirely confined to the

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scientists and engineers at Los Alamos inconcert with a handful of lower-level AAFofficers. Driven by technical concerns, work atLos Alamos had gradually coalesced around aweapon optimized for use against cities andcivilians. By December 1944, the only questionso far as Los Alamos Ordnance Division chiefWilliam Parsons was concerned was whichJapanese city would be destroyed first.[29] Beginning in late January 1945, AAF and LosAlamos personnel met with increasingfrequency to discuss operational issues relatingto the use of the atomic bomb, including thequestion of targeting. These meetingsculminated in April with the formation of agroup known as the Target Committee thatincluded representatives from both Los Alamosand the AAF.[30]

The first Target Committee meeting on April27, 1945, officially ratified the strategy of citytargeting that had evolved from the work of LosAlamos and the Ordnance Division. Thecommittee decided that in picking a target theyshould focus on “large urban areas of not lessthan 3 miles in diameter existing in the largerpopulated areas.”[31] At a second series ofmeetings on May 10-11 in Oppenheimer's LosAlamos office, the Target Committee formallyrejected the idea of attacking an isolatedmilitary target, concluding that “any small andstrictly military objective should be located in amuch larger area subject to blast damage inorder to avoid undue risks of the weapon beinglost due to bad placing of the bomb.”[32] Operating under the same assumptions thathad guided the research and development ofthe weapon as at Los Alamos, the AAF officersinvolved in selecting A-bomb targetsunderstood the bomb primarily as a large blastweapon.[33] This logic, along with concernsover the ability of AAF planes to accuratelydeliver the weapon, led the committee toalmost exactly reprise Parsons's earlierrecommendations. The bomb would be used ina large urban area where it would be sure todestroy large numbers of lightly constructed

buildings and in the process kill many Japanesecivilians.

Concerns about maximizing the bomb's blasteffects also dictated another recommendationthat emerged from the Target Committee: thatit should be used against a relativelyundamaged city. The first meeting of the TargetCommittee rated Tokyo low on the target listbecause it was “now practically all bombed andburned out.”[34] This inconvenient fact meantthat Tokyo and other previously attackedJapanese cities lacked the abundance of light,undamaged residential and industrialstructures that were the ideal targets for thebomb’s blast effects. Unconcerned oruninterested in effects produced by fire andradiation, the Target Committee decided thatusing the bomb against either a military targetor an already damaged Japanese city wouldwaste the bomb’s blast effects and producedisappointing results.

The third and final meeting of the TargetCommittee on May 28, 1945, culminated in theselection of Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata astargets for the atomic bomb. All three citiesharbored important Japanese war industries. However, in all these cities the most significantmilitary-industrial targets were located on thefringes of the larger urban area. Targetingthese war plants risked the possibility that aninaccurate delivery might result in the bomb’sexploding entirely outside the city. Moreover,even an accurate attack on one of thesefactories would fail to make use of the fullpower of the bomb as there were fewer lightstructures susceptible to blast on the urbanfringes than in the city center. The meetingconcluded with the Target Committeem e m b e r s ’ a g r e e i n g t o a s e t o frecommendations that explicitly endorsedtargeting densely populated urban areas at theexpense of any effort to hit military-industrialtargets:

"[The Target Committee agreed] not to specify

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aiming points, this is to be left to laterdetermination at base when weather conditionsare known.

to neglect location of industrial areas as pinpoint target, since on these three targets[Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata] such areas aresmall, spread on fringes of cites and quitedispersed.

to endeavor to place the first gadget in centerof selected city; that is, not to allow for later 1or 2 gadgets for complete destruction."[35]

This was a recommendation to use the bomb asa weapon for the obliteration of cities and themass killing of civilians. And while targetingthe atomic bombs in the center of Kyoto,Hiroshima, and Niigata ensured that somesmaller, scattered military-industrial targetswould be destroyed, it also virtually guaranteedthat the most significant war industriesassociated with those three cities would bespared any significant damage.

Stimson and Marshall were unaware of theTarget Committee's recommendations whenthey discussed the bomb in the secretary ofwar’s office on May 29. Unlike the approach ofParsons and the Target Committee, Stimson’sthinking about the bomb went well beyondtechnical efficiency. Civilian casualties were aregrettable but inevitable part of modernwarfare. But to deliberately target civilians formass killing not only was immoral but, byharming the international reputation of theUnited States, might undermine Americanleadership in the postwar world. Declaringthat the “reputation of the United States forfair play and humanitarianism is the world’sbiggest asset for peace in the coming decades,”Stimson repeatedly stressed that he was“anxious to hold our Air Force, so far aspossible, to the `precision' bombing which ithas done so well in Europe.” In a discussionwith Truman on May 16, 1945, he explicitlylinked his concerns over strategic bombing to

the use of the atomic bomb, suggesting that“the same rules of sparing the civilianpopulation should be applied as far as possibleto the use of any new weapons.”[36]

In a telephone conversation with McCloy onMay 21, Stimson and his assistant secretarydiscussed the question of the “big bomb” and“when it should be employed and how” withspecific reference to “the moral position of theUnited States and its responsibilities.” Recounting this conversation, McCloy confidedto his diary “the moral position of the U.S.weighs greatly upon [Stimson]” with respect tothe use of the bomb.[37] Reflecting theconcerns of the secretary of war, an outline fora presidential statement prepared by Stimson’saides on May 25 and intended for release afterthe use of the bomb stressed that the UnitedStates would “[c]hoose a military target like anaval base if possible so that wholesale killingof civilians will be on the heads of the Japanesew h o r e f u s e d t o s u r r e n d e r a t o u rultimatum.”[38]

Concerns over the targeting of civilianssurfaced again during the discussion betweenMarshall and Stimson on May 29. “TheSecretary,” McCloy noted in a memorandumsummarizing the discussion, “referred to theburning of Tokyo and the possible ways andmeans of employing the larger bombs.”[39] Inthe context of Stimson’s concerns aboutindiscriminate incendiary attacks againstTokyo, expressed both before and immediatelyafter the May 29 meeting, this statementsuggests that Stimson was troubled by the ideaof using the atomic bomb against a primarilycivilian target.[40] In response to Stimson’scomments, Marshall offered an explicitargument against using the atomic bombagainst civilians:

"General Marshall said he thought theseweapons might first be used against straightmilitary objectives such as a large navalinstallation and then if no complete result was

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derived from the effect of that, he thought weought to designate a number of largemanufacturing areas from which the peoplewould be warned to leave -- telling the Japanesethat we intend to destroy such centers. . . .Every effort should be made to keep our recordof warning clear. We must offset by suchwarning methods the opprobrium which mightfollow from an ill considered employment ofsuch force."[41]

Marshall’s statement, with its emphasis onlimiting the conduct of war against civiliansand its attention to the international reputationof the United States, mirrored Stimson's long-held concerns on this subject. Theseintertwined moral and practical concernssharply diverged from the recommendation ofthe Target Committee, with its emphasis on thetotal destruction of Japanese urban areas. Thenext day, these divergent approaches tonuclear targeting collided in the secretary ofwar's Pentagon office.

Army Chief of Staff General George C.

Marshall

At 9:20 a.m. on May 30, Harvey Bundy placed acall to General Leslie Groves to inform him thatthe secretary wanted to see him “rightaway.”[42] When the general arrived at thePentagon, he found that Stimson was intent ondiscussing the question of nuclear targeting.G r o v e s h a d p l a n n e d t o s u b m i t t h erecommendations of the Target Committeedirectly to the army chief of staff at a later dateand attempted to deflect Stimson's questionsby declaring that “I would rather not show [thereport] to him without having first discussed itwith General Marshall.”[43] Stimson, accordingto Groves’s later account, reacted sharply tothis attempted diversion: “Mr. Stimson said:‘This is one time I'm going to be the finaldeciding authority. Nobody's going to tell mewhat to do on this. On this matter I am thekingpin and you might just as well get thatreport over here.’”[44] While Stimson waitedfor Groves's staff to fetch the TargetCommittee's recommendations from his officeacross the Potomac, the secretary summonedMarshall to join them in a discussion of nucleartargeting.

Stimson's diary is elliptical in its description ofthe events of that morning, recording simplythat “[w]e talked over the subject verythoroughly of how we should use thisimplement in respect to Japan.”[45] Groves'spostwar memoir described the ensuing debateas focused primarily on the targeting of Kyoto. Stimson had visited that city in the 1920s whiletraveling to the Philippines. Citing Kyoto'sstatus as Japan's intellectual and culturalcapital, Stimson objected to its inclusion as atarget and cited his belief that the targetingdecision “should be governed by the historicalposition that the United States would occupyafter the war. He felt very strongly thatanything that would tend in any way to damagethis position would be unfortunate.”[46] Stimson's concern with attacks on Kyoto (eitherconventional or nuclear) has been well

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documented.[47] It seems unlikely, however,that Kyoto was the only subject of conversationthat morning. The underlying logic of theTarget Committee's recommendation, with itsnarrow emphasis on technical factors and itsendorsement of the deliberate destruction of anentire city, sharply contrasted with Stimson'sthinking about the conduct of the war as wellas Marshall's explicit suggestion that a militarytarget should be given first priority.

Lauris Norstad (left), Henry “Hap” Arnold(center), and Marshall (right) at thePotsdam Conference

A memorandum from Groves to Lauris Norstad,chief of staff of the Twentieth Air Force, writtenimmediately after the May 30 meeting inStimson's office, suggests that a largercontroversy was brewing at the end of May1945. “Will you please inform General Arnold,”Groves wrote to Norstad, “that this AM theSecretary of War and the Chief of Staff did notapprove the three targets we had selected,particularly Kyoto.” The mention of Kyotosupports at least part of Groves's post factoaccount of the meeting. Yet the reference to"the three targets we had selected" suggeststhat Stimson and Marshall raised objectionsthat went beyond the targeting of Kyoto.[48] When Norstad informed AAF Chief of StaffHenry Arnold of the decision, he omittedmention of Kyoto entirely, noting simply that

“targets suggested by General Groves for 509thComposite Group have been disapproved,supposedly by the Secretary of War.”[49] Stimson's belated intervention threw into doubtthe entire question of nuclear targeting on theeve of the May 31 meeting of the so-calledInterim Committee.

May 31: Setting the Context of Use

The scattered and sometimes intensediscussions in late May on the variousquestions that would determine the context ofthe bomb’s use culminated in a meeting of theInterim Committee on May 31, 1945. At 10:00a.m., Stimson, Marshall, Groves, the regularmembers of the Interim Committee, and thenewly created Scientific Advisory Panel,including physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer,Enrico Fermi, Arthur H. Compton, and ErnestO. Lawrence, assembled in the secretary ofwar’s Pentagon office. Stimson opened themeeting by declaring that “this project shouldnot be considered simply in terms of militaryweapons, but as a new relationship of man tothe universe.” He went on to warn that thebomb “must be controlled if possible to make itan assurance of future peace rather than amenace to civilization.” If not, it might become“a Frankenstein which would eat us up.”[50]

Most of the morning discussion dealt withpostwar issues, including the question ofwhether (and on what terms) the U.S. shoulddiscuss atomic energy with the SovietUnion.[51] During an afternoon lunch break, atwhich time Marshall left to attend to otherbusiness, the committee informally discussed anoncombat demonstration of the bombdesigned to impress the Japanese with thedanger they faced. Oppenheimer had alreadyvoiced his opposit ion to a noncombatdemonstration and apparently did so again atthe May 31 meeting. According to Lawrence,Oppenheimer and Groves joined in assertingthat “the only way to put on a demonstrationwould be to attack a real target of built-up

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structures.”[52] In advocating the use of thebomb in such a way as to maximize its blasteffects against light structures, the two menwere following the same logic that had guideddevelopment of the weapon at Los Alamos. Inthe face of this skepticism about the chances ofan effective noncombat demonstration, theconversation spilled over into the start of anafternoon session that began with “muchdiscussion concerning various types of targetsand the effects to be produced.”[53]

The Interim Committee minutes offer limitedinsight into the nature of the debate overnuclear targeting, merely recording thateventually the secretary of war offered aconclusion with which the rest of the groupexpressed “general agreement.” Thoughinsisting that “we could not concentrate on acivilian area,” Stimson apparently joined in theconsensus that an isolated target or militarybase would not allow for a suitably dramaticdemonstration of the bomb's power. In order“to make a profound psychological impressionon as many of the inhabitants as possible,” thebomb would have to be used in an area wherethere were a large number of civilians towitness its effects. This recommendation ruledout both a noncombat demonstration and theuse of the bomb against a strictly militarytarget. It was agreed, following Conant'ssuggestion, that the best target would be “avital war plant employing a large number ofworkers and closely surrounded by workers'houses.” No warning would be given to theJapanese prior to combat use.[54]

While the notion of using the bomb against a“war plant” may have soothed the consciencesof those with qualms over the targeting ofnoncombatants, the course of action they wererecommending entailed as a basic requirementthe mass killing of Japanese civilians. Why didStimson agree to this recommendation? Hislong-held moral and practical concern withlimiting the conduct of war and the record ofhis thoughts and actions in the days prior to the

meeting both indicated a fundamental revulsionat the idea of using such a devastating weaponwithout warning against a predominantlycivilian target, a sentiment shared by Marshall(who was not present for the afternoondiscussion of targeting). The frustratinglyopaque nature of the official minutes of theMay 31 meeting makes it impossible todetermine why the secretary of war ultimatelyacquiesced in the decision to target Japanesecities and civilians. It is, however, possible tooffer several plausible conjectures.

Perhaps the most important limiting factor inthe May 31 discussion of targeting was the typeof weapon that Los Alamos was on the verge ofproducing. From 1944 onward, Los Alamosscientists and engineers had been working on abomb designed to destroy the kinds of lightstructures found in abundance in Japanesecities. It was a concern with maximizing thedestructive effects of the type of weaponproduced by Los Alamos that had led theTarget Committee to recommend using “thefirst gadget in center of selected city” at theirfinal meeting on May 28.[55] Though Stimsonand some others on the Interim Committeewere troubled by city targeting, as were somescientists connected to the Manhattan Project,their reservations could not change the factthat the bomb as designed was optimized forthe destruction of cities and civilians. Giventhe time and money spent developing thebomb, the ongoing war in the Pacific, and thefact that Groves, Oppenheimer, and the TargetCommittee all endorsed use against a city, it islikely that Stimson saw the kind of mixedcivilian and military-industrial target suggestedby Conant, combined with the removal of Kyotofrom the target list, as a lamentable butultimately acceptable compromise.[56]

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Post-strike targeting photograph ofHiroshima

Another explanation for Stimson's decision tosupport the use of the bomb against Japanesecities was the so-called shock factor. In aninfluential article on the A-bomb decisionpublished in Harper's under Stimson’s name in1947, he directly linked the decision to use thebomb without warning on Japanese cities to theneed to produce “the kind of shock on theJapanese ru l ing o l igarchy which wedesired.”[57] The shock factor appears to haveplayed an important but ultimately superficialrole in the May 31 deliberations. Despite theloose talk of making a “profound psychologicalimpression” on the Japanese, there does notappear to have been any discussion aboutcalibrating the use of the bomb to achievespecific diplomatic objectives.[58] Without anoverall agreement on a diplomatic approach toJapan, including the issue of surrender terms,and without any experts on Japan present atthe Interim Committee meetings, such adiscussion was simply not possible. AsOppenheimer later put it, “We didn't knowbeans about the mil i tary situation inJapan.”[59] Rather, the Interim Committee'sdiscussion of the shock factor on May 31appears to have focused not on “the Japaneseruling oligarchy” but rather on the effect thatthe bomb might have on Japanese civilians. This approach echoed a similarly superficial

discussion of the psychological effects of thebomb during the course of the TargetCommittee's meetings at Los Alamos on May11-12.

Technical concerns over the delivery andefficacy of the bomb had already dictated thechoice of Japanese cities as targets by late1944. It was in picking which city to attackthat psychological factors came into play. TheTarget Committee ultimately selected Kyoto,the intellectual center and historical capital ofJapan, as the best initial target in part becauseits inhabitants were “more highly intelligentand hence better able to appreciate thesignificance of the weapon.” The goal was notsimply to obtain "the greatest psychologicaleffect against Japan" but also to make “theinitial use sufficiently spectacular for theimportance of the weapon to be internationallyrecognized.”[60] The Target Committeeapparently left unexamined the question of howincinerating and terrorizing the “highlyintelligent” citizens of Kyoto might push theJapanese government into capitulation. Thismacabre and shallow reasoning was reflectiveof a greater disconnect between the planningfor military operations against Japan and thediplomatic efforts to leverage military successinto a Japanese surrender that characterizedthe last months of the war in the Pacific.

On May 31 the Interim Committee apparentlyembraced the Target Committee's ill-definedformulation of the bomb as a psychologicalweapon. The desire to make “a profoundpsychological impression on as many of theinhabitants as possible’” clearly helped tojustify the use of the bomb against cities andcivilians. But as with the Target Committee'sdeliberations, there is no evidence that Stimsonor any of the other Interim Committeemembers wrestled with the practical questionof how the mass killing of civilians with atomicweapons might bring the Japanese governmentto surrender. At the May 31 meeting, thetechnical details of the bomb's use remained

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almost entirely divorced from the importantdiplomatic question of how -- and on whatterms -- to end the war in the Pacific.

The ongoing conventional bombing of Japanalso likely played a role in helping to validatethe strategy of city targeting with nuclearweapons. The decisions at Los Alamos that hadled to the design of a bomb optimized for useagainst cities and civil ians were bothindependent of and predated the violentincendiary campaign against Japan begun bythe AAF in March 1945. But in struggling withthe question of what to do with this newweapon, the precedent set by conventionalattacks on Tokyo and other Japanese citiesalmost certainly made it easier for the InterimCommittee to consider using the weapon in theway envisioned by Parsons and the TargetCommittee.

A combination of self-deception and misleadinginformation with respect to the nature of thetarget probably helped to seal Stimson's assentto the May 31 targeting recommendations. Theself-deception came in the form of hiswillingness to accept that a “vital war plantemploying a large number of workers andclosely surrounded by workers’ houses”constituted a primarily military target. Stimson's self-deception was facilitated byGroves, who apparently withheld informationabout the targeting of the weapon at the May31 meeting and in subsequent discussions priorto use. At the Target Committee meeting onMay 28, it had been explicitly decided “not tospecify aiming points” and “to neglect locationof industrial areas as pin point target, since onthese three targets, such areas are small,spread on fr inges of c i t ies and quitedispersed.”[61] The 509th Composite BombGroup subsequently adopted the TargetCommittee's recommendation in planning thestrikes of August 6 and 9. Air crews at the509th’s forward base on the island of Tinianwere allowed to select their own aiming pointsin order to maximize the bomb's effect on the

city as a whole at the expense of hitting anyparticular military-industrial target.[62] Groves, however, did not correct eitherStimson or Conant on May 31 (or later) whenthey suggested that the bomb would beemployed against a specific military-industrialtarget rather than used in a deliberate attemptto annihilate an entire city.

The d i f ference between the Inter imCommittee's May 31 recommendation ontargeting and that offered by the TargetCommittee (and subsequently followed by the509th in the attacks on Hiroshima andNagasaki) was in some ways minor. Bothaccepted use against a city; the only differencewas the aim point within the city. But toStimson this point was likely important in thatit allowed him to believe that he was notintentionally targeting civilians for mass killing.Moreover, as events at Nagasaki would laterreveal, the seemingly academic question of aimpoints had real life-and-death significance forthe bomb's potential victims.

“Outdoing Hitler in Atrocities”

Events proceeded rapidly following theconclusion of the marathon meeting of theInterim Committee on May 31, which served asthe capstone to four days in which the pivotalissues of sometimes heated discussion relatedto unconditional surrender and nucleartargeting. On June 6, Stimson met withTruman to present the commit tee ’srecommendations. By this point, prior to bothTruman's approval of the plan to invade Japanand the meeting at Potsdam that culminated inthe final American ultimatum to the Japanesegovernment, the top political, military, andscientific figures involved in the ManhattanProject had already signaled their assent to aset of policy guidelines that would determinethe use of the bomb. The United State woulduse nuclear weapons on Japanese cities. Therewould be no prior public statement or warningto Japan about the bomb. Nor would there be

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any attempt to enter into negotiations with theSoviet Union about postwar internationalcontrol of atomic energy prior to combat use.

As he presented these recommendations to thepresident, Stimson exhibited a seeminglyschizophrenic attitude toward the moral issuesinvolved. In the course of the June 6 meeting,the secretary of war again raised his objectionsto the conventional area bombing of Japanesecities, stating his desire “to hold the Air Forcedown to precision bombing” if possible.Stimson offered two reasons for opposingindiscriminate attacks on Japanese cities:

"[F]irst, because I did not want to have theUnited States get the reputation of outdoingHitler in atrocities; and second, I was a littlefearful that before we could get ready the AirForce might have Japan so thoroughly bombedout that the new weapon would not have a fairbackground to show its strength."[63]

In his linkage of American area bombing toNazi atrocities, Stimson was expressing long-held concerns about the need to restrain theconduct of the war for both practical and moralreasons. This concern was fresh in thesecretary of war's mind -- he had recentlyheard chilling private testimony from acongressional committee that had investigatedNazi war crimes in Europe, including thenotorious death camps at Dachau andBuchenwald.[64] Yet after initially raisingobjections to city targeting with eitherconventional or nuclear weapons, Stimson wasnow apparently willing to sanction the use ofindiscriminate force against Japanese civiliansin the form of the atomic bomb. In response tohis secretary of war's tortured logic, Truman“laughed and said he understood.”[65]

Presented with a two billion-dollar weapondesigned for the destruction of cities, Stimsonundoubtedly hoped that, however terrible, thebomb might speed the end of the war andobviate further bombing as well as the planned

invasion of the Japanese home islands.[66] Oppenheimer's rejection of a noncombatdemonstration and the combination ofdeception and self-deception on the types oftargets to be hit likely helped him to rationalizethe course of action that he recommended toTruman on June 6. Ultimately, however, theposition of endorsing indiscriminate nuclearkil l ing in order to end indiscriminateconventional k i l l ing proved to be anuncomfortable one for the secretary of war. For the next two months, Stimson and othersprivy to the atomic secret continued to explorealternatives even as preparations for use of thebomb against Japanese cities went forward.

By early July, Stimson belatedly acted on theadvice of Grew and others, suggesting toTruman that any future statement to Japanshould include the reassurance that “we do notexclude a constitutional monarchy under herpresent dynasty.”[67] At the PotsdamConference in mid-July (which he attended asan informal advisor to Truman), the secretaryof war urged the president to issue aclarification of American terms, including astatement on the Emperor, prior to the use ofthe bomb. If the Japanese continued to resistafter such a clarification, then, and only then,“the full force of our newer weapons should bebrought to bear” along with “a renewed andeven heavier warning, backed by the power ofthe new forces and possibly the actual entranceof the Russians in the war.”[68] Apparentlyfrustrated when Truman and Secretary of StateJames F. Byrnes refused to consider issuing astatement on the Emperor as part of the July 26Potsdam Declaration, Stimson also sought torevisit the targeting issue. In a series ofconversations with AAF Chief of Staff Arnold atPotsdam, Stimson discussed the bomb’s effectson “surrounding communities” and “the killingof women and children.”[69]

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Stimson and Secretary of State James F.Byrnes at Potsdam.

The last-minute American deliberations aboutthe bomb and surrender terms at Potsdam havebeen the subject of intense academic study andmuch controversy. But while Truman andByrnes have borne the brunt of the criticism fortheir failure to offer a clear statement of thepostwar status of the emperor at Potsdam,Stimson and Marshall also played an important(if inadvertent) role in determining thisoutcome. By temporarily tabling anyreconsideration of American surrender termsseveral months earlier at the May 29 meeting,the secretary of war and army chief of staffforfeited what was almost certainly the bestopportunity to join the diplomatic track withdiscussions over the use of the bomb. Thehectic, tension-filled atmosphere of thePotsdam Conference proved to be aninauspicious place for a reasoned discussion ofthe unconditional surrender issue. The samecould be said of the targeting issue. If theintransigence of Japanese leaders, abetted bythe American delay in clarifying surrenderterms, ultimately made the use of the bombinevitable, it did not necessarily follow that ithad to be used without warning against citiesand civilians. But once again Potsdam provedto be a poor venue in which to belatedly revisitthe complicated technical and operational

issues related to nuclear targeting. ThoughStimson (with Truman’s assent) did manage tokeep Kyoto off the targeting l ist , hisruminations on “the killing of women andchildren” were not enough to overcome themomentum toward city targeting that began atLos Alamos and was ratified by the TargetCommittee and Interim Committee in lateMay.

Aerial view of Hiroshima after thebombing.

None of the evidence or arguments aboveshould be taken to imply that all the importantchoices about use were finalized by May 31. But the accretion of previous decisions, takeneither consciously or as a result of simpleinaction or inattention on the part of therelevant policy makers, made last minutereconsideration of issues such as surrenderterms and targeting difficult even under thebest of circumstances. The sheer number ofissues under consideration at Potsdam and thetime pressure associated with the ongoingfighting with Japan, imminent Soviet entry intothe Pacific War, and the looming disputes overthe postwar se t t lement , made suchreconsideration next to impossible. In thatrespect, unraveling the atomic bomb “decision”requires a close engagement with the series oftechnical, political, military, and diplomaticdecisions that worked to gradually shape the

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context of use long before the Enola Gay left onits fateful mission in August 1945.

Sean L. Malloy is an assistant professor ofhistory at the University of California, Mercedand the author of Atomic Tragedy: Henry L.Stimson and the Decision to Use the BombAgainst Japan. This is a revised and expandedversion of a chapter of Atomic Tragedy.Reprinted material from “The Ordeal of HenryL. Stimson,” in Atomic Tragedy: Henry L.Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bombagainst Japan,” by Sean L. Malloy. Copyright© 2008 by Cornell University. Used bypermission of the publisher, Cornell UniversityPress.

Posted at The Asia-Pacific Journal on April 4,2009.

Recommended citation: Sean L. Malloy, “FourDays in May: Henry L. Stimson and theDecision to Use the Atomic Bomb” The AsiaPacific Journal, Vol. 14-2-09, April 4, 2009.

Notes[1] Acting Chief of Staff Thomas T. Handy toGeneral Carl A. Spaatz, July 25, 1945, Carl A.Spaatz Papers, Library of Congress, box 24,“July, 1945.”[2] On St imson and h is compl icatedrelationship to the bomb see Sean L. Malloy,Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and theDecision to Use the Bomb Against Japan(Ithaca, 2008). Other biographical treatmentsof Stimson include David Schmitz, Henry L.Stimson: The First Wise Man (Wilmington, Del.,2001); Godfrey Hodgson The Colonel: The Lifeand Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950 (NewYork, 1990); Elting Elmore Morison, Turmoiland Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times ofHenry L. Stimson (Boston, 1960).[3] HenryLewis Stimson Diaries (microfilm edition),Manuscripts and Archives, Yale UniversityLibrary (hereafter cited as Stimson Diary), May28, 1945.

[4] Stimson Diary, February 27, 1945.[5] Though its focus is split between the USSR,Japan, and the United States, TsuyoshiHasegawa's Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman,and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, Mass.,2005) is probably the best single source on thedebate within the American government oversurrender terms in 1945. Also see Richard B.Frank, Downfall: The End of the ImperialJapanese Empire (New York, 1999), 214-21.[6] The original and most influential statementof this orthodox defense of the bomb wasStimson, “The Decision to Use the AtomicBomb,” Harper’s (February 1947): 97-107. Formore contemporary restatements of thisposition see Robert James Maddox, Weaponsfor Victory: The Hiroshima Decision (Columbia,Mo., 2004); Robert Newman, Truman and theHiroshima Cult (East Lansing, Mich., 1995).[7] Foreign Relations of the United States, TheConferences at Washington, 1941-1942, andCasablanca, 1943, (Washington, D.C.) 837(hereafter cited as FRUS).[8] Joint Chiefs of Staff 924/15, April 25, 1945,box 169, section 12, record group 218, NationalArchives II, College Park, MD.[9] Herbert Hoover Memorandum, May 15,1945, Formerly Top Secret Correspondence ofSecretary of War Stimson, record group 107,box 8, National Archives II, College Park, MD.(hereafter cited as “Safe File”); Stimson Diary,May 16, 1945.[10] McCloy, “Memorandum for ColonelStimson,” May, 28, 1945, “Safe File,” box 8.[11] Grew, “Memorandum of Conversation withthe President,” May 28, 1945, enclosed in Grewto Stimson, February 12, 1947, Henry LewisStimson Papers (microfilm ed.), reel 116,Manuscripts and Archives, Yale UniversityLibrary, (hereafter cited as Stimson Papers).[12] Joseph Grew to Stimson, February 12,1947, Stimson Papers, reel 116.[13] Stimson to Roosevelt, March 15, 1944,Stimson Papers, reel 109.[14] Stimson Diary, November 18, 1942; DavidM. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The AmericanPeople in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New

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York, 1999), 582-83; Robert Dallek, Franklin D.Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy1932-1945 (New York, 1979), 364-66.[15] Stimson Diary, June 14 (“politics of Italy”),July 1(“too much unconditional surrender”),1943. Also see Stimson to Roosevelt ,September 20, 1943, Stimson Diary.[16] Stimson, “Memorandum for the President:The Conduct of the War with Japan,” enclosedin Stimson to James F. Byrnes, July 16, 1945,Stimson Papers, reel 113.[17] Others present included the director of theOffice of War Information (OWI), Elmer Davis,and Judge Samuel Rosenman, counsel to thepresident. Stimson Diary, May 29, 1945;Forrestal Diary, May 29, 1945.[18] Stimson, “Memorandum for the Chief ofStaff,” May 30, 1945, “Safe File,” box 8.[19] Grew Diary, May 29, 1945, reprinted inGrew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record ofForty Years, 1904-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.,1952), 1434.[20] Stimson to Joseph Grew, June 19, 1947,Eugene H. Dooman Papers, box 2, HooverInstitution Archives, Stanford, Calif. (hereaftercited as Dooman Papers).[21] Grew, Turbulent Era, 1434.[22] Eugene Dooman to Joseph Grew, June 30,1947, Dooman Papers, box 2.[23] February 9, 1947, The Diary of William R.Castle (microfilm of original), HoughtonLibrary, Harvard University.[24] Herbert Hoover to John C. Laughlin,August 8, 1945, Hebert Hoover PresidentialLibrary, West Branch, Iowa, Post-PresidentialIndividual File, “O’Laughlin, John C.” OnStimson’s last minute efforts at Potsdam tofacilitate a Japanese surrender prior to the useof the bomb see Malloy, Atomic Tragedy,121-32.[25] Stimson Diary, May 29, 1945.[26] John J. McCloy, "Memorandum ofConversation with General Marshall May 29,1945, 11:45 AM," “Safe File,” box 12.[27] Stimson Diary, May 29, 1945. For alengthy discussion of nuclear targeting inWorld War II, see Sean L. Malloy, “‘The Rules

of Civilized Warfare’: Scientists, Soldiers, andAmerican Nuclear Targeting, 1940-1945,” TheJournal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3,474-512.[28] Malloy, Atomic Tragedy, 49-65.[29] “Character and strength of buildings indifferent parts of the city” and the “Contour ofthe ground” were the factors that Parsonssuggested would be most important in selectingcities for destruction. William Parsons toWilliam Purnell (via Leslie Groves), December12, 1944, Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of theManhattan Engineer District, 1942-46,microfilm publication M1109, file 5D, NationalArchives (hereafter cited as Groves “TopSecret”).[30] AAF Target Committee members wereBrigadier General Lauris R. Norstad, ColonelWilliam P. Fisher, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Dr.David M. Dennison, and Dr. Robert Stearns.Manhattan Project representatives included Dr.John von Neumann, Dr. R. Bright Wilson, Dr.William Penny, Dr. Norman F. Ramsey, ColonelLyle E. Seeman, and Major Jack Derry (whowrote the summary notes after each meeting).[31] Jack Derry, “Notes on Initial Meeting ofthe Target Committee,” April 27, 1945, Groves“Top Secret,” file 5D.[32] Derry, “Summary of Target CommitteeMeetings on 10 and 11 May 1945,” Groves,“Top Secret,” file 5D.[33] One of the important criteria used by thecommittee in selecting a target was that it “becapable of being damaged effectively by ablast.” Ibid.[34] Derry, “Notes on Initial Meeting of theTarget Committee.”[35] Derry, “Minutes of Third TargetCommittee Meeting -- Washington, 28 May1945,” Groves, “Top Secret,” file 5D.[36] Stimson to Truman, May 16, 1945, StimsonDiary.[37] Diary of John J. McCloy, May 21, 1945,John J. McCloy Papers, box DY1, folder 17,Amherst College Library, Amherst, Mass.(hereafter cited as McCloy Diary).[38] “Objectives,” [outline for draft of

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presidential address, author unknown but likelyeither Harvey Bundy or Arthur Page] May 25,1945, Harrison Bundy Files Relating to theDevelopment of the Atomic Bomb, 1942-46,Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers,record group 77, microfilm publication M1108,file 74, National Archives (hereafter cited asHarrison-Bundy).[39] McCloy, “Memorandum of Conversationwith General Marshall.”[40] On June 1, three days after this meetingwith Marshall, Stimson summoned Arnold toquestion the general about "a bombing ofTokyo" that Stimson found objectionableinsofar as it had apparently been aimedprimarily at civilians and as such represented abreach “of my promise from Lovett that therewould be only precision bombing in Japan.”Stimson Diary, June 1, 1945.[41] McCloy, “Memorandum of Conversationwith General Marshall.”[42] Groves Diary, May 30, 1945, Papers ofLeslie R. Groves, box 3, record group 200,National Archives II, College Park, Md.(hereafter cited as Groves Diary).[43] Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told: TheStory of the Manhattan Project (New York,1962), 273; Stimson Diary, May 30, 1945. Alsosee the account in Robert S. Norris, Racing forthe Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, theManhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (SouthRoyalton, Vt., 2002), 386-87.[44] Groves quoted in Len Giovannitti and FredFreed, The Decision to Drop the Bomb (NewYork, 1965), 40-41.[45] Stimson Diary, May 30, 1945.[46] Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 275.[47] Stimson Diary, June 1, 1945; Ira C. Eaker,"Memorandum for the Secretary of War," June11, 1945, “Safe File,” box 8.[48] Groves, “Memorandum to GeneralNorstad,” May 30, 1945 (emphasis in original),Groves “Top Secret,” file 5D (emphasis added).[49] The Diary of Henry H. Arnold, May 31,1945, Henry H. Arnold Papers, Manuscriptsand Records Division, Library of Congress(hereafter Arnold Diary).

[50] Gordon Arneson, “Notes of the InterimCommittee Meeting,” May 31, 1945 (“thisproject,” “must be controlled”), Harrison-Bundy, file 100; Stimson Diary, May 31, 1945(“Frankenstein”).[51] For more on the debate over internationalcontrol and the Soviet Union see Malloy,Atomic Tragedy, 80-95, 109-14, 131-34, 143-57.[52] Ernest O. Lawrence to Dr. Karl K. Darrow,17 August 1945, E. O. Lawrence Papers, box28, folder 20, Bancroft Library, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.[53] Arneson, “Notes of the Interim CommitteeMeeting,” May 31, 1945.[54] Ibid.[55] Derry, “Minutes of Third TargetCommittee Meeting.”[56] Michael Sherry has reached a similarconclusion regarding Stimson and the bomb.Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American AirPower: The Creation of Armageddon (NewHaven, 1987), 295.[57] Stimson, “The Decision to Use the AtomicBomb,” 105.[58] The “shock” factor, while not entirelyabsent in wartime discussions became muchmore prominent and well defined after the warin post-facto justifications of the bomb’s use. For more on shock see, Alperovitz, TheDecision to Use the Atomic Bomb, 165-66;Michael Gordin, Five Days in August: HowWorld War I I Became a Nuclear War(Princeton, 2007), 39.[59] Richard Polenberg, ed., In the Matter of J.Robert Oppenheimer (Ithaca, 2002), 34.[60] Derry, “Summary of Target CommitteeMeetings.”[61] Derry, “Minutes of Third TargetCommittee Meeting.”[62] For more see Malloy, Atomic Tragedy,134-35, 166-69.[63] Stimson Diary, June 6, 1945.[64] “Transcript of Conference Held at 11 am, 9May, 1945 with Stimson, Marshall and aSpecial Committee of the Senate and House ofRepresentat ive Which Invest igated‘ATROCITIES’ in Germany,” “Safe File,” box 2.

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[65] Stimson Diary, June 6, 1945.[66] For a version of this argument seeStimson, “The Decision to Use the AtomicBomb,” 107.[67] Stimson, “Memorandum for the President:Proposed Program for Japan,” July 2, 1945,

Stimson Diary.[68] Stimson, “Memorandum for the President:The Conduct of the War with Japan,” enclosedin Stimson to James Byrnes, July 16, 1945,Stimson Papers, reel 113.[69] Arnold Diary, July 22, 23, 1945; Henry H.Arnold, Global Mission (New York, 1949), 589.