Part II:

The Decision That Launched the Enola Gay

By John T. Correll

In April 1945, the new President learned the most closely-held secret of the war.

As Vice President, Harry Truman had not known about the development of the atomic bomb. On the day he assumed the presidency at the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had spoken to him briefly and told him that the United States was working on a weapon of extraordinary power. Twelve days later, on April 25, 1945, Stimson and Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, briefed President Truman in detail on the secret of the atomic bomb.

The bomb had not yet been tested. Once it was proved to work, Truman would consult with allies and advisors, but the decision on whether to use it would be his. Truman said later that he had no great difficulty in reaching the decision.[1] The question before him was how to end the war and save lives. He regarded the atomic bomb as a weapon -- an awesome one, to be sure -- but still a weapon to be used.

Roosevelt's view, apparently, had been the same. According to Stimson, who had been responsible to the President for the Manhattan Project since 1941, there was never any question in Roosevelt's mind but that the bomb would be used when ready.[2]

On Truman's orders, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima August 6. Another B-29, Bockscar, dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki August 9.

The unconditional surrender of Japan followed on August 15. For the next fifty years, however, Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb would be questioned again and again, and the retroactive judgment would often be harsh.

To understand the decision, it is necessary to examine the circumstances and the options as Truman saw them in the summer of 1945.

The War in 1945

Between 1941 and 1945, World War II cost more than one million US casualties.[3] It consumed the nation's energies and resources to an extent not experienced before or since, requiring the service of 16.1 million Americans in the armed forces and mobilization of the domestic industry and economy. In 1944, the war effort absorbed an astounding forty-four percent of America's GNP.[4]

When Truman became President in April 1945, US casualties were averaging more than 900 a day. In the Pacific, the toll from each successive battle rose higher. During the first three months of Truman's presidency, US battle casualties in the Pacific were equal to nearly half the total of US casualties in the Pacific over the previous three years.[5]

More than 26,000 Americans had been killed or wounded in the battle of Iwo Jima, February 15-March 25. US casualties in the battle of Okinawa, April 1-June 30, were about 48,000. As Truman deliberated about use of the atomic bomb, the long battle for the Philippines continued. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of US forces in the western Pacific, did not declare liberation of the Philippines until July 5, 1945 -- almost nine months after he had walked ashore at Leyte on October 20, 1944. Remnants of the Japanese occupation army continued with sporadic fighting from mountain redoubts until after the surrender. (That was also the case on Okinawa and elsewhere.)

The war ended in Europe on V-E Day, May 9, but Japan fought on. Most of the Japanese naval fleet had been destroyed, and Japanese airpower had been taken severe attrition. The eventual military outcome of the war had been sealed since the US captured the Marianas in 1944, but Japan had not accepted defeat and the fighting continued with casualties mounting.

In 1945, the war had finally come home to Japan. B-29s from Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were striking the Japanese homeland regularly, systematically destroying the industrial cities on Honshu and Kyushu. The US Navy and the Army Air Forces had cut off Japan's supply lines. Nevertheless, the war dragged on, with the prospect of its continuing into 1946. US and allied forces prepared for a difficult and costly invasion of the Japanese islands.

Bushido and Kamikaze

As Japan's desperation worsened, the ferocity of the fighting intensified. The code of bushido -- "the way of the warrior" -- was deeply ingrained. Surrender was dishonorable. Defeated Japanese leaders preferred to take their own lives in the painful samurai ritual of seppuku (called hara kiri in the West.)[6] Warriors who surrendered were not deemed worthy of regard or respect. This explains, in part, the Japanese mistreatment, torture, and summary execution of POWs. There was no shortage of volunteers for kamikaze missions or of troops willing to serve as human torpedoes or ride to honorable death on piloted buzz bombs.

Japan was dead on its feet in every way but one: The Japanese still had the means -- and the determination -- to make the invading Allied forces pay a terrible price for the final victory. Quantitative estimates of the last-ditch defenses vary, but there is no argument but that they would have been formidable.

Since the summer of 1944, the Imperial General Headquarters had been drawing units back to Japan in anticipation of a final stand there. The force thus assembled had extensive infantry and armor. Although the Japanese Navy had the bulk of the aerial responsibility with 1,030 fighters, 330 ground-attack planes, and 3,725 other aircraft (including kamikaze and maritime patrol), the Army still had enough planes to be a factor. Its principal contribution was air defense. The First Air Army had 600 kamikaze, 500 other aircraft. The Sixth Air Army had 1,000 kamikaze, 500 other aircraft.[7]

By one analysis, the Japanese force in the home islands had some 10,000 aircraft, nearly two-thirds of them kamikazes, which would engage the invasion force before it landed. Suicide boats and human torpedoes would defend the beaches. The Japanese Army planned to attack the allied landing force with a three-to-one advantage in manpower. If that failed, the militia and the people of Japan were expected to carry on with guerrilla warfare.[8] Civilians were being taught to strap explosives to their bodies and throw themselves under advancing tanks.[9] Construction battalions had fortified the shorelines of Kyushu and Honshu with tunnels, bunkers, and barbed wire.[10]

The Japanese were prepared to absorb massive casualties. On August 9 -- after both atomic bombs had fallen -- Gen. Korechika Anami, the War Minister, reviewed Japan's Ketsu Go (Operation Decision) defense plan for the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. Anami said the military could commit 2,350,000 troops. In addition, commanders could call on four million civil servants. The Japanese cabinet had approved a measure extending the draft to include men from ages fifteen to sixty and women from seventeen to forty-five (an additional 28 million people). Questioned by Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Army Chief of Staff Yoshijiro Umezu said that, "With luck, we will repulse the invaders before they land. At any rate, I can say with confidence that we will be able to destroy the major part of an invading force."[11]

It is generally assumed that the citizens would have fought with pickup weapons and bamboo lances, but in the spring of 1945, the Japanese government was planning to produce "people's weapons" that could be made easily in underground factories or with domestic materials in factories moved to safe locations.[12] How many "people's weapons" might actually have been produced by the start of the allied invasion is unknown.

Invasion Plans and Casualty Estimates

US military opinion was divided on what it would require to induce Japan's surrender and finally bring the war to an end. Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding US forces in the western Pacific, believed an invasion of the Japanese home islands would be necessary.

Gen. H. H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, and Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay (whose XXI Bomber Command in the Marianas was pounding Japan relentlessly) believed that B-29 conventional bombing could do the job. The AAF position in June and July, however, was to support Marshall's advocacy of invasion on the basis that a blockade of Honshu required air bases on Kyushu.[13]

Adm. William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff, and Adm. Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, thought Japan could be defeated without an invasion.[14] When Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commanding US forces in the central Pacific, joined MacArthur in recommending invasion of Kyushu, however, King agreed.[15]

Truman was aware of the differences among the military leaders but was satisfied that they had been reconciled for consensus with Marshall. Furthermore, Truman respected Marshall deeply and regarded him as the nation's chief strategist, so Marshall's opinion carried particular weight.[16]

The official plan called for an invasion in two stages:

• Operation Olympic, to begin Nov. 1, 1945, would be a land invasion of Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese main islands.

• Operation Coronet, planned for March 1, 1946, was an invasion of Honshu, the largest island.

The Joint Chiefs envisioned that the two-stage invasion would involve some five million troops, most of them American.[17] The invasion was to be preceded by a massive aerial bombardment, reaching maximum intensity before troops went ashore on Honshu. One memorandum said that "more bombs will be dropped on Japan than were delivered against Germany during the entire European war."[18]

A June 18 estimate from the military chiefs said that casualties in the first thirty days of the Kyushu invasion could be 31,000. Adm. King estimated 41,000. Adm. Nimitz said 49,000. MacArthur's staff said 50,000. Casualty estimates for Olympic and Coronet combined ranged from 220,000 to 500,000+.[19]

"I asked General Marshall what it would cost in lives to land on the Tokio plain and other places in Japan," Truman said later. "It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost at minimum one quarter of a million casualties, and might cost as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy. The other military and naval men present agreed."[20]

The relevant fact here is that Truman believed that unless he used the atomic bomb, an invasion of Japan would be necessary and that the casualties would be enormous.

Strategic Bombing

The capture of the Marianas in the summer of 1944 had given the Army Air Forces bases 1,300 miles from Tokyo. B-29s from Guam, Saipan, and Tinian could reach all of the major cities in Japan, including the big industrial cities on Honshu. B-29s operated at altitudes too high for Japanese fighters to stop them.[21]

On January 20, 1945, LeMay took command of XXI Bomber Command. On the night of March 9-10, without telling Arnold in advance what he was going to do in case it failed, LeMay launched a massive mission -- 334 B-29s -- to drop incendiary bombs on Tokyo. It was the most destructive raid in history. The official casualty report listed 83,793 dead and 40,918 wounded.[22] Sixteen square miles of Tokyo were destroyed that night.[23] In Operation Starvation, conducted concurrently with the strategic bombing campaign, the B-29s mined the waters along key stretches of the Japanese coast, cutting off an important mode of domestic transportation as well as the import of food and raw materials.[24]

The long-range B-29, which had first struck Japan in June 1944 from bases in China, inspired fear and awe. The Japanese called it "B-san," or "Mr. B."[25] Arnold, on a visit to Guam in June 1945, expressed his belief that the B-29 campaign "would enable our infantrymen to walk ashore on Japan with their rifles slung."[26]

The B-29s systematically laid waste to Japan's large industrial cities. LeMay told Arnold there would soon be nothing left to bomb or burn except for Kyoto (the old capital) and four other cities -- Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Kokura -- that were barred for routine B-29 missions. These four were, of course, on the target list for the "special bomb."[27]

The Emperor Takes a Hand

By the summer of 1945, the Japanese government had split into a peace faction (including Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki) and a war faction (Anami and the military). The war faction was powerful, but the peace faction was gaining an extraordinary ally: the Emperor, Hirohito. The Emperor, regarded as divine and the embodiment of the Japanese state, supposedly "lived beyond the clouds,"[28] above politics and government. In fact, the Emperor was interested and well informed. While he did not interfere, he was often present at important meetings.

The B-29 missions strengthened Hirohito's growing belief that Japan should not be devastated further in a losing cause. On March 18, he toured areas of Tokyo that had been firebombed March 9-10. The experience persuaded him that the war must end as quickly as possible.[29]

Hirohito shattered precedent at a meeting of the Supreme War Council June 22, openly stating his criticism of the military: "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers. We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will now strive to study the ways and means to conclude the war. In so doing, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."[30]

Anami and his faction managed to sidestep the Emperor's rebuke. All concerned -- including the Emperor -- hoped that the Soviet Union could be persuaded to act as an intermediary and help end the war on a more acceptable basis than unconditional surrender.[31] The basis for this, as the Japanese saw it, was that Japan's neutrality had allowed the Russians to concentrate on their real enemy, the Germans, and that in the postwar world, the Soviet Union would find a strong Japan to be useful as a buffer between its Asian holdings and the United States.[32]

Through July and into August, Japan continued to hope it could negotiate terms, including concessions for control of the armed forces and the future of its military leaders.

The passage of time and the repeated publication of pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have transformed Japan's image to that of victim in World War II. In the 1940s, Japan's image was different. The allies had imposed unconditional surrender on Germany. The United States was not inclined to make deals with the Japanese regime responsible for Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march, the forced labor camps, habitual mistreatment of prisoners of war, and a fifteen-year chain of atrocities stretching from Manchuria to the East Indies.

Options

Basically, President Truman and the armed forces had three strategic options for inducing the Japanese surrender:

• Continue the fire bombing and blockade. After the war, the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that without the atomic bomb or invasion, Japan would have accepted unconditional surrender, probably by November and definitely by the end of the year.[33] In the summer of 1945, however, Army Air Force leaders were not able to persuade Marshall that this strategy would work.

• Invasion. Neither Marshall nor Truman was convinced that LeMay's B-29 bombing campaign could bring a prompt end to the war. In their view, the only conventional alternative was invasion. The battle for Okinawa, occurring while deliberations about the bomb proceeded, was much on the minds of American leaders. Between April 1 and June 30, the United States took about 48,000 casualties [34] on Okinawa, where it was opposed by a Japanese force a fraction the size of the one waiting in the home islands. Kamikaze attacks in the Okinawa campaign sank twenty-eight US ships and did severe damage to hundreds more.[35]

• Use the atomic bomb. Within a few years after World War II, the specter of global nuclear war (combined with visions of Hiroshima) would imbue the bomb with special horror. In 1945, the perspective was different. "The final decision of when and where to use the atomic bomb was up to me," Truman said. "I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it would be used."[36]

A contemporary perspective on the atomic bomb can be found in the final (September- October 1945) issue of Impact, a classified publication distributed to Army Air Force units during the war. "The single fact that atom bombs are 2,000 times as powerful as ordinary bombs will make present-day air forces obsolete," it said. "In the future, a handful of planes will theoretically do the same job -- provided they can get to the target. . . . [I]t will not be long before our present air force will seem as curious as the lumbering triplanes of the last war."[37]

In 1945, the doubts and disagreements about use of the atomic bomb were mostly of a strategic nature, reflecting the belief that an invasion might not be necessary or that bombing and blockade would be sufficient. (Use of the bomb to end the war eventually saved Japanese casualties, too. The incendiary bombs from B-29s were taking a terrible toll. The attack on Tokyo March 9-10 killed more people than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.)

Advice About the Bomb

As discussions about use of the bomb continued, US authorities made preparations for the decision that seemed most likely. On May 28, a special committee in Washington nominated four urban industrial centers -- Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyoto -- as targets. On May 29, however, Secretary of War Stimson struck Kyoto (Japan's capital for more than 1,000 years) from the list. Nagasaki was eventually picked as the fourth potential target.[38]

The Interim Committee on S-1 (a code term for the Manhattan Project) advised the President on May 31 that the bomb should be used against Japan and that a demonstration explosion would not be sufficient. Reasons included the possibility that the bomb would not work, that the Japanese might think the demonstration was faked, and that there was no way to make the demonstration convincing enough to end the war.[39]

In his memoirs, Truman said a consensus had been reached in July, during the Big Three meeting at Potsdam, by Secretary of State James Byrnes, Stimson, Leahy, Marshall, and Arnold that the bomb should be used.[40] In fact, the advice was not as clear-cut as Truman depicted it in his memoirs. Although Arnold supported the decision, he declared his view at Potsdam that use of the bomb was not a military necessity.[41] Leahy had reservations about the decision also. And at a meeting with Truman July 20 during the Potsdam conference, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, commander of allied forces in Europe, advised against using the atomic bomb (although he said later his reaction was personal and not based on any analysis of the circumstances).[42]

Casualties were increasing with every day that Japan refused to surrender. Truman's biographer, David McCullough, sets the perspective trenchantly with a consideration that applied as the President was taking the final counsel of his advisors and allies at Potsdam: "Had the bomb been ready in March and deployed by Roosevelt, had it shocked Japan into surrender then, it would have already saved nearly fifty thousand American lives lost in the Pacific in the time since, not to say a vastly larger number of Japanese lives."[43]

During the Potsdam conference, Truman received word that the "Fat Man" bomb test at Alamogordo (5:30 a.m., July 16, Alamagordo time) had been successful. On July 25, the War Department relayed Truman's order that the 509th Composite Group should deliver the first "special bomb" as soon after August 3 as weather permitted on one of the four target cities.[44]

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed with Truman. At Potsdam, he said, "the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table." Years later, Churchill still thought that using the bomb had been the right decision.[45]

The Potsdam Proclamation, issued July 26 by the heads of government of the US, UK, and China,[46] warned of "utter devastation of Japanese homeland" unless Japan surrendered unconditionally. "We shall brook no delay," it said. The same day, the cruiser Indianapolis delivered the U-235 core of the "Little Boy" bomb to Tinian.

On July 28, Prime Minister Suzuki declared the Potsdam Proclamation a "thing of no great value" and said, "We will simply mokusatsu it." Literally, mokusatsu means "kill with silence." Meanings include "to ignore" and "to remain in a wise and masterly inactivity."[47] Suzuki said later the meaning he intended was "no comment."[48] The Allies took the statement as rejection of the Potsdam Proclamation.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The unit that would deliver the atomic bombs, the 509th Composite Group, had been organized in 1944.[49] Crews were handpicked by the commander, Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. The 509th trained in secrecy and then deployed to Tinian, where it was standing by when Truman's order was received.

In the early morning hours of August 6, the Enola Gay, flown by Tibbets, took off from Tinian. The primary target was Hiroshima, the seventh largest city in Japan, an industrial and military shipping center on the Inland seacoast of Honshu. At precisely 8:16 a.m., the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. More than half of the city [50] was destroyed in a flash, and about 80,000 Japanese were killed.[51]

Reaction by the Japanese cabinet was polarized, split evenly between the war faction and the peace faction. With the cabinet at an impasse, Hirohito took a more assertive position. On August 8, the Emperor instructed Foreign Minister Togo to tell Prime Minister Suzuki that Japan must accept the inevitable and terminate the war with the least possible delay, that the tragedy of Hiroshima must not be repeated.[52]

Anami could not bring himself to flatly defy the Emperor, but he continued to argue his position passionately. Hard-liners in the military were plotting to kill Suzuki and others of the peace faction. Anami was not part of the plot -- although his brother-in-law, Masahiko Takeshita, was a ring leader. Anami was tolerant of the plotters and gave them tacit encouragement.[53]

The Soviet Union, seeing an opportunity for easy pickings with limited risk, declared war on Japan August 8. Despite the desperation of a war suddenly active on two fronts, the Japanese were not quite ready to capitulate.

The primary target for the second atomic bomb mission on August 9 was Kokura, but the aim point was obscured by smoke drifting from a nearby city that had been bombed two days before. Bockscar diverted to Nagasaki on the western coast of Kyushu. Nagasaki was heavily industrialized and "had become essentially a Mitsubishi town, with shipyards, electric equipment production, steel factories, and an arms plant, all run by the conglomerate firm. Having been struck previously by only five small-scale bombing raids, Nagasaki presented a relatively pristine target."[54] The aiming point for Bockscar was the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the northern part of Nagasaki.[55] The bomb exploded on Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m., killing 40,000.[56]

Truman States His Reasons

In his radio address August 9, Truman said the United States had used the atomic bomb "against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us."[57]

The Japanese cabinet was aware of a rumor, based on interrogation of a captured B-29 pilot, that the next atomic bomb was to fall on Tokyo August 12. This may have prompted the surrender somewhat, but it was not a major factor in the decision.[58]

Japanese deliberation on August 9 lasted all day and into the night. At a Cabinet meeting that began at 2:30 p.m. -- hours after the second atomic bomb had fallen -- Anami said: "We cannot pretend to claim that victory is certain, but it is far too early to say the war is lost. That we will inflict severe losses on the enemy when he invades Japan is certain, and it is by no means impossible that we may be able to reverse the situation in our favor, pulling victory out of defeat."[59] Finally, at 2:00 a.m. on August 10, the Emperor told the Big Six meeting (the Supreme War Council) that "the time has come to bear the unbearable" and that "I give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied Proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister."[60]

At 4:00 a.m. the Cabinet adopted a message for radio transmission to Allied powers, saying in part: "The Japanese government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration, which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."[61]

The Allied response August 11 said that the "authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers" and that "the Emperor shall authorize and ensure the signature by the government of Japan and the Japanese General Headquarters of the surrender terms."[62]

The Surrender

The Anami faction continued to haggle, but at noon on August 14, the Emperor asked the Cabinet to prepare an Imperial Rescript of Surrender. He said that "a peaceful end to the war is preferable to seeing Japan annihilated."[63] The plotters engaged in various disruptive actions in the hours that followed, but it was over. At 11:30 p.m. the Emperor recorded his radio message for broadcast the following day. Anami committed seppuku at 5:00 a.m., August 15.

In the Imperial Rescript of Surrender, broadcast at noon on August 15, Emperor Hirohito said: "Despite the best that has been done by everyone -- the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State, and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people -- the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.

"Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers."[64] [Emphasis added.]

The atomic bomb did not win the war. Japan had been defeated already by the land, sea, and air campaign that went before. It is reasonable to conclude, however, that the bomb forced the Japanese surrender -- and considerably sooner than it would have occurred otherwise.

April 1. Battle of Okinawa begins.

April 12. Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes president.

April 25. Groves and Stimson brief Truman on Manhattan Project.

May 9. V-E Day, victory in Europe.

May 28. Target committee selects four urban industrial centers.

May 31. Interim Committee on S-1 says the bomb should be used against Japan and advises against a demonstration explosion.

June 18. Truman meets with Secretary of War, Joint Chiefs, and approves plan -- briefed by Marshall -- for invasion of Japan.

June 30. Battle on Okinawa ends.

July 16-August 2. Big Three conference at Potsdam.

July 16. Successful test of "Fat Man" bomb at Alamogordo.

July 25. War Department relays Truman's order to drop "special bomb."

July 26. Potsdam Proclamation. Cruiser Indianapolis delivers U-235 core of "Little Boy" bomb to Tinian.

July 28. Japan dismisses Potsdam Proclamation.

August 6. Hiroshima bomb. 8:16 a.m.

August 8. USSR declares war on Japan.

August 9. Nagasaki bomb. 11:02 a.m.

August 10. Japanese message explores for terms of capitulation.

August 11. Allies state that Japanese government will be subject to Supreme Allied Commander.

August 15. V-J Day. At noon, the Emperor's radio message, the Imperial Rescript of Surrender, is broadcast.

September 2. MacArthur accepts formal surrender, battleship Missouri, Tokyo Bay.

Footnotes

[2] Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces.

[3] Defense 92 Almanac (also source for total number serving in armed forces) gives the casualty breakout as 291,557 battle deaths, 113,842 other deaths, and 671,846 wounds not mortal. Dupuy, World War II, says 292,129 killed and 670,846 wounded.

[4] Air Force Association, Lifeline Adrift.

[5] McCullough, Truman.

[6] Simons, Japan at War.

[7] Tarnstrom, The Wars of Japan.

[8] Bradley, The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific.

[9] McCullough, Truman.

[10] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan.

[11] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan.

[12] Hoyt, Japan's War.

[13] Wolk, "The B-29, the A-Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender."

[14] Wolk.

[15] Specter, Eagle Against the Sun.

[16] Truman, Memoirs.

[17] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan.

[18] McCullough, Truman.

[19] McCullough, Truman.

[20] Truman, letter to Cate, January 12, 1953, reproduced in Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces. In his memoirs, Truman said that "General Marshall told me that it might cost half a million American lives to force the enemy's surrender on his home grounds." Note: Truman used the alternative spelling, Tokio, in his letter to Cate.

[21] Wheeler, Bombers Over Japan.

[22] Wolk, "The B-29, the A-Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender."

[23] Coox, "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific."

[24] Wheeler, Bombers Over Japan.

[25] Hoyt, Japan's War.

[26] Coox, "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific."

[27] Wheeler, Bombers Over Japan.

[28] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan.

[29] Hoyt, Japan's War ; Coox, "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific."

[30] Hoyt, Japan's War.

[31] Hoyt, Japan's War.

[32] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan.

[33] Wolk, "The B-29, the A-Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender."

[34] Published casualty figures for Okinawa vary. McCullough gives total as 48,000. Wheeler says 52,600. Gow says 55,163. National Air and Space Museum, January 1994, says 12,500 US dead, 35,500 wounded.

[35] Gow, Okinawa; McCullough, Truman.

[36] McCullough, Truman.

[37] "Air Victory Over Japan," Impact.

[38] Wheeler, The Fall of Japan, says the selection of Nagasaki was made in July by XXI Bomber Command. Coox says it was designated "unenthusiastically" by Arnold. Craven and Cate, in Army Air Forces, identify the members of the target committee as James F. Byrnes, Ralph A. Bard, William L. Clayton, Vannevar Bush, Karl T. Compton, James B. Conant, and George L. Harrison. Hershberg, in James B. Conant, says Stimson chaired the committee with Harrison, his aide, as alternate chairman. Byrnes was Truman's personal representative, soon to be Secretary of State. Bard was Undersecretary of the Navy and Clayton Assistant Secretary of State. Bush, Compton, and Conant were "scientist- administrators."

[39] Wheeler, Fall of Japan; McCullough, Truman.

[40] Truman, Memoirs ; McCullough, Truman.

[41] Wolk, "The B-29, the A-Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender."

[42] McCullough, Truman; Toland, The Rising Sun.

[43] McCullough, Truman.

[44] Letter to Gen. Carl Spaatz, commanding general, Army Strategic Air Forces, from Gen. Thomas T. Handy, acting Chief of Staff. Facsimile in Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces.

[45] Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 1953.

[46] Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek was not at Potsdam. His approval was obtained by radio. This statement is properly called the Potsdam Proclamation. It is often referred to as the Potsdam Declaration, but that term applies to an altogether different document issued August 2 by the US, the UK, and the USSR as a general report on the conference.

[47] Japan's Longest Day.

[48] Toland, The Rising Sun.

[49] Fifty years later, the US Air Force chose to continue the lineage of this unit as the 509th Bomb Wing, the first wing equipped with B-2 Stealth bombers. Frank Oliveri, "The Spirit of Missouri," Air Force Magazine, April 1994.

[50] Coox, "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific," says the bomb destroyed 4.4 of the seven square miles of the city.

[51] Figures vary. Dupuy: 60,000. Goralski: 78,000. Young: 80,000. Hoyt: 80,000 (or more).

[52] Japan's Longest Day.

[53] Japan's Longest Day.

[54] Coox, "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific."

[55] Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces.

[56] Again, figures vary. Goralski: 35,000. Dupuy and Young: 40,000. Hoyt, 60,000.

[57] McCullough, Truman.

[58] Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces.

[59] Japan's Longest Day.

[60] Japan's Longest Day.

[61] Japan's Longest Day.

[62] Japan's Longest Day.

[63] Japan's Longest Day.

[64] Japan's Longest Day.

References

"Air Victory Over Japan," Impact, Office of the Assistant Chief of Air Staff, September-October, 1945. (Army Air Forces Confidential Picture History of World War II, declassified and published in eight volumes by James Parton and Company, 1980.)

Bradley, John H. The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific. West Point Military History Series. Avery, 1984.

Calvocoressi, Peter, and Guy Wint. Total War: the Story of World War II. Pantheon Books, 1972.

Churchill, Winston S. Triumph and Tragedy. (The Second World War, vol. 6) Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

Coox, Alvin D., "Strategic Bombing in the Pacific: The American Air Assault on Japan, 1942- 1945," in Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, forthcoming, Center for Air Force History, 1994.

Craven, Wesley Frank, and James Lea Cate, ed. The Army Air Forces in World War II. Vol. 5, The Pacific: Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June 1944 to August 1945. University of Chicago Press, 1953.

Defense 92 Almanac. American Forces Information Service, Department of Defense. September/October 1992.

Dupuy, R. Ernest. World War II: a Compact History. Hawthorn Books, 1969.

Goralski, Robert. World War II Almanac, 1931-1945. Putnam, 1981.

Gow, Ian. Okinawa 1945: Gateway to Japan. Doubleday, 1985.

Hershberg, James G. James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Hoyt, Edwin P. Closing the Circle: War in the Pacific, 1945. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982.
_______, Japan's War: the Great Pacific Conflict, 1853 to 1952. McGraw-Hill, 1986.

Kerr, E. Bartlett. Flames Over Tokyo: The U.S. Army Air Forces' Incendiary Campaign Against Japan, 1944-1945. Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1991.

McCullough, David. Truman. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Mee, Charles L., Jr. Meeting at Potsdam. Evans, 1975.

National Air and Space Museum, "The Crossroads: the End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War," draft exhibition script, January 12, 1994.

The Pacific War Research Society. Japan's Longest Day. Kodanasha International, Ltd., 1968. English-language edition of Nihon No Ichiban Nagai Hi, Bungei Shunju Ltd., 1965.

Simons, Gerald, ed. Japan at War. Time-Life Books, 1980.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan. The Free Press, 1985.

Tarnstrom, Ronald L. The Wars of Japan. Trogen Books, 1992.

Tibbets, Paul W., with Clair Stebbins and Harry Franken. The Tibbets Story. Stein and Day, 1978.
_______, "Training the 509th for Hiroshima," Air Force Magazine, August 1973.

Toland, John. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. Random House, 1970.

Truman, Harry S. Memoirs, Vol. 1, Year of Decisions. Doubleday, 1955.

Wheeler, Keith. Bombers Over Japan. Time-Life Books, 1982.
_______, The Fall of Japan. Time-Life Books, 1983.
_______, The Road to Tokyo. Time-Life Books, 1979.

Wolk, Herman S., "The B-29, the A-Bomb, and the Japanese Surrender," Air Force Magazine, February 1975.

Young, Peter, ed. The World Almanac of World War II. rev. ed. World Almanac, 1986.

Zich, Arthur. The Rising Sun. Time-Life Books, 1977.

Copyright 1994 Air Force Association

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