Did Truman know Hiroshima was a city?

[Sheilbh]

Fascinating blog:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/

The author is Alex Wellerstein Professor of History of Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the USA. He's expanded on this theory (as mentioned in the blog) in an article which has now been published in the Age of Hiroshima:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193458/the-age-of-hiroshima

As he says - an interpretation and nothing definite but on this and his thread on this (https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1424387390391652358), it does seem like a plausible and horrifying possibility/interpretation.

[Maladict]

Fascinating blog:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2018/01/19/purely-military-target/

The author is Alex Wellerstein Professor of History of Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the USA. He's expanded on this theory (as mentioned in the blog) in an article which has now been published in the Age of Hiroshima:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691193458/the-age-of-hiroshima

As he says - an interpretation and nothing definite but on this and his thread on this (https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1424387390391652358), it does seem like a plausible and horrifying possibility/interpretation.

I'm not sold on this at all. Truman was perfectly okay with firebombing Japanese cities into oblivion, including Tokyo.
Only Kyoto was spared, allegedly because of Stimson's personal attachment to the city.

[Sheilbh]

He's actually written about the Kyoto target as well - again, quite interestingly:
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/

[Neil]

It feels like this is modern argumentation to try and clear Truman of an imagined crime.  It's impossible to say whether Truman knew that Hiroshima was a city or not, but it's not really an important distinction.  Cities were acceptable targets during the war.  It's only decades later that we're trying to condemn or acquit him. 

Honestly, I don't see the point.  If you're looking to condemn Truman for dropping the bomb on a city, then 'he didn't know' isn't a good enough argument, as he should have known, and very easily could have known by paying attention to his briefings.  Hiroshima was an industrial center, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to deduce that where the are factories, there must also be workers. 

[Sheilbh]

It feels like this is modern argumentation to try and clear Truman of an imagined crime.  It's impossible to say whether Truman knew that Hiroshima was a city or not, but it's not really an important distinction.  Cities were acceptable targets during the war.  It's only decades later that we're trying to condemn or acquit him. 

Honestly, I don't see the point.  If you're looking to condemn Truman for dropping the bomb on a city, then 'he didn't know' isn't a good enough argument, as he should have known, and very easily could have known by paying attention to his briefings.  Hiroshima was an industrial center, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to deduce that where the are factories, there must also be workers.

Of course it's impossible - but that's why the interpretation is interesting. It isn't obvious or clear whether he knew or not. And it is an answer - as is guilt at realising/being confronted by the power of the bomb - in Truman's change of attitude towards it from a great weapon to something too awful and destructive to use.

Although I don't think his suggestion is too much of an acquittal: Truman was too incurious (unlike Ike or FDR) and didn't really grill his advisors or understand the power he was unleashing.

Totally separate - but the most interesting Truman revisionism I've seen recently is that, despite what he said and popular memory, he was loaded when he left the White House.

[Valmy]

The Allies were regularly burning German and Japanese cities by this point. I have a hard time thinking Truman, or Churchill or Roosevelt, would have had issues with bombing these kinds of targets at least by 1945.

It was World War II, insanity was the normal. Early on the British were dropping leaflets and that was after years of the Germans, Japanese, and Italians committing horrible crimes against neutral countries throughout the world. It took awhile for the Allies to get to a place where burning Hamburg and Kyoto to the ground was considered a reasonable thing to do. We have to consider the context.

[Neil]

It's interesting in the way that many college papers are interesting, because they take a counterfactual statement and then try and build an argument for it. 

[Tamas]

Yeah Japanese and German cities were literally destroyed as a matter of routine by that time.

[The Larch]

If Truman thought that Hiroshima was not a city, what did he think it was?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah Japanese and German cities were literally destroyed as a matter of routine by that time.

I don't think anyone's disputing that - it's a question of why the language in August 1945 changed around the bomb. And whether the reason was actually that Truman didn't really understand that Hiroshima was a city not a military target (possibly because of a misapprehension of Stimson emphasising Kyoto's importance as a city and a cultural centre v Hiroshima's military facilities and industry). From the quotes he draws out - I think it is a plausible interpretation.

As it notes - Truman's diary in Potsdam after making the final decision not to go for Kyoto says (he didn't normally write a diary so this may have been him trying out early drafts):

I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.

Then in Truman's second draft (which he apparently wrote himself of his speech on this) - before he'd seen images of the damage read:

The world will note that the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima which is purely a military base. This was because we did not want to destroy the lives of women and children and innocent civilians in this first attack. But it is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on war industries and thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge the Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities and save themselves from destruction.

They only add a justification in the 5th draft when there were initial casualty estimates and images of the scale of the damage. And you're right about firebombing - that's why the Japanese sent scientists to ascertain if Hiroshima had actually been hit by an atomic bomb or if it had just been firebombed, because they didn't know at the time.

The version of Truman's statement that he actually read (on 9 August - so the day of the Nagasaki bomb) was:

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction. [...]

    Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it 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.

When Truman was informed that the Hiroshima bombing had been successful he wrote "this is the greatest thing in history!" The day after he makes that speech on the atomic bomb he gave an order to stop atomic bombing and started taking steps to really formalise civilian not military control of the weapons (there is a dispute over whether he really knew about Nagasaki ahead of schedule - not least because all of these decisions were happening on the sides of the Potsdam Conference and he didn't separately authorise that bombing).

So I think the question is what causes Truman to change - and I think the traditional argument is, arguably, more kind to Truman. That, confronted with the scale of destruction, he became aware and perhaps felt some sort of horror over the bomb. This piece is wondering if perhaps he was under a genuine misapprehension from the briefing with Stimson and actually thought Hiroshima was a "purely military" site and was too incurious or indifferent to ask questions that would disabuse him of that notion (like how many casualties will there be). Did he actually not know until he saw the images and the first reports of casualties - which is why he starts justifying (and self-justifying) it by reference to Pearl Harbor, Japanese war crimes and ending the war quickly? Which is a slightly different type of responsibility.

And personally I find that almost more scary that it was perhaps used without the person ordering it really understanding what he'd ordered.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean the problem I have is this is the sort of counterfactual that's easy to build out but hard to debunk, so I don't have a ton of use for it. About the only thing that would debunk would be some awkward recorded conversation where someone tells Truman point blank "by the way, Hiroshima is a city." The reality is Truman almost certainly would have known it was an urban, built up area based on briefings he received and what would have probably have been generalized knowledge of Japan he would have attained from being briefed on military matters on a daily basis. He certainly understood that "industrial area" is all but synonymous with "urban area" in Japan, and honestly in most countries, and he would be aware that in all the Axis countries, the idea of a "purely military" target is fanciful. I think it has to be remembered that in the 1940s the government was far more comfortable with being openly deceitful to the public, due to massive informational asymmetry.

In that era you could plausibly say a city of over 100,000 is a "military" or "industrial" target, and assume that 99% of Americans aren't going to go digging into the specifics on what Hiroshima's nature really is. But I think it was realized after the scale of reporting on the bombings started to come out that wouldn't work. So Truman's broadcast initial statement calls Hiroshima a "Military target" he doesn't call it a purely military target, nor does he elaborate. Which seems typical of someone not looking to bloody the details for the public.

Keep in mind, while the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are old hat today, for many Americans the full details didn't come out for a couple of years. Certainly, the kind of people who made sure to know such things knew it early on, but we didn't live in an information age back then like we do now. John Hersey's long form reporting (published as a book) on the Hiroshima bombing in 1946 was the first heavy exposure for many people of just the scale of what happened. He wrote about people having their eyes melted out of their skulls, their skin blistered beyond recognition by massive doses of radiation, the pure nightmare that was the days and weeks of dying left to those who had received a lethal, but not instantly-lethal, dose of radiation. The vaporization of downtown etc. I can promise you Truman had no desire to get too speechy about that shit on the radio.

FWIW I don't think Truman ever struggled that much with the after effects. There's a story from Oppenheimer who was in Truman's office years later, and started to kinda wax philosophic about the terrible thing they had done. Truman basically called him a bitch, said Oppenheimer didn't do anything, the decision was Truman's and Truman's alone, and that he didn't have time to cry over spilt milk.

[Valmy]

I mean Truman came into the Presidency knowing very little and had to learn on the job. It is possible he was misinformed intentionally, but so what? Somebody who made the decision in authority did know and either convinced him it was a military target or was fine with him thinking that. Politicians are susceptible to that kind of thing from their staff all the time.

But again in the context of World War 2 everybody was bombing cities all the time. It is not like if Truman wasn't the President but somebody else, would it have been different? It seems weird to me that after more than a decade of systematic targetting of civilians by all the world powers to make a big deal about this one dude as if it was a personal failing of Truman and Hiroshima would not have been targeted but for his own personal failings.

[Sheilbh]

If Truman thought that Hiroshima was not a city, what did he think it was?

Basically Stimson and Truman agreed the target list. Stimson - for whatever reason - strongly argued against bombing Kyoto. But in making that argument he emphasised Kyoto's civilian characteristics v Hiroshima's military ones (and there was a military base in Hiroshima).

So Stimson's diary on 24 July notes:

We had a few words more about the S-1 program, and I again gave him my reasons for eliminating one of the proposed targets [Kyoto]. He again reiterated with the utmost emphasis his own concurring belief on that subject, and he was particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that if elimination was not done, the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians. It might thus, I pointed out, be the means of preventing what our policy demanded, namely a sympathetic Japan to the United States in case there should be any aggression by Russia in Manchuria.

Truman's diary on the 25th is a little different (as above):

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

    He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.

So the point in his Kyoto post is whether Truman took more away from that meeting - inaccurately - than Stimson had actually been saying and perhaps not questioned enough to actually clarify the misunderstanding (reminder of Reagan and W Bush in not getting into the weeds?), to disabuse him of that misunderstanding. Or he may have known but just didn't realise how much damage it would do to the wider city, not just the base and industrial sector but then later changed his tone once he realised the scale of the violence from the bomb?

[Josquius]

There's some evidence to suggest not only did they know there were a lot of civilians there but that this was entirely part of what they were aiming for.
They WANTED a live test of the bomb on a civilian population. The war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon.

As for avoiding bombing the capital and Hiroshima being purely military- thats just reference to the cultural value of the cities. Hiroshima did have a major military base but not much in the way of special cultural value. Unlike Tokyo and especially Kyoto.
On that same note its such a shame Kokura had fog. Its so much more of a concrete nothing than Nagasaki.

Even if you don't like the human experimentation angle on the bomb its certain that at the time there was a huge amount of acceptance of collateral damage and levelling half a city just so long as you were knocking out a military target with it.
Terror bombing a purely civilian target on the other hand was quite different.

[Razgovory]

This sounds like the sort of elitism that all Missourians must deal with.  Everyone one assumes that if you are Missouri you are illiterate.