Did Truman know Hiroshima was a city?

[Razgovory]

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.

You have proof of this?

[PDH]

I do have a hard time believing that Truman didn't look at maps and saw that for some reason the "military base" of Hiroshima was marked exactly like cities filled with civilians on the maps.

Maybe he thought the bomb was less destructive and somehow more accurate and would only take out a military base.

[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.

You have proof of this?

I don't have reading links to hand, though a lot of it is there in primary sources.
Nobody would claim the live-fire exercise reason was the main one of course, far more important was maneuvering for position in the post-war world, but it was there.

This is a pretty good, albeit hefty, listen on the topic that does a decent job of looking beyond the all too pervasive even in the 21st century, cold war propaganda "the bomb won the war! no debate allowed!" view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go&t=3840s

[Sheilbh]

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.

For sure they didn't realise the full horrors but the headline points came out quickly.

From that piece on 8 August the New York Herald Tribune reported "Atom Bomb Destroyed 60% of Hiroshima; Pictures Show 4 Square Miles of City Gone" and this was in the Boston Globe on 9 August 1945 (the day after Truman was briefed on the impact of the bomb in Hiroshima and the day of the Nagasaki bombing which he didn't get prior warning of):

It may not be the full details of the horrors - but it actually overstates the number of casualties by estimating that 60% of the city were killed. Which opens another possible explanation, that Truman wanted to emphasise the military nature of the target in communicating to the public and the world.

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.

There is no so what - it's just a possibility based on the information we have. One of several, like most of history, which we then have to interpret. And I don't think there's any suggestion he was deliberately misinformed. And it is a way of reconciling very disparate written records by Truman (there are other possibilities). If Truman's diary a "purely military" target reflects what he genuinely thought at the time, he had misunderstood. And in this guy's argument it provides a different explanation for the emphasis by Truman in the rest of his presidency of putting nukes under civilian control and establishing a "taboo" against using them again.

It's one I think is quite interesting and is a sort of horrifying possibility because I think we like to imagine that such decisions are made on full information and people being briefed (despite our own experience of daily life) and cognisant of what they're doing.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I go back to it seems like we're putting a lot of stock in phrasing in a diary and other transcripts and for some reason assuming it gives us anything like a complete picture. I find it unlikely that Truman was unaware the atomic bombings were going to kill lots of civilian Japanese. There's some small chance maybe he had a different understanding of what "Hiroshima" was versus what it actually was, but I don't think he imagined it was a fort in the middle of a grassy field.

[Razgovory]

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we 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."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

[Josquius]

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we 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."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

OK Grumbler.

[Sheilbh]

I do have a hard time believing that Truman didn't look at maps and saw that for some reason the "military base" of Hiroshima was marked exactly like cities filled with civilians on the maps.

Maybe he thought the bomb was less destructive and somehow more accurate and would only take out a military base.

Yeah - I think that's a possibility.

The other interesting I didn't realise - but makes sense now I've read it - is that Truman wasn't involved in picking targets. The "target committee" was run out of the Pentagon and included Groves and his deputy Farrell, Brig. General Lauris Norstad of the US Army Air Forces plus some of the scientists. They were aware Hiroshima wasa "typical Jap city" - i.e. lots of wooden buildinngs. They definitely got a detailed target map made of Kyoto but I'm not sure if they did anywhere else. Their list of targets then went up to Stimson - Stimson told them not to bomb Kyoto at all without his permission and the rest of the targets were put on a "reserve list" not to be firebombed.

But the final decision on the target list was made at the end of July when they were in Potsdam. That's when Stimson makes his case that Kyoto is primarily civilian and cultural so shouldn't be a target, while Hiroshima is more military - and Truman writes in his diary.

I think given the general context of everything going on at that point - it could be possible that there wasn't the sort of maps and presentations we probably imagine. I think if Truman made the decision in DC and we were aware that he was in the White House or visited the Pentagon would be very unlikely, but the fact the decision on the final list was made in Europe makes it feel quite possible he was just getting a list and a briefing.

[The Brain]

The US bombing major cities to kill civilians was already established practice, witness Tokyo or Dresden. Of course Truman knew Hiroshima was a city, any atlas would have told him that if he was unsure. As POTUS he was C-in-C and responsible for all US operations, something he also knew. Hiroshima wasn't the deadliest single bombing of a Japanese city. Truman knew what nuking Hiroshima meant, and if he didn't that's even worse since it was his job to know. FDR was OK with burning the civilians of major Japanese cities including Tokyo to ashes, why wouldn't Truman be?

[Sheilbh]

I go back to it seems like we're putting a lot of stock in phrasing in a diary and other transcripts and for some reason assuming it gives us anything like a complete picture. I find it unlikely that Truman was unaware the atomic bombings were going to kill lots of civilian Japanese. There's some small chance maybe he had a different understanding of what "Hiroshima" was versus what it actually was, but I don't think he imagined it was a fort in the middle of a grassy field.

Yeah I agree - and I think it is a possibility. But it is an interesting one that explains the change in tone from both Truman's diary and drafts of his statement on Hiroshima and his responses from "this is the greatest thing in history" and we're only targeting the military, to we've tried "insofar as possible" to limit civilian casualties and there are justifications for why Hiroshima was bombed. I think the possibility that his briefing on the scale of the damage, change Truman's attitudes and rhetoric isalso very plausible.

I get that it's just phrasing in his diary and drafts he was writing with his team for a statement - and there is no way to have a complete picture, this is just an interpretation and a possibility among others. But it seems weird to discount contemporaneous written records by Truman based on common sense that he must have known.

Edit: I think it's the most - I don't know - destabilising, or scary, or unsettling possibility because we know what nukes are now and we know how seriously a leader would take the decisions of targets and ordering their use (in part because of Truman in the rest of his presidency). So it seems odd that he might not have had that knowledge and asked all those questions, but they didn't have knowledge then so it seems possible to me. And a reminder that then and now leaders don't just have imperfect information but may understand it imperfectly even when making the most consequential decisions.

[grumbler]

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we 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."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

OK Grumbler.

  This whole thing is such a complete Tyr that it is hilarious.  You may be the most gullible person on this board, and you can't resist ad hom arguments even when the hom isn't the person you are responding to.

So the answer is, no, you don't have any evidence for the absurd claims you made, but will go total belligerence instead of just admitting that.

[grumbler]

People are making a mountain out of a molehill.  Truman stated that the target was a purely military one, and it was:  the Tenth Army headquarters, in command of the defenses assembled on Kyushu to defend against an American invasion.  Damage to the rest of the city was collateral damage, as far as Truman's briefings were concerned.

There is little doubt that the reasons this HQ was selected as the first target included the fact that it would disrupt Japanese defenses, but also that the city would be devastated by targeting that HQ (not on the fringes of the city like most military installations).  The Targeting Committee wanted to ensure maximum psychological damage on the Japanese military and naval leadership by showing that the bomb could, indeed, destroy cities and make all the Yamato Spirit in Japan moot.

So the "target" wasn't the city, it was the HQ, a purely military installation.  The objective, though, was to devastate the city.  Truman may not have fully appreciated the latter fact.

[Razgovory]

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we 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."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

OK Grumbler.

Oh, I spoke too soon.  You do have evidence to back up your claim.   I thought you were making claims based on dodgy innuendo.  I eagerly await your new information.

[jimmy olsen]

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.

Agreed

[Josquius]

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we 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."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

OK Grumbler.

Oh, I spoke too soon.  You do have evidence to back up your claim.   I thought you were making claims based on dodgy innuendo.  I eagerly await your new information.

I know you're not actually interested in discussion and are merely trying to debate in bad faith about semantics. Doubtless this won't be enough as you will demand a literal quote using the exact words I used despite my making zero claim to be quoting someone. But...