A-Bombing Japan: Army Wanted to Use Batches of Nukes on Military Targets

Forty-four years ago this past week, American warplanes dropped single atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 110,000 Japanese, injuring as many and hastening the end of the brutal war in the Pacific.

Concentration on those bombings has led analysts to neglect other matters involving the use of nuclear weapons in 1945:

-- Serious Army thinking about dropping a batch of A-bombs to assist the planned Nov. 1 invasion at Kyushu.

-- Plans to send American GIs onto the Kyushu beaches shortly after the nuclear bombings.

-- President Harry S. Truman’s own post-Nagasaki reluctance to use a third A-bomb on Japan.

-- Truman’s fear on Aug. 14, shortly before Japan’s surrender, that he might have to drop an A-bomb on Tokyo to speed capitulation.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, Gen. George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, was considering employing as many as nine atomic bombs in connection with the scheduled Nov. 1 invasion. His loose plan, as he later explained, involved dropping three atomic bombs to assist each of the three Army corps scheduled to land on Kyushu, at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago. “One or two (bombs), but probably one,” he recalled, would have been used to kill many of the Japanese troops before each landing, “then another (A-bomb) further inland against the immediate supports, and then the third against any troops that might try to come through the mountains from the inland sea. That was the rough idea in our minds”--the A-bomb as a tactical weapon.

Such strategy contrasted sharply with the recommendation by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to drop the A-bomb on Japanese cities, partly to kill large numbers of noncombatants. That was not the way Marshall wanted to fight the war, and he had been the only presidential adviser to raise, well before Hiroshima, moral objections to the intentional A-bombing of civilians. As an elderly career officer who wished to abide by the older “rules” of war, he preferred exempting civilians when possible.

On July 30, 1945, two weeks after the successful test of a plutonium weapon at Alamogordo, N.M., Gen. Leslie Groves, commanding general of the top-secret Manhattan Project, outlined for Marshall the power of the weapon and the prospects for its tactical use against Japan.

The plan for using the bomb against Japan called for detonation at about 1,800 feet.

Groves was unworried about radiation lingering near the ground even shortly after the blast, and thus never mentioned the issue to Marshall. Even in the New Mexico test, where the explosion occurred near the ground, Groves assured Marshall that “tanks could have gone through the immediate explosion area at normal speeds within 30 minutes.” Thus, Groves stated, “with the explosion at the expected 1,800 feet, we think we could move troops through the area immediately, preferably by motor but on foot if desired.”

Groves, writing the week before the Hiroshima attack, also informed Marshall that more bombs would be ready--one more in August (after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks), three or four in September, three or four in October, at least five in November, seven in December and a higher monthly rate in 1946.

Marshall, Groves and others did not foresee that Japan would soon offer a surrender after the dropping of only two A-bombs. When Japan’s conditional offer--insisting on retention of the imperial system--arrived in Washington on Aug. 10, advisers put together an intentionally ambiguous reply; some were unwilling to retreat openly from the “unconditional surrender” formula devised by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and passed on to Truman. All hoped that Japan, already pummeled by two A-bombs and by Soviet entry into the Pacific War two days earlier, would speedily accept America’s response.

Filled with optimism that Friday, Truman revised the orders to the Army Air Forces on the use of A-bombs. His original order had empowered the military to drop these weapons on specified cities “as made ready.” Hence the second A-bomb had not required a new order. But now, on the 10th, he decided that he did not want to use any more nuclear weapons. Having received reports of the bloody devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he ordered that bombs could be used only by his explicit order. For Truman, in the words of one Cabinet member, “the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing . . . ‘all those kids.’ ”

On Aug. 11, as a result, Marshall and Groves decided not to ship the third A-bomb to Tinian, the Pacific outpost. The war seemed near the end, and there was no reason to risk such valuable cargo.

But by Aug. 13, doubts were growing about whether Japan would speedily accept U.S. terms. Aides to Marshall and Groves spoke about the possible use of more A-bombs on Japan. Marshall had concluded that a third A-bomb, if used against another Japanese city, would not propel a surrender. Instead, he was thinking about using a batch of A-bombs during the planned Nov. 1 invasion.

There is no evidence that Marshall discussed with Truman his loose plans for tactical use of the A-bombs. The President was apparently still thinking about cities, with thousands of noncombatants, as the likely targets if another bomb had to be used. Some generals were suggesting Tokyo.

Truman continued to wait impatiently for Japan’s reply, hoping the island nation would accept the surrender offer and end the war. At noon on Aug. 14, Truman talked about his concerns with the Duke of Windsor, then visiting Washington. The President complained that Japan had not surrendered, and, according to a British aide at that private meeting, Truman “remarked sadly that he now had no alternative but to order an atomic bomb to be dropped on Tokyo.”

But Japan’s surrender later on the 14th made that unnecessary. Not until many years later, with declassification of official papers, did we learn how much worse the nuclear war in the Pacific might have been if Japan had not surrendered in mid-August, 1945. Tokyo, and possibly Kyushu too, would today be remembered along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.