it would disclose that the weapon existed, Byrnes took a turn at teaching the physicist a lesson in domestic politics:
He said we had spent two billion dollars on developing the bomb, and Congress would want to know what we had got for the money spent. He said, “How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?”
But Byrnes' most dangerous misunderstanding from Szilard's point of view was his reading of the Soviet Union:
Byrnes thought that the war would be over in about six months… He was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia. I shared Byrnes' concern about Russia's throwing around her weight in the postwar period, but I was completely flabbergasted by the assumption that rattling the bomb might make Russia more manageable.
Shadowed by one of Groves' ubiquitous security agents, the three discouraged men caught the next train back to Washington.
There on the same day the Target Committee was meeting, this time with Paul Tibbets as well as Tolman and Parsons on hand. Much of the discussion concerned Tibbets' training program for the 509th Composite Group. He had sent his best crews to Cuba for six weeks to give them radar experience and flying time over water. “On load and distance tests,” the committee minutes report, “Col. Tibbets stated crews had taken off at 135,-000 lbs. gross load, flown 4300 miles with 10,000 lb. bomb load, bombed from 32,000 ft. and returned to base with 900 gallons of fuel. This is in excess of the expected target run and further tests will reduce the loading to reach the S.O.P. [standard operating procedure] of 500 gallons of fuel on return.” The 509th was in the process of staging out to Tinian. Pumpkin production was increasing; nineteen had been shipped to Wendover and some of them dropped.
LeMay was also keeping busy. “The 3 reserved targets for the first unit of this project were announced. With current and prospective rate of [Twentieth Air Force] H.E. bombing, it is expected to complete strategic bombing of Japan by 1 Jan 46 so availability of future targets will be a problem.” If the Manhattan Project did not hurry, that is, there would be no cities left in Japan to bomb.
Kyoto, Hiroshima and Niigata were the three targets reserved. The committee completed its review by abandoning any pretension that its objectives there were military:
The following conclusions were reached:
(1) not to specify aiming points, this is to be left to later determination at base when weather conditions are known.
(2) to neglect location of industrial areas as pin point target, since on these three targets such areas are small, spread on fringes of cities and quite dispersed.
(3) to endeavor to place first gadget in center of selected city; that is, not to allow for later 1 or 2 gadgets for complete destruction.
And that was that; the Target Committee would schedule no more meetings but would remain on call.
Stimson abhorred bombing cities. As he wrote in his third-person memoir after the war, “for thirty years Stimson had been a champion of international law and morality. As soldier and Cabinet officer he had repeatedly argued that war itself must be restrained within the bounds of humanity… Perhaps, as he later said, he was misled by the constant talk of ‘precision bombing,’ but he had believed that even air power could be limited in its use by the old concept of ‘legitimate military targets.’” Fire-bombing was “a kind of total war he had always hated.” He seems to have conceived the idea that even the atomic bomb could be somehow humanely applied, as he discussed with Truman on May 16:
I am anxious to hold our Air Force, so far as possible, to the “precision” bombing which it has done so well in Europe. I am told that it is possible and adequate. The reputation of the United States for fair play and humanitari-anism is the world's biggest asset for peace in the coming decades. I believe the same rule of sparing the civilian population should be applied, as far as possible, to the use of any new weapons.
But the Secretary of War had less control over the military forces he was delegated to administer than he would have liked, and nine days later, on May 25, 464 of LeMay's B-29's — nearly twice as many as flew the first low-level March 9 incendiary raid — once again successfully burned out nearly sixteen square miles of Tokyo, although the Strategic Bombing Survey asserts that only a few thousand Japanese were killed compared to the 86,000 it totals for the earlier conflagration. The newspapers made much of the late-May fire raid; Stimson was appalled.
On May 30 Groves crossed the river from his Virginia Avenue offices and hove into view. Stimson's frustration at the bombing of Japanese cities ignited a fateful exchange, as the general later told an interviewer:
I was over in Mr. Stimson's office talking to him about some matter in connection with the bomb when he asked me if I had selected the targets yet. I replied that I had that report all ready and I expected to take it over to General Marshall the following morning for his approval. Mr. Stimson then said: “Well, your report is all finished, isn't it?” I said: “I haven't gone over it yet, Mr. Stimson. I want to be sure that I've got it just right.” He said: “Well, I would like to see it” and I said: “Well, it's across the river and it would take a long time to get it.” He said: “I have all day and I know how fast your office operates. Here's a phone on this desk. You pick it up and you call your office and have them bring that report over.” Well, it took about fifteen or twenty minutes to get that report there and all the time I was stewing and fretting internally over the fact that I was shortcutting General Marshall… But there was nothing I could do and when I protested slightly that I thought it was something that General Marshall should pass on first, Mr. Stimson said: “This is one time I'm going to be the final deciding authority. Nobody's going to tell me what to do on this. On this matter I am the kingpin and you might just as well get that report over here.” Well in the meantime he asked me what cities I was planning to bomb, or what targets. I informed him and told him that Kyoto was the preferred target. It was the first one because it was of such size that we would have no question about the effects of the bomb… He immediately said: “I don't want Kyoto bombed.” And he went on to tell me about its long history as a cultural center of Japan, the former ancient capital, and a great many reasons why he did not want to see it bombed. When the report came over and I handed it to him, his mind was made up. There's no question about that. He read it over and he walked to the door separating his office from General Marshall's, opened it and said: “General Marshall, if you're not busy I wish you'd come in.” And then the Secretary really double- crossed me because without any explanation he said to General Marshall: “Marshall, Groves has just brought me his report on the proposed targets.” He said: “I don't like it. I don't like the use of Kyoto.”
So Kyoto at least, the Rome of Japan, founded in 793, famous for silk and cloisonne, a center of the Buddhist and Shinto religions with hundreds of historic temples and shrines, would be spared, though Groves would continue to test his superior's resolve in the weeks to come. The Imperial Palace in Tokyo had been similarly spared even as Tokyo was laid waste around it. There were still limits to the destructiveness of war: the weapons were still modest enough to allow such fine discriminations.
The Interim Committee was to meet in full dress with its Scientific Panel on Thursday, May 31, and on Friday, June 1, with its industrial advisers. The Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared the ground for those meetings on May 25 when they issued a formal directive to the Pacific commanders and to Hap Arnold defining U.S. military policy toward Japan in the months to come:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff direct the invasion of Kyushu (operation Olympic) target date 1 November 1945, in order to:
