75 years ago today the plutonium bomb nicknamed Fat Man detonated over the ancient castle town of Kokura, Japan. But really, it didn’t.
That is what was supposed to happen, but a series events converged leading to the destruction of Nagasaki a day earlier instead.
It seems fitting for the first issue of a publication about stories from the margins of history to start with a story about an actual note on the margins — technically an annotation I guess.
Target
The US military and scientists enlisted to build the atom bomb were locked in debate through the spring and summer of 1945 about where and how to use it. The first list of targets included 17 options listed in order of priority. Nagasaki was number 16.
The Target Committee made clear that protecting civilians was not a priority, stating the ideal target should be…
large urban areas of not less than 3 miles in diameter existing in the larger populated areas.
General Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, forcefully argued that Kyoto should be the top target. It had the requisite strategic value, large population and buildings, and was untouched by previous fire-bombing. In short, they wanted to demonstrate the weapon’s destructive capability on a large unvarnished canvas.
By May a new list with 5 cities had been developed. The cities on the final list would be spared conventional bombing only to make the contrast greater when ‘the gadget’ was dropped.
- Kyoto
- Hiroshima
- Yokohama
- Kokura
- Niigata
Kyoto fit the characteristics well and Hiroshima had surrounding hills that scientist expected to funnel the blast in a way to maximize destruction. Nagasaki was gone from the list.
But Groves’ boss, Secretary of War Stimson, had vacationed in Kyoto. He may even have honeymooned there. So he made it his personal mission to convince Truman to spare the city and succeeded by telling the president about the beauty and historic significance of Kyoto. Truman noted the result of the meeting in his diary:
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 (Kyoto) or the new (Tokyo). Stimson and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.
Planners decided they needed one extra target as a backup. So on the strike orders, clumsily added in by hand, is Nagasaki.
Racist
Truman was a white supremacist. A fact he stated plainly in a love letter to his future wife in 1911.
I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a n- - - - r or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n- - - - r from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. (Uncle Will) does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess.”
Yes it is, Harry.
First, this was a love letter! Way to woo. Second, Uncle Will sounds like a real asshole.
Civilians
Despite his racism, Truman worried about civilian casualties as was made clear in his diary entry stating they agreed the target would be “a purely military one.” A variation of that phrase appeared in the drafts (photo of third draft below) of the statement Truman would release to announce the bombing of Hiroshima, as historian Alex Wellerstein discovered. But it disappeared in the 48 hours after that bombing — perhaps the most consequential period of the war and certainly the most consequential for the people of Nagasaki.
Truman had always been in the dark about the Manhattan Project. He built his national profile as a senator on the Subcommittee on War Mobilization exposing war profiteers and waste. But whenever his investigations veered close to the Manhattan Project he was told not to look and dutifully obliged. It wasn’t until 12 days after FDR died that Truman first discovered the goal of the secret project.
The military and scientific leaders only shared with Truman what they wanted him to know, and he largely stayed out of their way. He thought Hiroshima was a military base, when in truth it was a bustling city with a military base.
And those lines blurred — young girls like 13-year-old Setsuko Thurlow were enlisted as code breakers to supplement the depleted military. In the end 90% of Hiroshima casualties were civilians, mostly women and children.
Soviets
Truman received photos and a briefing about the destruction of Hiroshima on August 8, and his tone changed. He realized the scale of the casualties and wanted to give Japan time to negotiate their surrender, which they were attempting through the unresponsive Soviets.
At that moment the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow was finally meeting with his counterpart, weeks after trying to get the meeting. He was being told the Soviets would break their neutrality pact and commence war with Japan the next day. They shut off telegram lines so the ambassador couldn’t alert the Japanese War Council who was also at that moment debating the terms of their surrender.
The knowledge may have hastened their deliberations, but it was all for naught because Stalin did not want a surrender yet. He was promised territories as a sweetener for entering the war with the other Allies. Weeks earlier he had told Truman they would join the war on August 15, but Stalin rushed the date forward after Hiroshima — worried he’d miss out on the spoils.
Truman knew this was coming and also knew the Soviet entry would be the fatal blow to Japan’s war effort. He wrote after meeting Stalin:
He’ll be in the Jap War August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.
The Soviets took a liberal interpretation of when August 9 began and opened a new front in the war against Japan only an hour into the ambassador’s meeting (Late in the day on August 8 in Moscow). It was past midnight at the site of the military operation.
Fat Man
The US military brass overseeing the bombing raids also took a liberal interpretation of their strike orders believing they had leeway to use all the atomic weapons they had on hand against any authorized targets. They settled on August 10 for a second atomic bomb attack, but the weather forecast looked bad from August 10-15. So they hastily moved the time table up by a day and assembled the untested a-bomb they had: Fat Man. The process was so haphazard that the firing unit cable was installed backwards, which would have kept the bomb from imploding. Unluckily, the error was corrected at the very last minute.
Truman had been told that only one “Tested” bomb was in play. There was enough fuel to develop three bombs:
- Gadget — the uranium bomb tested on July 17 in New Mexico;
- Little Boy–the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima
- Fat Man — a plutonium implosion bomb that was completely untested.
Truman never let on that he was left out of such a monumental decision but nobody in D.C., including the secretary of war, was aware. So it’s clear these decisions in the Pacific had no immediate oversight from the government. In darkness at 03:47 local on August 9, as the Soviets were invading Manchuria, the B-29 Bockscar rumbled down the runway at Tinian Island headed for it’s target — Kokura, Japan.
Nagasaki
There were six planes total on the mission and the photography plane was scheduled to rendezvous en route at 09:15. Bockscar circled for 30 minutes, using precious fuel, but never found that B-29 so carried on. The Enola Gay, the same B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, radioed with a positive weather report from Kokura.
The atomic bombs needed to be visually sighted by the bombardier, which proved impossible, despite earlier reports, as they arrived at Kokura. Clouds or smoke obscured the target and after 45 minutes the flight crew called it and headed to their secondary target…Nagasaki.
But they found the same problem there. Only one pass of the city was possible due to the delays and a faulty reserve fuel pump . They would either need to succeed on the first pass, abort and head back to refuel, delaying the bombing by several days, or try again but ditch their plane in the sea and risk capture. According to logs, a small opening appeared in the clouds just above the target at the last moment of the run. The bomb was released.
Military historians now believe the clouds never cleared. The crew either decided to use radar, which wasn’t that reliable and prohibited, or take their best shot. Fat Man missed its target by 1-2 miles and detonated over 8 schools and one hospital at 11:02 in the morning on August 9.
When Truman learned this he canceled any future bombings and changed directives so that he alone could order an atomic bombing. In a cabinet meeting announcing this, the secretary of commerce noted Truman’s feelings:
He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, “all those kids.”
It was too late. 74,000 died in Nagasaki.
The next bomb would not have been ready for several weeks. One clever captured American pilot saved himself from beheading by convincing his Japanese interrogators that the US had 100 a-bombs and he knew all about the secret plans. He did not and the US did not.
Some historians still try to argue the military value of bombing Hiroshima and believe the faulty post-war propaganda that it saved a million lives. But no serious scholar sees any value in the war crime that was the bombing of Nagasaki. The only question left before the Japanese War Council was the exact terms of surrender, not whether they would. Emperor Hirohito would announce Japan’s unconditional surrender on August 15.
At best it was an accident, miscommunication — more likely an afterthought . A city and people that in the minds of the US war planners existed in the margins.
Beyond the Margins
Twist of Fate Made Nagasaki Target 75 Years Ago | National Geographic
Did the U.S. Plan to Drop More than Two Atomic Bombs on Japan | National Geographic
Daughters of the Bomb: A Story of Hiroshima, Racism and Human Rights | Narratively
Nagasaki: The Last Bomb | The New Yorker
Posted on August 10, 2020 #Margins