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From: *Hiroshima Facts
Newsgroups: sci.space.history,sci.space.policy,rec.aviation.mi litary
Subject: FWD: Paul Tibbits, pilot of "Enola Gay", dead at 92
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:42:13 -0800
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On Nov 7, 12:51 pm, Stuf4 wrote:
From Hiroshima Facts:
On Nov 4, 5:44 am, Stuf4 wrote:
Here are quotes from the Top Secret minutes from the Manhattan Project
Targeting Committee [declassified6-4-74]:

- "targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter"

- "Hiroshima ...is such a size that a large part of the city could be
extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to
produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast
damage"

- "Yokohama ...has the disadvantage of the most important target areas
being separated by a large body of water..."

- "Use Against "Military" Objectives - It was agreed that for the
initial use of the weapon any small and strictly military objective
should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in
order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing
of the bomb."

Commentary:
These statements make it clear that reaping destruction to civilians
in the city was a major consideration in targeting these first nukes.

There was nothing in the quotes about killing civilians.

The target criteria clearly states: "large urban area of more than
three miles in diameter".

Large urban area does not mean large military target. *It means lots
of civilian bodies.

"Large urban area" doesn't have to mean "large military target", but
if they choose large urban areas that are full of military, then it
ends up being a large military target.



On top of that, here is an exact quote from the bombing order itself
(fromhttp://www.dannen.com/decision/handy.html) issued to Tooey
Spaatz:

==========
1. The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will
deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will
permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the
targets: *Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki.
==========

The target is NOT specified as some militarily significant site within
the city. *The target stated is the city itself.

Yes. *And by destroying the city, they destroy militarily-significant
sites within the city.



The section on Hiroshima starts with: "This is an important army depot
and port of embarkation"

That indicates that they were considering the fact that Hiroshima was
Japan's largest military port and held tens of thousands of soldiers.

Tens of thousands of soldiers? *I have seen that stated here
repeatedly, but I have yet to see any reference to support that as
fact.

"but wartime evacuations had reduced that number this summer morning
to about 280,000 civilians, 43,000 military personnel and 20,000
Korean forced laborers and volunteer workers. Hiroshima housed the
headquarters of the Japanese army's Second General Headquarters."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...3264-3,00.html

"Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It
contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of
all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage
point, and an assembly area for troops."
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp06.htm

"Out of 140,000 deaths, about 20,000 were considered to be those of
the military service men."
http://web.archive.org/web/200505250...CARE/ab2e.html

"Hiroshima had a civilian population of almost 300,000 and was an
important military center, containing about 43,000 soldiers."
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/hiroshima.htm

"As the headquarters of the Second Army and of the Chugoku Regional
Army, it was one of the most important military command stations in
Japan,"
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistle...?fulltextid=31

"There were 43,000 soldiers based in Hiroshima, and Nagasaki was an
industrial city that had turned out the torpedoes used at Pearl
Harbor. Its shipyards had built some of Japan's biggest warships."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/spe...s/closer1.html



The target that ended up in second place on the final list starts off
with: "This is one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded
by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light
ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defense materials. The
dimensions of the arsenal are 4100' x 2000'."

That rebuttal takes us back to the point previously made in this
thread, that if the targets were so militarily significant, it is
curious that the Air Force waited until August '45 to strike them.

Kokura Arsenal would have been struck much earlier had it not been
reserved as an A-bomb target.



Yokohama was seen as less than
desirable because plenty of water would be vaporized instead of people
(unless there were people out on the water).

No, it was seen as less desirable because the water would inhibit
incendiary effects and we wanted the bombs to appear as powerful as we
could.

I fail to see how maximizing incendiary effects does not translate
into "killing as many civilians as we could".

It certainly causes civilian deaths. *But the reason they wanted the
incendiary effects maximized was not because of the dead civilians,
but because they wanted to destroy a large area, so the government of
Japan would realize the power of the bombs.



I am clear that
incendiary effects are desirable to take out a military target if
you're concerned that you might drop off target, but the targeting
committee was expressing reservations about hitting the target dead
on.

I think they wanted the bombs dropped near the center of the cities.
That isn't dead on?



And it was decided not
to use the bomb against a military only target that wasn't surrounded
by a bunch of civilians, because if the bomb was dropped off target
then a bunch of trees would get blasted instead of a bunch of people.

They needed to destroy a target large enough to convey the full force
of the bombs' power.

This made a small military target unsuitable. *A large military target
like Hiroshima, however, was perfect.

I have never before heard Hiroshima refered to as a large military
target.

It was a large city with a militarily significant target in it. *Here
is a map that shows some significant areas within the city:

http://www.hiroshima-remembered.com/...oshimaMap.html

Notice how the target center was not at the area marked as the
military shipping dock. *The bomb was aimed to land at that bridge in
the center of town. *The hills around the town would reflect the blast
effects.

The bomb was too far north to destroy the docks, and too far south to
destroy the military supply warehouses, but it was placed just about
right to kill 20,000 soldiers and level the most important military
headquarters in Japan.



Overwhelming evidence has been presented to show that the
whole event was purposely intended to kill the people in the town
along with taking out the militarily significant buildings.

I've seen no evidence that the intent was to kill the town's
civilians. *They knew civilians would be killed, but that wasn't the
point. *Making Japan realize the power of the bombs was the point.



Requoting from that League of Nations resolution:
"Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in
such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not
bombed through negligence".

It does not say "minimize collateral damage". *It says "not bombed
through negligence".

Is there a difference? *If they are minimizing collateral damage, they
are not bombing civilians through negligence.

You can attempt to minimize collateral damage in an attack yet still
kill civilians negligently. *(Libya Apr86 is one such example.)

I'm not aware of any negligence in that case.



And I see this issue to be beside the main point being discussed
here. *At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the "collateral damage" was all the
trees that were leveled, because killing non-combatant civilians WAS
included in the primary objective.

There was nothing in the targeting directive about killing civilians.



It has been established from Top Secret documents from the Manhattan
Project Targetting Committee that their goal was to vaporize
civilians.

There is nothing in those documents that establish any such thing.

That document does not mince words. *Other people in this thread have
suggested that the text has been doctored. *You have chosen to reject
outright the highlights I have presented.

It is more that I am rejecting your claim that those highlights amount
to the targeting of civilians.



I totally understand that there are many Americans who have a problem
accepting the notion that the USAAF deliberately targeted non-
combatant civilians during WWII. *We're the "good guys", after all.

The main reason that I have a problem with it is because I dislike
seeing my country accused of something we are innocent of.



Well you might be shocked to learn that there is an entrenched history
of US military attacks on non-combatants. *Back to that El Dorado
Canyon example, one of the primary targets was Muammar Qaddafi's
house. *One of the dead bodies found in the rubble was his 1-year old
daughter, Hanna. *"Collateral", right? *You bomb someone's house, and
the kids are all fair game.

Qaddafi wasn't a non-combatant.



Then there is the fact that during that same raid, the French Embassy
in Tripoli was bombed by a US F-111. *The official word was that this
was "an accident", but the unofficial word was that this was
deliberately done in retribution to the French for their refusal to
permit overflight of their country (the Lakenheath bombers
subsequently flew the long way around through the Strait of
Gibraltar).

Any evidence to back up this unofficial word?



American's readily buy the story that it was a mistake. *Then in May
99, the US sent bombers that hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. *The
official word here too was that it was another "mistake".

When it is US Embassies getting bombed, there is a huge public
outcry. *But when it is US bombers deliberately targeting embassies of
other countries, that is presented as perfectly excusable.

Any evidence that the embassies were deliberately targeted?

I've heard that in the case of China's embassy, we were targeting a
transponder on our crashed stealth fighter to blow it up, and had no
idea that the bombs would find their way into a room within someone's
embassy. *But who knows if what I heard was accurate.



No excuse at all was made for Hiroshima & Nagasaki. *It is
rationalized even today as perfectly legitimate to have killed tens of
thousands non-combatant civilians.

Even you have rationalized it to yourself. *If it had been your
children that got vaporized, perhaps you would feel differently.

I'm not really rationalizing it. *I'm just pointing out the fact that
we weren't targeting civilians.



Also, if it was so important for this military headquarters to have
been taken out, then it would support your point to explain why the
USAAF waited until August '45 to bomb it.

They waited because they were saving the city for the A-bomb.

The first meeting of the targeting committee was not until the end of
Apr45. *Japan was getting pummeled by the AAF for months prior to
that first meeting. *And even after cities were selected, several of
these potential nuke targets were taken off the list because they were
subsequently struck by B-29s conventionally. *Here's one reference:

The first meeting didn't select cities. *That came at a later
meeting. *They were just listing choices.

A lot of the earlier AAF bombing didn't cause massive destruction in
the cities being bombed. *Widespread destruction only came with
LeMay's napalm raids.

At the time Hiroshima was finally selected as a target, only six
Japanese had been burned out by LeMay.



April 27 - The first meeting of the Target Committee was held to
select targets for atomic bombing. Seventeen targets are selected for
study: Tokyo Bay (for a non-lethal demonstration), Yokohama, Nagoya,
Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Kokura, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Sasebo (some of
these were soon dropped because they had already been burned down).
========
(http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Med/Med.html)

It is clear to me that if the militarily significant sites within
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been viewed as important enough, they would
have been attacked conventionally like the dozens upon dozens of other
Japanese cities that were.

LeMay's napalm raids were targeting Japan's war industry. *Hiroshima
did not factor high on his list because it was more a "city full of
soldiers" than a "city full of industry".

The reason Nagasaki was avoided had nothing to do with its
importance. *The Nagasaki area was hard to find using radar guidance,
and that was the way LeMay's napalm raids were finding their way to
their target cities in the middle of the night.



Why was it seen as necessary to invade Japan?

Because it was feared that they might not surrender otherwise.

If the overriding concern was to "save American lives", then it would
not matter whether or not the Japanese surrendered. *They would have
been contained.

Saving American lives wasn't the only concern. *People were getting
sick of the war and wanted it over.

Also, continuing the blockade of Japan would have killed many times
more civilians than were killed by the A-bombs.



(Note how Saddam Hussein did not surrender to George Bush the elder in
1991, and the US felt no compelling need to invade with ground troops
at that time.)

That would not have been an acceptable way to end WWII.



(Take Gulf War I as an example of such restraint.)

If the goal was to avoid the tragic loss of American soldiers in
Operation Downfall, one alternative is blatantly obvious, yet
curiously ignored:

- Don't invade.

Unfortunately it appeared at the time that Japan wasn't going to leave
us with that option.

It seems clear to me that Japan would have been rendered powerless in
being blockaded and getting continually pummeled by B-29s with
conventional munitions. *Especially considering the fact that Russia
had just declared war against Japan and they were about to join
America in the effort.

None of that was necessarily going to lead to Japan surrendering, or
prevent them from extracting a massive toll in an invasion.



It has been theorized that a major factor in the decision to drop the
bomb was to prevent Russia from getting a piece of the post-war pie.
And also to serve as a means of intimidating the Soviets themselves
with US nuclear might to help keep them in check in anticipation of
post-war events.

Perhaps. *But it was not the primary reason, which was to make Japan
surrender.