The Target Committee (Kindle Single) (6 page)

There was one last piece of business before the meeting was adjourned: the troubling matter of a group of “undesirable scientists” who had recently opposed the use of the bomb on Japan. Many were émigré European physicists who felt their fight was with Germany, not Japan. Several were Jews who had lost their families in Nazi death camps, for whom the battle had a personal dimension. Their guiding spirit was the Hungarian scientist Leó Szilárd, a difficult man who had been influential in establishing the Manhattan Project, but whom Washington now regarded as a perennial irritant.

How might these meddling boffins be subdued? The Interim Committee’s scientific panel seemed best equipped to soothe the dissent in their ranks, so Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Lawrence and Fermi were asked to prepare a report on whether “we could devise any kind of demonstration [of the atomic bomb] that would bring the war to an end without using the bomb against a live target.” The committee anticipated, indeed expected, an answer in the negative.
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The Scientists Do Their Duty

The next day – June 1, 1945 – Truman rose early to prepare a statement for Congress. It was a bright summer’s day, and he chose one of his three new seersucker suits, the gift of a New Orleans cotton company. The president felt refreshed after hosting the prince regent of Iraq at a state dinner a few nights earlier. He had spent yesterday – Memorial Day, May 31 – on the presidential yacht, cruising the Potomac, playing poker and preparing his speech for the San Francisco Conference on the creation of the United Nations, then in session. A day earlier he had resolved the problem of succession in the state department by finally approving the timing of the appointment of James Byrnes to replace Edward Stettinius as secretary of state (Byrnes would be sworn in on July 3).

That June morning Truman received Byrnes’ summary of the previous day’s marathon Interim Committee meeting. Byrnes had skilfully exploited his position as the president’s special representative, laying stress where he saw fit, emphasizing the consensus on the weapon’s use and, in effect, relegating Stimson to the sidelines. Byrnes’ upbeat assessment fortified the president for his important speech. Truman told a rapt house:

There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed . . . If the Japanese insist on continuing resistance beyond the point of reason, their country will suffer the same destruction as Germany . . .
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Few were then aware of the extent to which Japan had already experienced the same destruction as Germany.

On the day of Truman’s speech, four of America’s most powerful industrialists –the presidents of Westinghouse, DuPont, Union Carbide and Tennessee Eastman – attended the second sitting of the Interim Committee, where Byrnes reiterated, in Stimson’s absence, their intention to use the bomb as soon as available without warning on an urban area. All in attendance agreed. The talk then turned to the subject of the forthcoming test of the plutonium bomb in the New Mexican desert.
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As the weeks wore on, the Interim Committee’s influence ebbed away. The problem was Stimson. The war secretary harnessed his fading authority to the committee and personally invited the members. Some turned up as a courtesy, but attendance levels swiftly declined. Groves had only attended once: The immediate demands of the atomic mission understandably preoccupied him. He had little time for Stimson’s hifalutin talk – there was a war to be won. Stimson soon lost the attention of the president, Byrnes, and other senior committee members. They refused to be distracted by the war secretary’s portentous vision of a nuclear world.

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On June 11, the Manhattan Project’s most eminent scientists, Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi and Ernest Lawrence, met in Los Alamos, as agreed a fortnight earlier, to
answer the question of whether a demonstration of the bomb would persuade Tokyo to surrender.

The question was effectively redundant: The Target Committee had already answered in the negative. The scientists were merely doing what was politically expedient; their authority was required to silence the voices of dissenting scientists who opposed the atomic strike. Sixty-eight dissenting physicists, led by Dr. James Franck and Dr. Leó Szilárd, would later issue a report and sign a petition against the decision to drop an atomic bomb without warning on a defenseless city.

The scientists took three days to decide that a public demonstration of the bomb was not feasible. They made a point of debating the issues, for the sake of form, aware that their conclusions would not alter the course of history. History had been decided. They simply reconsidered all the scenarios that had been previously rehearsed, and came to the conclusion that a non-combat demonstration was not possible. On June 16, the four men – among whom Oppenheimer exerted the strongest influence – reported to Washington. They recommended “immediate use” of the bomb against a Japanese city in the hope of ending the war and saving American lives. “We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war,” they concluded. “We see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”
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“Our hearts were heavy,” Compton would later write. “What a tragedy, that this power . . . must first be used for human destruction.”
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In his memoirs, Truman ascribed to Oppenheimer, Compton, Lawrence and Fermi a critical role in his decision on how and where to use the bomb:

It was their recommendation that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done [and] that it should be used without specific warning . . . against a target that would clearly show its devastating strength. I had realized of course that an atomic bomb explosion would inflict damage and casualties beyond imagination . . . It was their conclusion that no technical demonstration they might propose, such as over a deserted island, would be likely to bring the war to an end. It had to be used against an enemy target.
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Truman was deceiving himself, adroitly shifting and spreading responsibility for the weapons’ use. He failed to mention the fact that the Target Committee had already made the decision, over which the scientists had had little or no influence. The scientists had served a political role, no more, reinforcing a foregone conclusion, thus thwarting the protests of their “undesirable” academic colleagues.

The Joint Chiefs Meet

In early June 1945 the plan to invade Japan, codenamed Operation Downfall, occupied Washington’s top military minds. History’s largest seaborne invasion would, if it proceeded, realize General MacArthur’s conception of two huge successive thrusts: first, the amphibious assault on Kyushu, dubbed Operation Olympic, scheduled for November 1, 1945; then the massed attack on the Tokyo Plain – Operation Coronet – set for March 1, 1946.

Truman had little regard for “Prima Donna, Brass Hat, Five-Star MacArthur,” as he’d told friends during a sail down the Potomac, saying, “It is a great pity we have stuffed shirts like that in key positions.”
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Shortening the war and saving American lives, not soothing MacArthur’s considerable ego, preoccupied Truman at the time.

So on Monday June 18, the president convened a critical meeting of the joint chiefs of staff to determine whether to go ahead with the planned invasion of Japan. Would it succeed?
And at what cost in terms of casualties? The final decision rested with the president, as supreme commander, and not with the joint chiefs, the Pentagon or MacArthur (who expected to command Operation Downfall). A day earlier, Truman had asked in his diary, “Shall we invade or bomb and blockade?” Truman clearly favored the latter course, in the wake of the carnage of Okinawa.

At 3.30 pm the masters of America’s military strategy entered the White House. Fleet Admiral Ernest King – clever, arrogant and “perhaps the most disliked Allied leader of World War II”
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– saw invasion only as a contingency plan to be followed if the naval blockade failed. General George Marshall – honorable, self-disciplined, incorruptible – advocated a massive, concentrated land invasion and had been exploring with Stimson a workable way of extracting a Japanese surrender. Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, believed strategic bombing of civilians was “barbarism not worthy of a Christian man”
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and thought the naval blockade alone would defeat Japan. In this view, Leahy had the support of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet.
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Lieutenant General Ira Eaker represented General Hap Arnold, the gruff, hard-driven chief of US Army Air Forces who shared LeMay’s faith in “area” or civilian bombing – despite its manifest failure in Germany – cracking Japanese morale as an alternative to invasion. In short, their preferred strategies were neatly aligned with their service backgrounds and egos.

In attendance too were departmental chiefs Stimson (War) and James Forrestal (Navy) as well as John McCloy, Stimson’s assistant secretary.

All were aware of S-1, code for the atomic bomb; all knew the test of the atomic bomb was scheduled for July 16; and all knew that if the test were successful, the bomb – or the threat of it – might hasten the end of the war and remove America’s reliance on Russia. None entered the meeting disposed to mention this on the record; the atomic elephant in the room remained a state secret, officially aired only in the most secure circumstances. The bomb’s absence from the minutes, however, did not mean it was not discussed.

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Truman called on Marshall, as the senior soldier, to begin. The general outlined the invasion plan that earmarked November 1, 1945 for the Kyushu landing (as MacArthur had proposed). The circumstances, he said, were similar to those that applied before D-day.

By that date, he said, American air and sea power would have:

                
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“cut or choked off entirely Japanese shipping south of Korea”

                
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“smashed practically every industrial target worth hitting” and “huge areas in Jap cities”

                
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rendered the Japanese Navy, “if any still exists,” completely powerless

                
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“cut Jap reinforcement capabilities from the mainland to negligible proportions.”
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Weather patterns and the helplessness of the enemy’s homeland defenses further recommended a November invasion, Marshall said. But “the decisive blow,” he added, might well be “the entry or threat of entry of Russia into the war” – that is, Russia’s invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, which would force Japan to capitulate.

Marshall turned to the likely losses, which aroused intense discussion. The Pentagon had estimated that American casualties – dead, wounded and missing – during the first 30 days of a land invasion “should not exceed the price we have paid for Luzon” – a reference to the battle for the Philippines, which produced 31,000 American casualties, compared with 42,000 inside a month of the Normandy landings.

Several caveats applied to this relatively low body count. The invasion of Kyushu would take longer than 90 days, and the figures did not include naval losses, which had been
extremely heavy at Okinawa. In any case, Marshall insisted “it was wrong to give any estimate in number.” The meeting thus fixed on 31,000 combat deaths, implying total casualties (dead, wounded and missing) of about 100,000–120,000.

On this basis, Marshall and King agreed that invasion was the “only course” available: Only ground troops could finish off the Japanese Empire and force an unconditional surrender, they told the meeting.

There must be no delay, King warned: Winter would not wait. “We should do Kyushu now,” he urged (his sudden enthusiasm marking a departure from his earlier position advocating the invasion of Japanese-occupied China). “Once started, however,” King added, using words Truman dearly wanted to hear, “[the operation] can always be stopped, if desired.”

A dissenting voice was Leahy, who, at Truman’s invitation, questioned the surprisingly small casualty estimates. He cited America’s 35 percent casualty rate in Okinawa. In what numbers were they likely to invade Japan, he asked. Marshall estimated that 766,700 US troops would be needed. They would face about eight Japanese divisions or, at most, 350,000 troops and, of course, a deeply hostile people.

The dreadful numbers rattled silently around the room: That would leave around 270,000 Americans dead, wounded or missing, implying a body count of 60,000–80,000.

King protested that Kyushu was very different from Okinawa, and raised the likely casualties to “somewhere between Luzon . . . and Okinawa” – or about 36,000 dead, wounded or missing. In this instance, King’s arithmetic was almost as dubious as his geography: Kyushu is a mountainous land riven with caves and hilly redoubts, rather like Okinawa.
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So the invasion would be “another Okinawa closer to Japan,” Truman grimly asked. The chiefs nodded. And the Kyushu landing, the president wondered – was it “the best solution under the circumstances?” “It is,” the chiefs replied.

Unconvinced, Truman asked for Stimson’s view, interrupting the war secretary, who had been regaling the meeting with his dubious ideas about a “large submerged class” of Japanese insurgents. Would not the invasion of Japan by white men have the effect of uniting the Japanese people, Truman asked. Stimson agreed: Yes, the Japanese would “fight and fight” if white men invaded their country.

With Truman’s opposition to an invasion deepening, he examined another card in his hand: the forthcoming Potsdam Conference, and how to get from Russia “all the assistance in the war that was possible.”