Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
of its topography. Lying in a bowl formed by mountains, the committee
believed that the bomb’s energy would be better focused there than anywhere
else. Hiroshima (est. pop. 350,000) was an “Army” city, the committee
believed, as well as was a major port. From the target information, the men
concluded that the city contained large quartermaster supply depots, had
considerable industry, and was the location of several small shipyards. Nagasaki
(est. pop. 210,000) was the major shipping and industrial center of Kyushu.
Kokura (est. pop. 178,000) had one of the largest Army arsenals and ordnance
works and the largest railway shops on Kyushu, with large munitions storage
areas to the south. Niigata (est. pop. 150,000) was an important industrial city,
making machine tools, diesel engines, and heavy equipment; it was also a key
port for shipping to and from the mainland. The initial selection now completed,
Manhattan Project member Stearns searched the target data to determine all that
he could about the cities, including the exact locations of strategic industries.
He also had to obtain the best possible aerial photographs and from them
determine the general nature of construction and the contents of the buildings,
the heights of prominent structures, and the total square footage of roofs. On
May 30, Groves asked General Marshall to direct Arnold to prohibit bombing
of the five cities by the Twentieth Air Force; he also asked that MacArthur and
Nimitz receive similar instruction^?^
In the process of target selection, target committee members sought
distinctly military reasons for their choices, but they recognized that substantial
collateral damage would be incurred by the bomb’s detonation. Since the AAF
had concluded in its own and from the COA’s analyses that Japanese manufac-
turing was dispersed among many modest shops in urban areas and in regions
surrounding industrial sites, the preliminary atomic bomb planning followed the
general thrust of the AAF’s intelligence assessments of Japanese targets. Not
Steams nor any other Manhattan Project people were intelligence analysts. They
accepted for their own purposes the data as presented, and they lacked the time
or background to make any independent studies.
Above all, General Arnold was a commander who was not playing a major
active role in the atomic bomb targeting decision, not even through Norstad
who, though a member of the target committee, was less active than the
specialists in the selection procedure. Marshall had given target selection
responsibility to Groves and the Manhattan Project people, not the air warfare
specialists. From the time that the 509th Composite Group began training in
Utah, Groves and Farrell-through the general planning process that worked out
the details of the unique mission and then through the target committee-gained
substantial operational control of the 509th. Colonel Tibbets, its commander,
often attended regular planning meetings at Los Alamos and met with the
committee in Washington.68
Arnold, Norstad, and LeMay saw the 509th as their unit, and so it was in
official terms. Formal transfer of the 509th to the Manhattan District was not in
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