Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Planning the Defeat of Japan
when he wrote in his diary the remarks about an invasion casting the die for a
fight to the finish. The outcome of that fight, Stimson believed, he would be a
high casualty list for Americaand a Japan left in “a worse shambles than we left
Germany.””Added to the apprehensions about casualties was the distaste many
Americans (including the senior military commanders) felt for Japan, stemming
from the Pearl Harbor attack and the brutal behavior of Japan’s troops
throughout Asia. The mistreatment of American POWs, about whom a good
deal of infonnation had filtered back to Washington from Philippine guerrillas
via the S WA G-2, no doubt contributed to this mind-set.”
Discussions in mid-June between the JTG and the USSBS served as a
forum for airing differing views of the American strategic bombing effort for
Japan. The USSBS members who had come back to the United States spent
considerable time reviewing the bomber program. Although the bombing survey
representatives were reluctant to force upon the AAF lessons drawn from the as
yet incompletely analyzed CBO, these joint discussions were fruitful in
providing consideration for new directions. Of particular interest was the
inference drawn by Quesada that Japan’s war-fighting potential did not match
Germany’s, and that the Japanese had concentrated their much more limited
economic assets in specific areas while they lacked resources to defend them.
There grew in the opinion of Quesada and the JTG the importance of transporta-
tion as a target along with ammunition reserves and petroleum, relegating urban
areas to a somewhat lower priority.
Two factors complicated matters for both sides. One was the basic
uncertainty about the state of Japan’s will and ability to fight on. The Soviets
had an interest in the Far East and in participating in the peace settlement; as
such, they were reluctant to end the fighting too quickly until they had some
part in it. Another complication was the dearth of knowledge about the
independent target study and of the air campaign being prepared by the
Manhattan Project. Among the few places where these two issues converged
was with Lauris Norstad, the Twentieth Air Force’s chief of staff and an officer
very close to Arnold. Norstad could discuss the atomic weapon secret with only
a few people while Arnold was preoccupied with a very busy schedule, his
recent heart attack, and the future of the Air Force. Norstad, who had advocated
the fire-bombing raids, apparently now became also a champion of the atomic
bomb as a key to the AAF’s future through a demonstration of air power.
The upshot of all of these discussions and differing opinions came on July
25, when Spaatz received a new air campaign mission directive based on a
formal JCS position. Transportation was the first objective, followed, in order,
by aircraft production, ammunition storage areas, and urban industrial areas. It
was too late to effect a change in the atomic bomb decision; the first weapon
was to be released over Hiroshima on August 6. Whatever the change to the air
campaign might have been, how quickly such change might have been
accomplished, and the results can never be judged with accuracy. That Japan
387