The International Campaign for Real History

Source notes
  1. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1, Year of Decisions (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), p. 417. This figure and others of similar magnitude appear in history texts used by American secondary schools, for example, Madgic, Seaberg, Stopsky, and Winks, The American Experience (Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 515; and Bragdon and McCutcheon, A Free People (Riverside, N.J.: McMillan, 1970). p. 377.
  2. Appendix E, "Letter from James Byrnes," in Robert J.C. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954), p. 245.
  3. "The Fortune Survey," Fortune, December 1945, p. 305.
  4. Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Harper's Magazine, February 1947.
  5. See, for example, Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 12; and The Harvard Nuclear Study Group, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), pp. 72, 73.
  6. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 6, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), pp. 638-639.
  7. Joseph C. Grew "The Emperor of Japan and Japan's Surrender," in Walter Johnson, ed., Turbulent Era. A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904-1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), pp. 1423-1924, and Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1, pp. 416-417.
  8. The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, General of the Army H.H. Arnold, and Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1947), pp. 440-444.
  9. Robert P. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), p. 903.
  10. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 924/15, Report by Joint Staff Planners, Subj: Pacific Strategy, 25 April 1945. Modern Military Branch, National Archives, 381 PA-6/10/43-Section 12.
  11. Although Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton was a member of the super-secret "Interim Committee" to discuss the possible uses of the atomic bomb, there seems to be no evidence that any other State Department official, not even his superior, Acting Secretary Grew, was allowed to share knowledge of the "S-1" project.
  12. Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop The Bomb (New York: Coward-McCann, 1965), pp. 180- 184.
  13. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1, p. 417.
  14. "Minutes of meeting held at the White House on 18 June 1945 at 1530 hours" (Truman Library); also contained in Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers: The Conference of Berlin. 1945 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 909.
  15. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender, p. 129.
  16. Ibid., p. 130.
  17. Lewis L. Strauss, "A Thousand Years of Regret," in Men and Decisions, Doubleday, 1962), p. 188.
  18. Ibid.
  19. Strauss, " A Thousand Years of Regret," p. 189.
  20. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender, p. 145.
  21. Strauss, "A Thousand Years of Regret," p. 189.
  22. Hanson W. Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the War (New York: Harper & Bros., 1950), p. 92; and Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender, pp. 132-135.
  23. Henry L, Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace avid War (New York: Harper & Bros., 1947), p. 628.
  24. Ibid., p. 629.
  25. The War Reports. p. 243.
  26. Ibid., p. 678. Emphasis added.
  27. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, from "The Political Target Under Assault," in Walter Wilds, ed., Japan's Struggle to Surrender (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), p. 13.
  28. Time War Reports, p. 439.
  29. Giovannitti and Freed, Decision To Drop The Bomb, p. 333.
  30. Louis Morton, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," in Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1960), p. 509. in a footnote, Morton identifies some of the "responsible officials," citing Byrnes (Speaking Frankly [New York: Harper & Bros., 1947], p. 508), Stimson (On Active Service, p. 637), and Leahy (I Was There [New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill, 1950], p. 208), and adds: "This feeling may unconsciously have made the atom bomb solution more attractive than it might otherwise have been. Some officials may have believed, too, that the bomb could be used as a powerful deterrent to Soviet expansion in Europe."
  31. Dr. Taro Takemi, "Remembrances of the War and the Bomb," Journal of the American Medical Association, August 5, 1983, pp. 618-619; and Edwin O. Reischauer, "Hiroshima Bomb Saved Japan from a Worse Fate," The Boston Globe, August 30, 1983, p. 21.
  32. Butow, Japan's Decision to Surrender, pp. 112- 188.
  33. "Minutes of meeting held at the White House on 18 June 1945."
  34. Ibid.
  35. Roy E. Applebaum, James M. Burns, Russell A. Gugeler, and John Stevens, "Okinawa: The Last Battle," in United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1948), p. 490.
  36. "Minutes of meeting held at the White House on 18 June 1945."
  37. Wesley Frank Craven and James C. Cate, eds., Army Air Force iii World War II, Vol. 5, The Pacific, Matterhorn to Nagasaki, June, 1944-August, 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 712-713.
  38. Interview with Forrest Pogue, Director, Dwight D. Eisenhower Institute for Historical Re-search, Smithsonian Institution, November 16, 1983.
  39. Morton, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," p. 509. General Lincoln felt that an American landing on Kyushu (at a cost of an estimated 31,000 casualties -- 7,000 to 8,000 lives), with the Soviets bearing down hard, would certainly end the war.
  40. Truman. Memoirs, Vol. 1, p. 419.
  41. Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, p. 613.
  42. Military Archives Division, Modern Military Headquarters Branch, National Archives, RG 165, OPD 800, Sec. 1, Case #8.