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Things that make you go hmmmm: Groves could publish a memoir the Manhattan Project in 1962 (<20 years after the war), yet the JFK cancellation files have still not yet been fully released.

What I was able to glean from the preview: Groves wanted to bomb 京都, less because he knew exactly what military targets there were there, and more because it would have been "large enough in area for us to gain complete knowledge of the effects of an atomic bomb." I wonder how much this calibration wish factored into his rationalisation (p.266) for not demonstrating the bomb before dropping it on civilians?

Good guys: Stimson (p. 275) and Patterson (p. 265)

https://archive.org/details/nowitcanbetolds00grov/page/274/m...

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> Groves could publish a memoir the Manhattan Project in 1962

He explicitly named it "Now It Can Be Told." Only 17 years after the bombs, the whole book. The rationales for the target selection -- yes, it's straight from the horse's mouth, and plausible because it is directly not something somebody would just write to in any way "improve" his own reputation, I'd like to believe. He also wrote there something like, if I remember correctly, that his biggest worry during the last months of the war has been that the war could had been over before he gets to drop the bomb on some city with civilians which would provide for good demonstration. It's also obvious that the existence of "military targets" was totally irrelevant, except as a good excuse to be provided to the current president. Something which sounded like that to me, at least. Maybe somebody will locate the specific words. Also Groves, before the Senate, November 1945, about the suffering of the victims of the bombs:

"As I understand it from the doctors, it is a very pleasant way to die." (1)

Also see the book from my Edit 2, before.

1) https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/survivors-hiroshima-a...

The story of the 1'000 cranes made an impression on me when I was young.

It's about storks, not cranes, but this is a hit soviet anti-war song (mid-80's, roughly contemporaneous with "Top Gun"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oCoVXcZ59Q

> The story of the 1'000 cranes

Do you mean, this documentary?

https://archive.org/details/motionpicture0072

Yes! (I remember a short story, thanks for the docco.)

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