How did America choose the targets for the atomic bomb? What made Hiroshima preferable over Kyoto or Tokyo?

Critical to the mission to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a series of meetings set up in mid-1945 and comprising America’s most powerful military, political and scientific chiefs.

The committeemen would decide where and how the first nuclear weapons would be used in anger.

In this absorbing and provocative narrative, historian Paul Ham shines a torch on their arguments to reveal the thinking behind the atomic destruction of two cities – and how the Target Committee justified it at the time.


Quotes from The Target Committee:

‘The ideal target city for an atomic bomb should … possess sentimental value to the Japanese so its destruction would adversely affect the will of the people to continue the war’ – Major General Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project

‘Kyoto lies in the form of a cup and thus would be exceptionally vulnerable. …It is exclusively a place of homes and art and shrines’ - Henry Stimson, US War Secretary


Praise for Paul Ham’s Hiroshima Nagasaki:

‘[A] vivid, comprehensive and quietly furious account ... unearthing fresh evidence of a deeply disturbing sort...’ - Ben Macintyre, The Times.

‘Ham is a splendid storyteller, a master of engrossing narrative’ – H. Bruce Franklin, Los Angeles Review of Books.

‘An eyewitness picture that leaves Dante’s Inferno looking pale’ - Peter Lewis, Daily Mail.