What if the United States government was to give the Japanese an evacuation warning, so that the bomb could be used against Japan without killing innumerable civilians? “He thought these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation,” according to meeting minutes, “and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave—telling the Japanese that we intended to destroy such centers.”
George Marshall
