Edwin O. Reischauer - Myth of Saving Kyoto

Myth of Saving Kyoto

During World War II, Reischauer was the Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service, and a myth developed that he prevented the bombing of Kyoto during the war, as explained by Robert Jungk in Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A personal history of the atomic scientists:

"On the short list of targets for the atom bomb, in addition to Hiroshima, Kokura and Niigata, was the Japanese city of temples, Kyoto. When the expert on Japan, Professor Edwin O. Reischauer, heard this terrible news, he rushed into the office of his chief, Major Alfred MacCormack, in a department of the Army Intelligence Service. The shock caused him to burst into tears. MacCormack, a cultivated and humane New York lawyer, thereupon managed to persuade Secretary of War Stimson to reprieve Kyoto and have it crossed off the black list."

In his autobiography, Reischauer specifically refuted that validity of this broadly-accepted myth:

"I probably would have done this if I had ever had the opportunity, but there is not a word of truth to it. As has been amply proved by my friend Otis Cary of Doshisha in Kyoto, the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier."