Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
is still alluded to in discussions on the future preservation of Kyoto. He is said to have made a desperate plea to
US military authorities to spare the cities of Kyoto, Nara, Kamakura and Kanazawa.
Despite this popular account, other theories have surfaced, along with documentation pointing to an elaborate
conspiracy aimed at quelling anti-American sentiment in occupied Japan. The evidence has fuelled a debate as
to whether or not it was in fact a well-planned public relations stunt scripted by US intelligence officials to gain
the trust of a nation that had been taught to fear and hate the American enemy.
Some historians have suggested that both Kyoto and Nara were on a list of some 180 cities earmarked for air
raids. Kyoto, with a population of over one million people, was a prime target (along with Hiroshima and Naga-
saki) for atomic annihilation and many avow the choice could easily have been Kyoto. Nara, it has been sugges-
ted, escaped merely due to having a population under 60,000, which kept it far enough down the list not to be
reached before the unconditional surrender of Japan in September 1945.
