(CP Note: In their book Nuclear Express, authors Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman noted there was a "message taped to the side of an instrumentation canister, dropped on the outskirts of Nagasaki several miles from ground zero, in conjunction with the August 9 attack.
Luis Alvarez, Phillip Morrison, and Robert Serber, all Los Alamos scientists, had relocated to Tinian for the bomb drops. They penned a one-page personal message to Prof. Ryokichi Sagane, a friend from their prewar days together in Berkeley. Professor Sagane had returned to Japan in 1940 to co-author the initial Japanese A-bomb study . . . [the] letter urged Professor Sagane to use his influence “as a reputable nuclear physicist, to convince the Japanese general staff of the terrible consequences which will be suffered by your people if you continue in this war. . . . Unless Japan surrenders at once, this rain of atomic bombs will increase manyfold in fury. With best regards . . .”)
On the afternoon of August 10, in the aftermath of Nagasaki, the emperor of Japan broke with history to call a true policy meeting of his cabinet.
