793.94116/97: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 9—7 a.m.]
593. Our 590, September 8, 11 p.m.,24 paragraph 5, proposals for the avoidance of bombing civilian populations. My British colleague has given me the following:
“In the British view the fundamental principles might provisionally be defined as follows: in order that bombing may be legitimate there must at least be: (a) an objective recognized as legitimate, and (b) an intention to attack that objective and not some other objective, and (c) a reasonable prospect that any bombs dropped will in fact hit the objective.
Correspondingly, the following at least should be definitely inadmissible: (a) the intentional bombing of civilian populations, (b) the plea that the presence of a legitimate objective in the neighborhood of a civilian center justifies general bombing of the area, even when there may be a hope of hitting that objective inter alia, and (c) a general and indiscriminate release of bombs even with the hope that they may hit a suspected legitimate objective, when it is not possible at the time to distinguish and identify that objective with certainty, or alternately when there is no reasonable expectation that the damage done will be restricted to the military objective.
In connection with (c) in preceding paragraph, an antiaircraft gun in the British viewpoint constitutes so small a target that it is normally only at point blank range and from a very low altitude that anyone could identify it with certainty and bomb it with a reasonable prospect of hitting it.”