I am absolutely not at all confident that the Stimsons had their honeymoon in Kyoto. In fact, I am deeply skeptical — both because it has a "too clever by half" feeling to it, but also because it is definitely not something mentioned in reliable accounts of Stimson and Kyoto, and not something that Stimson himself ever said, that I can see. It is something that is frequently asserted in newspapers and websites, but never reliably cited. It is not something that is present in any book-length Stimson biography; it is not in any piece of writing by Stimson himself that I have seen. I am not sure where or when the idea first originated.

Stimson and his wife definitely did visit Kyoto in 1926, and seems to have had a nice time over the course of about a week. They did so as part of a "trip to Orient" (as Stimson noted it in his diary) at the invitation of the Governor General of the Philippines, and while the Stimsons enjoyed the sites immensely — including Kyoto — they were also making observations about the political situation in the Philippines, Japan, China, and so on, that in the impressively inexpert way of elite politics in the 1920s (apparently being rich and smart and connected with other rich and smart people was enough to make one a regional expert!) was sufficient to get him audiences with President Coolidge on the matter and would lead to Stimson becoming Governor General of the Philippines himself in two years. There is also a documented trip in 1929, but it was basically an overnight stay (according to his diary, they arrived around 6pm, went to their hotel, and were on a train to Tokyo by 8:15am).

Stimson had complicated reasons, perhaps never fully himself understood or expressed, for saving Kyoto during World War II. But it should not be taken for granted that the honeymoon story is true! To be sure, the Stimsons were upper-class people with considerable resources. His family ran in the same social circles as families like the Astors, and at the time he was married he was a partner in the law firm of Root and Clark — as in, Elihu Root, the future Secretary of War, State, Senator, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. We don't know exactly what he made, but the previous year each of the partners made around $30,000 each — which would be a little shy of a million dollars today, adjusted for inflation. He did lots of travel in this period, including to Switzerland to go rock climbing, for which he was named an honorary member of the Alpine Club in London.

But if he took a honeymoon at all, it is not documented. Only the two trips above — 1926 and 1929 — have documentation. Stimson himself did talk in vague terms about his reasons for sparing Kyoto after the war, but he never cited a honeymoon.

To be sure, it is hard to prove a negative. I have seen no positive evidence of any honeymoon of the Stimsons anywhere.

Biographies checked:

• Godfrey Hodgson, The colonel : the life and wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950

• Robert Ferrell, Henry L. Stimson

• David F. Schmitz, Henry L. Stimson : the first wise man

• Elting Morison, Turmoil and tradition : a study of the life and times of Henry L. Stimson

• Richard Nelson Current, Secretary Stimson: a study in statecraft

• Sean Malloy, Atomic tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the decision to use the bomb against Japan

• Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (autobiography)

And I also have searchable copies of Stimson's diaries and papers from Yale University, but they do not cover the 1890s, unfortunately.

Anyway — I regard this as a pretty sketchy assertion (and never make it myself).

The most interesting (if odd) article on Stimson's potential psychological and personal motivations for saving Kyoto is Otis Cary, "The Sparing of Kyoto: Mr. Stimson's 'Pet City,'" Japan Quarterly 22 (October-December 1975), 337-347. It makes no assertion about honeymoons, but rather suggests that his decision to spare Kyoto was rooted in the affection and enthusiasm that one Henry Loomis had for Japanese art and culture. Loomis was the son of a close friend of the family, and the childless Stimsons tended to dote on the children of good friends somewhat as if they were their own. (As a child-free person myself, I can somewhat relate — there is a sort of vicarious parenthood in watching the children of close friends grow up.)

Anyway, in February or March 1945, the Stimsons had hosted "Cousin Harry" for dinner and had a long discussion about Japanese and Chinese art and culture, as "Cousin Harry" had been recently stationed in the Pacific. This may, Loomis later speculated, have sparked Stimson's enthusiasm for saving Kyoto. It would also have been around the time that the firebombing of Japan really started, and the destruction of so much Japanese art and culture with it.

Stimson did not like the firebombing campaign, and had never been involved in it (it was considered an operational decision, and the Secretary of War at that time did not get involved in such things), and tried to tamp it down unsuccessfully. Not long after this, he discovered that General Groves had decided that Kyoto was his #1 target for the atomic bombing, and moved to forbid it from being bombed.

My own pet theory, which is admittedly speculative, is that he psychologically felt the need to do something regarding the wanton destruction of Japanese culture he saw going on, and the only way to reconcile that with his belief that such destruction would be necessary for the war effort (which he obviously supported) was the idea of saving a single jewel of a city, a symbol not only of some kind of respect for culture and art and tradition that transcended the immediate needs of war, but also as a singular proxy for all of the things he could not save.

Whether this is true, or even something Stimson would have had any conscious awareness of, is of course impossible to verify. But I find it a much more compelling and interesting reason than "he went on a honeymoon there" (which seems to trivialize the entire thing, and reduce a fairly extreme and even heroic act to a matter of youthful enthusiasms), even if the honeymoon story were verifiable, which it isn't anyway.