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In reply to the discussion: Hiroshima - quit lying to yourselves [View all]Warpy
(111,242 posts)that had never been bombed in order to see what their new bomb would do to "pristine" targets.
However, the devastation wasn't markedly worse than what carpet bombing accomplishes.
It was, however, a classic poker bluff. We only had the two bombs ready for deployment. The Japanese didn't know that and after the second one fell, I'm sure they all thought we had more to drop.
Yes, the high command had been talking about surrender conditions. However, the surrender was not going to happen any time soon. The threat of one of those horrible weapons on every city in Japan hurried things up considerably, of that I have little doubt, and the final surrender was an unconditional one.
The beginning of August is a time to mourn all those innocent people for me, too. As I said, the choice of two non military targets just to see what the bombs would do is a shameful thing to contemplate.