An overlooked A-bomb issue: the wait-a-couple-weeks argument

[sofa king]

49. Definitely not a consideration.

Anyone who hasn't seen it yet will likely enjoy and be horrified by the selection of attitudes and actions depicted in the documentary film The Atomic Cafe, now available on Youtube:

In that film you'll see the Americans happily marching into bomb blasts and "protecting" sailors on irradiated ships with a few coats of lead paint. We simply had no idea whatsoever about the long-term, uh, fallout that results from the use of nuclear weapons.

At roughly the 53:30 mark is an outstanding example of how full of shit we all were about this. I believe the test you mention, hunter, was Operation Plumbbob:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob

That ignorance persisted long after World War II. When it began to be dimly understood, top brass immediately began to consider how radiation could be used as an area denial weapon. MacArthur proposed creating a "hot zone" along the North Korean border to keep the Chinese out, never guessing that all that radioactive dust would descend right on top of the American logistic facilities in Japan, and of course all of the Japanese.

Edit: It is also worth mentioning that the entire object of Soviet expansion in Asia, from Iran to Japan, from 1941 to 1989, was purely focused upon the acquisition of warm-water port facilities. Hokkaido doesn't quite fit the bill, but right across the straight is Honshu, and halfway down its length is the prize the Soviets dearly coveted: Tokyo. Considering that the Soviets were stupid enough to hit Afghanistan simply because it was one step closer to the Indian Ocean, it's no reach to guess that instead of a Korean war, there would have been a massive, probably nuclear, conflict on the Yamato plains, with the Americans operating at the end of a 3000-mile long logistic chain (recall also that we did not win the Korean War).