From: "William Robb"
From: "frank theriault"
>
> Of course, since Japan didn't surrender immediately after Hiroshima,
> waiting instead until the second bomb flattened Nagasaki, it's
> doubtful that a demonstration of the bomb's capabilities at a desert
> test-site would have persuaded Japan to surrender.
I recall reading somewhere some time prior to the internet that the Nagasaki
bomb was probably not needed to end the war, but as it was a different
design from the Hiroshima bomb, the military wanted to "test" it to see
which design had the better destructive power, and Nagasaki happened to be
there.
I don't know if there is much, if any truth to this, I don't recall what the
political leaning of the author was.
Wishful thinking by revisionists. There's a lot of that on both sides of
the debate.
The Japanese didn't surrender for another six days after the Nagasaki
bombing. The only reason a third weapon was not used was we didn't have
a third weapon. The Japanese did surrender before another became available.
The Nagasaki weapon was the same type that had already been tested at
Trinity site. It was the Hiroshima bomb whose design was untested.
All of the target cities were chosen because they had some militarily
significant target, were relatively unscathed by the conventional
bombing campaign, and were unlikely to be reached by the conventional
bombing campaign before the weapons were ready in Aug 1945.
After Hiroshima, the U.S. military did not know Japanese intentions, and
had very little intelligence on internal Japanese discussions in the
time between the two bombings. And, in fact, after Hiroshima the
Japanese were still thinking they could negotiate a cease fire and
armistice instead of surrendering. It's clear from Japanese records that
the Nagasaki attack is what caused them to surrender.
Timing of the second attack was based on weather.
It was originally scheduled for Aug 11, but bad weather was forecast
beginning Aug 10, and the commander of the bomb group responsible for
delivering the weapons rescheduled the attack for Aug 9.
Nagasaki was the secondary target and was attacked because the primary
target, Kokura, was 70% obscured by cloud, and the orders for the
mission required visual identification of the aiming point for bomb release.
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