As I understand it, It’s because they hadn’t been previously bombed, so the aftermath would provide a “well controlled” (in the scientific method sense) assessment of the damage that these weapons could inflict on a city.
^No. The justified declarared strategy, was that two would mean the US possessed many such weapons. (Although they didn’t.)
I haven’t seen it yet, but the movie “Oppenheimer,” appears to delve into the creation of nuclear weapons. It looks great…
@gorillapaws I thought I had read somewhere that they purposely didn’t bomb those two cities because they knew they were going to use the nuclear bomb on them. But if not Nagasaki was bombed only because another city was cloud covered, that would kill that theory.
@LifeQuestioner The flight from Saipan was very long and it was required that two different targets could be considered if the first target was obscured.
Other cities could be targeted even if military functions in those cities were little or none. The effect was to convince the Japanese that they must end the war. At that late stage of hostilities, the military manufacturing in a targeted city was of little or no consequence.