A-Bomb

[Bubble]

Why did the US decide to drop the A-bomb on Japan???????

[Lonnie]

Here's an interesting fact, in 1945, an air raid on Tokyo, using conventional bombs, killed 189.000 people, well over double the fatalities caused by the A Bombs, the probable, but not confirmed reason the A Bombs convinced the Japanese to surrender, is because the governing bodies would have needed much deeper shelters than they had, and wouldn't have been able to escape the after effects.

[Peter Pedant]

Most of the answers of the last fifty years are here,jumbled up

In terms of verifiable facts you can sort a few out

H and N were unbombed, and it is said that refugees - 80% of Japanese were homeless by the end of the war - congregated there as they also had noticed that H and N didnt seem to get it. this could bolster the observation that the Americans wished to see what it could do.

People say that there was a peace faction in theJapanese cabinet but then the Emperor saying 'Now is the time to think the unthinkable' on the day after N would not be thebig deal people say it is....

Dresden was a possible target but the war ended.

I have just read New Men by C P Snow which he wrote in 1952 from the British Scientists point of view and surprisingly all the points made above seemed to be made by the Brits and Americans working on the project within a few weeks of thefirst test.

[maxximus]

the bombing of tokyo was done with napalm, a horrible incindiary made by the standard oil and dupont chemical companies that sticks to everything and burns at extremely high temperatures, apparently the night in question the winds were very high and caused the fires to spread even more so. to the point that 16 sq. miles of the city melted along with the population and everything they owned, heat to the point that the canals were boiling.running low on napalm they used magnesium thermite bombs on kobe and osaka , even hotter and deadlier. hence the term fire bombing, hardly " conventional bombing" so nasty there use is supposed to be banned today. up there in the wmd category. the whole thing is so horrible it's almost unbelievable and we're still doing it, shocking.

[-GrimReaper-]

Because they wanted to show the world who was boss