They only had a nuclear pile bomb... (same with the Germans) it was a small runaway nuclear reactor style device and would only maybe take out 2 or 3 city blocks.
If anyone really had tested a proper nuclear weapon (Germans or Japanese) the Americans would have noticed.
I still reckon that at most, America was justified in maybe (just maybe) nuking the Japanese (or German) nuclear research facilities.
Using thermonuclear weapons against civilian populations is much less justifiable than say... hijacking planes to attack the country that betrayed you.
The Luke
First off dipshit, it wasn't a thermonuke, it was a regular nuke. Thermonukes didn't come around until the 50's with the hydrogen, bright spot. Secondly, it was estimated that we would lose 500,000+ soldiers in an invasion of mainland Japan. So let's see, 500,000 American soldiers to a couple hundred thousand Japs. Makes sense to me.
We could have bombed tokyo. we went after civilian populations both times. we just wanted them to have the infrastructure in place to surrender. while it's easier war mgmt, it sure sucks to take out 100k civilians twice just to scare em.
We were firebombing Tokyo repeatedly, so why would we nuke it? It was basically burned to the ground. Nagasaki was a massive seaport for the Japanese military and Hiroshima was a gigantic weapons manufacturing area. Do you honestly know anything outside of the conspiracy theory bullshit you spew?
