Quote:
Originally Posted by baddog
Already addressed:
At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of some industrial and military significance. A number of military camps were located nearby, including the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a minor supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. It was one of several Japanese cities left deliberately untouched by American bombing, allowing an ideal environment to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb. Another account stresses that after General Spaatz reported that Hiroshima was the only targeted city without prisoner of war (POW) camps, Washington decided to assign it highest priority.
If you can't equate industrial with military I have been giving you too much credit.
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Look how many civilian deaths occurred during the explosions -- it's clear that their goal was to cause an uproar among the citizens of Japan. They could have chosen other key targets that had a far less concentration of civilians but they wanted to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible.