Why hiroshima chosen

But even as Truman issued his statement, a second atomic attack was already in the works. According to an order drafted in late July by Lt. Leslie Groves of the U. Army Corps of Engineers, director of the Manhattan Project, the president had authorized the dropping of additional bombs on the Japanese cities of Kokura present-day Kitakyushu , Niigata and Nagasaki as soon as the weather permitted.

Still, the effect was devastating: close to 40, people were killed instantly, and a third of the city was destroyed. The atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki seen from Koyagi-jima on August 9, The final death toll was calculated as at least 50, Among those in the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki was the British pilot Leonard Cheshire. On 14 August, Japan agreed to the Allies' terms of surrender.

At midday on the following day, Emperor Hirohito broadcast the news to the Japanese people. It was the first time his voice had been heard on the radio. After the war, Hiroshima was rebuilt as a peace memorial city and the closest surviving building to the epicentre was designated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

Find out more about the authors who wrote them. Most of the content on this site is created by our users, who are members of the public. Internal deliberations and weather conditions ultimately led the U. In May , the committee issued their recommendations. Nilgata, an increasingly important port city, was also offered as an option. Kokura was a city of great military importance because it had the largest factory in western Japan for the production of aircraft, missiles and other weapons.

With Germany out of the war, the top minds within the Manhattan Project, the American effort to design an atomic bomb, focused on the choices of targets within Japan. The group was loosely known as the Target Committee, and the question they sought to answer essentially was this: Which of the preserved Japanese cities would best demonstrate the destructive power of the atomic bomb?

General Leslie Groves, the Army engineer in charge of the Manhattan Project, had been ruminating on targets since late ; at a preliminary meeting two weeks earlier, he had laid down his criteria. Groves asked the scientists and military personnel to debate the details: They analyzed weather conditions, timing, use of radar or visual sights, and priority cities. A fortnight later, at the formal May 10 target meeting, Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist on the project, ran through the agenda.

Joyce C. Stearns, a scientist representing the Air Force, named the four shortlisted targets in order of preference: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura. Hiroshima, a city of ,, held similar appeal. The members concentrated on the aiming points within the targeted cities. One reason was that the aircraft had to release the bomb from a great height—some 30, feet—to escape the shock wave and avoid the radioactive cloud; that limited the target to large urban areas easily visible from the air.

The Target Committee dismissed talk of giving a prior warning or demonstration of the bomb to Japan. When the meeting ended, the committee had no doubt about where the first atomic bomb would fall: on the heads of hundreds of thousands of civilians. During June, the Target Committee narrowed the choice. Kokura, too, made the reserved list.

It was the most obvious military target.