Why the United States DIDN'T Target Tokyo With Atomic Bombs

130,000 people. That’s how many people it is estimated died in the initial atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The death toll could have been much higher if the atomic bombs were dropped on Tokyo. What made the US decide not to attack Japan's capital city? Check out today's epic new video to discover why the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of Tokyo.

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[vic]

So basically the biggest reason why Tokyo avoided becoming a charred radioactive hellscape is that it was *already* a charred, firebombed hellscape.

[aphydgrimblekin]

Imagine living in Kokura and finding out you are only alive because it was cloudy that day.

[theambient]

The experience of the Japanese people with the bombing was horrible, but people might want to also remember the experiences of people affected by the Japanese invasion of China and other parts of Asian. The human rights abuses were beyond unimaginable. And that seems to be lost in discussions like this.

[kennethmays]

The fact that it took two bombs for them to surrender shows a demonstration wouldn’t have done the job by itself.

[maryhennessy]

My mom survived the Tokyo bombing. She was 9 years old. She just turned 89.

[mikelxanadu]

I went to Hiroshima earlier this year. They have a marker showing exactly where the bomb detonated, and standing beneath it was humbling. The museum itself is magnificently created to truly impart the horrors of nuclear war.

[BrucePerkins-mchp]

There was one man who lived in Nagasaki but was in Hiroshima on 8/6
At the time of the first bombing. He left to return home, and on 8/9 he experienced the 2nd bombing and he lived to tell his story after the official surrender on 9/12/45.

[travisedmonds]

It's also useful to think of the atomic bomb dropping as a test. The area had to be free of damage, so the US could tell exactly how effective each type of bomb was on a populated city instead of desert flats. Another purpose also was to show the soviets the destruction the US could bring on them as until '49 the US was the only atomic power and the soviets would have likely needed another decade if they had not infiltrated the Manhattan project.

[jonathanoloba]

The fact that you managed to drag out a simple google answer to 21 minutes is truly amazing

[tosoja]

War is painful 😢😢😢. Innocent people die because of the ego of a few persons that won't even step a foot on the battlefield.

[breygon]

I was stationed at a communications relay site outside of Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan in 1979. We had several Japanese contractors that worked with us. Most of them had served in the Japanese military during the war. One of them was in training to be be a Kamikaze pilot, another was part of a logicistics battalion on Kyushu and another had been a naval corpsmen (think medic). He was originally from Nagasaki. He lost just about all of his family to the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. He was also part of the relief efforts. A real sweetheart of a guy, not bitter towards Americans. But the common thread that all of them told me was that they were prepared to fight, and die, to the last man, woman and/or child. They put it very succinctly, "How would you have felt if your home country was being invaded?" Put that way, their determination to fight was understandable.

[DustinDawind]

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

[timwalker]

The last part of the war, my father was in the merchant marines, and because they were still drafting in 1945 he then joined the army. He said that when he and his army buddies would walk down the street, the Japanese civilians would quickly move to the other side and walk on the opposite sidewalk. He said that they would never look them in the eye. He also said that he was able to attend Tojo’s trial, if MacArthur had chosen to invade, he would’ve been part of that invasion.

[hunterkiller]

Before knowing Imperial Japanese War crimes: Atomic bomb is bad.
After knowing: This is merciful compared to what they've done.

[Johnrich]

According to Japanese historians (from Japan and focused on Japanese history) had the surrender of Japan happened 2 months later the population of Japan would have suffered a famine the following winter, as US bombing had burned crops to ash in the fields. After the war tons of American foodstuffs were sent to Japan as humanitarian aid.

Truman’s choice shortened the war by months and saved millions of JAPANESE lives.

[johng]

My uncle was in the Navy during WW2 (serving on the Missouri). He was a radio and radar technician with particular skill in jamming. He told me that the night before the hypothetical Main Islands invasion, he would have gone ashore with a Marine and sneak into the hills near the planned beachhead to start jamming Japanese radios. He didn’t find out until later that the Marine wasn’t going to be there to protect him, but to prevent him from being captured. That always figures into my calculus (along with the other items the narrator mentioned) when I’m thinking if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary (though what probably moves me the most is what my freshman roommate said about this: he’s first generation Japanese-American and he said he’s figured he wouldn’t be alive today if the U.S. had invaded because his grandparents (who were relatively young children at the time) had been training to charge U.S. forces with pitchforks).

[nikolasspring]

I love learning history. I’m a veteran from Utah and used to be stationed at dugway proving ground. Crazy that I never knew that played a part in ww2

[andrewcho]

If Tokyo was bombed and the royal family was wiped out, Japan would’ve been way less likely to surrender. That would have resulted in even more casualties for both sides. There is a good reason why emperor Hirohito avoided prosecution by the Allies after WW2

[Ray]

Because America only wanted a surrender, not to destroy Japan’s Empire. It was sadly brutal. Japan was a brutal enemy. Then we shook hands and moved forward. Anyone that wasn’t even born yet can stick their armchair opinions.

[timenginemannd]

The deadly fire bombing of Tokyo was codenamed Meeting House 2. This was a rare reuse of a Codename and the Target of that Codename.... (Meeting House was an earlier conventional bombing of Tokyo...)

Also Tokyo was not burned out by the fire bombing. But it was severely damaged to the point it went to almost the bottom of the list of Fire Bomb Targets.