Why did they not drop the Atomic bombs in rural areas as a warning/show of strength before using them on cities?
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A group of four scientists — J. Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Ernest Lawrence, and Enrico Fermi — were asked to consider the question of a “demonstration” in June 1945. [Their report on the issue](http://dannen.com/decision/scipanel.html) is very short. The main line of their rationale was that the found themselves aligning with the position that a) it might save American lives to use it immediately, b) it would encourage the world to end war more readily than not using it in a horrific way. They conclude: “We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”
It is interesting that at least one of the members of this committee, possibly Ernest Lawrence (possibly Enrico Fermi), had doubts about this, but was apparently somewhat badgered into agreeing with the others. It is also interesting that of course none of these people were experts in psychology, diplomacy, Japan, ethics, etc. — they were nuclear physicists, very smart ones, but hardly authorities on the particular subject matter at hand. Their report feels very much to be a pro-forma sort of thing, where the needed result was already known, and they didn’t feel the need (and nobody felt the need to insist) on arguing it in great detail, or invoke any evidence, or really justify its conclusions.
I point this out not as a criticism, but as a window into the mind of the people involved in these decisions. They were not seriously considering that they would not drop the bombs on a city without warning. They had many reasons for wanting to do this, including the relative scarcity of bombs (they could make more than the two they used, but they took time to produce), the desire to make as big as a psychological impact as possible on the Japanese, the desire to make as big a psychological impact as possible on the rest of the world (including but not limited to the Soviet Union), and the fact that the targeting of cities was already a common practice by the United States at that point in the war (though not all were pleased with that fact).
Even the scientists who argued against the use without warning, like the authors of the [Franck Report](http://dannen.com/decision/franck.html) (which is why Oppenheimer et al. were even asked to comment), didn’t argue for it on the basis of caring about Japanese civilians. They argued for it along diplomatic lines: that if United States used the bomb on a city without warning, it would lose moral authority and invoke the suspicion of the world, which would cut against its postwar goals. I just point that out because the reason people usually ask about a “demonstration” is because they were appalled at the loss of life and suffering, but that concern is interestingly absent in the discussions in the summer of 1945. If they thought about it, it is not a line of argumentation they thought would have any potency.
It is important to see the dropping of the bombs as a _choice_, and not the only possible actions, or the result of some long train of logic or strategy. That is clearly not what happened in 1945; there was a long train of decisions that led to the people in charge of these decisions feeling like this was the thing they wanted to do, and they paid very little attention to any contradictory ideas.
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