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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The Japanese negotiating position towards the end of the war was “we are willing to sacrifice every last man, woman, and child to prevent a US invasion of the mainland.” And there is every reason to believe that a US invasion of the Japanese mainland would have resulted in that.
You cannot apply your viewpoint of the world to a WWII Japanese civilian. They were indoctrinated from birth to believe that the Japanese Emperor was a literal god and that dying for him was the highest honor one could achieve in life. Japanese kamikaze pilots didn’t come into existence because the government forced people to do that – it came into existence because people were volunteering in droves to turn themselves into suicide bombers and the government eventually relented and allowed them to do it.
The point of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was to show the Japanese government that the US had an alternative to invading the mainland. The bombs showed that they *would* kill every last Japanese man, woman, and child – from the air and with minimal loss of American life.
That was what ultimately showed the Japanese government that there was no point in continued resistance – they wouldn’t get a glorious fight to the death in which the US was eventually forced to soften its negotiating stance when hundreds of thousands of US troops were killed by Japanese civilians performing suicide charges with old guns, farm equipment, and sticks. Rather, the US would just sit on Okinawa, cost-effectively annihilating the Japanese population from the air.
The *could* aspect of the bombs wasn’t particularly relevant. Although the Japanese government didn’t know about the progress of the Manhattan Project, they were aware of its existence as well as how powerful an atomic bomb was. So the Japanese didn’t know when atomic bombs were coming, but they did know that if the war went on for long enough, they would eventually come.
The important aspect of dropping the bombs was showing that the US *would* use them. The reason that the Japanese didn’t surrender after the first bomb was that the government thought that the US *wouldn’t* use another bomb on civilian targets because they didn’t think the US had the stomach for it. It took two bombs to prove to the Japanese government that the US government was *willing* to use them.
Dropping a bomb in a field somewhere wouldn’t have demonstrated that the US had the willpower to use the bombs. If anything, it would have demonstrated the opposite and hardened the Japanese opposition to unconditional surrender.
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