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I've always thought that they should have dropped that first bomb on a strictly military target. Find a Japanese harbor that had a few submarines and battleships and aircraft carriers docked in it and drop that first bomb there. Then tell the Japanese that if they don't surrender, we'll start dropping these bombs on your cities. But don't drop it on a city first, without warning, killing innocent civilians, men, women, children, non-combatants. Unimaginable human suffering. That's a war crime. There actually was, revealed in this documentary, a lot of discussion about a demonstration of the bomb for the Japanese before actually using bombs against Japanese cities, but apparently that idea was rejected because they thought it wouldn't be sufficiently persuasive. They had to show the Japanese that they were willing to use the bomb against their cities, it was believed.

-- Ron