The ongoing conventional bombing of Japan was FAR more destructive (and lethal) than the atomic bombing. People always seem to forget that.

By mid-1945, the US was running out of targets to destroy. Yet the Japanese were showing absolutely zero indication of entering into surrender negotiations. (We were reading their encoded messages. We knew their plans!)

The civilian populations were being trained in the manufacturing and use of homemade weapons to defend the home islands. The Japanese Imperial Army informed the Emperor that it would only require 20 million civilian deaths to repulse an American land invasion, which they felt they could easily absorb and recover from, while the Americans would surely lose their stomach for the war afterwards. (Just as they assumed the Americans would lose their stomachs for war after the attack on Pearl Harbor)

The cities targeted for nuclear weapons were chosen solely because they were ones of only a few cities that had not already been utterly destroyed by conventional bombing, or recognized as having historical/religious significance.

(Yep, that’s right. The US spared some Japanese cities specifically because they had historical or religious importance to the Japanese. I cannot think of another nation in history that has spared an enemy’s cities, in a time of total war, specifically because those cities were precious to the enemy.)