The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the “false emperor’s” palace?
And.....why are there still Japanese who lived on the islands still alive? Why are the Japanese islands still there? Why were the Japanese islands not atom-bombed off of the planet so that they would be at worst a vast wasteland/pile-of-rubble or at best a shallow sea?
the “god” emperor needed to be humiliated and humanized, not martyred
[ The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the false emperors palace? ]
Had they nuked Hirohito all the Japanese that believed in him would have probably gone crazy to Martyred themselves and it would have gotten very ugly even if we hadn’t stepped a boot onto the main island. You would have had several million Japanese who would be willing kamikaze pilots/ suicide bombers / banzai shooters....
In order to save face and his people the two nukes forced the almost god-like in the Japanese eyes Emperor to humble himself in-front of the rest of the world in order to save his own people from being burned to a crisp in future atomic bombings. The event led to the Emperor becoming a ceremonial position and the social evolution of the Japanese people to move into modern times.
“The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the false emperors palace?”
The specific answers to those questions are: Hiro and Naga had not been bombed, as had many Japanese cities. They were selected because the military wanted to see the destructive effects of the bombs without prior conventional bomb damage. Tokyo in fact had itself been firebombed in an incendiary attack that killed an estimated 100K and flattened many square miles of the city. Additionally, there was quite a bit of sensitivity as to how destroying the religious foundation of Japan might well be counterproductive....for whatever reasons you may imagine. Tokyo, yes, was the capital. But the spiritual center of Japan was Kyoto, which was spared a lot of bombing that it otherwise might have been subjected to.
I don’t understand your “islands” question. If you mean “we should have demo’ed the bomb”. That was thought of. At the time, we did not have dozens of them, I think there were ten or so. These things were thought about in great depth, and remember that most of the Manhattan scientists were relatively liberal and did not wish to destroy Japan, only to punish them and bring the war to the most expeditious close possible. There was no real question that Japan would eventually lose the war, and while some of course wanted to inflict massive punishment, the decisions were made after tremendous debate and consternation. I believe they were the right ones, others may disagree. They unquestionably had precisely the intended effect.
Tokyo had been firebombed earlier by Gen. Curtis Lemay, which resulted in 90,000 deaths.
The atomic weapons used on Japan were fission bombs. Yields of about 15 and 20 thousand tons (20KT) of explosive apiece.
A Hydrogen bomb, or fusion weapon, such as the weapon tested on Bikini Atoll had a yield of 15 million tons (15MT) of explosives. That is an explosive power a thousand times greater than the atom bombs used on Japan. The Bikini Atoll test vaporized only a small part of the island and created a modest size crater. You can't flatten whole islands with atomic weapons.
The objective of warfare is to accomplish some goal (like winning the war) and then move into the future as peacefully as possible. Killing their emperor would have galvanized Japanese hatred of us for centuries.
You'd be surprised what sort of issues are the direct concern of the general staff. They learn to consider those sort of things in the War College. We learned to think that way once we were allowed to send officers the British Admiralty School.
Because, strangely enough, he was the least objectionable of all the Japanese leaders around. And it would have resulted in us being forced to bomb Japan to rubble. When the emperor died in 1989 there were a number of suicides by people who thought it was an honor to die with their emperor.
And.....why are there still Japanese who lived on the islands still alive? Why are the Japanese islands still there? Why were the Japanese islands not atom-bombed off of the planet so that they would be at worst a vast wasteland/pile-of-rubble or at best a shallow sea?
Because you do what you have to do in war and then you stop.