Aside from the positive propaganda value of being able to point out that people were warned of this looming destruction, the language also suggests that all 35 cities would be destroyed, naming Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the head of the list.
Someone more knowledgable than I can perhaps clarify just how many bombs were available at the time and when additional bombs could be manufactured.
My recollection is that one bomb was detonated as a test, and the other two that existed were dropped on Japan. Was there an inventory capable of carrying out the explicit threat, or was the destruction of two targets going to be used to create credibility regarding the threat?
My recollection is that one bomb was detonated as a test, and the other two that existed were dropped on Japan. Was there an inventory capable of carrying out the explicit threat, or was the destruction of two targets going to be used to create credibility regarding the threat?
Contemporaneously, of course, it was no part of US interest to let it be known that we had no more A-bombs in inventory after Hiroshima. But much later I read the same thing as you - that we had no more A-bombs at that point, and that that was even true when Truman threatened the USSR with nuclear retaliation in response to their threats to Iran after WWII.Of course the public arguments about whether the A-bomb should have been used, or used in the way that it was, against Japan, were debated in ignorance of the actual number of A-bombs in US hands in August 1945.
On the Greenwich Workshop videotape now owned by the Smithsonian, Enola Gay pilot Tibbetts states they cancelled shipment of a third bomb to Tinian in the Marianas when Japanese surrender was announced. The videotape is titled “The Men Who Brought the Dawn,” and shows crews of both planes in personal statements and interviews, as well as original films from Nagasaki and Hiroshima.