Production rate of Fat Man and Little Boy type devices was about 4 per year MID 1945, perhaps 12 in 1946. Just keeping the US marines and Navy in the pacfic was costing 20k men per year due to the holdouts, the heat, the microbes and the subs. Screwing around bombing remote airfeilds or navy anchorages was not going to stop a warior class with 1850s honor morals. The Navy officers had already lost face and knew controlling the sea was not going to happen once the shipyards were in conventional bombing range, but the army and home guard officers had not seen much in the way of defeat and were ready to kill or jail the navy command and fight it out for 5 years. The emporor had a small window to issue “its over” after the bombing. Japan had stood up to conventional fire bombing of the homeland and a dreadful defence of unneeded islands with 10 times the casuity rate vs 6 bombs for nearly a year without any public complaints.
The only person who could stop the Japanese war effort did and saved his nation 5 million lives and had his nation back on its feet faster than the European Victors.
Thanks. I figured a Freeper would know. This topic comes up every year.
By December of '45, the two reactors in Washington were producing enough plutonium for four bombs a month. And the Nagasaki bomb was the last on that was hand-built. The rest were built on an assembly line, so they could assemble them faster than we could make plutonium.
The atomic bombings weres conducted under FDR's orders (without interference from Truman). If Japan had not surrendered after the Fat Man bomb, FDR's instructions were to continue bombing as soon as the bombs were available. Essentially to continue nuking then indefinitely until they cry "Uncle."
And by early 1946 we'd have had the assets to nuke a further four Japanese cities a month.