Washington was eager to force Japan to surrender unconditionally and was ready to hit the island nation with its most powerful atomic bomb a few days later and then follow up with another 12 nuclear strikes, US military archives highlighted to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombings on August 6 revealed.
The US government wanted to bomb the entire infrastructure of Japan, targeting cities, such as Kyoto, Yokohama, Kokura, Niigata and Tokyo, besides the two unfortunate ones — Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, dropped an atomic bomb that killed about 140,000 residents of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A second bomb followed three days later, leveling the city of Nagasaki and killing an additional 70,000 people.
