Answer:The name Hiroshima is so tied to the atomic bomb that it's hard to imagine there were other possible targets.
But in early 1945, the U.S. was still months away from building its first bomb and certainly didn't know what to hit.
"Should it be a city? Should it be a military installation? Should you be just displaying the bomb, without killing anybody?" These are questions that were yet to be decided, says Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Wellerstein has devoted his career to studying nuclear weapons and the decision to use them. He says that in the spring of 1945, the military convened a target committee, a mix of officers and scientists, to decide where the bomb should fall.
The minutes of this committee were declassified years ago — and they show it considered some far less deadly targets. The initial list included a remote military installation and Tokyo Bay, where the bomb would have been detonated as a demonstration.
But the target committee decided those options wouldn't show the world the power of the new bomb."They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important," Wellerstein says."They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important," Wellerstein says."They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important," Wellerstein says.
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