It was a good thing for the Japanese to surrender right after the two atomic strikes delivered on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; otherwise, the US military would have gladly bombed Japan with up to 12 more nuclear strikes that would have likely wiped the entire Asian nation off the face of the earth, Sputnik reported with the reference to US media.
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.
The main criteria for the target selection was to choose cities that hadn't been previously bombed, so the US military could assess the full effect of their nuclear strikes, the Daily Beast said.
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.