Hi Yerusalyim,
this is from http://www.doug-long.com/hiroshim.htm again:
----------------------------------------
The Potsdam Proclamation
On the evening of July 26, 1945 in San Francisco (which in Tokyo was the morning of July 27) a message from the Allies now commonly known as the Potsdam Proclamation was broadcast in Japanese. The broadcast was relayed to the Japanese government on the morning of the 27th (Pacific War Research Society, The Day Man Lost, pg. 211-212).
The proclamation demanded "the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces" (U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the U.S., The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), vol. 2, pg. 1474-1476). It made no mention of Japan's central surrender consideration: the retention of the Emperor's position (Butow, pg. 138-139). What made this crucial was that the Japanese believed their Emperor to be a god, the heart of the Japanese people and culture (Pacific War Research Society, Japan's Longest Day, pg. 20). The absence of any assurance regarding the Emperor's fate became Japan's chief objection to the Potsdam Proclamation (Pacific War Research Society, The Day Man Lost, pg. 212-214). In addition, the proclamation made statements that, to the Japanese, could appear threatening to the Emperor: "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest" and "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals" (U.S. Dept. of State, Potsdam 2, pg. 1474-1476).
---------------------------------------
As far as I understand this, the main reason for Japan not to surrender was that they didn't know, what would happen to their Emperor, who, BTW, also wanted to end the war.
Another excerpt from http://www.historychannel.com/cgi-bin/frameit.cgi?p=http%3A//www.historychannel.com/tdih/wwii.html :
--------------------------------------
... "Little Boy" was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. ... There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying. According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load. There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them.
-------------------------------------
Even Nagasaki and Hirosima were aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine
Sorry, but dropping an a-bomb over a hospial isn't exactly what I understand "aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine"
I personally think, dropping the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was (among other things) the retaliation for Pearl Harbor (4 yrs earlier). The difference: 2,400 American soldiers and sailors were killed in Pearl Harbor (which is bad), in Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 240,000 Japanese civilians died (which is even worse).
Anyway, the only thing I wanted to say is, that the America is far from being perfect or better than other countries... It's only a thing from the point of view...
