re: Do you feel bad about the US dropping the atomic bombs on Japan?

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The original target was Kokura but there was no storm. It was obscured by clouds and smoke from an overnight fire raid against a nearby city. They made three runs before diverting to the predetermined secondary target of Nagasaki.

They were going to make a radar drop against Nagasaki, which could be considered a judgement call, but they found enough clear skies to make a visual attack instead.

In reality, Kokura was saved and Nagasaki doomed because the strike package was late. One of the B-29s never made the rendezvous and Bockscar disobeyed orders and waited too long for it to show. Had they followed orders and left on time, they would have hit the original target (two B-29s had already flown ahead and checked the weather).

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There you go ... that's right. I had forgotten why Kokura was not second. But Kokura was not going to be the third, even after having been passed-over as the second. Sapporo was going to be the third and would have been had Truman had another bomb ready to drop five days later - which he didn't. There is some debate as to how long before a third bomb would have been made ready but Truman wanted to bomb his way through Japan until they surrendered. Remember, there was a long lull between the dropping of Fat Man and the time Japan actually surrendered.

The original list was as follows:

1) Kyoto (removed from list for historical/cultural reasons by US Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson)
2) Hiroshima (became #1 because we had bombed it very little unto that point in time)
3) Yokohama (industrial city, it was too bombed-out to give a good post bombing account of the effects)
4) Kokura (had been spared major bombing so bomb could be used there as a test case)
5) Nagasaki (spared conventional bombings as well)
6) Sapporo (untouched so they considered it perfect for the third bomb which was going to be another Fat Man because they had no more Little Boys)
7) Niigata (was next on the list and along with Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura it had been spared major conventional bombing runs so the A-bomb could be used on a relatively pristine municipality)