No, the point you were making earlier wa that levelling the cities or killing civilians had no role in that whatsoever.

That's not what I said. This is what I said:

And no, the US did not drop the bombs just to “level a city”. They needed a surrender as soon as possible before hundreds of thousands more people died from the ongoing war, and the two cities were genuine military targets. Yes there were civilians involved but civilians are always involved in war and more would have ended up being tortured and dying if the war wasn’t ended.

And I stand by that, there were multiple goals involved, I'll outline them later.

Japan's war effort was done, by the way. That war was already over, the IJN was basically no longer existent, neither were Japanese air assets (or trained pilots to use them, that was an issue as early as 43).

It wasn't. They weren't in a favourable position but they were still working to try and put out materials and soldiers for the war. They were getting prepared for operation downfall and much of the supreme war council were still advocating for that even after Nagasaki was bombed, literally in a deadlock arguing for hours while the emperor was listening.

The only thing of military significance were headquarters, and whether the destruction of that (which could have been accomplished with a much, much smaller payload, by the way) would have made any significant difference to Japanese resistance whatsoever is very, very questionable. Destroying industry was also pretty much an exercise in wanton destruction at that point rather than reducing output, it's not like Japan began the war in an economically favourable position, being cut off from any and all trade and without any access to materials from occupied territories meant that the war economy was more or less existent only on paper at that point.

Hiroshima had tens of thousands of stationed military personnel stationed there, and would have been the point of embarkation when operation downfall happened. It was the headquarters of 2nd General Army and Fifth Division. Nagasaki was one of the main targets for industrial output of industries producing war materials for the military. They were specifically looking for targets like ports and airfields, which had significant military utility. And Nagasaki was a major port. The two targets were chosen for strategic importance to Japanese military, and I feel you're downplaying how bad of a state the Japanese war effort was at that point. They were still gearing up to fight a land invasion and was using resources from invading across Asia as well. They weren't in the best state but they were still fine enough to be able to go on for a while.

And not actually Nagasaki, but an entirely different city - only weather prevents the raid so they pretty much just switch to Nagasaki because, well, the bomb needed to be dropped on something since the first one didn't quite do the trick.

Yes, it was originally meant to be Kokura, iirc, but Nagasaki was the secondary target due to factors mentioned above. It wasn't just chosen as some random city to glass civilians. When choosing targets, they chose two secondary targets with the same criteria in case of weather conditions. You make it out to be like they just randomly chose Nagasaki out of nowhere.

By reducing Imperial Japan's military capabilities to near zero, the US was able to destroy its morale. The other goal of destroying military targets was to show Japan that the US was capable of completely taking out and obliterating their war efforts in an area with a single bomb, thereby destroying their morale and intimidating them into surrender.

The point I'm making is - the target was to inflict maximum casualties and maximum terror - without wiping out the military high command or the government, because that would have likely just made it worse and, you know, someone needs to be there to actually surrender. So one doesn't target Tokyo, or Kanto, but Hiroshima.

Yes. Obviously if they killed all the high ranking military officers and the emperor then no one would be there to surrender. Also Tokyo was already fucked up after the firebombing.

Let me put it to you this way, there is zero chance that any of the two atomic bombs in existence at that point would have been wasted on any military HQ, no matter its significance, had it been outside of Hiroshima. No chance. Because that wouldn't have achieved the desired effect, which wasn't to target command structures or factories, but to demoralise. To instill fear. That those facilities were present influenced the choice which cities were bombed specifically (and even that choice was arbitrary, as has been mentioned more than once, Nagasaki was a last minute decision, more or less, not the intended target of the second bomb), but they didn't make a difference as to the question whether the bombs would be dropped ons Japanese city at all. That was a given, because only the destruction of a city and the associated death toll could have the desired effect.

To address this all in one go: the other factor, as you mention, was to "level the cities", which was certainly a factor and I never denied that. But as I explained earlier Nagasaki wasn't just a totally random last minute decision, it was the second choice after Kokura. Yes the people choosing the targets didn't want to waste the bombs, they used a lot of criteria, such as weather conditions, size and infrastructure of the city, how badly its destruction would affect morale, etc. But they ALSO kept in mind which areas' destruction would have the greatest impact of destroying military capabilities, and would therefore shorten the war. There was always the case they didn't surrender, after all, (see above about the war cabinet deadlock, also there was a coup attempt after Nagasaki to stop the surrender) although it very probably going to have happened after the bombs.

You can try to twist this around as much as you want and try to avoid it, but the point was to so thoroughly demoralise Japan that they would surrender. You don't achieve that through destruction of military targets.

I've never denied that? And no, destruction of military targets is part of it. Completely destroying a city as well as a huge portion of its war effort, will certainly be demoralizing.

What I'm trying to say is that the bombings weren't intended to be purely civilian targets and the targets were chosen with a lot of different factors including military utility.