American B-29s would not firebomb those areas. By the end of May 1945, these cities had become the finalists, with Kyoto and Hiroshima being the two primary targets.
Very few areas met all the qualifications among them were Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kokura, and Niigata. Between April and June, military leaders generated a long list of Japanese cities using three criteria: First, the cities needed to be large, wider than three miles with sizable populations second, they needed to have “high strategic value,” meaning military installations of some kind and third, they needed to have escaped the U.S.’s ongoing firebombing campaign begun in March 1945. military was considering different targets for the first deployment of the atomic bomb that summer.
