I don’t know much about history, but I know that Okinawa was a terrible and bloody battle and many lives were lost. I know that they bombed it for days and not many Japanese men died. So why wasn’t it not nuked? I am curious as to why they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Okinawa would have made more sense. I know there were other locations on the list. Thank you for your time.
There are many threads on here as to why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen for their targets. But a very basic answer is: the battle of Okinawa was in April 1945. They did not have atomic bombs ready for use until August 1945. So even if they had a totally different target criteria (they explicitly wanted to bomb urban areas that would showcase the power of the atomic bomb), it would have been totally impossible unless they were willing to wait 3 months to invade Okinawa, which they weren't. Okinawa was an important forward base for the bombing campaigns of the end of the war, and was in fact where the Nagasaki bomber had to do an emergency landing on its way back from its mission because it had run very low on fuel.