This idea is actually based on a conversation I remember having with a friend during my university days. I had just come back from a student trip to Hiroshima, and was feeling pretty somber and was telling my friend about it (incidentally, I'm American, and the friend I was talking to here is Australian). He told me that he thought it was the only way to end the war, and as our conversation progressed, he shared with me this idea: that if it were up to him, he would've dropped the first atomic bomb (that is, the Los Alamos test bomb) directly on Mt. Fuji, as a demonstration/warning to the Japanese before another was dropped on an actual city.
This has always stuck with me years later, and I thought I'd pass it on here. So...let's look at this idea, sparing the military, political, and cultural arguments against its plausibility. What happens if the first A-bomb is dropped not on a Japanese city, but on the country's most sacred and recognizable natural landmark, which is visible from Tokyo? Both immediate political and military effects, and long-term cultural effects?