Why is it the USA nuked Japan but not Germany?

Germany had already surrendered months earlier before the final testing and development of atomic bombs were completed.

Pearl Harbour?

Japan was ready to surrender, too, and the president knew it, and dropped the bombs anyway. That makes us assholes.

Germany surrendered before the bomb was ready to be used, as @Kropotkin noted.
Japan refused to surrender, even after the first bomb was dropped. So the US dropped the second bomb. Then Japan surrendered.

@kritiper for the win!

Well I see someone stayed awake in history class! well done :)

Not so much history class as the history I’ve picked up since I graduated.

I just watched this multipart documentary series on Smithsonian. Japan was nowhere close to surrendering, as it was against their principles and culture. Japan was putting up one hell of a fight in the Pacific. The US was really struggling and losing a lot of men.

This is a great series, with original footage. It shows the struggle the US was having to take each island. Japan was nowhere close to surrendering.

https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/the-pacific-war-in-color/6n2fcn/season-1

No, Japan was not about to surrender. They also don’t deserve much of our sympathy when you learn about what they were doing to people in China. Hitting a civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that’s kind of a dick move on our part though.

Bad timing for Japan. Realistically, based on the timeline of the atomic bomb creation, there seemed little chance that Germany would be a viable target.

The first successful test detonation, the Trinity Test, in New Mexico only occurred on July 16, 1945. By this time, Germany had already officially surrendered and ended their participation in the war.

Good thing Germany surrendered, heard they were working on a nuke also.

@Dig_Dug Germany had a project for it but did not have the resources. They would have never gotten one developed.

Hiroshima was a manufacturing center, so was justified. Nagasaki was an alternate target. They wanted to bomb Kokura but it was clouded over.
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

The B-29 would have been used to haul the A-bomb over Germany since the B-29 could carry the 10,000 lb. bomb and the B-17 and/or B-24 couldn’t (Max bomb load for a B-17 was 6,000 lbs.) Also, the B-17 and B-24 didn’t have pressurized crew compartments and couldn’t fly much over 10,000 feet, whereas the B-29 could fly higher than 20,000 feet which was important when dropping the bomb and then getting as far from the blast as possible as the bomb was falling to it’s target.