Click Here to Read: Twists of fate made Nagasaki a target 75 years ago: The Japanese port was not the U.S’s. first choice for a nuclear attack in August 1945, but shifting circumstances and last-minute choices doomed the city by Amy Briggs on the National Geographic Website on August 5, 2020. Atomic cloud over Nagasaki from Koyagi-jima Image: Hiromichi Matsuda (松田 弘道, ?-1969) Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.