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Yep, there was no need to drop it other than as a show of force to Russia. Japan didn’t even surrender as a result of the bombs, it surrendered to the US after Russia invaded to avoid succumbing to Soviet rule

my understanding of the japanese surrender is way different than yours. yes, russia declaring was a factor but a minor one. it was the Emporor (sp) that decided to surrender and the a bombs was his breaking point. most of the top brass and young officers in their army did not want to surrender. only their god (emporor) could get away with surrender.

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ot to mention the fact that in the lead up to Hiroshima, the US intentionally gave peace terms it knew Japan could never accept.

these terms you speak of were decided at the Pottsdam conference between churchil, stalin and roosevelt. unconditional surrender was the only peace terms the allies were going to accept from both germany and japan. and that decision was way before the a bomb was dropped; in fact the bomb wasn't even ready and churchill nor stalin knew about it.

Coldcushcush has it right. The Soviets had a lot of territory to cover in China and Korea before they would ever get to the Home Islands. The Emperor's decision to surrender was driven by damage assessment reports from the first bomb. The decision making process was too slow, in part due to internal resistance to surrender. Even after Hirohito had made the commitment to surrender, and had even recorded the speech announcing it to the nation, there was a coup attempt by the Japanese military to prevent the surrender. One of the Emperor's butlers sneaked out with the taped speech after the military seized the palace, and saw to it that the speech was played on national radio. Only once the coup plotters heard that did they give up and kill themselves.

At war's end, Japan was found to have thousands of aircraft and uncounted munitions squirreled away in caves around the nation. In particular, they had over 1000 of the highly effective Ohka human-guided rocket-propelled missiles, two of which had been used in combat, sinking one ship outright and narrowly missing the other thanks to an insanely lucky shot by an AA gunner on a tiny aircraft approaching at 500 MPH.

An invasion would have been a bloodbath. Even worse had things gone on long enough for the Red Army to get to the islands. They were known for barbarity to civilians, friend and foe alike.