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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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It's hard to claim the nuclear bombs were a major contributor to their surrender when Japan was trying to surrender before the first bomb dropped. What made the surrender difficult was the ally's demand that the Japanese emperor be stripped of his power. This was a big ask at the time, since the emperor was directly tied into Japanese religion.
In addition to this, the American military were committing war crimes before the drop of the nuclear bombs. The American military was killing more japanese citizens in there multiple night time carpet bombing runs than they did with the nuclear bombs.
The nuclear bomb was not "to end the war" because the war was already over when Truman decided go ahead and use then. The nuclear bomb was to show the USSR our military capabilities to scare them once the war ended.
They had a minority interest in surrendering before the first bomb dropped. The Fire Bombing of Tokyo civilan centers (arguably a worse atrocity than the bombs) had their morale and their communications broken, but every source I've ever read concludes that they genuinely were not ready to surrender, and it would have taken an actual mini-coup to do so, one that seemed to not be happening.
That doesn't mean the bombs were necessary. They were, however, contributors to the surrender. The Japan preparing to rally from having their capital razed, civilian targeting worse than they had seen either side commit in the war, was suddenly struck with Hiroshima being vaporized.
I DO believe they were in the process of surrendering when the bomb hit Nagisaki.
Taking a step back, the bigger question is whether there are wrong ways to win a war. The US took Japan to surrender using 4(or more?) of the biggest civilian-targetting mass-death events in human history. We destroyed their civilian economy with lethal force in preference to destroying their military infrastructure. I think that was unacceptable.
But it DID contribute to the surrender.