> This point is very often overlooked by US based media and historians (I guess for obvious reasons), but the fact of the matter is that we don't know if only the two bombs would've been enough to make Japan capitulate.
This is covered by Walker in his book Prompt and Utter Destruction:
And he still concludes that dropping the bombs was a necessary element in their surrender.
The Japanese were expecting the Russians/Soviets to enter the war: the only surprise was that it was sooner than they expected (Spring 1946). Fighting them was already taken into account in their 'calculations'.
From a 1946 article:
> About a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent, well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major move if the war had continued. He replied: "You would probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack would have been made on such and such beaches."
> "Could you have repelled this landing?" we asked, and he answered: "It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you."
> "What would have happened then?" we asked.
> He replied: "We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated," by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.
I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been willing to pull out of Manchuria, lose that territory, and use those troops for home island defence.
> I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been willing to pull out of Manchuria
Given the success of Soviet's new combined arm doctrine (later called “deep battle”), I don't think “pull out of Manchuria” would have been a possibility, as the Japanese force there would very likely have collapsed to a point where getting back to Japan would have been impossible (think Dunkirk but with much more land to leave behind you and with an enemy moving even faster and where you don't have neither air or sea superiority).
This is covered by Walker in his book Prompt and Utter Destruction:
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/829496
And he still concludes that dropping the bombs was a necessary element in their surrender.
The Japanese were expecting the Russians/Soviets to enter the war: the only surprise was that it was sooner than they expected (Spring 1946). Fighting them was already taken into account in their 'calculations'.
From a 1946 article:
> About a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent, well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major move if the war had continued. He replied: "You would probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack would have been made on such and such beaches."
> "Could you have repelled this landing?" we asked, and he answered: "It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you."
> "What would have happened then?" we asked.
> He replied: "We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated," by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-...
I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been willing to pull out of Manchuria, lose that territory, and use those troops for home island defence.