Maybe not even that. By the time they dropped the nukes, 90% of structures in Japan were razed, in a far more deadly manner. Russians were a looming, merciless

Maybe not even that. By the time they dropped the nukes, 90% of structures in Japan were razed, in a far more deadly manner. Russians were a looming, merciless threat the Japanese leadership was very conscious of. There has been the suggestion that use of the Bomb had allowed for a good excuse to surrender to the U.S. then and there, because dealing with Russians would have been worse. I'm writing this from memory of an article on foreignpolicy dot com 5-7 years ago