> There was also the alternative that US general MacArthur actually recommended, which was to continue firebombing them into submission. You can't actually be

> There was also the alternative that US general MacArthur actually recommended, which was to continue firebombing them into submission. You can't actually be serious? The firebombing of Tokyo caused more deaths, not less, than either of the atomic bombs. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo : "The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9/10 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II;[2] greater than Dresden,[13] Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events." > As an aside, do you really think that in a country that was in complete shambles, that any word of a bomb that had killed everyone around it, or that word of the real damage would have gotten to the emperor in the time it took them to surrender? The Emperor knew the same day. However much of a "shambles" the Home Islands may have been in, the Japanese at least had telegraph cables, and when they stopped responding from Hiroshima, and when the outskirts of Hiroshima wired news of a horrific bomb detonation they actually sent planes over to investigate and confirm. > The most likely reason that they surrendered was that they knew they were hooped once the Soviets finally joined the war against them on August 8th. The U.S.S.R. declaration of war certainly caught them by surprise; but the Japanese were certainly not stupid. They knew the war was not winnable by 1943 when they lost the strategic initiative in the Pacific to the U.S. The U.S. had the men, the Navy, and the equipment already in-theatre for the invasion. The U.S.S.R. had the men but not the naval or air forces needed to cover an amphibious invasion before the U.S. could start, so their entering the war only had a strategic impact for Manchukuo (and later, North Korea).