Reply #4: Yes they were defeated [View All]

but ready to surrender is another matter.

The Japanese culture and attitude towards war and their emperor - especially amongst the armed forces - calls into question whether they would choose to fight a suicidal battle for the homeland rather than surrender. There was considerable conflict in the leadership over this and the emperor wasn't inclined to lose the imperial tradition.

The expectation that a rain of atomic mombs might remove any chance of having a war of attrition that would convince the allies to accept less than unconditional surrender might have thrown the decision by the Japanese to accept the unacceptable.

And I wonder how 'barbaric' those military leaders considered the firebombing of Tokyo which is estimated to have killed more civilans than either atomic bomb.

One should also consider whether the actual use of the bomb in war moved the consequences from the theoretical to the actual and kept the world from subsequently resorting to use of nuclear weapons in subsequent conflicts to much worse individual and cumulative effect.