So indeed after the fact, what you say may indeed have been true about the bombs not being necessary.īut in the summer of 1945 when the decision to drop the bombs was made, there wouldn't necessarily have been that clear cut a picture to the people involved in making the decisions. Granted the Japanese were pretty forthcoming in details on their side after the war and this combined with intelligence gathered during the bombing raids probably combined to paint a whole picture. The bombing survey you cited is a 1946 report (unless that is a typo) and written after the fact. History can be extremely fickle that way. However the point I was trying to make is that we ultimately never knew what would have happened if the bombs hadn't been dropped and it is quite also possible that with their dropping, the war still might have continued if certain individuals had been successful in their coup attempt.
