pleasure-pain principle:cause the Japs enough pain and they stopped
A close relative of mine, a Marine, was in Tientsin, China waiting for the invasion of Japan. The bombs saved him, his descendants, and millions of other Americans and Japanese. It was the right thing to do.
That’s not what the Smithsonian says!
That was before Guam tipped over!
FDR issued orders for the first bombing, then the second if necessary, with orders to continue bombing as the weapons became available until Japan surrendered. They already had the plutonium for third bomb, which could have been ready within weeks of Nagasaki. By November the reactors in Washington State were producing enough plutonium per month for four more bombs. So there would have been a third bombing in the November-December time frame. And if the Japanese still hadn't surrendered yet, starting in January of 1946 the US would have been nuking basically a city every week.
But not on Truman's orders, on FDR's. All Truman did was not interfere with the orders Roosevelt already had in place. It was Roosevelt who nuked Japan ... from the grave.
And it's a myth that their surrender was "unconditional." The Japanese reply to the Potsdam declaration stated they would agree "with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."
The US counter-offer did not address the terms Japan had requested but stated "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms. Which was passing the buck to MacArthur and both sides already knew Mac's position on the Emperor. That the Japanese people would be easier to placare with a cooperating Emperor on the throne than with no Emperor at all.