95% of Americans don’t know the real decision chain that really pushed the USA to drop the bomb, and here is the short version:
The Potsdam Declaration involved Churchill, FDR and Stalin, and part of the agreement required that after Hitler defeat within some increment of time the Soviets would aid in the fall of Japan.
The allies could see there was an on-going Soviet land-grab in Eastern Europe —that Stalin almost certainly would not simply leave after Hitler’s final defeat. They realized that heavy Soviet aid in the fall of Japan would likely result in a divided Japan —an Eastern version of what befell Germany, with a half-century division of the whole country, a Berlin airlift, etc., etc.
In other words, a Japanese version EXACTLY what we see to this day in the divided Koreas:
An accelerated US victory would provide a much greater chance of totally excluding Stalin from Japan, which is how it played out (aside from the loss of Sakalin and some minor islands immediately north of Hokkaido).
There were military and moral questions that came into play in the Atomic Bombings, but in the end the most compelling factors came from international POLITICS.
You’re probably never going to read this again.
A very reasonable addition to the reasons at least. But they fed the Bear too much before that.