“The ONLY thing that got the Japanese to surrender were the bombs.”
The day before the second bomb, Stalin also declared war on Japan, and launched a large scale offensive in Manchuria. Japan had fought a war with Russia in 1911, and had reason to fear from that, but more so from what they knew of Soviet brutality, and how cruel they were as occupation forces, as compared to surrendering to the Americans.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not only shocking and destructive in general, they really destroyed the last concentrations of Japan’s defense industry.
American diplomats also led their Japanese counterparts to report that atomic bombings would build up to be nightly occurrences (even though were had shot our wad for a while with the second one).
“... Japan had fought a war with Russia in 1911...” [BeauBo, post 73]
Czarist Russia and Imperial Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War from February 1904 until September 1905, when hostilities were ended by the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that effort.
Military historians generally recognize the conflict as the first victory in modern times of an Asian power over a European power. Japan’s prestige was greatly magnified, especially after the destruction of the combined Russian fleet at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Navy, at Tsushima Straits 27-28 May 1905. Great Britain looked on it as a validation of their naval organization and tactics, and the superiority of British-built warships: the British had sold a number of warships to Japan, and provided initial crew training. Japanese warship design followed that of the Royal navy for some time after.