After Hirohito's surrender recording was made, mid-level officers in Tokyo got wind of it and staged a coup d'etat that was barely suppressed.
Not just 10s of thousands of US soldiers' and Marines' lives were saved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but millions of starving East Asians, including Japanese.
The notion that this was done to wave a saber at the Soviet Union is revisionist hogwash. That was mentioned in exactly 1 meeting in the many held to decide about the final conduct of the war.
Maybe the internal face-saving was important, but I still think the biggest factor is that the US demonstrated it had both the means and the will to annihilate the entire Japanese people and give them a death without meaning or honor.
Franks has proven to be one of the most reliable and accurate Pacific War historians ever.