No. Check out VD Hanson's chapter on this in his book, "Ripples of Battle." They were only "successful" in that they do exactly what suicide bombers always do: they removed the self-imposed restraints of a humane power and caused us to say, "OK, you want death and destruction, here it is."
You act like the bomb was something special. If we hadn't had the a-bomb, and still had to invade Japan, you would have seen marked changes in tactics after Okinawa and a conventional bombing campaign that would have made the Tokyo fire-bombing look like a Cub Scout campfire.
Sorry, wrong. The nuclear weapons were pivotal. Read Okumiya.
Lived in Japan soon after the war when I was a youngster. I was at a very impressionable age. Picked up a lot from normal social relationships with the Japanese. The war was a very fresh Japanese memory in those days. You could drive from Tokyo to Yokohama and pass rubble fields without interruption for nearly a half hour.
The nuclear bombing had a hundred times more impact on the "Japanese psyche" than LeMay's firestorm that had made those rubble fields I saw. Views to the contrary view are incorrect.
The "liberals" of the era loved the Strategic Bombing Survey, done entirely by "liberal" academics, that purported to show that strategic bombing was ineffective and that the nuclear bombing was even less effective than that. I do not know why the Strategic Bombing Survey people wrote what they did nor whether we are looking at nonfeasance or at malfeasance. I would say self deception and lies.