A couple of lines stick in my mind, but not the books titles dammit.
One was when a U.S. diplomat was talking to his counterpart right after the war. The Jap said they had to surrender before America dropped a third bomb. The U.S. guy said that at the time we had no more. The Jap said “If we’d have known you had only two . . .” and then shut up but the import was clear.
The other was this statement (from a creaky memory) where a Jap General was giving a pep talk to his troops, “Yes, things look bad now but if we resolve to fight on, we will still win.” This was AFTER the second bomb was dropped.
One of my favorite ploys when I run into one of these “we were wrong to drop the bomb” types is to ask them, “Do you honest-to-God believe that Japan would not have used it on us to prevent an invasion?” Deer in the headlights time.
Forgot to add that when people who suffered under Jap occupation were asked if we should have bomber Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more often than not the reply was “Why did you drop only two?”
We had more in the pipeline. The U.S. expected to have another atomic bomb ready for use in the third week of August, with three more in September and a further three in October. On August 10, Major General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project, sent a memorandum to General of the Army George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, in which he wrote that "the next bomb . . should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or August 18." On the same day, Marshall endorsed the memo with the comment, "It is not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President." There was already discussion in the War Department about conserving the bombs in production until Operation Downfall, the projected invasion of Japan, had begun.
"The problem now [August 13] is whether or not, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, to continue dropping them every time one is made and shipped out there or whether to hold them . . . and then pour them all on in a reasonably short time. Not all in one day, but over a short period. And that also takes into consideration the target that we are after. In other words, should we not concentrate on targets that will be of the greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, and the like? Nearer the tactical use rather than other use.