Without the atom bombs Japan would still surrender...given the right condition.

Now that more and more official records have been released from Secrecy Act time-tables, we now know that Truman knew all along that Japan was willing to surrender long before the atom bombs.

Every single one of Truman's Intelligence, military and political advisors went along with every single member of the General Staff and all his cabinet save 2...were adamantly against not only using the bombs, but Unconditional Surrender in the first place. They all agreed it was only prolonging the war.

Sec'try War Stimson(though against Japanese interment camps) felt we had to use the bombs, not so much to scare the Japanese but in his words, intimidate Stalin. Unfortunately that didn't work at all.

Byrnes(Truman's Carl Rowe) was the only other for it.

Even Curtiss LeMay of all people(who created SAC and ability to nuke cities around the world) argued he didn't want to be remembered as a 'war criminal' and sincerely felt he could be tried as such someday.

Eventhough Stalin was lying about submitting Japanese peace proposals to us since 1943, Swedish, Swiss, Argentine and other histories prove they were used as well.

Worse, we KNEW EXACTLY the Japanese position at the time in regards to the Emperor even amongst the 'peace party'. The one code we were best at breaking was their Diplomatic Code. We were reading what they were saying to eachother even before they were. We KNEW that even months before the atom bombs, the Japanese were determined to fight on over only one issue anymore, not even land, but the Emperor's safety, security and position. Something we ended up guaranteeing anyways.

That's like saying the reason I slapped you was because you weren't willing to give up "A" and then even after I slapped you I let you keep "A" anyways.

Unconditional Surrender was one of the biggest mistakes on our side.
Cabinets, Staff even the most ardent commanders like MacArthur, Patton, Montgomery and Ike were all against it from start to finish.

To start with, we had to do was recind Unconditional Surrender.
Then the Japanese would see that they would be treated differently depending upon which leaders they supported.
The militarists, who had already started losing their throat grip on the politicians even before Tojo was sacked, were already divided amongst themselves voting against the 'die to the end' extremists.

The Brits were smart.
Upon surrender, they immediately asked the Emperor's permission to keep Japanese military and re-arm them. The Brits and Dutch used these 'surrendered' Japanese garrisons, air,army even sea, to 'hold down the fort' against the communists throughout Indonesia, Borneo, Malaya/malaysia and Burma. The first Japanese returning home in 1946, the last in 1951. By doing that, the British and Dutch succeeded where the French and Americans failed in keeping the communists from power.

If you like, ignore that the Japanese still refused to surrender after touring the carnage of the first bomb, that the Soviets invaded BEFORE the second bomb and that decoded Japanese records indicate that to them, that was at least as telling a blow. Like the Germans, the Japanese would have preferred to keep the communists as far away an uninvolved as possible.

If we had agreed to do what we ended up doing anyways, leave the Emperor, we could not only have ended the war before the Soviets got involved, but also, like the British and Dutch, in such a way that by incrementally replacing the Japanese military occupying Asia with ours, China would never have become communist, there would have been no Korean nor Vietnam war. No decades of Trillions of dollars of spending in an Asian as well as European Cold War.

Without a doubt the Japanese were willing to surrender even without the atom bombs, in an even more advantageous end-scenario situation for our side as well.

What is worse, is that this isn't 'hind-sight-wisdom', Truman and our Intel and staffs KNEW this to be true. But Stimson(who did not believe the only good jap is a dead jap) believed Stalin would 'mind his place' only if we used it.

Though of course I believe he also suggested using it only on a military only target, island, maybe even (though bad for the natives too) Truk instead.

What if there was no A-bomb?

We still could have and should have won even better than we did.