As living memory very quickly recedes and the number of people who fought in the Second World War who are still alive rapidly approaches zero (if you were 18 at the close of WW2, you would now be 96 years old), we very increasigly rely on documentary evidence. Quite literally nobody who made the important decisions during the war are still alive and that especially goes for making arguably the most horrendous single decision of the war: namely, to use nuclear weapons.
I have my suspicions based on the ambiguity of documents, that the decision to use nuclear weapons was more or less a fait accompli; from the moment that the United States got their hands on them. When you have generals who can fight wars from desks, separated by oceans, the fate of people who you consider as the enemy is irrelevant in total war.
The façade given is that X-Day which would have been an Allied invasion of Japan starting in Okinawa and Y-Day which would have been another Allied invasion of Japan starting in Hokkaido, would have been met with the most brutal defence by the Japanese people at home as they fought with every pot and pan that they had. Japanese politics was deadlocked but the people themselves were not as weary as the German people had been. I also think that the thousand bomber raids on places like Dresden were equally cruel and barbaric.
As it was from April 18 until August 15 1945, US bombing raids mainly by B-29 Superfortresses dropped incendiary bombs on 64 Japanese cities; with practically no tactical advantage from what I can gather. Granted that the Japanese military had been brutal in Korea, and in China (especially Nanking) but to make civilians suffer for the acts of the military, is equally as cruel and barbaric. Maybe as many as 900,000 people died as a result of firestorms due to bombing across Japan, and 8.5 million people were rendered homeless.
On July 26, which is three months into the series of air raids on Japan, the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender (Potsdam Declaration) which was signed by Truman, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, contains a possible hint about what was to come:
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/hiroshima-nagasaki/potsdam.html
We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.
- Article 13, Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, 26th Jul 1945.
Probably anyone who had had their ears tuned to the sounds of the winds of change, may have interpreted the clause "prompt and utter destruction" as hint that the United States had something terrible up their sleeve and that they were prepared to use it.
Here's the problem which is becoming ever worse year on year. It is impossible to know what Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo knew, what Cabinet Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu knew, or what Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki knew. It is even harder to guess what they knew or could have imagined almost 80 years later. Not only do we not know what the government of Japan knew about what weaponry the United States had, we also don't know if they knew what accepting the terms of surrender in the Potsdam Declaration would have entailed.
What further compounds this problem is that even the US State Department appears to have conceded in a contemporary memorandum issued just four days after the Potsdam Declaration was issued, that the terms are deliberately ambiguous. How could the government of Japan know what accepting the terms of surrender in the Potsdam Declaration would have entailed, when even the US State Department had no real idea of what those same terms of surrender would have entailed:
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1254
Note 4 - The Japanese Government: The status of the Japanese Government is left uncertain. It apparently is to continue and to exercise certain functions. (Article 10)
Note 7 - Enforcement of Objectives: Not clear. The Japanese Government has the responsibility of carrying out some and possibly all the demands of the Allies. Some of the “terms” would seem to necessitate direct action by Allied authorities.
- No. 1254, Department of State Memorandum, 30th Jul 1945.
What we do know is that the United States had the bomb and used it and would have used more. Another "Fat Man" bomb would have been used on August 24, with enough in production to drop three more in September and three more in October. I have no idea how these would have been used in conjunction with Operation Downfall but I imagine that the bomb would have been dropped before Allied troops were sent in. In this respect, the bomb would have acted similarly in principle to the way that shore bombardment works in general tactics before an amphibious landing.
The reason ostensibly given for using the bomb was that it would be the quickest and swiftest way to end the war in the Pacific. That may very well be true but I have my suspicions, given that the Japanese Diet was deadlocked 6-6 and that the decision whether or not to accept the Potsdam Declaration and the terms of surrender was being reserved for the Emperor; that the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only unjustified but an act of untold barbarism and cruelty, played out because warmongers knew that they could get away with it.
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