Alex WellersteinVerified account

Back in Moscow, the Soviets had just granted the Japanese ambassador a long-desired meeting with Molotov. Molotov immediately handed him a declaration of war, saying it started "tomorrow." But he was used a different time zone for "tomorrow," so it started in a few hours. Tricky!

So at midnight on August 8/9, Soviet forces stream into Manchuria, overwhelming the Japanese there. The Japanese high command put together a meeting the next morning (Aug. 9). They are clearly VERY distressed by the Soviet situation, and are trying to figure out what comes next.

Now, did the news they had gotten about the Hiroshima bomb play a role in their distress? Maybe! It's VERY hard to disentangle the two. The news of both overlaps in a very real way. There are those who will argue for one or the other being more important. It's a hard call.

Either way, the Japanese high command, including the militarists, are despondent. Things are NOT going well. The "bleed them out" plan won't work against Stalin. Obviously Stalin isn't going to negotiate a diplomatic end of the war for them, either. And the US has atomic bombs.

During this meeting, the bombing of Nagasaki happens (11am Japanese time). The news is brought to them during the meeting. It does NOT seem to affect the conversation in any strong way — the opinions they have prior to learning about Nagasaki don't change.

This is why historians tend to say that Nagasaki wasn't that important; there's no evidence of change. Could it have added to existing convictions? Maybe. Can we re-run history without it, to see what happens? Obviously not. But it doesn't seem to have done much at that meeting.

Hence there are even historians who think that the Hiroshima bombing was necessary, but Nagasaki was not. The "after the fact" justification of the two bombs, as an aside, has nothing to do with why Nagasaki happened when it did.

The original plan was to wait until August 10th (after the August 3rd plan for Hiroshima) before the second bomb — a solid week between them. As it was, it was only 3 days. Nagasaki got moved up because of weather considerations, just as Hiroshima had been moved down.