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There was an interesting Ask Historians thread about Nagasaki recently and the jist of it was that the decision to drop the second bomb wasn't made at the highest levels, or rather that it was hazily delegated much earlier and the call was made by local command. And because of local decisions, the moving up of the Nagasaki/Kokuro bombing by several days due to weather, makes it much harder to justify.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3c6xai/why_d...

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>makes it much harder to justify.

Makes what harder to justify?

>This is of relevance to the question because there are a lot of people who think the bombing of Hiroshima is justified, but when you get into the question of Nagasaki it gets more murky. Three days is not adequate time for a government to make a major decision; it is not really even adequate time for a government to assess what has happened (whether it was really an atomic bomb, what the damages were like, etc.).

TFP

If the decision was in the hands of theatre commanders it certainly doesn't make it harder to justify, and in fact deals a serious blow to the "the bombs were only dropped because of political relations with Russia" meme.

> Makes what harder to justify?

The widespread loss of civilian life.

If Japan had surrendered would they have dropped another one?

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