>>The narrative that Japan was about to surrender is a nice story, but has no factual basis.

I agree, if they were 'about to surrender' they would have surrendered after the first atomic bomb, but they didn't, and I believe they only surrendered after the second, because they assumed there would be a 3rd and 4th etc

Look at how many people that were killed on Okinawa - which wasn't even the Japanese homeland - does anyone really believe that the Japanese wouldn't have rallied every man, woman and child to defend their homeland once Americans started a ground invasion? I believe lives were saved.