The survey stated that Japan was going to lose the war with or without nuclear weapons as strategically Japan was overmatched, which was obviously true.

However, this survey was looking at Japan’s overall defeat, not the timing of surrender or the number of casualties avoided by dropping the bomb. At the time, US military planners were working with invasion timetables that projected tens of thousands to hundred thousands of US casualties if the US invaded Japan.

The survey doesn’t deny that many more American or Japanese soldiers might have died in the weeks or months before surrender if the war had not ended immediately after the atomic bomb was droppped.

>...Military historian Gian Gentile disputed this counterfactual, stating that testimony from Japanese leaders in USSBS interrogations supported the likelihood of Japan continuing the war beyond November and December 1945. Gentile stated that survey authors chose not to publish such evidence, as it challenged their conclusions.

The last major battle before the dropping of the atomic bombs was the battle for Okinawa and it was the bloodiest and fiercest battle fought against the Japanese. Absolutely no one who knew about that battle would have claimed that Japan was already defeated.

>...When the guns fell silent, more than 240,000 people had lost their lives in the campaign for Okinawa. The American loss rate was 35 percent of the force, totaling 49,151 casualties.

>...So close to the home islands, most Japanese soldiers refused to surrender and fought to the death. Their fanaticism contributed to a dreadful toll. Some 110,000 Japanese and conscripted Okinawan defenders were killed in action.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/okinawa-costs...

Japan had every intention of defending the main islands just as strong, or stronger, starting with operation Ketsu-Go. One of the slogans in Japan in 1945 was "The sooner the Americans come, the better...One hundred million die proudly."

https://irp.fas.org/eprint/arens/chap4.htm

As user 542354234235 pointed out in an earlier message:

>...Every option (invasion, mass starvation via blockade, atomic bombing) was a horrific nightmare of death for the Japanese.

Unfortunately, I think that was situation the Allies found themselves in.

>...and in all likelihood was instead to ensure Japan surrendered to the US and not to Russia

This idea keeps getting repeated by revisionists, but is not credible. While the Soviets considered invading Hokkaido after Japan surrendered, very few people think they would have succeeded. The USA had given the Soviet Union some ships that could be used, but they would not have been nearly enough.

Assuming you mean USSR, who declared war on Japan on August 8th 1945, we need to believe someone used a time machine to travel to the future before they authorized the first atomic strike on August 6th?

Strategic bombing, outside of maybe the two atomic bombings, has never compelled an enemy's surrender despite several attempts to do so. And the fact that the bomber corps's own survey, trying to argue for the value of its work, suggested that it alone was capable of bringing Japan to surrender without any other forces given enough time should be regarded with a healthy degree of skepticism.

"Military historian Gian Gentile disputed this counterfactual, stating that testimony from Japanese leaders in USSBS interrogations supported the likelihood of Japan continuing the war beyond November and December 1945. Gentile stated that survey authors chose not to publish such evidence, as it challenged their conclusions."