[shhrubbery!]

yeah, that's why they ran up the white flag after the first one was dropped

IIRC, the Japanese were stunned out of the minds, but did make some noises about surrender after the first bomb.

I believe there's evidence that Japanese communications re surrender were mistranslated.

Don't get me wrong, I think Truman made the right decision with the first bomb. It's the second I'm not so sure about. But, when the commander-in-chief gets faulty intelligence, can we really blame him?

[southland]

The japanese were still shooting at us after Hiroshima so the second bomb was necessary .. We had no more bombs under construction at that time.

[VOA]

IIRC, the Japanese were stunned out of the minds, but did make some noises about surrender
after the first bomb.

I was being a bit cavalier with my initial post...it's just that even as a boy
I thought "those Japanese were fanatics...a nuke and given a couple of days and they
still didn't surrender!".

My fuzzy memory does seem to recollect that they did make some halting attempt at
surrender, but like you say, they were probably too stunned to bring off
a coherent and complete negotiation.

Even though the Japanese did have some conception of what a nuclear bomb would do,
it surely was nearly incompreshensible "shock and awe" to be the first recipient of
such a device.