Comment wikipedia seems incomplete on this point (Score 1) 332
I don't have the sources in front of me, but there were multiple Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations before the second bomb was dropped. As I recall, the later ones dropped all of the other conditions--they only wanted their emperor preserved.
But I don't have the primary sources handy so--for the sake of argument--let me just concede that as well. Let's say Japan wanted territorial integrity and a bunch of other stuff as well. Do you still think that bombing them again three days later was the only way? Backed-into-a-corner, the American war machine literally had no other options whatsoever? I would suggest that, at minimum, one option would have been to give the Japanese government a little more time to investigate the bombing and educate their leaders and advisers about it. Three days is an incredibly short amount of time, especially pre-satellite, pre-internet and with fog of war chaos everywhere.