<P> Robert Pape also argues that: </P> <P> Military vulnerability, not civilian vulnerability, accounts for Japan's decision to surrender . Japan's military position was so poor that its leaders would likely have surrendered before invasion, and at roughly the same time in August 1945, even if the United States had not employed strategic bombing or the atomic bomb . Rather than concern for the costs and risks to the population, or even Japan's overall military weakness vis - a-vis the United States, the decisive factor was Japanese leaders' recognition that their strategy for holding the most important territory at issue--the home islands--could not succeed . </P> <P> In Japanese writing about the surrender, many accounts consider the Soviet entry into the war as the primary reason or as having equal importance with the atomic bombs, while others, such as the work of Sadao Asada, give primacy to the atomic bombings, particularly their impact on the emperor . The primacy of the Soviet entry as a reason for surrender is a long - standing view among some Japanese historians, and has appeared in some Japanese junior high school textbooks . Notably however, the Soviet Navy was well regarded as chronically lacking the naval capability to invade the home islands of Japan, despite having received numerous ships under loan from the US . </P> <P> The argument about the Soviet role in Japan's surrender has a connection with the argument about the Soviet role in America's decision to drop the bomb: both arguments emphasize the importance of the Soviet Union . The former suggests that Japan surrendered to the US out of fear of the Soviet Union, and the latter emphasizes that the US dropped the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union . Soviet accounts of the ending of the war emphasised the role of the Soviet Union . The Great Soviet Encyclopedia summarised events thus: </P>

Debating the past the decision to drop the atomic bomb