>>Many high position people in the military and government knew that it was hopeless to continue the war long before the atomic weapons were used...

Prior to Pearl Harbor, commander of the Japanese fleet Admiral Yamamoto said "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

Yamamoto had worked and studied in the USA and fully understood that US productive capability was so massive that unless war could be carried to the North American continent, his situation would soon become impossible. It is interesting to contemplate how he may have altered history had he not been assassinated in 1943.