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The international impact cannot be understated. The U.S. was concerned that both the Germans and Russians had their own atomic weapons programs, and that before/after the fall of Germany, the possibility was strong that atomic scientists defected to the Soviet Union, just as many did to the U.S.
In the waning days of the war, both the U.S. and Russia moved fast to capture known Japanese research centers for Chemical and Biological warfare, such as those in Japanese-occupied Manchuria - not just to shut them down, but to retain the military scientific data for their own uses.
The U.S. could have detonated a test bomb with foreign observers in order to demonstrate their newly developed weaponary, but instead chose to actually bomb heavily populated civilian areas, as a warning to the rest of the world, as much as to press the Japanese into a quicker surrender.
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