Murray Sayle died...

...at age 84. He's described in the Times as a "reporter and adventurer," which is cool in and of itself. But I though his take on the Japanese surrender in World War II was particularly interesting:

One article, published in The New Yorker on July 31, 1995, six days before the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and consuming almost the entire issue, made the startling argument that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not persuade the Japanese to surrender. Rather, he asserted, it was the prospect of an invasion by the Soviet Union that ended the war in the Pacific.

“The bombs promised only to kill more Japanese,” Mr. Sayle wrote in the article, a meticulously reported account of the mounting Japanese desperation in the summer of 1945, “whereas the Soviets, possibly allied with local Communists, threatened to destroy the monarchy, which almost all Japanese, and certainly those in the government, viewed as the soul of the nation. A surrender with some guarantee for the emperor thus became the best of a gloomy range of options, and the quicker the better, because every day that passed meant more gains on the ground for the Soviets, and thus a likely bigger share of the inevitable occupation. Recognition that a surrender today will be more favorable than one tomorrow is the classic reason that wars end.”