Mitsumasa Yonai told an adviser to the Japanese ruling elite that the two events provided a good excuse to surrender at a time when local hostility to Emperor Hirohito and his government was increasing rapidly.

The conversation was among the first published complete translations from the Japanese of accounts of key high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the end of the war, the archive said.

They were released on the 60th anniversary Friday of the bombing of Hiroshima as part of a comprehensive on-line collection, including declassified US government documents, on the first use of the atomic bomb and the end of the war in the Pacific.

"It may be inappropriate to put it in this way, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, God's gifts," Yonai said nearly a week after an American B-29 dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Three days later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The twin bombings killed some 210,000 people.

"Now we can end the war without making it clear that we have to end the war because of the domestic situation," said Yonai, who was among the six-member inner cabinet led by Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki.

"I have long been advocating the conclusion (of the war), not because I am afraid of the enemy's attacks or because of the atomic bombs or the Soviet participation in the war," he said. "The most important reason is my concern over the domestic situation."

The bombings came as Hirohito, once considered a demigod, was losing public support for continuation of the war amid growing hostility towards him and his government.

Faced with such domestic pressure, Hirohito and his advisers welcomed the dropping of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war against Japan as they provided the emperor with credit for ending the turmoil.

How influential the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki compared to the impact of the Soviet declaration of war were on the Japanese decision to surrender has been the subject of controversy among historians.

Some believed the shock of the atomic bombs while others thought Hiroshima and the Soviet declaration of war made Hirohito and his court believe that failure to end the war could lead to the destruction of the imperial house.

The curtain fell on Japan's quest for Asian hegemony less than a week after the Nagasaki nuclear bombing on August 9, 1945, as Japan surrendered unconditionally by accepting the Potsdam Declaration.

Hirohito turned into a figurehead and died in 1989, leaving the ancient Chrysanthemum Throne to his son Akihito but never resolving questions over his own responsibility in the war.

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