>>16542945
>>16541611
Okay, I will be as clear as I can.

I stated
>Their only demand in the weeks leading up to the bombing was the preservation of the Emperor as a figurehead, which the US ultimately decided to do for its own reasons

to which you replied

>Prove the Japs only wanted to keep the Emperor in their desperate attempts to surrender and not also keep Formosa and Korea. Hard mode, nothing in the days before the atomic bombing.

Which I took to imply some sort of argument about the detailed timeline of Japanese surrender efforts, which I do not recall in detail and which have EVERYTHING to do with the Soviet declaration of war, as you know.

Hence why I said "make your argument" because I did not want to get in the weeds.

I have in Empire in the Bomb,
>The Japanese ambassador in Portugal made it known that "the actual terms of the peace were unimportant so long as the term 'unconditional surrender' was not used."

I have, as you suggested
>The one imperative was to protect the Emperor and to preserve the kokutai.

I have
>By mid June 1945 [Before Trinity!] ... Emperor Hirohito agreed to seek SOVIET [my emph] mediation on the basis of "Peace with honor." He endorsed a plan calling for withdrawal from ALL [orig emph] occupied territories, partial disarmament, and preservation of the imperial system.

Then
>Contrary to Truman and Stalin... the Japanese did not reject Potsdam. Having failed to receive no official notice of the ultimatum, it made no immediate response.

They did not try any of the establishrd back-channels. Emperor heard the news about Potsdam on the radio. It was total silence from any allied powers including the Soviets until the bomb dropped.

The decision to bomb two targets was made in the same meeting.

I have a fun quote from Byrnes that shows this is all neither here nor there
"If we insisted on unconditional surrender we could justify the dropping of the atomic bomb."

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>Some may question my right to destroy a city with 300 thousand souls, but those who truly understand realize I have no right to let them live.