Alex WellersteinVerified account

They offered conditional surrender on August 10th. The US rejected this and dropped some more conventional bombs on them while they had an attempted coup. Then on August 14th the Emperor gave his radio broadcast accepting unconditional surrender.

I thought the US allowed one condition, that Emperor Hirohito be kept as a figurehead? From what I read, the US felt they had no time to reject that condition because the Soviets were cutting through Korea like butter, after having conquered Manchuria in less than a week.

They required and accepted unconditional surrender and then, later decided to allow him as a figurehead. Which is to say: if they knew they were going to do that (it isn't clear they did), they COULD have offered conditional surrender (and maybe gotten it sooner), but didn't.

My understanding was that Byrnes Note comment about ultimate form of Japanese gov being chosen by Japanese was nod to keeping emperor as Japanese were unlikely to dump Him?

It is deliberately vague, but the Japanese were worried that the Emperor would be tried as a war criminal, for example. The Byrnes note deliberately does not diverge from Potsdam which deliberately does not clarify these issues.

So it was deliberately set up to avoid commitments but also to encourage interpretations of a commitment/likelihood re: the Emperor?

I don't think it was set up to very encouraging. Saying, "after a lengthy occupation, we're gonna let the people decide how the government works from then on (if we don't have you executed first)" is not very encouraging.

This is why essentially only the Emperor could make the move to accept the surrender conditions. Nobody else in the high command would have put him on the line like that.