ABSTRACT
The Allied war against Japan ended on 14 August 1945, following the bomb-ings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were sandwiched around Soviet entry into the Pacific war on the 8th. Tucked away amid these dramatic actions were some important but generally neglected events, virtually lost in modern memory: Japan's offer on the 10th of a conditional surrender with a guarantee of the imperial system: America's intentionally ambiguous reply on the 1 ith; a resulting sharp split in the Japanese government over whether to continue the war: the emperor's second intervention to push for surrender and peace; and a nearly successful coup in Japan that might have prolonged the war and provoked America's use of a third A-bomb and possibly even more atomic bombs. Because the war ended on the 14th and the third bomb was never used, analysts have generally ignored this important period of 10–14 August. Studies of the A-bomb have often also neglected the heavy conventional bombing of Japan during the spring and summer of 1945, culminating in a thousand-plane attack on the 14th, with some squadrons dropping their deadly cargo after Japan's announced surrender.
