It was willing to accept a conditional surrender, which was not an offer on the table. The options were unconditional surrender or invasion and pacification. The projected cost in lives of that operation was in the millions. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined didn’t even kill 1/10th of those projections.
What made the Japanese surrender was the Soviet Union declaring war. They held out hope until the very end that the soviets would mediate a peace, even after the nukes.
The Japanese government was already willing to surrender.
It was willing to accept a conditional surrender, which was not an offer on the table. The options were unconditional surrender or invasion and pacification. The projected cost in lives of that operation was in the millions. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined didn’t even kill 1/10th of those projections.
What made the Japanese surrender was the Soviet Union declaring war. They held out hope until the very end that the soviets would mediate a peace, even after the nukes.