Specifically...
In a careful account of events leading up to the atomic bombing, historian Peter Kuznick cites the Pacific Strategic Intelligence Summary for the week of the Potsdam meeting:
“t may be said that Japan now, officially if not publicly, recognizes her defeat. Abandoning as unobtainable the long-cherished goal of victory, she has turned to the twin aims of (a) reconciling national pride with defeat, and (b) finding the best means of salvaging the wreckage of her ambitions.”
Colonel Charles Bonesteel, chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section, recalled: "the poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton so to speak, through Russia.”[13] Allen Dulles of the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) briefed Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, at Potsdam. He wrote:
"On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo--they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and the constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people."
Yes.
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