Replying to a message of Roy Witt to Bob Ackley:

 RW> 14 Apr 09 03:48, Bob Ackley wrote to Roy Witt:

 RW>>> offered to surrender. This was thru the Swiss government, who
 RW>>> informed the US government. The Japanese also agreed to the
 RW>>> surrender as posed in the Potsdam agreement in the same message.
 RW>>> Apparently already aprised of the contents by the Swiss.

 RW>>> You can read a copy of it here.

 RW>>> http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/450810a.html

 BA>> I don't do Internet and in any case I don't dispute that the Japanese
 BA>> offered unconditional surrender after the Nagasaki blast.

 RW> They ignored the Hiroshima blast?

No.

 BA>> What I said was that the Japanese wanted to open surrender
 BA>> negotiations a couple of months *before* the Hiroshima bomb was
 BA>> dropped, and that Stalin chose not to pass the message along to his
 BA>> allies.

 RW> Actually, that happened on August 8th, and it wasn't Stalin who made
 RW> that decision, it was Molotov and then given to the Japanese
 RW> Ambassador to transmit to Japan...

No, Roy, it happened in July of 1945.

"American cryptanalysts, who usually strove to win battles, worked to make peace
when they solved Japanese messages that indicated Japan's desire to quit the war
before the atomic bombs had devastated her and opened the era of nuclear war.
Through the formation of a new cabinet in April, 1945, implied a mandate to seek
peace, the United States obtained the first concrete evidence of the desire on July
13.  On that date, President Truman and other high American officials read an
instruction of Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to his ambassador in Moscow,
Nasatake Sato.  Togo urged Sato to see the Soviet Foreign Minister before the Big
Three conference at Potsdam and tell him of the Emperor's strong desire to end 
the war.  Explain, Togo said, that the only real obstacle to peace was the Allies'
demand for unconditional surrender.  If this were insisted upon, he said, Japan
would have to continue the fight.  The implication was that another surrender
formula might bring peace.
"In the next few days additional messages were intercepted and read that threw
further light on Japanese intentions.  They verified the view of many experts on 
Japan that a promise to preserve the Emperor would open the way to a surrender
which in most other respects would be unconditional."  The 'Big Three' then
modified their demand from unconditional surrender to unconditional surrender of
Japan's military.  Japan did not accept because the Allies' terms did not promise
the retention of the Emperor.

I was in error in thinking that there was a delay in the decryption and 
translation of intercepted Japanese diplomatic traffic.

Above quotes excerpted from David Kahn, "The Codebreakers," page 610.

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