The Japanese surrender wasn't fully unconditional. They were allowed to keep their emperor. I believe MacArthur was involved in this decision. Seeing as the alternative was a full invasion and they had their crazies giving out spears to everybody it was probably a good idea. They were estimating a million US casualties in an invasion and Japanese would have been pretty much wiped out.

I'm a little prejudiced here since my Dad was in MacArthur's army. He would have been in that invasion.

One unfortunate part of this was that the Japanese never really faced up to what they had done and younger Japanese don't know why other Asians hate them since they weren't taught that history. they are still denying Nanking. The Germans know their history since that was a real surrender.

Steve