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30. The Emperor Preserves His Realm

The new American president, Harry S. Truman, until recently a Democratic senator from Missouri, was on the 1944 ticket with Roosevelt primarily because he was not controversial like FDR's preceding vice president, Henry A. Wallace. Truman was an unknown quantity and inexperienced in foreign affairs. He relied heavily on the team Roosevelt had assembled to win the war, although it soon became evident he had a mind of his own.

When he assumed the presidency, the war against Germany was sweeping to a devastating conclusion.1 Truman turned his primary attention to winning the war against Japan. Though Japan's defeat was certain, the Western Allies were sobered and dismayed by the ferocity with which Japanese soldiers and sailors defended and died for their positions and ships and the frightening resolve by which kamikaze pilots weaved through curtains of antiaircraft fire to immolate themselves on Allied warships. As spring came, despite the destruction of its fleet, the reduction of its merchant marine to a million and a quarter tons2 and the methodical burning of its cities, the Japanese showed only the most tentative signs of surrender.

In fact there was a bitter behind-the-scenes battle going on in Tokyo between an emerging peace party and the army. Wild hopes that Russia would perhaps even help Japan vanished on April 5, 1945, when Moscow renounced the 1941 neutrality pact.3 The Japanese army hoped to fight one last, enormous battle on Japanese soil, claiming this would induce the Americans to offer terms. The peace party answered that the outcome of the last battle was so easy to predict it would be wiser to sue for peace while the mainland still remained intact.4 With the two sides unable to agree, the new premier of Japan, octogenarian Admiral Baron Suzuki Kantaro, raised the fear that there was no hope for Japan but resistance, no matter the cost.5

The imperial general headquarters continued to prepare for "one last battle."6 By summer the Japanese had assembled about 1.8 million soldiers in Japan, with about half a million on Kyushu, the most likely point of American attack.7

In China, imperial headquarters actually strengthened Japanese forces south of the Great Wall to a million men but it thinned out forces in Manchuria. This region stuck into Soviet-controlled territory like a salient. The high command decided to hold only a line across its base. In spring, 1945, the Japanese began to mass their troops on the Asian mainland, assembling a substantial force around Wuhan and Shanghai and the remainder across north China, south Manchuria and Korea. This concentration forced the Japanese to abandon regions they had occupied. Chinese troops followed on their heels.8

* * * * * * * * * *

The issue of war or peace finally came to a head in Japan on June 8. Under extreme army pressure, an imperial conference approved a decision to fight the war to the end "to preserve our unique national structure and safeguard our sacred fatherland." Included in the decision was a program to induct the entire male population into the military service and to organize the nation's females into a corps to serve with the army or make munitions.9

This decision, which could only lead to the destruction of Japan, finally galvanized Marquis Kido Koichi, the lord privy seal, into action. He got Hirohito's sanction to send a personal envoy to seek Soviet help to tell the United States and Britain that Japan wanted peace on any terms, "so long as they are compatible with the national honor" and Japan's independence was assured.10 The supreme war council, awed by the emperor's action, agreed to seek "terms which will at least ensure the preservation of our monarchy." On June 22 the emperor told the leadership to ignore the June 8 decision and intensify endeavors to end the war.11

Although Japanese leaders made a feeler through Sweden,12 they put their faith in the Soviet Union. They did not recognize that the Soviet Union wanted the war to continue so it could enter and gain concessions at Japan's expense. Renunciation of the neutrality pact and movement of Soviet troops eastward when Germany surrendered should have warned the Japanese off. It did not. On July 10 the supreme war council decided to send Prince Konoe Fumimaro to Moscow.13

Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori radioed Sato Naotake, ambassador in Moscow. Instead of telling Sato straight out that the war council had reduced its terms only to retention of the emperorship, he wrote three long-winded, nonspecific messages regarding use of Russia in the peace process.14 Molotov used the excuse of his imminent departure for Potsdam, Germany, and the culminating three-power conference on World War II to refuse to see Sato. The sign was ominous.15

Meanwhile, conditions in Japan were approaching disaster. Railroads and bridges were being destroyed by U.S. aircraft faster than they could be repaired. B-29s ranged at will over the cities. The U.S. began dropping leaflets giving "advance notice of bombing." These listed cities targeted for fire-bombing, causing more evacuations and fear.16 American submarines and mines laid by B-29s forced termination of ferries between Pusan, Korea, and Kyushu, cutting Japan-mainland connections to minor links across the Sea of Japan. Within a couple of months General Marshall expected to sever these. Aircraft based in the Philippines halted all traffic from the south.17 Food supply was becoming critical. Consumption fell to 1,700 calories a day (against 2,000 prewar) and was declining as importations no longer could get through.18 Malnutrition was general and soldiers began bartering military supplies for food.19 Ambassador Sato in Moscow pointed out that American incendiaries could burn large parts of Japan's vital rice harvest as soon as rice paddies were dry and plants ripe. "If we lose our autumn harvest, our situation will be absolutely critical," he warned.20

But destroying Japan's rice crop played no role in American strategy, although Admirals King and Leahy believed an air and sea blockade could make Japan surrender in time. Even so, they supported General Marshall in a massive invasion of Kyushu with three-quarters of a million assault troops (operation Olympic), scheduled November 1, 1945. This was to be followed by a culminating invasion of the Tokyo plain around March 1, 1946 (operation Coronet).21 The American leadership believed the defeat of Japan must be accomplished as soon as possible, even in the face of great casualties.22

There was only a hint of searching for another way of bringing about Japan's surrender. The United States was doggedly pursuing unconditional surrender. But, on June 18, Admiral Leahy told the president he feared "our insistence on unconditional surrender would result only in making the Japanese desperate and thereby increase our casualty lists." Truman answered that he didn't feel he could take any action to change public opinion on the matter.23 Although American Magic intercepts probably picked up the exchanges between Ambassador Sato and Foreign Minister Togo, the information was not enough to show that Japan was offering terms which might be acceptable to the United States.24

Meanwhile, events related to Japan were moving with great speed toward resolution. At Potsdam President Truman and the new secretary of state, James F. Byrnes,25 revised drafts of a Japanese surrender ultimatum with the British. The Soviet army chief of staff, Alexey I. Antonov, said the Russians would be ready to attack in late August.26

Then on July 16 came a stunning flash from Washington to Secretary of War Stimson: the first atomic explosion had occurred at 5:30 a.m. that day at a remote part of the Alamogordo air base in southern New Mexico. Another brief message the next day announced that the test had been highly successful but it was July 21 before a special courier arrived with the written report of Major General Leslie R. Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project. The report described in awed terms the frightful power of the "Fat Man" implosion type of fission bomb. It unleashed a blast equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, set off an enormous ball of fire and flash of light equal to several suns at midday. Light was so intense a blind woman saw it and other witnesses clearly observed it 180 miles away. It turned a superheavy 70-foot steel test tower half a mile away into a twisted wreck.27

The American air force was planning to drop another type of atomic bomb on a city. It was "Little Boy" of a gun-assembly type, not tested during the Potsdam conference, but which the scientists were now certain would work. Although President Truman had not given his approval as yet, a specially trained B-29 group was preparing to leave for Tinian in the Marianas. There it would be ready to drop Little Boy upon one of four Japanese cities which so far had not been damaged by fire-bombing, having been, as it were, "saved" for the great atomic-bomb test.

The city the air force wanted to bomb most was Kyoto ("the capital"), the most historic city of Japan, ancient center of Japanese culture, seat of the emperor from 794 A.D. to 1868 and closely identified with Japanese monarchy. It was one of the architectural gems of the world. Secretary of War Stimson, who had visited Kyoto during the 1920s and was deeply impressed with the city's significance, had been resisting the air force's desire.28

However, on the same day that Groves's report on the Alamogordo blast arrived at Potsdam, George L. Harrison, acting chairman of the War Department's supersecret "interim committee" charged with the atomic bomb, radioed Stimson: "All your local military advisors engaged in preparation [for dropping the bomb] definitely favor your pet city and would like to feel free to use it as first choice."29 Stimson immediately went to President Truman and General Henry Arnold, air force chief, and got their agreement to remove Kyoto from the list.30

Although Kyoto had been spared, Truman had decided to use the bomb if Japan refused unconditional surrender. When Stimson gave Churchill Groves's report, the prime minister was enthusiastic and advised that the Russians be informed.31 Truman reported that Churchill "unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the war." So, Truman recorded, did his military advisors. Although the final decision was up to the president, he said "I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used."32

To Truman, the atomic bomb changed everything, especially the need for Soviet services in the Pacific war.33 Although Stalin had told Truman and Byrnes on July 17 that Soviet forces would be ready to intervene in the Pacific war around the middle of August, he said their movement could only come after Russia had reached an agreement with the Chinese, who objected to Stalin's insistence that the military zone around Port Arthur should extend to Dairen and that there also should be a Soviet naval base at Dairen.34 Byrnes, hoping to keep the Russians out of the war, cabled T.V. Soong, the Chinese negotiator, not to give way on any point to the Russians.35 Truman also radioed Chiang Kai-shek along the same lines.36

The effort was a long shot, however. The United States couldn't abruptly go back on the Yalta agreement. Furthermore, Chiang was far more concerned with getting Stalin to support the Nationalists against the Communists than with a few losses in Manchuria.37

When Truman told Stalin about the new American weapon on July 24, the Russian premier showed no special interest. He said he was glad to hear it and hoped Americans would make "good use of it against the Japanese."38 Did Stalin know about the bomb already and was he merely playacting? Probably, since Soviet spies had long before infiltrated into the Manhatten Project.39 However, it's possible Stalin was not aware of the enormous power of the new weapon or that the Americans had completed its development.

It was now imperative to commence peace negotiations with the Japanese or to send some warning. Stalin showed Truman a copy of Japanese Ambassador Sato's request that Prince Konoe be allowed to deliver a message and asked whether he should answer. Truman responded that he had no respect for the good faith of the Japanese and accepted Stalin's suggestion that he give Sato an unspecific answer.40 Thus Hirohito's peace initiative died.

American planners were well aware before Potsdam that the fate of the emperor was the single most serious obstacle to Japanese unconditional surrender.41 But the top U.S. leaders did not address this issue specifically.42

The president was extremely harsh on the Japanese at this time and this may have influenced his refusal to include any concessions in the surrender proclamation. On July 18 Churchill asked whether unconditional surrender could be expressed in some other way that would leave "the Japanese some show of saving their military honor and some assurance of their national existence." Truman replied coldly he did not think the Japanese had any military honor after Pearl Harbor.43

On July 25 Churchill and the British Labour party leader Clement R. Attlee, who'd attended Potsdam, returned to Britain for parliamentary elections. Churchill's Conservative party lost control of Parliament and Attlee became prime minister, with Ernest Bevin as new foreign secretary. Attlee returned with Bevin on July 28 and they represented Britain in the conference until adjournment on August 1.44 In less than four months the two Western architects of Allied victory, Roosevelt and Churchill, were gone.

The proclamation to Japan included a promise to withdraw Allied occupation forces from Japan once reforms had been made and militarism eradicated and a "peacefully inclined and responsible government" established. There was no word about the emperor. But there was another call for Japan's unconditional surrender, failing which the proclamation promised Japan's "prompt and utter destruction." The British and Chinese approved.45

Despite the harshness of the proclamation, the emperor announced he deemed it acceptable in principle but military leaders pressed Premier Suzuki to reject the ultimatum. Suzuki told a July 28 press conference the message was only a rehash of the Cairo conference proclamation of 1943 and the government would ignore it.46

Suzuki's statement was a great mistake. It was the final confirmation to American leaders of Japanese intransigence and removed the last restraint upon them to employ the atomic bomb. Early on the morning of August 6, a single B-29 by the of name Enola Gay rose from the tarmac on Tinian and, bearing Little Boy, set a course for the number-one target on the air force's special list: Hiroshima, a city of some half-a-million residents and refugees near the southwestern tip of Honshu. At 8:15 a.m. the B-29 released the bomb set for an air burst 2,000 feet above the city. The explosion and the enormous mushroom cloud were unbelievably stupendous. Shock waves almost instantly destroyed two-thirds of the city. Only three hulks of concrete buildings remained in all of the central part. Much of the city and many people vaporized. Nearly everything else was laid flat. Total casualties were over 300,000. The official postwar figures showed 92,000 dead or missing and over 9,000 seriously injured. But 80,000 soldiers were stationed at Hiroshima and at least half perished and many of the more slightly injured succumbed later to radiation poisoning or radiation-induced diseases.47

President Truman got the news on the cruiser USS Augusta in the Atlantic on the way back from Potsdam. At the White House the press secretary released a Truman-approved statement. It described in almost chamber-of-commerce terms the technological achievement and the difficulties the developers had overcome. But it contained a somber warning: "We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war."48 Actually the U.S. had only one more bomb, a Fat Man like the one tested at Alamogordo. It also was at Tinian and the air force planned to drop it on Kokura (now part of Kitakyushu) on northern Kyushu. Workers were building a third to be ready in late August or early September.49

At first the Japanese couldn't make out exactly what had dropped on Hiroshima. Only when authorities picked up a radio broadcast from San Francisco did they learn it was an atomic bomb. They now realized Japan could literally be destroyed. They knew the bomb was going to destroy people, not merely docks, factories and communications. The emperor told Foreign Minister Togo it was obviously impossible to defend the homeland any longer and the cabinet had better conclude peace immediately without wasting time arguing terms.50

The army refused to tell the people about the atomic bomb but the news got out quickly through Japanese-language broadcasts describing the new weapon in detail from American stations on the Philippines, Okinawa and the Marianas.51

Stalin and the Soviet army chief of staff had said at Potsdam the Russians would not be ready to attack until middle to late August. And Stalin qualified this by requiring the Chinese first to agree to his terms. T.V. Soong returned to Moscow with the new foreign minister, Wang Shijie, on August 7 to renew talks. The astonishing news of the atomic bomb, however, changed Stalin's thinking. It now was entirely possible that Japan would surrender before Soviet troops marched. This would make it unnecessary for Russia to enter the war and impossible for it to claim the spoils it wanted. Stalin wasted no time. On August 8 Molotov announced a state of war with Japan as of August 9. Soviet troops immediately crossed into Manchuria.52

Stalin stopped pushing for the last inch of concessions from China. He pulled off both his major extra demands: a military zone around Port Arthur that extended to Dairen and a separate naval base at Dairen. Molotov and Wang Shijie signed the papers on August 14. From Russia, Chiang Kai-shek got what he wanted: a thirty-year treaty of friendship, recognition of the Nationalists as the government of China and acknowledgment of Chinese sovereignty and Nationalist jurisdiction over Manchuria. True to his word, Stalin gave no crumb of recognition to the Chinese Communists. In exchange Stalin got a thirty-year lease on half of the harbor facilities at Dairen, now declared to be a free port; Port Arthur as a naval base, and joint ownership and operation of the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railways with a Russian director.53

The Japanese supreme war council met August 9, 1945, and, though it accepted the Potsdam declaration "in principle," adjourned without a decision. The only recourse was to hold another imperial conference.54

On this day the United States dropped its second atomic bomb upon the western Kyushu city of Nagasaki, destroying about half of the city. The blast killed many thousands of people but high hills confined the damage to a smaller area than at Hiroshima. Kokura, the primary target, had been saved because the B-29 spent forty-five minutes in bad weather without sighting its aiming point, then proceeded to Nagasaki.55

The Japanese war council met in the emperor's presence shortly before midnight on August 9. After much argument the leaders still remained divided. Finally Prime Minister Suzuki proposed "to seek the imperial guidance and substitute it for the decision of this conference." The announcement electrified the group. Although the emperor's word was law, to solicit his advice was an extraordinary deviation. Hirohito slowly announced with visible emotion that further hostilities would bring utter destruction and he felt compelled to call a halt to the war and accept the Allies terms. To the complete befuddlement of the militarists, the emperor had commanded immediate peace.56

Kase Toshikazu, Foreign Minister Togo's deputy, quickly dispatched an English-language message to the Japanese legations at Bern and Stockholm, to be transmitted by the Swiss and Swedish governments to the U.S. and other major belligerents. The message announced that Japan was ready to accept the Potsdam declaration "with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler."57 Not waiting on the formal notice to reach the Allies, the foreign ministry also ordered widespread foreign broadcasts, beginning at 8 a.m. August 10.58

The Japanese message reached Washington in the early hours of August 10. Byrnes rushed to the White House. Admiral Leahy urged prompt acceptance but Brynes didn't want the U.S. to retreat from unconditional surrender. He wanted the U.S. to set conditions. Truman agreed and Brynes drafted a reply which Stimson declared was "masterful" in granting conditions to Japan without seeming to do so.59 The key part of Byrnes's message was: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the emperor and the said Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the supreme commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms." The American message was a remarkable concession: Japan not only was to keep its emperor but also its existing government, something denied Germany, which went under military rule.60

The United States already had determined not to allow any other Allied powers to have more than token roles in the occupation of Japan. Washington planned for the supreme Allied commander, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, to become in effect the viceregent for the United States, acting through the emperor and Japanese government to carry out American demands. The United States, which had contributed 95 per cent of the men and means to defeat Japan, was not going to allow a German-style partition of Japan.61

The emperor told Togo the Allies' reply was satisfactory and should be accepted with no delay. But some members of the supreme war council, influenced by Anami, had sudden misgivings.62 The climax came on the morning of August 14 when peace-party leaders convened another imperial conference. After much argument, the emperor finally spoke. It was impossible to continue the war, he said. The Allies' reply was acceptable. "You will all please agree to my views. If we do not terminate the war at this juncture, our unique national structure will be destroyed and our nation will suffer extermination." When he finished, the emperor was in tears and the twenty-four men at the conference were sobbing loudly.

At noon on August 15 the people of Japan heard for the first time the recorded voice of the emperor over nationwide radio. Hirohito announced he had ordered surrender. The enemy, he said, "has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives." He said "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable." Hirohito enjoined his people to beware of emotional outbursts and fraternal strife, meaning that no one should attempt to defy his orders.63

On August 16 the foreign office notified the Allied powers that the emperor had issued a rescript accepting the Potsdam declaration. Meanwhile, War Minister Anami had committed suicide, causing the government to fall. The emperor made a bold and unusual move: he summoned Prince Higashikuni, his uncle-in-law and an active general, and directed him to form a government and to enforce army discipline. Although some diehards continued to make threats, members of the new government and the royal family quietened dissension.64 Without incident, American advance troops landed at key points in Japan and took up guard positions.

At 9:04 a.m. on September 2, 1945, World War II finally came to an end on the deck of the U.S. battleship Missouri moored in Tokyo bay amid an immense fleet of American and other Allied warships and flying the American flag that had been hoisted over the White House on the day of Pearl Harbor. At that moment the new Japanese foreign minister, Shigemitsu Mamoru, at the head of a tiny delegation of eleven Japanese, signed the surrender document presented to him by Douglas MacArthur. The ceremony marked the end of Japan as a military power and, for many years, as a great arbiter of Far East's destiny. Into Japan's place stepped the United States. Though its aims were different from those of the shattered Japanese empire, it now held the water margin of East Asia just as Japan had done for half a century. The peoples of East Asia would now have to deal with the national aspirations of the United States as they formerly had to deal with those of Japan.65

Chapter 31: An Illusion of Omnipotence >>

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