A World at Arms (171 page)

The Americans not only read these calls for surrender but also the responses from Tokyo. The repeated assertions from Tokyo that this unsolicited advice had been rejected, and that the Japanese government would not accept the concept of unconditional surrender even if the institution of the imperial house were preserved,
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told the Americans two very important things.

In the first place, these exchanges showed that the subject of surrender
was actually under discussion in Tokyo, an entirely new feature of the situation. Secondly, they demonstrated that so far the advocates of continuing the war were winning out over those who were prepared to surrender, but they might not always be able to do so. Perhaps the blows of atomic bombs and of Soviet entrance into the war could swing the balance to the faction which urged surrender.

Sato’s repeated advocacy of a new meeting of the Japanese Governing Council in the presence of the Emperor, in response to Tokyo’s assertion of unanimity, including the Emperor, in opposition to surrender, only accentuated these two points and stressed the significance of still another issue: the role of the Emperor in any surrender.
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A personal intervention of the Emperor would be needed to control the advocates of continued fighting in Tokyo and to assure obedience to any orders to surrender by the huge Japanese forces still in the field on and off the mainland of Asia as well as in the home islands.
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There was, under these circumstances, agitated discussion in the highest levels of the United States government of two closely related issues. First, should the call for unconditional surrender be accompanied by some assurance to Japan about the retention of the imperial system; and, second, should there be some public call for Japan to surrender now rather than face total destruction and defeat later, possibly including a reference to the new weapon. There was no agreement on the issue of the Emperor, though increasingly there was a sense that a new Japan could keep a constitutional monarchy if the people so chose, and in the meantime the Emperor under Allied control could effectively end hostilities in the home islands and throughout the areas still controlled by Japanese forces. President Truman had issued a call for Japan’s surrender combined with some reassurances on May 8;
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there had been no response, but he was leaning toward a new public statement. However, he wanted to postpone that until the atomic bomb test scheduled for mid-July showed that the weapon was almost certainly going to work and until the call for Japan’s surrender could be issued from Potsdam-the old center of Prussian power, now the meeting place of the Allies who had triumphed over Germany. Perhaps the Japanese would draw the obvious conclusion from Germany’s fate.
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In the days that Truman and other American leaders prepared to go to the Potsdam conference, the materials for two atomic bombs were sent to Tinian in the Marianas, and the test site in New Mexico was prepared. While the Americans were operating on the assumption that the atomic bombs would be used to try to shock Japan into surrender, the final order had been deferred for a decision by the President.
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Even before the American decision, the British government had formally
given its approval for the new weapon’s use.
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Two weeks later, on July 15, the test of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert showed that the weapon was even more terrible than anticipated.
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Now was the time, in the President’s opinion, both to notify Stalin of the successful test and to issue a warning to the Japanese. The former step was a simple one; since Truman knew of Soviet atomic espionage and assumed that they were working on a bomb themselves, this would only confirm the fact that weapons could now be produced. Stalin merely expressed the hope that the weapon would soon be used on the Japanese. As for the warning to the Japanese to surrender before they were destroyed, that could now be issued in the knowledge that, if they refused, the new weapon could and would be used.

While the military planners at Potsdam therefore agreed on future operations against Japan, with Stalin even agreeing to the establishment of American weather stations in the Soviet Far East,
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the highest commanders present at the conference knew or were now informed that there was a possibility that Japan would surrender before Olympic and Zipper, scheduled for November and December of that year, had to be launched.
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The Potsdam Declaration combined a call for unconditional surrender with extensive assurances about Japan’s future. Designed to appeal to the peace faction in the Japanese government, the document was based on the prior drafts discussed in Washington and assuring a future for a peaceful Japan which could eventually pick its own government. The imperial system was not mentioned, but the implication of its possible retention was clearly there, and the document was so read in Tokyo.

In the internal debates in the Japanese government, the advocates of acceptance did not as yet include the Prime Minister, so that the official pronouncement rejected the Potsdam Declaration. That declaration had been joined in by the Chinese Nationalists who were involved in negotiations with the Soviet Union about the concessions Russia wanted before entering the Pacific War and supporting Chiang Kai-shek
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The Japanese therefore knew that they faced the combined views and power of the United States, British, and Chinese governments at a time when these were in conference with the Soviet Union. The Japanese government was also being urged to accept the Potsdam terms through their contacts in Switzerland with the American Office of Strategic Services;
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but they were unwilling to accept the Potsdam terms and so announced in public.

The Americans waited a few days to see whether there were second thoughts in Tokyo;
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the President then gave the orders to go ahead
with the atomic bombs. Both bombs then available were to be dropped a few days apart on a schedule determined by weather conditions and with the intent of fooling the Japanese into thinking that the United States had an indefinite supply which could be unloaded on the home islands. The reality was quite different. There was only one more near to being ready, and others would follow quite slowly,
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but the hope was that the shock of seeing done with one bomb what up to that time had required hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs (in raids on Germany since 1943 and on Japan since March 1945) might tilt the balance within the Japanese government to the advocates of surrender.
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The first of the bombs was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, causing enormous damage in the center of the city, killing fifty to eighty thousand people and wounding an equal number. An official announcement from Washington explained what had happened; now it was expected that the Japanese would understand what was meant by the total destruction promised them if they did not surrender.
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The internal debates in the Japanese government continued. The Emperor had on june 26 called on the government to find a way to end the war, but the opponents of surrender both urged delay until the latest approach to the Soviet Union had been answered and also held to their original position on the basic issue. If the strategy of awaiting the American invasion was sound, if the expectation of inflicting very heavy casualties on the invader was realized, and this in turn offered a hope of a negotiated settlement, then the question of whether tens of thousands died in “conventional” air raids or as a result of the new weapon made little difference. The Minister of War and the Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff still wished to continue the struggle.

The Japanese received their answer from the Soviet Union on August 8: it was a declaration of war followed immediately by an attack in very great force on the Japanese army in Manchuria.
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This was a significant double blow to the Japanese. Their military intelligence had misled them as to the timing of a likely Soviet attack; it was assumed that there was much more time available to prepare for this invasion.
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On the political and diplomatic side, the blow was in some ways even more serious. In spite of all signs to the contrary, there had still been hopes in Tokyo that the Soviet Union would remain neutral and either act as an intermediary in negotiations for peace terms with the Western Powers or, if assured of sufficient concessions by Japan, might even join Japan. In spite of all the warnings from the ambassador in Moscow, such illusions still flourished in Japanese government circles in the summer of 1945; the Soviet declaration of war, therefore, came as an all the more effective
psychological blow. Before any detailed news on the advance of the Red Army in Manchuria could reach Tokyo, word was received of the second atomic bomb’s dropping on Nagasaki.

Originally destined for another target, the Nagasaki bomb was actually more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, but primarily because of local terrain features caused less destruction and fewer casualties than the earlier one. It is, however, doubtful whether such details were known in Tokyo at the time or would have made any difference. The key point was that the atomic bombs were falling, that one plane with one bomb could now accomplish the effect of hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs at a time when the Americans were known to the Japanese to have enormous numbers of planes. At an Imperial Council held in the night of August 9–10, the equal division of the Council, three for surrender against three for continued war, was broken by the Emperor personally. For the first time since a prior Emperor had intervened in 1895 (to obtain the yielding of the Japanese government to an ultimatum from European powers to change the peace terms a victorious Japan had then imposed on a defeated China), the Emperor took a personal role when the government was divided rather than simply giving his sanction when presented with a previously agreed upon policy; he ordered the Japanese government to accept the Potsdam terms.
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The Japanese surrender offer which followed included a reservation on the status of the imperial system. Two critical issues now remained to be resolved if the war were to end promptly: first, the Japanese government had to remain in power in the face of those in the Japanese military who objected to ending the war, and, second, the Allies in general and the Americans in particular had to decide how to handle the question of the retention of the Emperor.

One side of this puzzle was whether the victims of Japanese aggression would agree to the retention of the imperial system.
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The subject had been debated at length within the American government. Secretary of War Stimson and Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew, who had served as ambassador to Japan, urged a concession on this issue. The new Secretary of State, James Byrnes, and Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson as well as most of the more liberal members of the administration were opposed. Public opinion in the United States was in general also opposed, as were the articulate organizations of the American left who, perhaps mindful of the deal with Darlan in November 1942, wanted no concessions to the old order in Japan and urged the dropping of additional atomic bombs instead. The imperial system had produced war before and might well do so again.

President Truman, who appears to have leaned in the direction of
allowing retention, approved a compromise response which implicitly accepted the imperial system by referring to the Emperor’s authority being “subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers,”
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with the Japanese people promised that they could establish their own form of government. Truman also ordered a suspension in the dropping of atomic bombs but had the conventional bombing continued to pressure the Japanese into acceptance.

The Americans obtained the reluctant agreement of the Soviet Union and China to this answer while agreeing to a very sensible British proposal that the Emperor be required to instruct
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to sign the surrender rather than sign it himself. Now came the question of whether the Tokyo government could accept this wording and remain in power.

The opponents of surrender claimed that the provision that the people of Japan would be free to decide on their future form of government was incompatible with Japan’s basic system. Once again the Emperor had to intervene personally in an evenly divided Council and insist on acceptance of these terms. He would make a broadcast to the people of Japan explaining the necessity of ending the war.

Inside Japan, the opponents of the course ordered by the Emperor made a major effort to reverse the decision to accept the Potsdam declaration. Military figures in key positions in the capital tried to kill their opponents, seize and destroy the recording with the Emperor’s broadcast to the people of Japan, and take over power with the intention of continuing in the war. A full scholarly examination of this last in a long series of military coups in modern Japan is not available in any Western language, but what is known appears to show that the coup failed primarily because the Minister of War, General Anami Korechika, refused to support the plotters.
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Himself an advocate of continued fighting, Anami was, on the other hand, not prepared to defy the orders of the Emperor repeatedly and personally expressed in his presence. He committed suicide in this dilemma, and the plotters failed in their attempt to overthrow the government. It was a close call, and in a way shows that the earlier fears of the peace advocates within the government, that any open move to end the war could lead to a coup which would prolong rather than shorten the conflict, was warranted. But the Emperor, who had assured himself of backing from the imperial family, was able to assert his will against those who still refused to contemplate surrender.

There were now two further issues remaining: the formalities of surrender as a prelude to the occupation of the home islands of Japan, and the surrender of the vast Japanese garrisons remaining on the mainland of Asia and on islands scattered over the South Pacific and off the coast
of Southeast Asia. Over a period of a month, both of these matters were resolved. In spite of tense moments, the surrender process moved forward without major problems. With imperial princes sent out from Tokyo, the Japanese commanders in the various garrisons were persuaded to lay down their arms. A series of local surrenders made prisoners of war of the 5,400,000 men remaining in the Japanese army and an added 1,800,000 in the navy.
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Certainly Allied soldiers everywhere were ecstatic at the prospect of not having to kill every one of these soldiers with great losses to themselves as had once looked all too likely.
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Furthermore, the surrender obviated Japanese plans to slaughter Allied prisoners of war as fighting approached the camps where they were held, a project for which considerable preparations had evidently been made, to the horror of prisoners who had already suffered enormously.
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