Yesterday I wrote a diary about the bombing of Hiroshima and the end of the Second World War. In it I pointed out that many of the standard arguments put forth by revisionist historians are simply myths and that they were originally concocted by right-wing Americans in an attempt to discredit the Truman administration.
There were a number of comments on the diary, some supportive, many critical, and a few that were both. First, I would like to thank all of those who took the time to read, think about and respond to what I wrote. Second, I would like to address some of the criticism directed toward what I wrote.
A number of posters questioned whether my assertion that Japan was not close to surrender was accurate. Others questioned whether the bomb was aimed more at the Japanese (with whom we were at war) or at the Soviets (with whom we were not). Since the latter criticism depends on the first (the Soviets could only have been a bigger concern than Japan if American leaders had regarded the war with Japan as essentially over) I will deal with that criticism in this diary.
The idea that Japan was close to surrender has gained a great deal of currency in the years since the end of the war. Part of the reason for this comes from the fact that Japan appeared to be so thoroughly beaten when the first Americans landed in the country that they could not imagine that the people had the capacity to fight even another day. These impressions, together with postwar politics came to color the opinions of some prominent Allied leaders, especially in regard to the necessity of the use of the atomic bomb.
However, the far more cogent arguments concerning Japan’s willingness to surrender come from conclusions drawn about Japanese diplomatic activity in the summer of 1945. This activity provides the background for many revisionist arguments that Japan was on the verge of surrender and that the United States knew it. It was primarily of two kinds. First, there were various informal feelers put out by well-placed Japanese in neutral capitals in Europe who sought to begin the process of war termination. None of these had any formal sanction whatsoever and were rejected, rightly, by American intelligence as being little more than "peace entrepreneurs."
The second, far more serious effort was in the mission that the Japanese government had agreed to send to the Soviet Union. This mission was to be headed by former prime minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro, who was to be sent as the Emperor’s personal envoy to seek the good offices of the Soviet Union in ending the war. While on the surface, this may have seemed promising, Allied leaders knew of the mission and they knew that it was as good as meaningless.
In point of fact, Konoe was to have no mandate when he went to the Soviet Union. The "doves" within the government wanted to send him in order that he could begin to explore terms for ending the war, terms which Togo Shigenori, the leading "dove" in the government, instructed Sato Naotake, Japan’s ambassador to Moscow, were to be "nothing like unconditional surrender." These words, words which were intercepted and decoded by American intelligence, were those of the single most active proponent for peace in the Japanese government. The others of the "Big Six," on the Supreme War Council agreed to send Konoe with the understanding that he would do three things: 1. Seek Soviet belligerence on Japan’s side, 2. Failing that seek a benevolent neutrality in which the Soviet Union would supply Japan with needed war materiel in exchange for token territorial concessions, and 3, failing in the first two objectives insure that the Soviet Union stay out of the war. Thus the whole of this effort amounted to sending an envoy to a (then) neutral country with no clear idea of how to proceed and confused, if not contradictory objectives.
At this time Ambassador Sato informed Togo that the Soviets would not agree to accept an ambassador without a more specific mission. He also told his superior, in a cable which American listening stations intercepted and decoded, that the allies would only accept an unconditional surrender or conditions closely approximating such. At this point he suggested that Japan offer to accept surrender with the sole condition that it be allowed to keep its "kokutai." This word, often inelegantly translated as "national polity" has no precise equivalent in English. Part of the reason for this is that it has no precise meaning in Japanese. Ignorant western historians, particularly those in the atomic bomb revisionist camp, have often asserted that it meant simply "keeping the emperor." It did not. It was one of those elastic political phrases that had, by the end of the war, come to have almost mystic connotations. The thorny problem of rendering it articulate would cause considerable trouble for those who sought to end hostilities even after the bombs had been dropped and the Soviets had entered the war.
Linguistic and cultural complexities notwithstanding, the point here is that Sato specifically suggested keeping the "kokutai" as a condition for surrender. Togo unequivocally rejected this. He noted that it went without saying that the preservation of the "kokutai" was a must but that he was interested in "nothing like an unconditional surrender." This testy exchange, which American intelligence knew all about, is of great importance. It shows that the single most pacifically inclined of the six members of the Supreme War Council was adamantly opposed to ceasing hostilities on anything approaching terms the Americans would find acceptable. Moreover, they knew this AT THE TIME. In addition to this, three members of the council wanted to send Konoe not in order to make peace, but rather to explore the possibility of procuring Soviet assistance AGAINST the allies.
Given these conditions, even the most ardent dove and gifted politician could have made no substantial progress toward ending hostilities. Konoe was neither of these things. He was a weak an ineffectual leader who admired the Nazis (he once attended a costume party dressed as Hitler) and caved into the military whenever he was challenged. Konoe, who was prime minister at the outbreak of the war with China, later explained his decision to take a hard line against Chiang thus: "I was so eager to do away with friction and conflict within Japan that I acceded to the demands of the national renovationists as much as I could." This was hardly the kind of person who would show bold leadership to end the war. Konoe’s mission was a fool’s errand and everyone but Togo, and perhaps Konoe himself, knew it.
As to what sort of terms Konoe might have offered had he been a bolder sort, one need only look at the conditions debated by the Supreme War Council on August 10, AFTER both bombs had been dropped and the Soviets had entered the war on the American side.
The War Council split on the question of what to do. Togo had persuaded Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro and Navy Minister Yonai Mitsumasa to support his plan: accepting the Potsdam Proclamation with the sole condition that the "kokutai" be maintained, the plan that he himself had forcefully rejected in his earlier exchange with Sato. Opposed to these three were the hard-liners: Army Chief of Staff Umezu Yoshijiro, Navy Chief of Staff Toyoda Soemu and Army Minister Anami Korechika. This hard-line faction suggested that the Allies be presented with four conditions: that the "kokutai" would be preserved, that there would be no occupation of Japanese territory, that Japan would be entrusted with disarming itself, and that Japan would bear sole responsibility for the prosecution and trying of its own war criminals. Here the council deadlocked, and the hard-liners must have been happy with this, figuring that no decision was a decision in favor of the status quo, that is continued belligerence.
However, Suzuki was holding an ace up his sleeve and he played it well. By prior consultation with the Court, he had arranged for the possibility of bringing the matter before the Emperor. He thus announced that the Council was deadlocked and that the issue would have to be taken before the Emperor and the full cabinet. At that meeting Hirohito heard both sides of the argument and politely, but forcefully came down on the side of the peace faction: the only condition would be the maintenance of the "kokutai." That left the problem of deciding exactly what the "kokutai" was.
Here Togo proposed that a note be drafted that told the Allies that the government of Japan agreed to the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation with the understanding that the said proclamation did not in any way affect the position of the emperor under the nation’s laws. The hard-line nationalists at the meeting could not accept this formulation because it implied that the mystical emperor, who was coeval with both the heavens and the Japanese people, was merely a constitutional monarch subject to laws made by men. Baron Hiranuma asserted that a better formulation would be that the said proclamation did not in any way prejudice "his majesty’s prerogatives as a sovereign ruler." This was the version that was sent to the Allies.
Many revisionist historians, grossly ignorant of Japanese political history, have asserted that this was nothing more than them trying to keep the emperor. That is total nonsense. Iokibe Makoto, one of Japan’s leading historians on the subject and the current President of its Self-Defense Forces Academy, has called Hiranuma’s formulation a "greybeard’s guile." If accepted, it would have essentially negated all Allied war aims with a single phrase contained in a binding international agreement. Setting aside for the moment the fact that Hiranuma’s formulation was an explicit rejection of the notion of popular sovereignty, both the strong Hiranuma reservation and the weak Togo reservation would have preserved the constitution of the Empire of Japan more or less as it was. This constitution was drafted in such a manner that it specifically thwarted civilian control over the military, popular sovereignty, natural rights, an independent judiciary, or any of the other institutions of government that Americans see as essential to maintaining the liberty of the people and thus insuring that they control both their government and their military. That is to say that it would have allowed Japan to maintain the system of government (or more accurately of misrule) that had allowed the military to dominate the civilian organs of government and lead the nation on the road to conquest in the first place.
This fact was instantly recognized by Eugene Dooman and Joseph Ballantine, arguably the most pro-Japanese of State Department experts. Ballantine rejected the Japanese note out of hand, asserting, "We can’t agree to that, because the prerogatives of the emperor include everything, and if you agree to that, you’re going to have endless struggle with the Japanese."
On the advice of these two men Secretary of State James Byrnes recommended against accepting the Japanese provision. With the help of his assistants he drafted a reply that unequivocally rejected Japan’s demand while simultaneously implying the continued existence of the emperor and government of Japan. The reply ("From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the 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. . . .") made clear that all power would rest with the Supreme Commander. This was very clear to all in Japan, so clear in fact that the peace faction in the Foreign Ministry had to take to deliberately mistranslating the reply so that the words "subject to" were replaced by the far weaker "circumscribed by". The Army, however, produced its own, accurate, translation, correctly noted that the reply was a complete rejection of Japan’s minimum condition and demanded that the war be continued as the cabinet had previously agreed.
Only a second intervention by Hirohito ended the debate in favor of surrender.
That said, the government now faced the task of enforcing its decision. The simple fact was that no one, not even the militarists, had control of the army and no one knew how it would react. No one knew whether individual units or commanders would simply regard the surrender command as a trick by the evil counselors that had surrounded the Emperor. It order to forestall this possibility Hirohito, on the advice of his intimates, took the unprecedented step of recording a surrender broadcast himself, on the assumption that it would be next to impossible to reject the words if they came from the emperor’s own lips.
However, the story did not end there. On the night before the surrender broadcast a pitched battle was fought on the grounds of the Imperial Palace as hard-liners attempted to take over the palace and seize the recording of the Emperor announcing the acceptance of the Allied terms. Violence erupted throughout Tokyo. Both the Prime Minister’s official residence and his private home were attacked, captured and destroyed by die-hard incendiaries. Two days before MacArthur was scheduled to land at Atsugi Air Base, another pitched battle raged between the die-hards and those that sought to effect the surrender peacefully. Suzuki resigned after pushing through the decision to surrender and the new PM, Imperial Prince Higashikuni, was chosen specifically because it was felt that his Imperial blood and his ties with the military made him the only man capable of getting the Army to actually lay down its weapons. Hirohito’s brothers had to be dispatched to the armies in Asia to get them to cease hostilities. All of this occurred after the atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war, and the Emperor’s announcement of his "sacred decision" to cease hostilities.
Japan was nowhere close to surrender prior to the use of the atomic bomb and barely managed to pull it off even AFTER both bombs and the Soviet intervention. Had it not been for these things it is likely that no one in the Japanese government would have ever been able to muster the political will and political capital to force the army to lay down its arms.
Significantly, this was exactly the judgment of those involved in the actual events. Prime Minister Suzuki later asserted that the country was fully committed to continuing the war and was moving apace to make preparations to meet the expected invasion before the bombing of Hiroshima. After that, he said, it was obvious that an enemy in possession of such a weapon would have no need to invade. Navy Minister Yonai privately referred to the bombings and Soviet belligerence as "gifts from the gods." Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Hirohito’s closest confidante, Kido Koichi said they were "useful elements for making things go smoothly." Chief Cabinet Secretary Sakomizu Hisatsune, one of the primary strategists and plotters of the peace faction, and a man whose outright deception of his superiors kept the chance for peace alive, asserted that they were nothing less than a "golden opportunity sent by Heaven."
The reason that these men, all of them from the peace faction, could use such terms to describe the hellfires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that they knew what many today refuse to face: the atomic bombs and the intervention of the Soviet Union might very well have saved Japan’s national existence. The hard-liners in the Army were hell-bent on resistance to the bitter end and their hold on power within the country was becoming stronger rather than weaker with the deterioration of the military situation. Without the twin shocks of the atomic bombs and the Soviet intervention, those in the peace faction might never have gotten enough control to push through and enforce a surrender.
The record is clear and the conclusions to be drawn from it are as inevitable as they are incontrovertible. Japan was nowhere close to surrender before Hiroshima.