Surrender of Japan

The surrender of Japan ended World War Two in the Pacific, but getting to that endpoint was no simple process. There were Japanese factions quite prepared to fight to national death, until the unprecedented direct intervention of Emperor Hirohito in the decision process.

Policy issues

An utterly critical point, although for different reasons to the different sides, was the demand for "unconditional surrender". Franklin D. Roosevelt suggested he had used it informally, but it had been discussed before it became public, if not fully staffed. Roosevelt may well not have considered the military implications of the phrase to the Japanese, and to a lesser extent, the Germans.

Had Japan not surrendered, the U.S. was preparing the Operation DOWNFALL invasions, the Japanese response to which were in the Operation KETSU-GO plans. It remains controversial if Hirohito would have intervened without the surprises of the nuclear attacks on Japan or the Soviet attack on Japan, or both. Alternatively, others believe Japan would have surrendered had strategic bombing and naval blockade had continued.

It was the opinion of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey that "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. " This is a reflective analysis, however, that uses Japanese materials not available to the Truman Administration, and which was done after some significant linguistic problems in diplomatic communications were resolved.

This article does not purport to determine if Truman made the best decision, with the information available at the time, to use nuclear weapons. It also does not make value judgments on broader political considerations, both U.S. domestic and in dealing with the Soviet Union.

Chronology

February 1944

A study group, headed by Rear Admiral Sokichi Takagi of the Imperial Japanese Navy general staff, raised misgivings about the outcome of the war.

July 1944

The Battle of Saipan ended on 7 July, bringing the Home Islands into B-29, Hirohito first told the military to recapture it, having said to the Prime Minister of Japan, Hideki Tojo on June 17, "If we ever lose Saipan, repeated air attacks on Tokyo will follow. No matter what it takes, we have to hold there.

Hirohito thought the battle was costly enough that a new Prime Minister might encourage an American peace proposal. He withdrew support from Tojo and replaced him with a covert operations specialist, Kuniaki Koiso.

August 1944

The Koiso government, on 5 August, formed the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, or Inner Cabinet. Its "announced purpose of the Council was "to formulate a fundamental policy for directing the war and to adjust the harmonization of the combined strategy for politics and war". It comprised six regular members--the Premier, Foreign Minister, Army Minister, Navy Minister, Army Chief of Staff, and Navy Chief of Staff--who could, however, bring in any other Cabinet minister as a regular member when necessary. In addition, the two deputy chiefs of staff attended meetings but did not vote, and the Council had a secretariat."

February 1945

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said that the Emperor had a series of interviews with the senior statesmen whose consensus was that Japan faced certain defeat and should seek peace at once. Forrest Morgan wrote that he could find no historian that confirmed this and it did not match the Chamberlain's notes.

Japanese discussion

Just before the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima and six weeks before the Battle of Okinawa, Hirohito met with former Lord Privy Seal Nobuaki Makino, and six former prime ministers — Kiichi Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Reijiro Wakatsuki, Keisuke Okada and Fumimaro Konoe. They recommended continuing the war; Hiranuma and Hirota specifically mentioned fighting to the end while others suggesting finding an opportune moment.

On February 14, Konoe urged the Emperor to sue for peace quickly, before what he regarded as the greatest threat, the Soviet Union and Communism. He saw that the Emperor and Kid were indirectly encouraging the communization of Japan, by supporting the generals of the Control Faction.

Yalta Conference

At the Yalta Conference, Joseph Stalin presented his demands, accepted by Franklin D. Roosevelt on 8 February, for committing troops to the war with Japan, sovereignty over the Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin. Roosevelt also agreed, without consulting China, to China leasing Port Arthur to the Soviet Union, granting access to Dalian, control of the Southern Manchurian Railway, and recognition of de facto Soviet sovereignty over Outer Mongolia.

March 1945

Rear Admiral Sokichi Takagi would warn, just before the fall of Iwo Jima in March 1945, that Tokyo would become "a battleground in a month." Indeed, the first major night incendiary raid hit Tokyo on the 9th and 10th, destroying approximately 40 percent of the city and killing 80 to 100,000 people.

James Forrestal, the U.S. Secretary of War, approved a psychological warfare proposal from Captain Ellis Zacharias, U.S. Navy, to encourage a peace faction.

April 1945

Hirohito stopped supporting Koiso, blaming him for military defeats, and called for Suzuki to lead a new government. One of the Emperor's concerns with Koiso is that he had been trying to negotiate peace in China through an intermediary not in the government.

The Imperial Japanese Navy made its final surface sortie on April 7, sending a surface action group centered on IJN Yamato. The ships were sunk long before they reached Okinawa, which they were, in theory, to support. The one-way force actually had no chance of affecting the battle, and, at best, was a last honor gesture by the IJN.

Entitled "Defeat of Japan by Blockade and Bombardment", a paper from the Joint Intelligence Staff (JIS) would render the Imperial Japanese Navy "impotent", "virtually neutralize" Japanese air forces, reduce Imperial Japanese Army combat endurance to "only a few months", but, even though

Probably all will agree that such operations if kept up long enough will inevitably produce, at some future data, unconditional surrender of whatever might remain of Japan's economy and the Japanese people, but estimates with respect to the time element vary from a few months to a great many years.

The JIS reemphasized that an essential to Japanese capitulation before the end of 1945 required clarification of the doctrine of unconditional surrender.

Even as George C. Marshall urged direct invasion, he was working with Henry Stimson and Joseph Grew to find a way to change the unconditional surrender policy.

May 1945

Japanese-Soviet interactions

War Minister Korechika Anami had suggested exchanging some Japanese cruisers for Soviet oil and aircraft, and encouraging the Soviets to maintain neutrality. It is unclear which cruisers, in reasonable conditions, he had in mind.

Stalin told Harry Hopkins, in Moscow on the 29th, that the Soviets would be ready to invade Manchuria on or about 8 August, depending on weather conditions.

Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov received Ambassador Sato on 29 May, and told him that nothing had happened at Yalta that should alarm Japan, and said that the Soviet abrogation of the 1941 nonaggression pact was a formality. Sato appeared to believe him, although the U.S. MAGIC commentary on Sato's report to Tokyo was "[T]he meeting leaves a mental picture of a mastiff who also knows where the bone is buried."

Zacharias broadcasts

On May 8, shortly after President Harry Truman's announcement of the end of the war in Europe, Zacharias, identifying himself as the "official spokesman of the U.S. Government," delivered the first in a series of 18 radio broadcasts to the Japanese leadership explaining the concept of unconditional surrender. Zacharias emphasized that unconditional surrender was a military term signifying "the cessation of resistance and the yielding of arms."

Office of War Information personnel observed that "these messages produced much positive reaction in the general population of Japan and in several instances exhortations warning the Japanese people against the broadcasts have been intercepted by the Federal Communications Commission." A later report stated that Prince Takamatsu, brother of the emperor, and other top Japanese officials believed that the broadcasts "provided the ammunition needed by the peace party to win out against those who wanted to continue the war to the bitter end."

June 1945

Hirohito held a June 22 meeting with Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki, War Minister Korechika Anami, the Foreign Minister, Navy Minister, and Chiefs of Staff of the Army and the Navy. He asked "Isn't it time for you to consider ways to bring this war to an end?" Prince Konoye, as a result, was sent as an emissary to Joseph Stalin, who, without telling the Japanese, sent the message to the Potsdam Conference, then in session.

July 1945

The Potsdam Declaration of 26 July stated the Allied terms for Japanese surrender, but the document was unclear on what would be the single most important issue to the Japanese: preservation of the Throne as the symbol of kokutai, the national identity.

First response to Potsdam Declaration

Linguistic ambiguity drastically confused the situation. In December 1941, the Japanese government misunderstood a memorandum from U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to be requiring Japanese withdrawal from China and Manchuria, when China alone was meant, and the war was a result. In this case, the Japanese used the word mokusatsu in their broadcast response to the Declaration. This word means "to kill with silence", but an alternate translation is to give deep study to the matter. Tokyo radio used the word, saying the government would mokusatsu the declaration and fight on. According to an authorized biography of Harry S. Truman, "The English translation became "reject," and the president took it as a rebuff. Years later he remembered, 'When we asked them to surrender at Potsdam, they gave us a very snotty answer. That is what I got. . . . They told me to go to hell, words to that effect.'"

Zacharias claims

Zacharias wrote that his 21 July broadcast had used the words, "Shokun ga go-zonji no tori, Taiseiyo Seiyaku oyobi Cairo Fukoku wa Bei seisaku no kongen to natte orimas.", or, in the official translation, "As you know, the Atlantic Charter and the Cairo Declaration are the sources of American policy." In the article, he said that these eighteen words "now conceded by the Nipponese to have had a vital perhaps decisive role in ending the war." He explained that he had been influencing a peace faction of "Admiral Suzuki, a confidant of the Emperor; Navy Minister Yonai, representing the whole Navy clique; General Umezu, chief of the Imperial General Staff and leader of the dissidents within the Army; Shigenori Togo, Japan's Foreign Minister at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack; Baron Kiichi Hiranuma, president of the Privy Council, and General Shigeru Hasunuma, chief aide-de-camp to the Emperor. The composition of this group was significant. These men had the support of the throne and also certain foreign contacts which enabled them to put out a series of peace feelers in Bern, Switzerland, and in Rome, Italy." His claims, in hindsight, were somewhat suspect. Umezu was not part of the peace faction, only agreeing to it after the Emperor's intervention.

"By suggesting that the Japanese could obtain surrender terms according to the Atlantic Charter, he had ignored the President's order not to state that the emperor would be retained....Almost immediately, the Navy forbade Zacharias from making any further broadcasts to Japan unless he was detailed to the Office of War Information (OWI), which was done", on the grounds that his mission had become diplomatic rather than military. By July 26, he had been stripped of his "official spokesman" status and reassigned to OWI.

Preparations for nuclear attack

Nuclear weapons were ready on Tinian by mid-July. The decision on where and when to use the weapons had been delegated to the field commander. Given the need for the military to prepare the operation, the effective order was issued by President Truman on 25 July, before the Potsdam Declaration.

In orders issued on 25 July and approved by Stimson and Marshall, Spaatz was ordered to drop the "first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki." He was instructed also to deliver a copy of this order personally to MacArthur and Nimitz. Weather was the critical factor because the bomb had to be dropped by visual means, and Spaatz delegated to his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, the job of deciding when the weather was right for this most important mission.

August 1945

During this period, the nuclear attacks should not be taken in isolation. Bombing by carrier and long-range aircraft continued. Naval warfare continued to destroy shipping among the home islands.

Bombing of Hiroshima

The Potsdam Declaration had included a warning that must surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction." No other more specific warning was given of the nuclear attacks. Hiroshima was bombed on 6 August, and Truman's announcement

Soviet Union enters the war

The Soviets abrogated their nonaggression treaty and invaded Manchuria on the 8th.

Acceptance of the Potsdam terms

At the conclusive Imperial conference, on the night of 9-10 August, the Supreme War Direction Council still split three-to-three. It was necessary for the Emperor finally to repeat his desire for acceptance of the Potsdam terms.

Hirohito called a conference, on the 12th, of all the Imperial princes, to enlist their support.

A response was sent to the Allies, accepting the Potsdam terms with the caveat that the Throne would be preserved. The Allies sent their acceptance on August 12.

Voice of the Crane

The "voice of the crane" is a traditional and respectful term for the actual words of the Emperor. Hirohito did not make radio broadcasts, so few had heard it. Even when he did, he spoke in a Court dialect intelligible to few.

Formal surrender

On the deck of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), selected because President Truman's home was the state of Missouri, the formal surrender documents were signed on 2 September. Douglas MacArthur presided for the Allies and Chester W. Nimitz for the U.S. He opened the proceeding with the words:

The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor it is for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to the higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are to serve, committing all our people unreservedly to higher compliance.