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.

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 nuclear attacks on Japan, or if Japan would have surrendered had strategic bombing] and naval blockade had continued.

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, Koisi Kuniaki.

February 1945

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.

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.

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.'"