Surrender of Japan

• 1. Introduction

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  At 8:15 in the morning on the 6th of August 1945, a single aircraft released a single bomb over Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, President Harry S. Truman went on the air to promise Japan "a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." Three days after that, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. And still, Japan did not immediately surrender.

  What followed in the next two weeks was one of the most consequential political crises in modern history. Emperor Hirohito recorded his surrender address on a gramophone record that had to be physically smuggled out of the Imperial Palace to prevent it from being destroyed. Army officers staged a coup attempt inside the palace walls in the middle of the night. The "Big Six" -- Japan's six most powerful leaders -- deadlocked on whether to accept the Allied terms, even as more than 1,000 American bombers pounded the country around the clock.

  The formal end of World War II would not come until the 2nd of September 1945, when Japanese officials signed the instrument of surrender aboard a U.S. Navy battleship. But the road to that moment wound through secret diplomacy, atomic destruction, Soviet betrayal, and an emperor who finally decided to speak.

• 2. Japan on the Brink

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  By the summer of 1945, the Empire of Japan had been losing the war for nearly two years. The fall of Saipan in July 1944 cost Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo his position. His replacement, General Kuniaki Koiso, declared the Philippines would be the site of the decisive battle -- and then lost the Philippines too, forcing another leadership change.

  The economic picture was equally grim. Allied submarines and aerial mining had largely destroyed Japan's merchant fleet. With almost no natural resources of its own, Japan depended on imports for coal, oil, iron, and rubber. By 1945, production of those vital supplies had fallen to a fraction of prewar levels.

  The Imperial Japanese Navy had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force. After a series of raids on the shipyard at Kure, the only major warships in any fighting condition were six aircraft carriers, four cruisers, and one battleship -- most heavily damaged, none adequately fueled.

  Faced with this reality, Japan's military planners devised Operation Ketsugō: an all-out defense of the southernmost home island of Kyushu. The plan was radical. Rather than a deep defensive line, every resource would be staked at the beachhead. More than 3,000 kamikazes would strike the Allied amphibious transports before troops could land. If that failed, another 3,500 kamikazes, 5,000 Shin'yo suicide motorboats, and the remaining destroyers and submarines -- described as "the last of the Navy's operating fleet" -- would follow. The entire strategy, however, rested on a single assumption: that the Soviet Union would remain neutral.

• 3. The Big Six and Haragei

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  Japan's wartime decisions ran through the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, known simply as the "Big Six." Created in 1944, it comprised the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Army and Navy ministers, and the two military chiefs of staff. Their identities mattered: Admiral Kantaro Suzuki as Prime Minister, General Korechika Anami as Army minister, and Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo -- who alone among the six consistently pushed for a rapid end to the war.

  The political structure was designed to give the military near-veto power over any government. Japanese civil law from 1936 required that the Army and Navy ministers be active-duty officers. Military law allowed service headquarters to rescind an officer's permission to hold political office at any time. In practice, this meant the Army and Navy could bring down any government they disliked simply by ordering their ministers to resign.

  Suzuki's true intentions have been debated ever since. After the war, he and other officials claimed they had been secretly working toward peace all along, concealing their real aims through the concept of haragei -- roughly translated as "the art of hidden and invisible technique." But historian Robert J. C. Butow wrote sharply that haragei's very ambiguity "invites the suspicion that a conscious reliance upon this art of bluff may have constituted a purposeful deception predicated upon a desire to play both ends against the middle."

  What is clear is that by late June 1945, the Emperor himself had lost confidence in military victory. He told the Big Six directly: "I desire that concrete plans to end the war, unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied." Marquis Koichi Kido, the Emperor's confidant, had already warned in a June memorandum that Japan could not "be sure we will not share the fate of Germany" if the war continued. His peace proposal, however, did not contemplate Allied occupation, prosecution of war criminals, or relinquishing territories acquired before 1937.

• 4. Stalin's Double Game

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  Japan's best hope for a negotiated peace, in the view of its leadership, was the Soviet Union. Moscow had signed a five-year Neutrality Pact with Japan in 1941, and Japan's "peace" camp believed Stalin could be persuaded to broker favorable terms with the United States and Britain.

  What the Japanese did not know was that Stalin had already committed, at both the Tehran Conference in late 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, to entering the war against Japan within three months of Germany's defeat. The United States had made substantial concessions to secure that promise. While Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and ambassador Yakov Malik went to great lengths to assure the Japanese that the Neutrality Pact remained valid, Soviet forces were quietly transferring battle-hardened divisions from the European theatre to the Far East.

  On the 5th of April, the Soviet Union gave formal notice it would not renew the Neutrality Pact when it expired in 1946. Even this alarmed the Japanese, though Molotov's reassurances dampened the reaction.

  Japanese ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow understood the reality far better than his superiors in Tokyo. On the 30th of July, he wrote bluntly: "There is no alternative but immediate unconditional surrender if we are to prevent Russia's participation in the war." His warnings went unheeded. Soviet secondary objectives beyond Manchuria included leases for the Chinese Eastern Railway, Port Arthur, and Dairen -- and, potentially, an invasion of Hokkaido itself, beginning with a landing at Rumoi. The 5th Area Army assigned to defend Hokkaido was under strength at just two divisions and two brigades, and the Soviet plan called for attacking from the west, where Japanese defenses were thin.

• 5. Potsdam and Mokusatsu

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  The Allied leaders met at Potsdam from the 16th of July to the 2nd of August 1945. Truman learned of the successful Trinity nuclear test on the first day of the conference and shared the news with the British delegation -- though he gave Stalin only a vague hint about "a powerful new weapon." Unknown to the Americans, Soviet intelligence had already penetrated the Manhattan Project in its early stages.

  On the 26th of July, the United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding Japan's unconditional surrender with the warning: "We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay." The declaration promised Japan would be stripped to its pre-1894 territory, occupied, and disarmed -- but crucially, it made no mention of the Emperor at all.

  That silence was the result of internal Allied disagreement. The United States wanted to abolish the monarchy or put Hirohito on trial as a war criminal. The British wanted to retain the imperial family. Secretary of State James Byrnes, wanting to minimize Soviet involvement in the Pacific, persuaded Truman to delete any assurance about the Emperor's position.

  On the 27th of July, Japan's cabinet debated how to respond. Foreign Minister Togo urged silence until Moscow could be consulted. But the following day, Prime Minister Suzuki met the press and used the word mokusatsu -- a term whose meaning ranges from "refusing to comment" to "ignoring with contempt." He described the declaration as a "rehash" of the Cairo Declaration and said the government would "press on to the bitter end." Whether Suzuki intended contemptuous dismissal or tactical silence has been argued ever since. What is not argued is the effect: the Allies read it as rejection.

• 6. The Twin Shocks

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  On the 6th of August 1945, the Enola Gay -- a Boeing B-29 Superfortress piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets -- dropped the bomb code-named Little Boy on Hiroshima in southwest Honshu at 8:15 in the morning. Confused reports reached Tokyo throughout the day.

  The Japanese military was initially skeptical. Both the Army and Navy had their own atomic bomb programs, so Japan's officers understood how difficult building such a weapon would be. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had built one bomb, they could not have many more. American planners had anticipated exactly this reasoning -- which is why a second bomb had been prepared to drop in quick succession.

  At 04:00 on the 9th of August, Tokyo received word that the Soviet Union had declared war, subscribed to the Potsdam Declaration, and launched an invasion of Manchuria. The Soviet 16th Army, 100,000 strong, had begun the invasion of southern Sakhalin Island, with orders to be prepared within 10 to 14 days to invade Hokkaido. Japanese intelligence had predicted that American forces might not invade for months; Soviet forces could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days.

  Then, shortly after 11:00 that same morning, while the Supreme Council was still meeting, word arrived that Nagasaki had been struck by a second bomb. The Big Six split 3-3. Suzuki, Togo, and Admiral Yonai favored accepting the Potsdam Declaration with one condition -- a guarantee of the Emperor's position. General Anami, General Umezu, and Admiral Toyoda insisted on three further terms: that Japan handle its own disarmament, prosecute its own war criminals, and face no occupation at all.

  Anami went further. He reportedly told the cabinet that a captured American pilot had claimed the United States possessed 100 atomic bombs and would destroy Tokyo and Kyoto within days. In reality, the United States would not have had a third bomb ready until around the 19th of August. Anami also expressed a desire for the entire Japanese nation to be "destroyed like a beautiful flower" rather than surrender -- a sentiment that captures just how far the hardliners were from accepting reality.

• 7. The Emperor Decides

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  Just before midnight on the 9th of August, an Imperial Conference convened with no consensus in sight. After hours of deadlocked debate, Prime Minister Suzuki made an unprecedented request: he asked Emperor Hirohito to break the deadlock himself.

  The Emperor spoke. He described reports that fortifications at Kujukuri Beach, east of Tokyo, remained incomplete despite promises they would be ready by June. "I do not believe that the discrepancy in the case of Kujukuri can be rectified," he said. He expressed distress at the thought of his loyal soldiers being disarmed and his loyal officials being punished as war criminals. And then: "The time has come to bear the unbearable.... I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation."

  Early on the 10th of August, Japan's Foreign Ministry telegraphed the Allies through Swiss channels that Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration -- but only if the Emperor's prerogatives were not diminished. The Allied response, drafted by Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, arrived on the 12th of August. It stated that from the moment of surrender, the Emperor's authority would be "subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers," and that Japan's ultimate form of government would be "established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people."

  The ambiguity was intentional. Navy Minister Yonai privately welcomed it, telling colleagues: "The atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, divine gifts. This way we don't have to say that we have quit the war because of domestic circumstances." On the 14th of August, the Emperor met with his senior Army and Navy commanders. Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, whose headquarters had been in Hiroshima, said he had no confidence in defeating the Allied invasion. Anami, Toyoda, and Umezu made one final case for fighting on. The Emperor listened to all of them, then said his decision had not changed.

• 8. Coup, Record, and Ceremony

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  While the Emperor met with his commanders on the 14th of August, a group of officers led by Major Kenji Hatanaka was preparing to take the palace by force. Their plan was to seize the gramophone record of the Emperor's surrender address before it could be broadcast, and to inspire the rest of the Army to rise against the decision.

  Hatanaka convinced the commander of the 2nd Regiment of the First Imperial Guards, Colonel Toyojiro Haga, to cooperate by falsely claiming that senior generals including Anami and Umezu supported the coup. At around 02:00, the conspirators moved. But Hatanaka could not secure the cooperation of Lt. Gen. Takeshi Mori, commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division -- whose cooperation was essential. When Mori refused to side with the coup, Hatanaka killed him.

  Meanwhile, around 23:00 on the 14th of August, Emperor Hirohito had recorded his address with the help of an NHK recording crew. The record was given to court chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa, who hid it in a locker safe in the office of Empress Kojun's secretary. When Hatanaka's men searched the palace through the night, they could not find it. By dawn, the Eastern District Army commander Shizuichi Tanaka -- who had refused Hatanaka's approach -- had arrived at the palace and ordered the conspirators to stand down. The coup collapsed.

  At noon on the 15th of August, the record was broadcast across the Empire. Many Japanese had never heard their Emperor speak. General Korechika Anami had already committed seppuku before dawn, leaving a message that read: "I -- with my death -- humbly apologize to the Emperor for the great crime."

  The occupation of Japan began on the 28th of August under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. On the 2nd of September 1945, aboard a U.S. Navy battleship in Tokyo Bay, Japanese government officials signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. Isolated Japanese soldiers continued to resist across Asia and the Pacific for months and years afterward, some as late as the 1970s. The state of war with the Allied powers formally ended only when the Treaty of San Francisco came into force on the 28th of April 1952. Japan and the Soviet Union required four more years beyond that, signing the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 to formally close their own war.