Retribution_ The Battle For Japan, 1944-45 Part 17

An age before, in 1942, on Joseph Grew's return from service as U.S. amba.s.sador in j.a.pan, he was dismayed by the American people's abysmal ignorance of their enemy. He delivered lectures around the country, in an attempt to increase understanding of the magnitude of the task which the U.S. faced in overcoming this formidable foe. Grew described his shock on hearing an intelligent American a.s.sert blithely: "Of course there must be ups and downs in this war...but it's now a question of time before Hitler will go down to defeat-and then we'll mop up the j.a.ps." The events of August 1945 would display, in the most awesome and terrible fas.h.i.+on, the culmination of the process once so insouciantly described as "mopping up the j.a.ps."

NINETEEN.

The Bombs

1. Fantasy in Tokyo

IN THE FINAL PHASE of the Second World War, Allied generals and admirals played a minor role in the decisions which precipitated j.a.pan's surrender. These will remain a focus of controversy until the end of time, first, because of the use of atomic bombs; second, because the mountain of historical evidence, detailing the princ.i.p.al actors' words and deeds, stands so high. Much of it invites inconclusive or even contradictory interpretation. Leading figures changed their minds, some more than once. Several wrote disingenuously afterwards, to justify their own actions. The j.a.panese aspect of the story is rendered opaque by a familiar chasm between what the nation's leaders said, and what each afterwards claimed or is conjectured privately to have thought. of the Second World War, Allied generals and admirals played a minor role in the decisions which precipitated j.a.pan's surrender. These will remain a focus of controversy until the end of time, first, because of the use of atomic bombs; second, because the mountain of historical evidence, detailing the princ.i.p.al actors' words and deeds, stands so high. Much of it invites inconclusive or even contradictory interpretation. Leading figures changed their minds, some more than once. Several wrote disingenuously afterwards, to justify their own actions. The j.a.panese aspect of the story is rendered opaque by a familiar chasm between what the nation's leaders said, and what each afterwards claimed or is conjectured privately to have thought.

From the winter of 1944 onwards, a significant party in Tokyo was seeking a route by which to end the war, and to overcome the army's resolve to fight to the last. Even the most dovish, however, wanted terms that were not remotely negotiable, including the preservation of j.a.panese hegemony in Korea and Manchuria, freedom from Allied military occupation, and the right for j.a.pan to conduct any war crimes trials of its citizens. As late as May 1945, the emperor clung to a belief that a victory was attainable on Okinawa, which would strengthen j.a.pan's negotiating position-in other words, that military resistance was still serviceable. On 9 June, he urged the j.a.panese people to "smash the inordinate ambitions of the enemy nations."

The "peace party" thought and spoke as if j.a.pan could expect to be treated as an honourable member of the international community. There was no acknowledgement of the fact that, in Western eyes, the behaviour of the j.a.panese since Pearl Harbor, indeed since 1931, had placed their nation beyond the pale. j.a.pan's leaders wasted months a.s.serting diplomatic positions founded upon the demands of their own self-esteem, together with supposed political justice. In reality, their only chance of modified terms derived from Allied fears that a host of men would have to die if an invasion of the homeland proved necessary. As blockade and bombardment, together with the prospects of atomic bombs and Russian entry into the Pacific theatre, progressively diminished the perceived American need to risk invasion, j.a.pan held no cards at all.

Nothing more vividly reflected Tokyo's misreading of its own predicament than its attempts to enlist the good offices of the Soviet Union as an intermediary. Russian abstention from belligerency until August 1945 was among the odder aspects of the global conflict. In April 1941 it served the interests of both Russia and j.a.pan to conclude a five-year Neutrality Pact. j.a.pan's ambitions lay south and eastwards. It needed to secure itself from a threat in the rear. Likewise, even before Russia became committed to its death struggle with Germany, Moscow wanted no complications in Asia. When Hitler's Operation Barbarossa was launched in June 1941, Stalin was thankful to be a.s.sured by Richard Sorge, his legendary agent in Tokyo, that j.a.pan would not attack Russia, and thus that the Red Army could safely throw everything into the western war.

Yet if peace on the Russo-Manchurian border suited the two neighbours for three years, by 1944 it no longer suited the United States. A million j.a.panese soldiers in China might sooner or later be committed against the Americans. An invasion of Manchuria by the Red Army offered the most obvious means of deflecting such a redeployment. Stalin's ma.s.ses could reprise what they were so spectacularly doing in Europe-saving the lives of Western Allied soldiers by expending those of Russians. As late as 6 August 1945, MacArthur told an off-the-record press briefing in Manila of his eagerness for the Soviets to invade Manchuria: "Every Russian killed830 is one less American who has to be." is one less American who has to be."

Churchill and Roosevelt were thrilled by Stalin's September 1944 promise to launch sixty Soviet divisions against j.a.pan within three months of Germany's collapse. "When we are vexed831 with other matters," the prime minister wrote to FDR, "we must remember the supreme value of this [commitment] in shortening the whole struggle." MacArthur was firmly of the view that "we must not invade j.a.pan proper with other matters," the prime minister wrote to FDR, "we must remember the supreme value of this [commitment] in shortening the whole struggle." MacArthur was firmly of the view that "we must not invade j.a.pan proper832 unless the Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria." Marshall concurred. American field commanders wanted all the help they could get to diminish the numbers of enemy they might have to confront in the j.a.panese home islands. From Luzon, Maj.-Gen. Joseph Swing of 11th Airborne Division wrote home in May, dismissing reported British fears about the perils of admitting the Soviets to the Asian war: "Everybody wants the Roosh unless the Russian army is previously committed to action in Manchuria." Marshall concurred. American field commanders wanted all the help they could get to diminish the numbers of enemy they might have to confront in the j.a.panese home islands. From Luzon, Maj.-Gen. Joseph Swing of 11th Airborne Division wrote home in May, dismissing reported British fears about the perils of admitting the Soviets to the Asian war: "Everybody wants the Roosh833 as soon as he will come and the more the merrier. As to what Uncle Joe Stalin will get in the East...he'll demand and probably get anything he wants." as soon as he will come and the more the merrier. As to what Uncle Joe Stalin will get in the East...he'll demand and probably get anything he wants."

Was.h.i.+ngton recognised that the Russians would not fight unless they received tangible rewards for doing so. To destroy the n.a.z.is, the Soviet Union had already contributed twenty-five times the human sacrifice made by all the Western Allies together. After months of equivocation, at Yalta Stalin presented his invoice for an eastern commitment. Moscow wanted from j.a.pan the Kurile Islands and southern Sakhalin; from China, the lease of Port Arthur, access to Dalian as a free port, control of the southern Manchurian railway, and recognition of Russian suzerainty over Outer Mongolia. On the fifth day of the conference, 8 February 1945, Roosevelt agreed to accept Moscow's terms. The U.S. president acted with colonialist insouciance, making important Chinese territorial concessions without consulting the Chinese government. But these arrangements were nominally subject to Chiang Kai-shek's endors.e.m.e.nt, and in return Moscow pledged to recognise the Nationalists as China's sole legitimate rulers. Both the Soviet and American delegations went home from Yalta well pleased with their bargain, indifferent to the fact that it would violate the Russo-j.a.panese Neutrality Pact.

Yet in offering incentives, Roosevelt ignored the fact that Stalin never did-or forbore from doing-anything unless it fitted his own agenda. In 1945, far from the Russians requiring encouragement to invade Manchuria, it would have been almost impossible to dissuade them from doing so. As soon as Germany was beaten, Stalin was bent upon employing his armies to collect Asian booty. Ironies were thus densely woven into the events of the five months following Yalta. On 22 February, the j.a.panese amba.s.sador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, a former foreign minister, called on Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister, on his return from the Crimean conference. Sato was a.s.sured that bilateral Russoj.a.panese relations, the future of the two countries' neutrality pact, had nothing to do with the Americans and the British. This bland deceit was gratefully received in Tokyo. j.a.pan sought Russian goodwill to salvage its tottering empire at exactly the moment Stalin secretly committed himself to loot it.

As the Russians planned and armed for an August descent on Manchuria, however, American enthusiasm for their partic.i.p.ation began to falter. Even if U.S. military leaders were eager to see the Red Army committed, politicians and diplomats were much more equivocal. European experience suggested that whatever Stalin's armies conquered, they kept. It seemed rash to indulge further Russian expansionism in Asia. By April 1945, some important Americans would have been happy to break the bargain made with Stalin in February, if they could justify doing so. The Russians, conscious of this, thenceforward possessed the strongest possible interest in ensuring that the j.a.panese kept fighting. If Tokyo made peace with Was.h.i.+ngton before Stalin had s.h.i.+fted his armies eastwards and was ready to declare war, the Americans might renege on the rewards promised at Yalta.

j.a.panese politicians, with extraordinary naivete, acted in the belief that wooing neutral Russia would serve them better than addressing belligerent America. In reality, there was more willingness among some Western politicians than in Moscow to consider concessions in return for an early end of bloodshed. Winston Churchill was the first and most important Allied leader to propose qualifying the doctrine of unconditional surrender in respect of j.a.pan. Before the combined chiefs of staff in Cairo on 9 February 1945, he argued that "some mitigation would be worthwhile, if it led to the saving of a year or a year and a half of a war in which so much blood and treasure would be poured out." Roosevelt dismissed the prime minister out of hand. British influence on this issue, as indeed upon everything to do with the Pacific war, ranged between marginal and non-existent. The decisions about how to address the j.a.panese, whether by force or parley, rested unequivocally in Was.h.i.+ngton.

A strong party in the State Department, headed by former Tokyo amba.s.sador Joseph Grew, now undersecretary of state, favoured a public commitment to allow j.a.pan to retain its national polity, the kokutai kokutai, of which the most notable feature was the status of the emperor. Grew and his a.s.sociates believed that the kokutai kokutai mattered vastly more to the j.a.panese than it should to anyone else: if a.s.surances on this point would avert a bloodbath in the home islands, they should be given. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal agreed, as did some media opinion formers. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on 13 May: "There are notes mattered vastly more to the j.a.panese than it should to anyone else: if a.s.surances on this point would avert a bloodbath in the home islands, they should be given. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal agreed, as did some media opinion formers. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on 13 May: "There are notes834...not merely in the ex-isolationist press but eg the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post, of the possibility of some modification of unconditional surrender in [j.a.pan's] case and optimistic speculation of likelihood of her early surrender when she perceives the hopelessness of her case, and woven into popular desire for Russian partic.i.p.ation in the Pacific War there runs a thin but just perceptible thread, the thought that an American settlement of that area would best be made if USSR were kept out of it."

Yet the White House and its most influential advisers believed that American public opinion would recoil from concessions to the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor, among whom the emperor was symbolically foremost; and that generosity was anyway unnecessary. j.a.pan's predicament was worsening rapidly. The princ.i.p.al uncertainty focused upon whether it would be necessary to invade the home islands. Among U.S. chiefs of staff, Admiral Ernest King, for the navy, and Gen. "Hap" Arnold of the USAAF opposed a ground invasion. While their desire to avoid another b.l.o.o.d.y campaign was no doubt sincere, both men also had partisan agendas, well understood in Was.h.i.+ngton. King wanted the world to see that j.a.pan had been defeated by the U.S. Navy and its blockade. Arnold sought recognition of strategic bombing's decisive contribution, in pursuit of his crusade to make the Army Air Forces an independent service. King and Arnold could invoke important opinion in support of their case. Early in April, the U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee predicted that "the increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive c.u.mulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, and the collapse of Germany" would soon oblige the j.a.panese to acknowledge that they could not continue the war.

Yet as Germany foundered, King and Arnold allowed themselves to be persuaded that planning must continue for Olympic. Marshall, although he had never been enthusiastic, "went firm." However unwelcome, the invasion option must be kept open. Given the lead time indispensable to a huge amphibious operation, a commitment was needed forthwith. Experience, especially at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, showed that the enemy exploited every day of grace to strengthen his defences, and thus to raise the cost of delaying invasion. The chiefs of staff were also concerned that the American people's patience with the war was ebbing, and thus that it was essential to hasten a closure in the east. On 25 April the joint chiefs of staff adopted JCS 924/15, endorsing Olympic. Their memorandum, which should be regarded as prudent recognition of a contingency, rather than as an ironclad commitment, was forwarded to the president-the very new president-of the United States.

Harry Truman has come to be regarded as one of America's outstanding national leaders of the twentieth century. In the spring of 1945, however, this decent, simple, impulsive man was all but overwhelmed by the burden of office thrust upon him by Roosevelt's death on 12 April. "I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen upon me," he told reporters on the afternoon that he was sworn in. "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now." One journalist said: "Good luck, Mr. President." Truman said: "I wish you didn't have to call me that." By one of Roosevelt's most hubristic omissions, given the desperate state of his own health, he had made no attempt to ensure that his vice-president was briefed to address the vast issues which now fell to his lot. Until 12 April, Truman was not even a recipient of Magic intelligence bulletins. Those who observed him closely during his first months at the White House believed that much he said and did was motivated by insecurity, a desire to appear authoritative and decisive, though within himself he felt equipped to be neither. Such self-awareness deserves the sympathy of posterity.

On 10 May, responding to perceived Russian breaches of faith in Europe, Truman directed that lend-lease supplies to the Soviet Union should be terminated. Grew and Averell Harriman, U.S. amba.s.sador in Moscow, wanted him to go further, and repudiate the Asian provisions of Yalta. Stimson dissuaded the president from these courses, observing that "the concessions...to Russia on Far Eastern matters...are...within the military power of Russia to obtain regardless of U.S. military action short of war." But Truman's conduct in the months that followed was dominated by a determination to prove his own fitness for office, above all by making no unnecessary concessions to the bullying of the Soviet Union, and by conducting the last phase of the war against j.a.pan with a conviction worthy of his great predecessor, and of his great nation. He now discovered that science promised an extraordinary tool to further these ends.

On 24 April Truman received from Stimson a letter requesting a meeting to discuss "a highly secret matter." Next day, the secretary of war and Maj.-Gen. Leslie Groves, senior officer responsible for the Manhattan Project, revealed to the new president its secrets, about which he had previously received only intimations. "Within four months," wrote Stimson, "we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city." Groves was bent on dropping two, to prove to the j.a.panese that the first nuclear explosion represented no unique phenomenon.

The Manhattan Project represented the most stupendous scientific effort in history. In three years, at a cost of $2 billion, the U.S.-with some perfunctorily acknowledged British aid-had advanced close to fulfilling a programme which much of the scientific world had thought unattainable, certainly within a time frame relevant to this conflict. At Truman's meeting with Stimson and Groves, he was not warned that he must make a great decision, confront a historic dilemma. He was merely informed of the new weapon's impending maturity. There was no hint of looming controversy. Rather, there was an absolute a.s.sumption that if the j.a.panese continued to fight, atomic bombs would be used against them, as had been every other available destructive tool to advance the conflict's ending.

Technological determinism is an outstanding feature of great wars. At a moment when armadas of Allied bombers had been destroying the cities of Germany and j.a.pan for three years, killing civilians in hundreds of thousands, the notion of withholding a vastly more impressive means of fulfilling the same purpose scarcely occurred to those directing the Allied war effort. They were irritated, indeed exasperated, by intimations of personal scruple from scientists concerned with the weapon's construction. As long as. .h.i.tler survived, the Manhattan team had striven unstintingly to build a bomb, haunted by fear that the n.a.z.is might get there first. Once Germany was defeated, however, some scientists' motivation faltered. Their doubts and apprehensions grew about the purposes to which their efforts might be turned.

A group in Chicago formed a "committee of social and political implications" which became known as the Franck Committee. Its members argued in a report submitted to Was.h.i.+ngton: "The military advantages and the saving of American lives achieved by the sudden use of atomic bombs against j.a.pan may be outweighed by the ensuing loss of confidence and by a wave of horror and revulsion sweeping over the rest of the world and perhaps even dividing public opinion at home." In May 1945, some Manhattan team members made determined efforts to caution America's political leaders. Several wrote letters to the president. Leo Szilard, one of the foremost Chicago scientists, paid a personal visit to the White House. Truman's secretary diverted him to Spartanburg, South Carolina, home of James Byrnes, the president's personal representative on the bomb committee.

Byrnes enjoyed one of the more unusual careers in American history. Sixty-six in 1945, a self-made man of the humblest origins, he had served as congressman, senator and Supreme Court justice. Critics dismissed him as a mere Democratic Party hack and White House crony, but he wielded extraordinary power as director of the Office of War Mobilization, and was widely described as FDR's "a.s.sistant president." Embittered by Roosevelt's refusal to offer him the vice-presidency, in the spring of 1945 he had opted to retire into private life when abruptly recalled by Truman, who intended him for secretary of state. At Spartanburg on 22 May, Byrnes was irked to be confronted by the unsolicited Hungarian emotionalism of Szilard: "His general demeanour and his desire to partic.i.p.ate in policy-making made an unfavourable impression on me." The scientist, in his turn, was dismayed by Byrnes's unreceptiveness: "When I spoke of my concern that Russia might become an atomic power soon, he said that General Groves...told him there was no uranium in Russia." Groves hated Szilard, and indeed had claimed to suspect him of being a German agent.

As the scientist made his case against precipitate use of the bomb, Byrnes interrupted impatiently that Congress would have plenty to say if $2 billion proved to have been expended on the Manhattan Project for no practical purpose. "Byrnes thought the Russians might be more manageable if impressed by military might," recalled Szilard. Nothing could demonstrate this more effectively than the atomic bomb. The Hungarian was disgusted when Byrnes urged him to consider that the bomb might even get Stalin's legions out of his own country. "Flabbergasted" by his host's insensitivity, Szilard walked unhappily back to Spartanburg station. It would have been little consolation to him to know that attempts by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr to convey the same fears to Roosevelt and Churchill had met with a response even less temperate than that of Byrnes. The prime minister suggested that Bohr should be confined, to prevent him from venting his dangerous misgivings.

The scientists' scruples counted for little alongside the consensual perception of America's leaders.h.i.+p that here was a weapon which could decisively strengthen their hands in confronting the Soviets as well as defeating the j.a.panese. The builders of the bomb were fatally hampered in their attempts to promote a debate about its use by the fact that security made it impossible, indeed treasonable, even to discuss its existence outside their own circle. Most focused concern not upon the bomb's use, but upon whether a warning should first be given to j.a.pan, and whether the peace of the post-war world might best be secured by sharing America's atomic secrets with the Soviets.

If the scientists had better understood the disastrous strategic predicament of the j.a.panese in 1945, more would have opposed Hiros.h.i.+ma. As it was, however, the men who knew most about the new weapon were quarantined from awareness of the context in which it would be employed. Meanwhile, the politicians responsible for determining the bomb's use had an inadequate sense of its meaning for civilisation. Byrnes told Truman: "It might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war." Overwhelmingly the most important representative of the Manhattan Project in Was.h.i.+ngton was not a scientist, but General Groves. Triumphalist about the monumental undertaking of which he was chief administrator, he rejected any notion that his country might fail to exploit its fulfilment.

Groves is one of the least-known significant military figures of the Second World War. It is hard to overstate his importance in sustaining momentum towards the detonation of the bombs over Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. A major-general whose rank would have ent.i.tled him only to a divisional command in the field, he had been promoted by fate to extraordinary authority. An army chaplain's son, as deputy chief of construction for the army he had played a major role in building the Pentagon. In September 1942 he was a forty-six-year-old colonel eagerly awaiting overseas posting-"I wanted to command troops"-when he was instead ordered to supervise the Manhattan Project. "If you do the job right, it will win the war," he was told.

It seems likely that his superiors said this to reconcile the engineer to a thankless domestic posting, rather than because they believed it at the time. Groves's a.s.signment was unique for a soldier, requiring him to oversee thousands of civilian scientists of the highest gifts and often most wayward personalities, led by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer. Beyond these guiding brains, Groves was responsible for a workforce that eventually grew to 125,000, embracing engineers, administrators and construction personnel, centred upon the development laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and operating other facilities all over the United States. Most of these people had no notion, of course, about the objective of their labours. The paunchy, bustling general reported only to the secretary of war and the army chief of staff. To Groves's own amazement, as the bomb approached completion he was deputed by Marshall also to a.s.sume responsibility for its operational use.

Groves was bereft of tact, sensitivity, cultural awareness, and human sympathy for either the j.a.panese or the bevy of n.o.bel laureates whom he commanded. He hara.s.sed and goaded the scientists as if they were army engineers building a bridge. Yet his effectiveness demands the respect of history. His deputy, Col. Kenneth Nichols, described him as "the biggest sonofab.i.t.c.h835 I've ever met in my life, but also one of the most capable. He had an ego second to none...tireless energy, great self-confidence and ruthlessness. I hated his guts and so did everyone else, [but] if I was to have to do my part all over again, I would select Groves as boss." At the end of April 1945, the general was exultant. The sun shone brilliantly upon his purposes. A bomb should be ready for testing inside three months, its siblings for use rapidly thereafter. Groves's commitment was critical to the eventual decision to destroy Hiros.h.i.+ma. When other men faltered or their attention was distracted, he never flagged. A week after the White House meeting with Stimson and the general, Truman ordered the formation of the so-called Interim Committee, to advise him on the progress and appropriate use of the bomb. Groves had already established a Target Committee, which selected eighteen j.a.panese cities as possible objectives, and endorsed the general's view that when the time came, two atomic weapons should be dropped. I've ever met in my life, but also one of the most capable. He had an ego second to none...tireless energy, great self-confidence and ruthlessness. I hated his guts and so did everyone else, [but] if I was to have to do my part all over again, I would select Groves as boss." At the end of April 1945, the general was exultant. The sun shone brilliantly upon his purposes. A bomb should be ready for testing inside three months, its siblings for use rapidly thereafter. Groves's commitment was critical to the eventual decision to destroy Hiros.h.i.+ma. When other men faltered or their attention was distracted, he never flagged. A week after the White House meeting with Stimson and the general, Truman ordered the formation of the so-called Interim Committee, to advise him on the progress and appropriate use of the bomb. Groves had already established a Target Committee, which selected eighteen j.a.panese cities as possible objectives, and endorsed the general's view that when the time came, two atomic weapons should be dropped.

When Truman learned of Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May, therefore, he knew of the extraordinary means the United States was soon likely to possess to impose its will on its enemies and drastically to alter the balance of power between itself and the Soviet Union. Stimson told a colleague: "We really held all the cards836...a straight royal flush, and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play it...Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much...Let our actions speak for themselves." At a press conference on 8 May following the end of the war in Europe, Truman restated America's determination to receive the unconditional surrender of j.a.pan's armed forces. He said nothing explicit, however, about the future of the emperor, and emphasised that America did not intend "the extermination or enslavement of the j.a.panese people."

Next day, j.a.pan defiantly informed the world that the German surrender increased its determination to fight on. The j.a.panese minister in Berne, alarmed by observing the revulsion towards all things German which followed exposure of their concentration camps, urged Tokyo to avoid giving the world any impression that j.a.pan would follow n.a.z.i policies "at the bitter end." Yet there were still plenty of fantasists. As late as 29 May, j.a.pan's naval attache in Stockholm expressed his belief that in negotiations the Western Allies would allow j.a.pan to retain Manchuria "to provide a barrier against Russia." He thought Britain would be content to settle for restoration of its Asian colonies. He himself favoured fighting on, because he thought Western dismay about Russian excesses left the Anglo-Americans open to compromise. These messages were read in Was.h.i.+ngton, via Magic.

While j.a.pan was suffering terrible pain from LeMay's B-29 offensive, it was plain that several months must elapse before the U.S. could launch its next big land campaign, which the j.a.panese correctly a.s.sumed would be an invasion of Kyushu. j.a.pan's peacemakers supposed, therefore, that they still had time to talk. Since early spring there had been some diminution of expectations among civilian politicians. Facing imminent defeat on Okinawa, they aspired only to preserving the kokutai kokutai, together with Manchukuo's "independence" and Korea's status as a j.a.panese colony.

If these ambitions were fanciful enough, the fantasies of the military were even more extravagant. As an incentive to the Soviets to maintain their neutrality, the navy proposed exchanging some j.a.panese cruisers for Russian oil and aircraft. Gen. Korechika Anami was a man of few brains and little imagination, but as war minister he possessed overwhelmingly the most influential voice in the j.a.panese cabinet. Anami opposed all concessions on the Asian mainland: "j.a.pan is not losing the war, since we have not lost any homeland territory. I object to conducting negotiations on the a.s.sumption that we are defeated." More realistic voices urged that j.a.pan should concentrate upon a single limited objective: preserving the imperial system and the homeland's territorial integrity.

Among many leading j.a.panese, there was a sharp distinction between an outcome of the war which they would privately accept, and that which they would acknowledge in the presence of colleagues and subordinates. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki, for instance, favoured peace. In public, however, he continued to exhort the nation to resist to the end, in the spirit of the kamikazes. The politicians feared for their lives if they were identified as defeatists by the military fanatics, and recent j.a.panese history suggested that their apprehension was well-founded. Admiral Suzuki himself, seventy-seven and deaf, carried the scars of four bullet wounds received in 1936, during an attempt by army ultra-nationalists to overthrow the then government.

The consequence of the peace party's timidity was a stunning incoherence of view, which persisted through to August 1945. j.a.panese equivocation was bound to incur the impatience, if not incomprehension, of literal-minded Americans, to whom words meant neither more nor less than they expressed. j.a.pan's critical error was to address the quest for peace at the usual snail's pace of all its high policy making. Tokyo was oblivious that, 8,000 miles away, General Groves's t.i.tanic enterprise was hastening towards its climax at a far more urgent tempo.

j.a.pANESE LEADERS feared, indeed antic.i.p.ated, a Russian invasion of Manchuria. They were nonetheless shocked when, six weeks after Molotov told Amba.s.sador Sato that nothing had happened at Yalta which should alarm his country, Moscow announced the abrogation of the 1941 neutrality pact. In j.a.panese eyes, Soviet behaviour represented perfidy. Yet on 29 May Molotov received Sato amicably, and a.s.sured him that the Soviet statement was a mere technicality, that Russia "has had her fill of war in Europe," and must now address huge domestic problems. Sato, usually bleakly realistic about Soviet p.r.o.nouncements, was rash enough to swallow this one. U.S. intelligence annotated the Magic decrypt of the amba.s.sador's report to Tokyo: "[The] meeting leaves a mental picture of a spaniel in the presence of a mastiff who also knows where the bone is buried." If it seems extraordinary that the architects of Pearl Harbor could be surprised by another nation's duplicity, that the j.a.panese could suppose themselves to possess any negotiating hand of interest to Stalin, their behaviour was of a piece with the huge collective self-delusion which characterised Tokyo's conduct in 1945. feared, indeed antic.i.p.ated, a Russian invasion of Manchuria. They were nonetheless shocked when, six weeks after Molotov told Amba.s.sador Sato that nothing had happened at Yalta which should alarm his country, Moscow announced the abrogation of the 1941 neutrality pact. In j.a.panese eyes, Soviet behaviour represented perfidy. Yet on 29 May Molotov received Sato amicably, and a.s.sured him that the Soviet statement was a mere technicality, that Russia "has had her fill of war in Europe," and must now address huge domestic problems. Sato, usually bleakly realistic about Soviet p.r.o.nouncements, was rash enough to swallow this one. U.S. intelligence annotated the Magic decrypt of the amba.s.sador's report to Tokyo: "[The] meeting leaves a mental picture of a spaniel in the presence of a mastiff who also knows where the bone is buried." If it seems extraordinary that the architects of Pearl Harbor could be surprised by another nation's duplicity, that the j.a.panese could suppose themselves to possess any negotiating hand of interest to Stalin, their behaviour was of a piece with the huge collective self-delusion which characterised Tokyo's conduct in 1945.

In Moscow on 28 May, in response to a question from Harry Hopkins, Stalin said that the Soviet Union would be ready to invade Manchuria on 8 August, though weather would thereafter influence exact timing. Hopkins reported to Truman that Stalin favoured insistence upon j.a.pan's capitulation, "however, he feels that if we stick to unconditional surrender the j.a.ps will not give up and we will have to destroy them as we did Germany." The same week, j.a.pan's foreign minister, s.h.i.+genori Togo, appointed Koki Hirota, a former prime minister, foreign minister and amba.s.sador, as his secret envoy to the Soviets, with instructions to pursue their friends.h.i.+p as well as neutrality.

Hirota's first move was to visit Jacob Malik, the Russian amba.s.sador in Tokyo. He expressed admiration for the Red Army's achievement in Europe, a richly comic compliment from an emissary of Germany's recent ally. Malik reported to Moscow that Hirota's overtures, though intended to be deniable, reflected a desperate anxiety by the j.a.panese government to end the war. He judged success implausible, however, since Tokyo persisted in its determination to cling to Manchuria and Korea. Nor were such fantasies confined to politicians. Jiro Horikos.h.i.+, the Zero design engineer, often discussed with friends the prospect of soliciting Soviet aid: "j.a.pan has made special efforts837 to maintain neutrality with the Russians," he wrote in his diary in May, "and we hoped we could rely on her fairness and friends.h.i.+p in mediating with the Allies." to maintain neutrality with the Russians," he wrote in his diary in May, "and we hoped we could rely on her fairness and friends.h.i.+p in mediating with the Allies."

Meanwhile in Was.h.i.+ngton on 31 May, at a meeting of the Interim Committee Stimson emphasised the magnitude of its agenda: to manage deployment of a weapon that would bring about "a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe." James Byrnes flatly rejected a proposal made by Oppenheimer, director of the atomic programme, that its secrets should be shared with the Russians. He also dismissed a suggestion that Soviet representatives should be invited to attend the bomb's testing. Beyond security considerations, America would appear ridiculous in the event of failure. For the same reason he opposed, without dissent from the committee, a formal warning to the j.a.panese. Oppenheimer himself said that he found it impossible to imagine a demonstration of the bomb-for instance, in the skies off j.a.pan-which would be likely to impress the enemy. Next day, 1 June, the decision was formally recorded: "Mr. Byrnes recommended, and the Committee agreed, that the Secretary of War should be advised that, while recognizing that the final selection of the target was essentially a military decision, the present view of the Committee was that the bomb should be used against j.a.pan as soon as possible, that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers' homes, and that it be used without prior warning."

When Stimson reported these conclusions to Truman on 6 June, the secretary of war made two disingenuous and indeed contradictory observations. He had firmly rejected Groves's proposal to drop the first bomb on the ancient capital Kyoto, hub of j.a.pan's culture. He was unmoved by the general's pragmatic argument that Kyoto was "large enough in area for us to gain complete knowledge of the effects of the bomb. Hiros.h.i.+ma was not nearly so satisfactory in this respect." Tokyo and several other cities had already been discarded as objectives, on the grounds that they were mostly rubble already. Stimson told Truman that, against air force wishes, he had held out for a precision rather than an area target, because he did not want the atomic bombing to be compared with Hitler's ma.s.s murders. He also expressed fears that LeMay "might have j.a.pan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength." Truman laughed, and said that he understood. Here was a vivid ill.u.s.tration of the inability of two intelligent men to confront the implications of what they were about to do. They had been told the potential explosive power of the atomic bomb, yet no more than the scientists did they know its consequential effects, of which radiation sickness was the most significant. In their minds, as in that of Winston Churchill, the new weapon represented simply a ma.s.sive multiple of the destructive capability of LeMay's B-29s.

Stimson's role puzzles posterity. He was the most august veteran in the administration, seventy-eight years old. His political career began in 1905, when he was appointed a U.S. attorney for New York by Theodore Roosevelt. A gentleman at all points, known as "the colonel" from his military service in World War I, he had served as secretary of state under Hoover from 1929 to 1933, and presided over the War Department from 1940 to 1945. Stimson disliked many things about total war, above all aerial bombardment of cities. Robert Oppenheimer noted his strictures: "He didn't say that air strikes shouldn't be carried on, but he thought there was something wrong with a country where no one questioned that." In the months preceding Hiros.h.i.+ma, though Stimson was increasingly tired and ill, no American political leader devoted more thought and attention to the bomb. Oddly, given his distaste for incendiary attack, he never expressed principled opposition to atomic devastation. Indeed, he welcomed Oppenheimer's weapon as a means of shortening the war. He strove, however, to serve the j.a.panese with notice to quit before this horror fell upon them.

The secretary of war's fastidious reservations were quite insufficient to deflect the process now in train. From June onwards, only absolute j.a.panese submission could have saved Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. Thereafter, no explicit political decision was made to drop the bomb; rather, a dramatic intervention from Truman would have been needed to stop it. To comprehend the president's behaviour838, the limitations of the man occupying the office, his July Potsdam diary is helpful. This reveals Truman's ingenuous private responses to the personalities and events amidst which he found himself. His narrative possesses an awesome ba.n.a.lity. To say this represents not condescension, for Truman's later achievement is undisputed, but mere recognition of his predicament. He was a self-consciously small man much influenced by advisers, notably Byrnes and the former amba.s.sador to Moscow Joseph Davies, because he was morbidly sensitive to his own inexperience.

The president adopted in the case of "Little Boy" precisely the same mechanism employed throughout the war by the democracies to implement strategic decisions. He, the politician, approved the concept, then left its execution in the hands of the military-which meant Groves. The dispatch of Enola Gay Enola Gay and and Bock's Car Bock's Car, in common with all bomber operations, required a sequence of orders, aircrew training, logistical preparation, which was now rolling. In recent years, immense scholarly attention has focused upon the decrypted j.a.panese diplomatic communications, notably with Moscow, which became available to the Americans between June and August 1945. Yet the salient aspect of these is readily summarised: the j.a.panese government wanted to end the war, but privately as well as publicly rejected unconditional surrender. j.a.pan's most notable pragmatist, Amba.s.sador Sato in Moscow, vividly articulated in cables to Tokyo his conviction that nothing the j.a.panese government was minded to propose would prove acceptable to the Allies.

If Sato held this opinion, why should Americans intercepting his messages have been any more impressed? In 1945, the distant chirrups of Morse between Tokyo and Moscow were nowhere near explicit or humble enough to halt the earth-shaking juggernaut being steered towards j.a.pan by Leslie Groves. After the war, Truman falsely claimed that he gave the order to attack Hiros.h.i.+ma at the beginning of August 1945, perhaps because he feared that it would seem shocking to posterity to acknowledge that there was no such moment of deliberate presidential judgement before Col. Paul Tibbets took off. Having acquiesced in the process months earlier, thereafter the president merely remained informed of progress, and did not halt the Enola Gay Enola Gay. Tolstoy argues-in the context of Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia-that great events possess an impetus of their own, independent of the will of national leaders and commanders. Had he lived through 1945, he would have judged the countdown to the dropping of the bombs a vivid demonstration of his thesis.

The j.a.panese continued to delude themselves that they had time to talk, time to probe and haggle with each other and with the Allies. They believed that their ability to extract a huge blood price from their enemy before succ.u.mbing represented a formidable bargaining chip. Instead, of course, this helped to undo them. It seems irrelevant to debate the merits of rival guesstimates for Olympic's U.S. casualties-63,000, 193,000, a million. What was not in doubt was that invading j.a.pan would involve a large loss of American lives, which n.o.body wished to accept. Blockade and firebombing had already created conditions in which invasion would probably be unnecessary. New means now promised a summary termination of j.a.pan's defiance, and perhaps also pre-emption of the Soviet onslaught.

Why should the United States have endured prevarication from the sponsors of Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march, or further duplicity and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt from the bloodstained Soviets? The public face of j.a.pan remained implacable. Given the strains to which U.S.-Soviet relations were now subject, knowledge that the j.a.panese were seeking terms through Moscow rather than offering submission to Was.h.i.+ngton could only stimulate American impatience and cynicism. The dropping of the bombs did not represent, as Truman and others later claimed, a direct alternative to a costly U.S. invasion of j.a.pan. The people disastrously influenced by the prospect of Olympic were not Americans, but the j.a.panese, whom it persuaded to continue the war. Much historic attention has focused upon whether the U.S. should have warned Tokyo that it planned to drop atomic bombs. In truth, j.a.pan's military leaders.h.i.+p would have been much more readily confounded by a public American intimation that it did not intend to invade the home islands, unrealistic though such a notion is.

2. Reality at Hiros.h.i.+ma THE J j.a.pANESE d.i.c.kered through June, unaware that American attention was now fixed upon two critical events, scheduled for undetermined dates in August: the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the dropping of atomic bombs. The hawks in Was.h.i.+ngton, foremost among whom were James Byrnes and Truman himself, were eager that the second should pre-empt the first; that, if possible, the U.S. should be seen to have terminated the j.a.panese war without Soviet partic.i.p.ation. A paper prepared by the War Department's Operations and Plans Division on 12 July a.s.serted the advantages of an early j.a.panese surrender "both because of the enormous reduction d.i.c.kered through June, unaware that American attention was now fixed upon two critical events, scheduled for undetermined dates in August: the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the dropping of atomic bombs. The hawks in Was.h.i.+ngton, foremost among whom were James Byrnes and Truman himself, were eager that the second should pre-empt the first; that, if possible, the U.S. should be seen to have terminated the j.a.panese war without Soviet partic.i.p.ation. A paper prepared by the War Department's Operations and Plans Division on 12 July a.s.serted the advantages of an early j.a.panese surrender "both because of the enormous reduction839 in the cost of the war [by achieving victory without an invasion] and because it would give us a better chance to settle the affairs of the Pacific before too many of our allies are committed there and have made substantial contributions to the defeat of j.a.pan." Yet until the Manhattan Project attained fulfilment, planning continued for the launch of Olympic on or soon after 1 November. The atomic bomb was antic.i.p.ated, but it must never be forgotten that its putative power did not become proven fact until the test on 16 July at Alamogordo in New Mexico. in the cost of the war [by achieving victory without an invasion] and because it would give us a better chance to settle the affairs of the Pacific before too many of our allies are committed there and have made substantial contributions to the defeat of j.a.pan." Yet until the Manhattan Project attained fulfilment, planning continued for the launch of Olympic on or soon after 1 November. The atomic bomb was antic.i.p.ated, but it must never be forgotten that its putative power did not become proven fact until the test on 16 July at Alamogordo in New Mexico.

In the weeks before the Potsdam summit conference, Stimson and others devoted intensive effort to drafting a proclamation, which they expected to be signed by all the Big Three Allied leaders, offering j.a.pan a last opportunity to surrender before facing unparalleled devastation. The "warning party" in Was.h.i.+ngton attached much importance to including in such a doc.u.ment an a.s.surance about the preservation of the imperial dynasty. Many hands tinkered with the drafting, seeking a precision of language which would deny j.a.pan's militarists any escape clause. Yet some prominent State Department officials, notably including a.s.sistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, opposed sparing the emperor. They believed that Hirohito must pay the price for having occupied the throne of a nation which launched a hideous war. By the time the American delegation sailed for Potsdam, rival drafts of the proclamation reposed in several briefcases. The instincts of Truman and Byrnes were much closer to those of Acheson than to those of the would-be compromisers. To eager applause, the president had told Congress on 16 April that "America will never become a party to any plan for partial victory." This remained his position thereafter.

WITHIN the Allied nations, in July 1945 many people who knew nothing of the atomic bomb or the imminent Soviet invasion of Manchuria believed that the eastern war was anyway approaching its end. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on the fifteenth: "The belief that j.a.pan herself is anxious to capitulate on terms less than unconditional surrender has been further nourished by stories of unrest and dissatisfaction inside j.a.pan; reports over the Tokyo radio that the dean of j.a.panese journalists had openly criticised his government for 'dismissing the loss of strategic islands with superficial optimism.'" A week later, the emba.s.sy noted: "Generally it is believed the Allied nations, in July 1945 many people who knew nothing of the atomic bomb or the imminent Soviet invasion of Manchuria believed that the eastern war was anyway approaching its end. The British emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton reported to London on the fifteenth: "The belief that j.a.pan herself is anxious to capitulate on terms less than unconditional surrender has been further nourished by stories of unrest and dissatisfaction inside j.a.pan; reports over the Tokyo radio that the dean of j.a.panese journalists had openly criticised his government for 'dismissing the loss of strategic islands with superficial optimism.'" A week later, the emba.s.sy noted: "Generally it is believed840 that the Pacific War is rus.h.i.+ng towards an early climax." Eichelberger of Eighth Army wrote from the Philippines on 24 July: "A great many people feel that the Pacific War is rus.h.i.+ng towards an early climax." Eichelberger of Eighth Army wrote from the Philippines on 24 July: "A great many people feel841...that j.a.pan is about to fold up." He added next day: "so many believe that the j.a.ps will quit if Russia comes in." Yet such optimism underestimated the obduracy which still prevailed among j.a.pan's leaders.

In Tokyo, the emperor made his first direct personal intervention at a meeting of the "Big Six," the leaders of j.a.pan's government and armed forces, in the Imperial Palace on 22 June, following defeat on Okinawa. While all those present signified their commitment to continue the war-a mantra as indispensable to every j.a.panese princ.i.p.al as obeisance to the throne-Hirohito authorised an attempt to pursue negotiations through Moscow. In the days that followed, the j.a.panese were dismayed to find that Amba.s.sador Malik was "too busy" to meet Hirota again. Now, for the first time, an astonished Amba.s.sador Sato in Moscow was informed that ministers in Tokyo were pursuing at least a modest portion of the policy which for months he had urged in vain. When Malik did receive Hirota on 29 June, however, the Russian found the j.a.panese talking in fantasies: he advanced proposals for preserving Manchukuo's "independence," for abandonment of some j.a.panese fis.h.i.+ng rights in exchange for Russian oil, together with a general willingness to discuss outstanding issues. This was persiflage, as absurd to Malik as it seems to posterity.

However sincere was Hirohito's desire to initiate a negotiation, so dilatory were the j.a.panese diplomatic efforts which followed that a month was thrown away-a fatal month for Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. The prevarication which characterised the conduct of j.a.pan's leaders in the summer of 1945 represented an appalling betrayal of hundreds of thousands of its soldiers, sailors and airmen who had died in recent campaigns designed to buy time for their country. Such time was squandered. Colonel Tibbets's take-off was now barely five weeks away, Stalin's a.s.sault little more. At a meeting of the Soviet Stavka and politburo in Moscow on 2627 June, the formal decision had been promulgated to launch Russian armies into Manchuria and seize the offsh.o.r.e islands promised at Yalta. Some generals and party leaders urged also occupying the j.a.panese home island of Hokkaido. Others, including Molotov and Marshal Zhukov, argued that such action would be militarily hazardous, and would enable the Americans to claim a breach of the Yalta terms. Stalin preserved his silence, leaving the issue open to wait upon events.

WHEN H HIROTA sought a further meeting with Malik in Tokyo on 14 July, in the absence of encouragement from Moscow the amba.s.sador again refused to see him. The next step in this black farce was the nomination of Prince Konoe, yet another former prime minister, to serve as the emperor's personal envoy to the Soviets. Grotesque equivocations accompanied the appointment. To avoid a confrontation with the war party, Konoe was given no formal instructions. Amba.s.sador Sato was urged by the foreign minister: "Please be careful not to give the impression that our plan is to make use of the Russians in ending the war." The exasperated amba.s.sador cabled back, demanding to know how much influence j.a.panese promises-for instance-of non-annexation or non-occupation of overseas territories were likely to have, when most of these had been lost anyway. He declared that he could never hope to convince such supreme realists as the Soviets "with pretty little phrases devoid of all connection with reality." sought a further meeting with Malik in Tokyo on 14 July, in the absence of encouragement from Moscow the amba.s.sador again refused to see him. The next step in this black farce was the nomination of Prince Konoe, yet another former prime minister, to serve as the emperor's personal envoy to the Soviets. Grotesque equivocations accompanied the appointment. To avoid a confrontation with the war party, Konoe was given no formal instructions. Amba.s.sador Sato was urged by the foreign minister: "Please be careful not to give the impression that our plan is to make use of the Russians in ending the war." The exasperated amba.s.sador cabled back, demanding to know how much influence j.a.panese promises-for instance-of non-annexation or non-occupation of overseas territories were likely to have, when most of these had been lost anyway. He declared that he could never hope to convince such supreme realists as the Soviets "with pretty little phrases devoid of all connection with reality."

But these were all that Tokyo's riven factions could agree to offer. Hirohito's 12 July message to Molotov, conveyed by Sato, declared simply: "His Majesty The Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender the j.a.panese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honour and existence of the Motherland..." The message concluded with a bald a.s.sertion that Prince Konoe would shortly arrive in Moscow to seek to "restore peace," bearing a letter confirming the lofty sentiments expressed in the emperor's cable.

ALL THESE exchanges became known to the Americans through Magic intercepts. On 16 July, Stimson noted in his diary: "I received...important papers [regarding] j.a.panese maneuverings for peace." John J. McCloy, his deputy, likewise wrote exultantly: "News came in of the j.a.panese efforts to get the Russians to get them out of the war. Hirohito himself was called upon to send a message...to Stalin. Things are moving-what a long way we have come since that Sunday morning we heard the news of Pearl Harbor!" Forrestal noted: "The first real evidence of a j.a.panese desire to get out of the war came today...Togo said...that the unconditional surrender terms of the Allies was about the only thing in the way of termination of the war." exchanges became known to the Americans through Magic intercepts. On 16 July, Stimson noted in his diary: "I received...important papers [regarding] j.a.panese maneuverings for peace." John J. McCloy, his deputy, likewise wrote exultantly: "News came in of the j.a.panese efforts to get the Russians to get them out of the war. Hirohito himself was called upon to send a message...to Stalin. Things are moving-what a long way we have come since that Sunday morning we heard the news of Pearl Harbor!" Forrestal noted: "The first real evidence of a j.a.panese desire to get out of the war came today...Togo said...that the unconditional surrender terms of the Allies was about the only thing in the way of termination of the war."

A few miles from the cold, shattered heart of Berlin, in Potsdam's Cecilienhof Palace, Stalin was playing host to the last great Allied summit conference of the war. Each partic.i.p.ant perceived the occasion as a critical challenge, none more so than Harry Truman. He was a novice, taking a place at a table crowded with legends, Stalin and Churchill foremost among them. The president, having sailed from Newport News, Virginia, on 7 July, was now installed in a three-storey yellow stucco house at 2 Kaiserstra.s.se, formerly owned by a German film-maker whose daughters had been raped on the premises barely ten weeks earlier, during its pillage by the Red Army. The building was, of course, densely microphoned by the Soviets, and the NKVD provided domestic staff. It was there that Truman received a memorandum from Stimson, emphasising how urgent had become an American warning to Tokyo.

The princ.i.p.al business to be transacted at Potsdam related to Europe, specifically the future of Germany and Poland. The issues of the Far East war and Soviet partic.i.p.ation were also much on the minds of the princ.i.p.als, but a host of great matters competed for the attention of Truman and Byrnes. It would be unjust to perceive their approach to Asian matters as perfunctory. Throughout the conference, however, these had to be addressed in the context of much else. Byrnes, with Joseph Davies, overwhelmingly the most important influences upon the president, took the news of Tokyo's overtures to Moscow much less seriously than did Stimson, McCloy and Forrestal. The secretary of state wrote later that he thought little of this j.a.panese attempt to "avoid the emperor's removal and also save some of their conquered territory."

Some historians have perceived in Byrnes's att.i.tude a petty nationalism unworthy of the issues at stake. It may be true that he was an unsophisticated man, smaller than his great office, as Truman later decided him to be. Yet if Byrnes's judgements in the summer of 1945 were strongly influenced by domestic political considerations, they do not seem unreasonable. The U.S. was j.a.pan's princ.i.p.al enemy. Throughout the war, the Soviet Union had shown itself obsessively fearful that the Western Allies might make a separate peace with Germany. Britain and the U.S. deferred to Soviet paranoia-rejecting, for instance, every approach from German anti-n.a.z.is until the last days when Hitler's armies in Italy surrendered. Now, Tokyo had chosen to approach Moscow. At a time when Soviet savagery and expansionism in Europe were shocking the world, why should not the U.S. spurn such contortions? Those who criticise America's alleged failure to reach out to the enemy in the last weeks of July 1945, to save the j.a.panese from themselves, seem to neglect a simple point. If Tokyo wanted to end the war, the only credible means of doing so was by an approach to Was.h.i.+ngton, through some neutral agency less hopelessly compromised than the Soviet Union.

We know why why this did not happen: because the j.a.panese expected to gain more favourable terms from the Russians; and because the war party in Tokyo would have vetoed direct negotiation with the United States. The loss of face would have been unendurable. The State Department's Asian experts thoroughly understood the cultural and political forces which caused the j.a.panese to behave as they did. When, however, America stood on the brink of absolute victory over a nation which had brought untold grief and misery upon Asia, why should not the enemy bear the burden of acknowledging his condition, and indeed his guilt? this did not happen: because the j.a.panese expected to gain more favourable terms from the Russians; and because the war party in Tokyo would have vetoed direct negotiation with the United States. The loss of face would have been unendurable. The State Department's Asian experts thoroughly understood the cultural and political forces which caused the j.a.panese to behave as they did. When, however, America stood on the brink of absolute victory over a nation which had brought untold grief and misery upon Asia, why should not the enemy bear the burden of acknowledging his condition, and indeed his guilt?

Hitler set a standard of evil among those whom the Allies fought in the Second World War. Some historians, not all of them j.a.panese, argue that j.a.pan's leaders represented a significantly lesser baseness; and certainly not one which deserved the atomic bomb. Few of those Asians who experienced j.a.panese conquest, however, and knew of the millions of deaths which it encompa.s.sed, believed that j.a.pan possessed any superior claim on Allied forbearance to that of Germany. Post-war critics of U.S. conduct in the weeks before Hiros.h.i.+ma seem to demand from America's leaders moral and political generosity so far in advance of that displayed by their j.a.panese counterparts as to be fantastic, in the sixth year of a global war. Their essential thesis is that America should have spared its enemies from the human consequences of their own rulers' blind folly; that those in Was.h.i.+ngton should have displayed a concern for the j.a.panese people much more enlightened than that of the Tokyo government.

Why, however, should the U.S. either have welcomed a Soviet propaganda triumph in Asia, or humoured the self-esteem of a barbarous enemy? Truman's "firmness" towards j.a.pan certainly reflected a desire to impress his authority upon the Soviets, as well as upon the American people. Yet it is hard to believe that Roosevelt, architect of the doctrine of unconditional surrender, would have behaved much differently, had he survived. In the war against Germany, Stalin took much in return for paying most of the blood cost of victory. He profited from overrunning eastern Europe while the British and Americans dallied west of the Rhine. In the j.a.panese war, however, the U.S. was unequivocally the victor. It was irksome to see the Soviets on the brink of garnering rich rewards for attending curtain calls after missing all but the last minutes of the play. The princ.i.p.al and overwhelming reason for dropping the bomb was to compel the j.a.panese to end the war; but it seems entirely reasonable that the U.S. also wished to frustrate Soviet expansionism.

James Byrnes wrote in his memoirs: "Had the j.a.panese government surrendered unconditionally, it would not have been necessary to drop the atomic bomb." Tsuyos.h.i.+ Hasegawa, author of one of the more significant recent studies of this period, comments: "Perhaps this statement842 can be read in reverse: 'If we insisted on unconditional surrender, we could justify the dropping of the atomic bomb.'" Hasegawa's words again prompt the question: why should the U.S. can be read in reverse: 'If we insisted on unconditional surrender, we could justify the dropping of the atomic bomb.'" Hasegawa's words again prompt the question: why should the U.S. not not have insisted upon unconditional surrender? have insisted upon unconditional surrender?

At Truman's first bilateral meeting with Stalin at the "little White House," 2 Kaiserstra.s.se, on 17 July, the Soviet leader announced that his armies would be ready to invade Manchuria in mid-August. The president wrote to his wife, Bess, next day: "I was scared I didn't know whether things were going according to Hoyle or not. Anyway a start has been made and I've gotten what I came for-Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it. I'll say that we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won't be killed." How can this letter be squared with Churchill's memorandum to Eden at Potsdam: "It is quite clear that the United States does not at the present time desire Russian partic.i.p.ation in the war against j.a.pan"? Truman, like many of his advisers, regretted the deal for Soviet intervention in the Far East. Yet at Potsdam he was obliged to make the best of the fact that Yalta could not be u