Hirohito, Emperor Shōwa, 1935. (Public Domain)
By Todd DePastino
The Atomic Bomb that destroyed Hiroshima effectively ended the Pacific War. Japan’s perfidy at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was fully repaid with the nuclear strike on August 6, 1945. Because of the Bomb, Japan’s surrender was inevitable.
That’s the history most of us learned. But it’s far from the full story.
History rarely packs up so neatly, and the Pacific War is no exception. Japan’s surrender was never a foregone conclusion, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Behind the scenes, an intense struggle raged in Tokyo’s Imperial Palace. Factions fought bitterly, the military’s obedience was uncertain, and an 11th-hour coup nearly derailed the peace. V-J Day—August 14, 1945—was the result of tortured deliberations and last-minute decisions, rather than a simple reaction to overwhelming force.
Months before Hiroshima, Japan stood on the brink of annihilation. Allied forces had captured Okinawa in June, and daily bombings were laying waste to Japanese cities. Tokyo and Osaka, among others, had been ravaged by incendiary bombs. Much of the nation was de-housed and starving. Japan’s leaders knew an Allied invasion of the homeland, codenamed Operation Downfall, was imminent, portending the slaughter of millions if the country fought on.
The Big Six
Japan’s fate rested entirely in the hands of six people—the “Big Six”—who made up what was called the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War. This all-powerful leadership group operated on strict consensus. All decisions had to be unanimous, all voices in harmony. Within the Big Six, rivalries and disagreements roiled far beneath the surface, like tectonic plates grinding against each other. But never could these hidden conflicts disturb the placid waters of the visible world. When the Big Six spoke, they did so with one voice.
The unified message from the Imperial Palace in the summer of 1945 was that Japan would never surrender but would fight to self-annihilation. “It is glorious to die for the Holy Emperor of Japan, and every single Japanese man, woman and child should die for the Emperor when the Allies arrive,” the government told its people in June. The Big Six instructed the Emperor’s subjects to sharpen sticks and prepare to plunge them into the abdomens of the invaders.
But half of Japan’s war leaders, three of the Big Six, privately considered this plan madness. Prime Minister Baron Kantaro Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, and Navy Minister Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai believed Japan needed to stop the fighting to avoid destruction. They knew Japan’s military situation was untenable and, through agonizing deliberations in the Imperial Palace’s air raid bunker, pushed for a negotiated surrender before it was too late.
This “Party of Peace” within the Big Six insisted that surrender was honorable if it included a single condition: the preservation of the Emperor. If the Allies pledged that Emperor Hirohito could remain on the throne, Suzuki, Togo, and Yonai were willing to lay down arms and save Japan from annihilation.
Opposing the Party of Peace were the die-hards in the war faction: War Minister General Korechika Anami, Army Chief of Staff General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda. These men, at first, resisted any hint of surrender. By the summer of 1945, however, they suggested that stopping the war could be done under four conditions: that Japan would 1) disarm itself; 2) conduct its own war-crimes trials, if any; 3) remain unoccupied by the enemy; 4) retain its Emperor. This was more ceasefire than capitulation.
Presiding over these factions was Emperor Hirohito himself, a figure traditionally above politics and constitutionally silent during deliberations of the Big Six. The Emperor literally was not permitted to speak, even though he was revered as a near-deity, and all sides claimed to act in his name.
Prevented from interfering with government policy, Hirohito kept his worries about Japan’s destruction largely to himself. Evidence shows that the Emperor knew the war was a lost cause by February 1945, and he began searching for a way to end it. In June, Hirohito’s close adviser, Marquis Koichi Kido, presented him with a memorandum urging a diplomatic path to peace.
Kido suggested that Japan ask the neutral Soviet Union to mediate a settlement – a long shot, but one of the few options left. He even dusted off the World War I Treaty of Versailles as a model: Japan might give up its conquered territories and disarm, but not be occupied, thus preserving the sovereign nation centered on the Emperor.
Through the uniquely Japanese art of haragei –non-verbal communication or, literally, “stomach art” –the Emperor and his representatives used euphemisms, indirection, and facial expressions to convey his wishes to the Big Six. And in June, the Big Six settled on its consensus approach: the Party of War would continue fighting, while the Party of Peace would send peace feelers to Moscow.
Throughout June and July 1945, Japan waited for a Soviet reply to its pleas for help in ending the war on soft terms. But this effort went nowhere. Unbeknownst to the Japanese, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had already secretly agreed with the US and Britain at the Yalta Conference back in February to enter the war against Japan three months after the surrender of Germany.
For the US, Stalin’s entry into the Pacific War promised a quicker end to the fighting with fewer American casualties. For Stalin, getting in on the kill of Japan meant recovering Russian territories—South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the warm water port of Dalian (also called Port Arthur) on the Yellow Sea—that Russia had lost back in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.
The Potsdam Conference
Then, in July 1945, the Allies met again, this time in a defeated Germany in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. There, Truman, Stalin, and Churchill (replaced mid-conference by Prime Minister Clement Atlee) hammered out final agreements on the shape of postwar Europe and confirmed that the Soviet Union would declare war on the Empire of Japan by August 9, 90 days after Germany’s surrender.
On the evening of July 24, Truman took Stalin aside and casually mentioned that the US had developed a “new weapon of unusual destructive force”—the Bomb. Stalin feigned indifference, replying that he hoped the United States would make “good use of it against the Japanese.” In truth, Stalin had spies at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project had manufactured “Fat Man,” the plutonium bomb. Stalin had known about the project years before Truman had been let in on the secret.
Two days later, on July 26, the Allies (minus the Soviet Union, which was not yet at war with Japan) issued the Potsdam Declaration, officially titled the “Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender.” The Declaration warned the Japanese to surrender immediately or face “prompt and utter destruction.”
The Potsdam Declaration never mentioned the Bomb, and to Emperor Hirohito and the Party of Peace, the document’s ambiguous, even beguiling language hinted that the Allies’ surrender terms were less than unconditional.
“We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation,” stated the Declaration. In addition, the Allies pledged that “Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy” and that Japan would be allowed a sovereign government “established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”
The Supreme Council for the Direction of the War: “Big Six”
Party of War vs Party of Peace
At a meeting of the Big Six on July 27, the Party of Peace suggested accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. The document contained just enough assurance, they said, to believe the Allies would leave Emperor Hirohito unharmed and enthroned.
The Party of War maintained its steadfast refusal to surrender. So, the two sides clung to their wobbly consensus. Japan would continue fighting the war on the one hand, while pursuing peace feelers through the neutral Soviet Union on the other.
On the face of it, the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 500 miles to the west of Tokyo, on August 6 did nothing to shake this consensus. Indeed, some historians have argued plausibly that the Bomb didn’t move Japan toward surrender at all.
When reports of Hiroshima’s destruction reached the Imperial Palace 12 hours after the Enola Gay’s mission, the Imperial Army, the Imperial Navy, and civilian officials responded with a collective shrug. They’d experienced worse carnage, such as the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 people the night of March 9-10, 1945. They didn’t consider the Atomic Bomb a game changer that could alter the calculus of war. They doubted that the US had more than one Bomb. Even if the US possessed a giant arsenal of Bombs, War Minister Anami argued, “Would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?”
The Supreme Council for the Direction of the War didn’t even see fit to call an emergency meeting after the attack on Hiroshima and waited to reconvene at 10:30am on August 9.
But by then, another disaster had befallen Japan, one more devastating in war leaders’ minds than the destruction of Hiroshima. At midnight on August 9, the Soviet Union broke its neutrality, declared war on Japan, and launched a massive invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria.
The Soviet attack placed Japan in a strategic dead-end, foreclosing any possibility of a negotiated peace via Moscow and raising the terrifying specter of Red Army occupation of the Japanese home islands. To some, a Communist Japan was a fate worse than annihilation.
At the August 9 meeting of the Big Six, Army Chief Umezu downplayed the Soviet threat, but the Party of War had nothing left to offer the Party of Peace to secure a consensus. With the dream of Soviet mediation exposed as a fantasy, the two sides were at an impasse. They had gone down the road of consensus as long as they could until the stubborn reality of total defeat stopped them in their tracks. All that was left for the Big Six to discuss was surrender.
An Imperial General Headquarters meeting, April 29, 1943. The Showa Emperor Hirohito is in the center. Navy officers are seated left while Army officers are seated right. (Asahi Shimbun)
Deadlock
As they deliberated, a messenger arrived with terrible news: a second Atomic Bomb had just exploded over the city of Nagasaki. The timing was almost surreal – calamity upon calamity. Nagasaki didn’t change the Supreme Council’s calculus of war, but it proved that Hiroshima was not a one-off and added to the urgency of the moment.
The Big Six continued debating with a view to forging a new consensus. But now, for the first time in the war, haragei, “stomach art,” failed them. The Big Six were deadlocked 3-3. The Party of War would settle for nothing less than a negotiated armistice. Failing that, they were content to die in the suicidal defense of the home islands.
The Party of Peace, meanwhile, insisted on surrender with one condition only: retaining the Imperial throne.
Hours passed in heated discussion with no consensus on the horizon. Word of the deadlock reached the Emperor through informal channels. Japan’s harmonic unity, his advisers said, had been shattered. The tectonic plates of faction had churned the waters. It was now time for the Sacred Voice of the Emperor to be heard.
Voice of the Crane: The Emperor Speaks
Just before midnight on August 9, the Big Six joined other members of Japan’s leadership for an unprecedented Imperial Conference – a formal gathering in the presence of Emperor Hirohito.
The atmosphere was tense and grave inside the long narrow underground shelter. Adding to the claustrophobia was stifling heat and humidity so thick that sweat beads formed on the wood-paneled walls. The Emperor sat elevated on his throne at the head of a long table. Normally disengaged from policy, he would now hear both sides and serve as arbiter.
Each of the Big Six members stated their views one by one to the Emperor. General Umezu still argued that the Soviet entry didn’t doom their homeland defense – while the situation was “unfavorable,” it wasn’t hopeless. On the other hand, supporters of the Party of Peace spoke bluntly about “the deterioration of the domestic situation” – a euphemism for the starvation that presaged food riots and revolution. This specter of internal collapse weighed on Hirohito’s mind as much as foreign invasion.
At 2:00am on August 10, after hearing the debate, Emperor Hirohito addressed the group – an electrifying moment in Japanese history. In pin-drop silence, the 44-year-old monarch removed a glove, wiped his brow, and spoke in the archaic, formal, and stilted language the Japanese called the “Voice of the Crane”:
I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer . . . The time has come to bear the unbearable . . . I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister.
With this statement, the deadlock was broken. Hirohito’s intervention, later called the “sacred decision,” was technically an imperial order that bypassed the usual requirement for unanimous Big Six consensus. War Minister Anami and the other militarists, though deeply unhappy, submitted to the Emperor’s authority. In Japanese culture and law, the Emperor’s voice was decisive – disobeying him was treason.
The United States Responds
One step remained: informing the United States of the surrender. Before noon on August 10, Japan’s Foreign Ministry sent a cable to a member of the Swiss legation in Washington, DC, who passed the message along to Secretary of States James F. Byrnes. Japan, the message said, accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration “with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.” The war seemed moments from ending.
But the drama was not over.
Secretary Byrnes, speaking on behalf of the Allies, issued a reply on August 12 that triggered another round of hand wringing in Tokyo. The Allies wouldn’t guarantee the Emperor’s throne, but they wouldn’t rule it out either:
From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms. . . . The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.
The American reply didn’t explicitly promise Hirohito’s continued reign long-term, merely that the ultimate form of government would be decided by the Japanese people in due course. For the Allied leaders, unconditional surrender was still the rule – they were unwilling to promise anything to a regime that had started the war.
To Foreign Minister Togo and Prime Minister Suzuki, the Allied clarification was acceptable: it tacitly allowed the Emperor to remain, even if under control. But to hardliners, the thought of their divine Emperor taking orders from a foreign general – and an enemy at that – was almost too much to bear. Was this condition in line with the Emperor’s dignity? Did it “prejudice his prerogatives as Sovereign Ruler,” which the Japanese had tried to safeguard?
The militarists grumbled that this sounded like the Emperor might be a puppet. Hours of debate and deliberation dragged through the day, the night, and the next day.
Washington grew impatient. Truman had halted bombing on August 11 after Japan had signaled its intent to surrender. But, on August 14, with no further word from the Japanese, the President resumed the attacks, sending 700 B-29s on the longest and largest bombing mission of the war. He also gravely conceded that he’d probably have to hit Tokyo with a third Atomic Bomb due for delivery on August 19.
An Attempted Palace Coup
With the sound of bombardment audible from the palace bunker, Hirohito’s cabinet called another Imperial Conference on August 14. Once again, the Emperor spoke. He told War Minister Anami and others that he found the Allied reply acceptable and that the surrender would proceed. There could be no more debate. The only issue left was notifying his subjects and his military, which was scattered across what was left of Japan’s crumbling empire.
Hirohito also told the Big Six that he would announce the surrender personally over the Japan Broadcasting Corporation radio network. This was a break from protocol so profound that it amounted to near sacrilege. The Japanese people had never before heard an Emperor’s voice. Those who sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne weren’t meant to be seen or heard in public. Even portraits of the Emperor were rare and often veiled so that ordinary people wouldn’t view them directly. The moment was indeed extraordinary.
Sound technicians arrived at the Palace at 11:00pm on August 14 and set up microphones and a gramophone with a recording head. Hirohito entered with the Imperial Rescript—a 4 minute 36 second written speech which had been prepared by advisers. As the Emperor spoke, the technicians looked at each other with worry. His Majesty’s voice was so soft, the recorder could barely pick it up. The Emperor offered to read again. This time, his attempt to increase the volume elevated the pitch. He also skipped some characters. But even a poorly read speech was better than none, and this second recording was the one selected to be broadcast the next day at noon.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the palace, a group of die-hard Japanese officers were on the rampage, looking to overthrow the government, stop the recording, and keep the war going.
Desperate to avoid the dishonor of surrender, the coup plotters bluffed their way past Imperial Guards, cut telephone lines, and scoured the palace’s labyrinthine corridors in search of the phonograph records.
The rebels tied up palace staff at bayonet-point and pressed them for information. They shot dead the commander of the 1st Imperial Guard Division. They also sought the blessing of Party of War leader Anami, hoping he would support the coup. Anami refused. But he also didn’t stop the attempted coup d’état. He would leave its success or failure in the hands of fate.
The renegade officers never found the recordings. Palace staff kept the records hidden, first in a stack of papers, then in the Empress’s wardrobe crate. Finally, they were smuggled out of the complex in a basket of laundry.
Co-conspirators across Tokyo were similarly thwarted in their attempts to assassinate members of the Party of Peace—Prime Minister Suzuki, Admiral Yonai, and Foreign Minister Togo–and other government officials tasked with effectuating the surrender. Senior Army officials refused to endorse the coup. “The Emperor has spoken,” as Anami told the rebels.
Dawn broke on August 15 with intransigent soldiers buzzing around Tokyo with leaflets urging the people to reject surrender. But the coup was effectively broken, its leaders dead by suicide in the Imperial Palace.
The phonograph records containing Hirohito’s Imperial Rescript—the “Jewel Voice Recording”—were now at the headquarters of Japan Broadcast Corporation. Radio announcers the nation over spent the morning preparing people for an “important broadcast” at noon, instructing them to listen “honestly and solemnly without fail.”
The Emperor Addresses His Subjects
At midday on August 15, 1945, the Japanese people swarmed around their radios, many of them outdoors, as most villages only had one such device.
The announcer began, “All listeners, please rise.”
Then, at the stroke of noon, a scratchy phonograph recording of Emperor Hirohito’s high-pitched voice crackled over the collective hush.
The language was formal and archaic, punctuated with ornamental phrases few had ever heard. It seemed like a voice from long-ago, from the age of diamyos and shoguns and samurai. Missing from the classical rhetoric were the words “surrender” and “defeat.” He spoke euphemistically and passively about what was happening and what was to come.
I have considered deeply the general trends of the world and the current situation of the Empire, and I have decided to take extraordinary measures to bring the current state of affairs to an end . . .
After four years of war, despite the valiant efforts of our land and naval forces, the diligence of our government officials, and the devoted service of our hundred million subjects, the war situation has not necessarily turned in Japan’s favor. Moreover, the general trends of the world have not been advantageous to us . . .
Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
The trials and suffering that the Empire must endure from now on will indeed be great. I fully understand the anguish of my people. However, in accordance with the dictates of fate, I must bear the unbearable and endure the unendurable in order to pave the way for peace for all future generations . . .
Understand well my intentions and act accordingly.
Most listeners were initially confused – Hirohito’s courtly language was obscure. But, after the recording was played, radio announcers restated the Rescript in plain Japanese. Some wept, others stood in stunned silence. Legend has it even the cicadas in the summer trees paused and held their breath. When it sunk in that Japan was surrendering, reactions varied from grief and shame to a quiet sense of relief that the unbearable war was finally over. Defeat was a liberation from a nightmare that had consumed the nation.
Japanese civilians listen to the broadcast of the Emperor reading the Imperial Rescript of Surrender, August 15, 1945. (Public Domain)
Japan Surrenders
That evening, General Korechika Anami–Japan’s War Minister, the Army’s highest-ranking officer, and the Big Six’s leader of the Party of War–plunged a short blade into the left side of his abdomen. He pulled it right, then turned it upward. His final words jotted on a note next to him: “”I—with my death—humbly apologize to the Emperor for the great crime.”
Just what Anami thought that crime was remains a mystery.
Other hardliners followed the example of Anami. They would leave the Japanese people to endure the unendurable.
Once Hirohito’s voice had been heard and the imperial command to surrender was understood, the majority of Japan’s military followed orders. But it wasn’t a simple process – surrendering an empire spread across Asia and the Pacific was a huge logistical undertaking. Some units responded with defiance or denial. A few remote garrisons pledged to fight on.
In his message to the military, Hirohito made no mention of the Atomic Bomb, but rather emphasized the Soviet declaration of war. The prospect of Soviet invasion was a more tangible threat to Army officers than stories of a new and powerful weapon. The Emperor dispatched personal emissaries, many of them members of the royal family, to assure commanders that the surrender order was genuine and must be obeyed.
On August 18, as Japanese forces were trying to surrender, the Soviet Union launched an amphibious assault on Japan’s Kuril Islands north of the home island of Hokkaido. Japanese defenders put up a ferocious resistance and mauled the Soviets, nearly wiping out the landing force. Panic rose in Tokyo that news of a Japanese “victory” against the Soviets might embolden hardliners to restart hostilities. The surrender seemed to hang by a thread which a single incident could snap. The Army, speaking in the Emperor’s name, frantically ordered the Kuril garrison to stand down. Compliance was touch-and-go. But the Japanese commanders ultimately ceased fire, and the Kuril Islands skirmish ended.
Neither the Allies nor the Japanese were fully assured the war was over until a 20-minute ceremony aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay. There, Japanese representatives—including Party of War member General Umezu—signed the Instrument of Surrender in the shadow of General Douglas MacArthur and others.
With that act, the largest and deadliest event in human history, World War II, came to a close. Out of the ashes, a new world would be born.
