Hiroshima_ The World's Bomb - Andrew J. Rotter [133]
Suzuki put a stop to it at 10.00. He told the group that he would apprise the Emperor of the debate, and once more gather the Supreme War Council (the Big Six). The plan, hatched that afternoon with Kido, was to turn the meeting into an imperial conference, the Emperor himself presiding. Kido had earlier talked to Hirohito for nearly an hour. His own doubts about the four-conditions proposal having been sharpened by his encounters with Konoe, Takamatsu, and Shigemitsu, Kido had evidently brought the Emperor around with a small redefinition of the kokutai, broadening it slightly so as to offer the Japanese greater autonomy in determining its ultimate form. Now, after midnight, the principals in the drama met yet again, this time in a room in the palace basement, and in front of the Emperor. Then came a twist: Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma, chair of the
Privy Council, had been asked by the Emperor to join the deliberations. Hiranuma spoke out of his turn, asked many questions, and went on at length. At the end, he proposed yet another broadening of the definition of kokutai: it was to be understood that the Potsdam Declaration ‘does not comprise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of his majesty as a sovereign ruler’. ‘In effect’, Herbert Bix has written, ‘this amounted to an affirmation that the emperor’s rights of sovereignty, including the all-important right of supreme command, antedated the constitution and had been determined by the gods in antiquity ...It was certainly not constitutional monarchy’ that Hiranuma had proposed. Either because they accepted Hiranuma’s redefinition of the kokutai or because they were simply exhausted, the three members of the ‘Peace Faction’ did not object.
Suzuki now asked the Emperor to decide. While no transcript of Hiro-hito’s exact words exists, the historian Robert J. C. Butow has pulled together a ‘re-creation’ of what he said, using the recollections of those who were there. Hirohito said he agreed with Togo—that they should ask for only the single condition. ‘Continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer.’ Despite promises made by the military, Tokyo was poorly defended; indeed, the sovereign said pointedly, ‘there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance.’ Painful as it was to give way, it was necessary now to ‘bear the unbearable’. With that, Hirohito left the room. All six members of the Supreme War Council promptly signed a statement endorsing surrender on the one condition. At 3.00 a.m. the cabinet provided its endorsement. But Anami, angry at the use of the Emperor to break the deadlock in a way he thought dishonorable, now demanded to know whether, if the United States rejected preservation of the kokutai, Suzuki was prepared to continue the fight. Suzuki said he was. Just over three hours later, Japan’s terms were transmitted to the Allies via the neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland.47
Harry Truman received the news around 7.30 in the morning of 10 August. He gathered Byrnes, Stimson, Leahy, and Forrestal and asked them what he should do. Probably no one in the room understood the subtlety of Hiranuma’s conditional language, but Byrnes had already been buttonholed by a trio of Japan specialists in the State Department (one of them Joseph Grew), who insisted that the Japanese condition reserved limitless power for the Emperor and would thus frustrate the effort to demilitarize and democratize the defeated nation. Byrnes was worried enough that compromising in any way the unconditional