Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [303]
An age before, in 1942, on Joseph Grew’s return from service as U.S. ambassador in Japan, 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 assert 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 Japs.” The events of August 1945 would display, in the most awesome and terrible fashion, the culmination of the process once so insouciantly described as “mopping up the Japs.”
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 Japan’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 principal 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 Japanese 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 Japanese hegemony in Korea and Manchuria, freedom from Allied military occupation, and the right for Japan 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 Japan’s negotiating position—in other words, that military resistance was still serviceable. On 9 June, he urged the Japanese people to “smash the inordinate ambitions of the enemy nations.”
The “peace party” thought and spoke as if Japan 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 Japanese since Pearl Harbor, indeed since 1931, had placed their nation beyond the pale. Japan’s leaders wasted months asserting 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, Japan 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 Japan to conclude a five-year Neutrality Pact. Japan’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