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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 Hiroshima. 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 Japanese 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 Japan’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 Japanese people.”

Next day, Japan defiantly informed the world that the German surrender increased its determination to fight on. The Japanese 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 Japan would follow Nazi policies “at the bitter end.” Yet there were still plenty of fantasists. As late as 29 May, Japan’s naval attaché in Stockholm expressed his belief that in negotiations the Western Allies would allow Japan 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 Washington, via Magic.

While Japan 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 Japanese correctly assumed would be an invasion of Kyushu. Japan’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, together with Manchukuo’s “independence” and Korea’s status as a Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japanese cabinet. Anami opposed all concessions on the Asian mainland: “Japan is not losing the war, since we have not lost any homeland territory. I object to conducting negotiations on the assumption that we are defeated.” More realistic voices urged that Japan should concentrate upon a single limited objective: preserving the imperial system and the homeland’s territorial integrity.

Among many leading Japanese, 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