Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [310]
The consequence of the peace party’s timidity was a stunning incoherence of view, which persisted through to August 1945. Japanese 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. Japan’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 titanic enterprise was hastening towards its climax at a far more urgent tempo.
JAPANESE LEADERS feared, indeed anticipated, a Russian invasion of Manchuria. They were nonetheless shocked when, six weeks after Molotov told Ambassador Sato that nothing had happened at Yalta which should alarm his country, Moscow announced the abrogation of the 1941 neutrality pact. In Japanese eyes, Soviet behaviour represented perfidy. Yet on 29 May Molotov received Sato amicably, and assured 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 pronouncements, was rash enough to swallow this one. U.S. intelligence annotated the Magic decrypt of the ambassador’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 Japanese 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 Japan’s capitulation, “however, he feels that if we stick to unconditional surrender the Japs will not give up and we will have to destroy them as we did Germany.” The same week, Japan’s foreign minister, Shigenori Togo, appointed Koki Hirota, a former prime minister, foreign minister and ambassador, as his secret envoy to the Soviets, with instructions to pursue their friendship as well as neutrality.
Hirota’s first move was to visit Jacob Malik, the Russian ambassador 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 Japanese 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 Horikoshi, the Zero design engineer, often discussed with friends the prospect of soliciting Soviet aid: “Japan 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 friendship in mediating with the Allies.”
Meanwhile in Washington 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