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By Root 923 0

obeisance to the throne—Hirohito authorised an attempt to pursue negotiations through Moscow. In the days that followed, the Japanese were dismayed to find that Ambassador Malik was “too busy” to meet Hirota again. Now, for the first time, an astonished Ambassador Sato in Moscow was informed that ministers in Tokyo were pursuing at least a modest portion of the policy which for months he had urged in vain. When Malik did receive Hirota on 29 June, however, the Russian found the Japanese talking in fantasies: he advanced proposals for preserving Manchukuo’s “independence,” for abandonment of some Japanese fishing rights in exchange for Russian oil, together with a general willingness to discuss outstanding issues. This was persiflage, as absurd to Malik as it seems to posterity.

However sincere was Hirohito’s desire to initiate a negotiation, so dilatory were the Japanese diplomatic efforts which followed that a month was thrown away—a fatal month for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The prevarication which characterised the conduct of Japan’s leaders in the summer of 1945 represented an appalling betrayal of hundreds of thousands of its soldiers, sailors and airmen who had died in recent campaigns designed to buy time for their country. Such time was squandered. Colonel Tibbets’s take-off was now barely five weeks away, Stalin’s assault little more. At a meeting of the Soviet Stavka and politburo in Moscow on 26–27 June, the formal decision had been promulgated to launch Russian armies into Manchuria and seize the offshore islands promised at Yalta. Some generals and party leaders urged also occupying the Japanese home island of Hokkaido. Others, including Molotov and Marshal Zhukov, argued that such action would be militarily hazardous, and would enable the Americans to claim a breach of the Yalta terms. Stalin preserved his silence, leaving the issue open to wait upon events.

WHEN HIROTA sought a further meeting with Malik in Tokyo on 14 July, in the absence of encouragement from Moscow the ambassador again refused to see him. The next step in this black farce was the nomination of Prince Konoe, yet another former prime minister, to serve as the emperor’s personal envoy to the Soviets. Grotesque equivocations accompanied the appointment. To avoid a confrontation with the war party, Konoe was given no formal instructions. Ambassador Sato was urged by the foreign minister: “Please be careful not to give the impression that our plan is to make use of the Russians in ending the war.” The exasperated ambassador cabled back, demanding to know how much influence Japanese promises—for instance—of non-annexation or non-occupation of overseas territories were likely to have, when most of these had been lost anyway. He declared that he could never hope to convince such supreme realists as the Soviets “with pretty little phrases devoid of all connection with reality.”

But these were all that Tokyo’s riven factions could agree to offer. Hirohito’s 12 July message to Molotov, conveyed by Sato, declared simply: “His Majesty The Emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated. But so long as England and the United States insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honour and existence of the Motherland…” The message concluded with a bald assertion that Prince Konoe would shortly arrive in Moscow to seek to “restore peace,” bearing a letter confirming the lofty sentiments expressed in the emperor’s cable.

ALL THESE exchanges became known to the Americans through Magic intercepts. On 16 July, Stimson noted in his diary: “I received…important papers [regarding] Japanese maneuverings for peace.” John J. McCloy, his deputy, likewise wrote exultantly: “News came in of the Japanese efforts to get the Russians to get them out of the war. Hirohito himself was called upon to send a message…to Stalin. Things are moving—what