Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [322]
The party most deluded by the declaration was Japan. When the absence of Stalin’s signature was noted in Tokyo, it was supposed that he had chosen to exclude the Soviet Union from the ranks of Japan’s enemies; and thus that it remained a plausible intermediary. The Japanese were further heartened by the eclipse of Churchill, following the British election defeat which removed him from the premiership. They supposed this to open prospects of faltering and dissension in the Allied ranks. Some in Tokyo were encouraged by the language of the Potsdam Declaration. Through Moscow, they sought clarification of its vague generalities. At a cabinet meeting on the afternoon of 27 July, Foreign Minister Togo urged making no immediate public response, partly because it would be almost impossible to achieve an agreed position among ministers. The declaration’s terms were reported in the Japanese press, omitting only the Allied promise that Japanese soldiers would be allowed to return peacefully home. Newspapers were less restrained than politicians in their reactions: “Laughable Surrender Conditions to Japan,” said the heading of an editorial in Yomiuri Hochi. Another title, Asahi Shimbun, reported: “The government intends to ignore it.” Mokusatsu, silence in the face of unacceptable words or deeds, is among the principal behavioural tools of Japanese society.
Next day, however, several officeholders headed by Anami, the war minister, declared that silence would not suffice. They insisted that Suzuki should denounce the declaration. The prime minister made a short statement to a press conference, dismissing the American document as “a rehash of the Cairo Declaration. The government does not think that it has serious value. We can only ignore it. We shall do our utmost to see the war through to the bitter end.”
Some historians have questioned whether Suzuki indeed used these words in this context. Yet if there is doubt about the exact language, it is undisputed that the Japanese government agreed to make no positive response to the Declaration. The U.S. Associated Press reported on 27 July: “The semi-official Japanese Domei news agency stated today that Allied ultimatum to surrender or meet destruction would be ignored.” The emperor himself seems to have made no attempt to question Suzuki’s posture. Hirohito has so often been credited with a role as Japan’s principal peacemaker that it is important to emphasise his rejection of the Potsdam terms. If the emperor had intervened decisively at this point, rather than a fortnight later, all that followed might have been averted. As it was, this hesitant, inadequate divinity continued to straddle the fence, wanting peace yet still recoiling from acknowledgement of his nation’s defeat, and history took its course.
From Moscow, Ambassador Sato continued to bombard Tokyo with imprecations to face reality. “There is no alternative but immediate unconditional surrender if we are to try to make America and England moderate and to prevent [Russia’s] participation in the war,” he cabled on 30 July. Foreign Minister Togo replied on 2 August, urging patience: “It is difficult to decide on concrete peace terms all at one stroke.” He reported, however, that the emperor was closely following developments in Moscow, while Suzuki and the army’s leaders explored the question of whether the Potsdam Declaration offered scope for negotiation. American naval intelligence analysts of the Magic decrypts on the declaration reported: “There is a disposition (or determination) of finding in its terms a sufficiently effective emollient for tortured pride which still rebels at the words ‘unconditional surrender’.”
It is unknown whether Truman read these decrypts or this analysis on his way back from Potsdam. The final conference session took place on 1 August. Stalin left Berlin that day, and the U.S. president early the following morning. Truman had already approved the text of a public statement to be issued