Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [343]
Xu said bitterly: “This was not justice907. Everyone was sickened by the things that happened. The Russians were supposed to be our liberators, our brothers, but we quickly learned to regard them as enemies. They masqueraded as revolutionaries, but in truth they were no more than wolves.” Xu himself was fortunate to escape retribution for his time working for the Japanese. “I was too unimportant a person,” he shrugged. Like millions of Manchurian Chinese, he now found himself witnessing a drama on which the curtain would ring down in accordance with Moscow’s timetable, not that of Tokyo or Washington.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Last Act
1. “God’s Gifts”
THE OPERATIONS and Plans Division of the War Department in Washington wrote on 7 August: “Undoubtedly the biggest question908 in [ Japanese] minds is how many atomic bombs have we and where are we going to drop the next one…We had a rumor that Suzuki had been made Premier to make peace. If this was true, either there were strings to his appointment or else conditions have changed. Japanese propaganda since the [Potsdam] proclamation has obviously been guided by those ‘self-willed militarists’ against whom [it] was aimed.” This was not far from the mark.
It remains cause for astonishment that, even in the wake of the atomic bombs and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, the political stalemate in Japan at first appeared unbroken. The military party, dominated by the war minister, Anami, and other service chiefs, argued that nothing had changed: resistance to the death was preferable to accepting the Potsdam Declaration; Japan could still successfully oppose an invasion of the homeland. Admiral Toyoda, the naval chief, fancifully suggested that world opinion would prevent the U.S. from perpetrating another “inhuman atrocity” with atomic bombs. Some civilian politicians were now willing to accept Potsdam, but with familiar conditions: there should be no occupation of Japan, and the Japanese must try their own alleged war criminals. Most ministers, however, cared about only a single issue: retention of the position of the emperor, though there were endless nuances about how this demand should be articulated. There is no doubt that some genuinely feared the spectre of “red revolution” in Japan, of a dramatic and terrible explosion of popular wrath in the wake of defeat, if the stabilising influence of the emperor was removed.
Throughout 9 August, at meetings of the cabinet and Supreme War Council and at the Imperial Palace, these matters were debated. Within the government and service departments, the terms of dispute quickly became known, and provoked frenzied intrigue. Junior officers at the War Ministry, in particular, were appalled by the notion of surrender, and pressed their superiors to have no part of such a betrayal. Vice-Admiral Onishi, begetter of the kamikaze campaign and now deputy chief of naval staff, begged Anami not to yield to the peacemakers. News of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki appears to have made astonishingly little impact on the leadership one way or another, save that it fulfilled the American purpose of emphasising that “Little Boy” was not a unique phenomenon. Anami speculated wildly that the Americans might possess as many as a hundred atomic weapons.
That evening of the ninth, the “Big Six” members of the Supreme War Council found themselves called to an “imperial conference” in the palace. There, they were told, Hirohito would announce a “sacred decision.” The summons reflected fevered efforts by the peace party, in conversations that afternoon between Prince Konoe, Mamoru Shigemitsu and the lord privy seal, Marquis Kido. At first, Kido was aghast at the notion of involving the throne in a matter of such delicacy. “You are advocating a direct