Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [349]
Soon after 3 a.m., troops of Eastern Army arrived at the palace, informed the Imperial Guard soldiers that their orders had been faked, and quickly restored order. Realising that the coup had failed, one plotter, Col. Masataka Ida, drove to Anami’s house to report the news. The war minister invited Ida, also, to join him for a farewell drink. There were more tears and embraces. At 5:30 a.m., Anami donned a white shirt given to him by Hirohito, seated himself on the floor facing the Imperial Palace, thrust a short sword into his left abdomen, and made the proper cross and upward cuts. He then severed his own carotid artery. As blood sprayed across the testament before him, Takeshita asked: “Do you want me to help?” Anami said: “No need. Leave me alone.” When his brother-in-law found the general still breathing a few minutes later, he took the sword and finished him off. The only mitigation for Anami’s contemptible conduct of his own life and death is that he never betrayed the doings of the peace party to the fanatics. Later that morning, Hatanaka and Shiizaki shot themselves.
Given the mind-set of Japan’s armed forces, what was remarkable was not that a coup was attempted, but that only a tiny handful of officers chose to participate. For all their anger, and a significant number of suicides in the days to come, the overwhelming majority of soldiers acceded to the emperor’s will. If this indicated the strength of Hirohito’s influence, it also seems unlikely that it could have been effectual save in the new circumstances created by Soviet entry into the war and the atomic bombs. So powerful was the culture of self-immolation fostered by Japanese militarism over a generation that the instincts of many officers demanded continuing the war, however futile such a course.
Even had Japan chosen to reject the Byrnes note, it is most unlikely that an American invasion of the home islands would have been necessary. The Soviets were within days of reaching the Pacific coast and establishing themselves in the Kuriles. LeMay’s B-29s were preparing to launch a systematic assault on Japan’s transport network, against negligible opposition, which would quickly have reduced much of the population to starvation. Historians have expended much ink upon measuring the comparative influence of the atomic bombs against that of Soviet intervention in persuading Japan to surrender. This seems a sterile exercise, since it is plain that both played their parts. “For Japan’s civilian politicians913,” asserts Japanese historian Kazutoshi Hando, “the dropping of the atomic bombs was the last straw. For the Japanese army, it was the Russian invasion of Manchuria.”
Considering the plight of civilians and captives, dying in thousands daily under Japanese occupation, together with the casualties that would have been incurred had the Soviets been provoked into maintaining their advance across mainland China, almost any scenario suggests that far more people of many nationalities would have died in the course of even a few further weeks of war than were killed by the atomic bombs. Stalin would almost certainly have seized Hokkaido, with his usual indifference to losses. Robert Newman suggests914 that 250,000 deaths would have occurred in every further month the war continued. Even if this is excessive, it addresses a plausible range of numbers. Starvation and LeMay’s fire-raisers would have killed hundreds of thousands more Japanese by the late autumn of 1945. Such an assertion does not immediately render the detonations of the atomic bombs acceptable acts. It merely emphasises the fact that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by no means represented the worst outcome of the war for the Japanese people,