Ship of Ghosts - James D. Hornfischer [197]
On August 13, the U.S. Twentieth Air Force took the war of persuasion directly to the Japanese people when B-29s rained on Japanese cities not bombs but leaflets with transcripts of the surrender negotiations. The air in Tokyo was thick with intrigue and the latent energy of rebellion. It seemed possible that either domestic opposition or a military coup might overthrow the emperor. Fear of the latter was well grounded and immediate. Any number of high-ranking army officers had serious doubts that field commanders would comply with the terms of surrender. In the hidden depths of the Army Ministry’s air raid shelter, a plot was taking shape to ensure that the rest of Japan did not either.
The field-grade officers who led the putsch pledged their allegiance not to the faltering emperor but to “the wishes of the imperial ancestors [which] constitutes a wider and truer loyalty to the Throne.” There is evidence to suggest that their ranks included not just younger officers but at least one central figure in the army’s planning and policy hierarchy. Like the twisted vision that seized the mind of Adolf Hitler as Soviet armies overran Berlin, the plotters saw the final immolation of the Japanese populace as a lamentable but just result of their failure in the war.
As the plotters tried to widen their circle, senior officers loyal to Hirohito unmasked their plan. On August 14 the plotters panicked and made their move. Lt. Gen. Takeshi Mori of the Imperial Guards Division was slain in a confrontation with one of the leaders of the revolt, Maj. Kenji Hatanaka. As Emperor Hirohito watched through the armored shutters of his palace quarters, the rebels occupied the Imperial Palace, winning the temporary cooperation of the Imperial Guards by presenting orders with the forged seal of General Mori. They tried to confiscate the phonograph recording that the emperor planned to broadcast that day, declaring the end of Japan’s resistance. But the timely intervention of officers loyal to the emperor brought the Imperial Guards back to the side of law and order and stilled the rebellion that could have changed the fate of the world.
It took as long as two days for Emperor Hirohito’s order to reach his commanders. As it descended upon them out of the blue, it induced disbelief, and doubtless led more than a few to contemplate mutiny by way of slaughter. Despite the horrors wrought by the U.S. bombing campaign, General Anami all along clung to a near-mystical belief that if the army summoned the will to continue fighting, “a road to success will somehow be revealed to us.”
In Washington, concerns mounted over the fate of the estimated 15,000 American prisoners of war in Japanese custody (among an Allied total of 168,500). The instability of the political crisis gripping Tokyo, revealed to the Allied leadership via their code-breaking operations, created a chilling spectrum of possibility. Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, urged that any surrender negotiations with the Japanese require that Japan “immediately forthwith and without delay” transfer all POWs to staging areas for liberation by the Allies. The Allied governments that same day declared the Japanese people “individually and collectively” responsible for any harm that might come to prisoners of war. August 1945 was suffused with wrenching uncertainty as warring nations still numb from the pain of four years of total war lurched toward a final reckoning.
CHAPTER 61
What would Japan do with its prisoners? The question was in the mind of every POW. It concerned the White House, and even the Imperial Army’s high command, who understood that their treatment of prisoners would affect Washington