Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  The far-less-stirring cabinet statement simply announced that the Allies had attacked Japan with a new type of weapon, and concluded, rather too optimistically, that

  our fighting forces will no doubt be able to repulse the enemy’s attack, but we must recognize that we are facing a situation that is as bad as it can be. The government will do all it can to defend the homeland and preserve the honor of the country, but it expects that Japan’s 100 million will also rise to the occasion, overcoming whatever obstacles may lie in the path of the preservation of our national polity.13

  Rigorous censorship had prevented the vast majority of the Japanese people from learning just how badly the war had been going, and many were understandably confused by the apparently contradictory statements beamed into their homes and shops that afternoon. That confusion spread ever further throughout the nation the following day, when Japan’s major newspapers printed the texts of both communiqués.

  Confusion was not an issue for many mid-level staff officers in the War Ministry and other key units in Tokyo, however. On the morning of August 11 some fifteen men gathered secretly in the bomb shelter beneath the ministry building to discuss ways they might negate the government’s “dishonorable” peace overtures to the Allies and ensure that the war continued at least to a point that would allow Japan to secure a negotiated settlement. The conspirators included Takeshita, Anami’s brother-in-law; Inaba, the writer of the “Instructions to the Troops” that was broadcast the night before in the war minister’s name; and a particularly fanatical army major named Kenji Hatanaka. The men who filed into the stuffy and quickly smoke-filled shelter did not intend to depose Hirohito; on the contrary, they were devoted to the emperor and his essential role in the “national polity,” believed that he had been “misguided” and “tricked” by Suzuki and other doves within the government, and felt that in “protecting” Hirohito—even against his will, if it became absolutely necessary—they were acting in the best interests of the monarchy, the nation, and their own sacred honor.

  The conspirators’ repeated references to “sacred honor” did not keep them from agreeing to undertake some distinctly dishonorable actions in the emperor’s name. In order for their plot to succeed, they decided several people would have to die, and quickly: Suzuki, Togo, and Marquis Koichi Kido, the current Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and a key supporter of the “doves,” were to be assassinated at the earliest opportunity. Other key senior officers—including Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori, commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division, and General Shizuichi Tanaka, whose 12th Area Army (also referred to as the Eastern District Army) controlled the greater Tokyo region—would be offered the opportunity to join the rebellion, but were to be killed if they refused. Takeshita told the plotters that he was certain he could win Anami’s support for the coup, assuring them that the war minister secretly shared their beliefs and would agree wholeheartedly with their aims. Having decided on the substance of their action, the plotters turned to its timing. The coup had to be carried out before Japan received the Allied response to its surrender offer, they agreed, so as to prevent the “defeatist” Suzuki government from having the opportunity to disgrace the nation by accepting whatever counteroffer the Allies might make. With this last detail seen to, the conspirators dispersed.14

  The coup plan hatched in the War Ministry bomb shelter had barely been put into motion when news of a response to Japan’s conditional acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration terms arrived in Tokyo, though not via official channels. At forty-five minutes after midnight on the very early morning of August 12 a radio-monitoring station outside Tokyo picked up an Associated Press news flash, broadcast by a shortwave station in San Francisco, carrying the full text of the Allied answer to Japan’s offer to accept the Potsdam terms. The reply, drafted by American Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, was immediately transmitted to the Foreign Office, where it landed like a third atomic bomb. Rather than accept the Japanese condition that nothing in the surrender agreement should prejudice “the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler,” the Allies replied emphatically that “from the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms.”15

  In a single, concise sentence the Allied response effectively destroyed Japanese hopes of preserving the “national polity.” The emperor—the hereditary god-sovereign of the nation—and his ministers were to be stripped of their power and influence and reduced to mere subordinates of some as-yet-unidentified Allied military officer. This was a crushing blow, but worse was to come with regard to the tradition that Japan’s sovereignty stemmed solely from the hereditary emperor: “The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”16 Heaping insult upon already grievous injury, as the Foreign Ministry staffers read it, the Allies were declaring that not only would the emperor lose the mantle of mystical, sacred, and inviolable sovereignty that had for centuries surrounded his Chrysanthemum Throne, his subjects were actually to be given the right to decide for themselves what form their government should take.

  The Allied response was shocking to those in the Foreign Ministry and among the members of the emperor’s inner circle, once the news had reached the palace, but it was within the Japanese military that the pronouncement ignited the hottest flames of rage. Many senior commanders had harbored hopes of a negotiated settlement that would somehow allow Japan itself to decide where and when the nation’s armed forces would lay down their arms; a settlement that would also prevent any foreign occupation of the Home Islands. Yet the Allied diktat clearly stated that the emperor “shall issue his commands to all the Japanese military, naval and air authorities and to all the forces under their control wherever located to cease active operations and to surrender their arms.” And, further, that “the armed forces of the Allied Powers will remain in Japan until the purposes set forth in the Potsdam Declaration are achieved.”17

  As might be expected, these last two components of the Allied reply prompted an immediate reaction from the army and navy chiefs of staff. At 8:20 on the morning of Sunday, August 12, General Umezu and Admiral Toyoda—almost certainly in response to the frenzied pleadings of their firebrand subordinates and without requesting authorization from Anami and Yonai, their respective superiors—made an unscheduled joint appearance at the imperial palace and requested an immediate audience with Hirohito. Once closeted with the emperor and his chief military aide, General Shigeru Hasunuma, the two men made lengthy presentations in which they declared the Allied reply to be absolutely unacceptable. The men argued that Japan should continue the fight no matter the consequences, both to preserve the honor of the nation’s military forces and to win better terms from the Allies. Hirohito listened attentively, then informed the two senior officers that he could make no decision on their presentation because he could not act based upon the intercepted news flash from San Francisco; he had to await the formal text of the Allied reply, which would be forthcoming from Secretary of State Byrnes through normal diplomatic channels.

  Hirohito’s statement was more than a little disingenuous. Despite the unexpectedly uncompromising tone of the Allies’ response to Japan’s surrender overture, the emperor remained determined to bring the war to an end as soon as possible. He repeated this determination to Togo during a scheduled 2 P.M. audience, and found that his foreign minister was in total agreement that the Allied terms had to be accepted, though they foreshadowed fundamental and irrevocable changes within the highest levels of Japan’s ruling civilian and military elites. It was now up to Togo to sell the military’s senior leaders and, more important, the full cabinet on the absolute necessity of issuing an immediate, positive response to the Allies.

  That would prove to be a herculean task, however. The tenor and content
of the Allied reply had reopened the vast chasm between the hawks and the doves within both the Big Six and the cabinet, despite the emperor’s August 10 sanctioning of an immediate end to hostilities. Moreover, even as Togo was leaving for the prime minister’s home to attend the special afternoon cabinet meeting at which he would repeat Hirohito’s edict and ask for unanimous agreement to accept the Allied terms, the officers bent on a coup d’état were attempting to pull the still-reluctant War Minister Anami into their cabal. Seven of the conspirators hurried into the general’s office after his return from the palace and as he was preparing to leave for the cabinet meeting. With Takeshita acting as spokesman, they begged him to join their rebellion. Buckling on his sword, Anami told Takeshita to call on him at home that evening, then rushed out to his waiting staff car for the short ride to Suzuki’s residence.

  The cabinet meeting began promptly at 3 P.M., but that was perhaps the only thing that went according to Togo’s plan. Suzuki read a translation of the Allied reply to Japan’s conditional surrender offer, stressing more than once that it was the “unofficial” version taken from the intercepted radio broadcast. Then Togo rose. After admitting that the Allied terms were not perfect, especially in the restrictions they placed on the emperor’s powers and his place in Japanese society, Togo argued eloquently and at some length that they must nevertheless be accepted, and quickly, to ensure the nation’s very survival.

  Hardly had Togo retaken his seat when Anami stood and launched into the by-now familiar litany of reasons why acceptance of the Allied terms would be the greatest and most catastrophic error in Japanese history. The “national polity” would be destroyed, the military would be humiliated, and the homeland would be desecrated for eternity through its occupation by foreign troops. To Togo’s consternation the war minister’s reasoning seemed to resonate with many of the cabinet members, and even Suzuki himself seemed swayed by Anami’s words. Realizing that any immediate vote might well go against him, Togo announced that because the official version of the Allied message had not yet arrived through diplomatic channels the cabinet should postpone any further discussion—and any final decision—until after the communiqué had been received and authenticated. Somewhat to his surprise the majority of those in attendance agreed, and Suzuki adjourned the fractious session nearly four hours after it began.

  Worn out by the long and contentious meeting, Togo shuffled into an anteroom of the prime minister’s residence and telephoned his deputy, Shunichi Matsumoto, to report on the gathering. When the foreign minister expressed his fear that the untimely arrival of the official Allied response that night might prompt an emergency cabinet session that could well result in a vote to continue the war, Matsumoto suggested a simple yet elegant solution: he would direct the staff of the Foreign Ministry’s communications office to hold any official message arriving from Secretary Byrnes for the remainder of that Sunday until the following morning. The time and date stamp indicating when the Allied cable arrived would thus read Monday, August 13. If nothing else, the administrative ruse would give Togo additional time to muster his forces and, conceivably, again enlist the emperor’s aid in bringing about Japan’s immediate surrender.

  Matsumoto had put his plan into action just in time: Byrnes’s official cable arrived at the Foreign Ministry at 6:40 that Sunday evening and was immediately stamped as having been received at 7:30 Monday morning.

  Concealing the cable’s arrival from virtually everyone in the government did prevent the emergency cabinet meeting that Togo feared would result in a vote to continue the war; however, it did not keep the anti-surrender factions from working to advance their own agenda. Late on the night of August 12 two key members of the coup plot—Lieutenant Colonel Masataka Ida and the fanatic Major Hatanaka—called on War Minister Anami at his family home in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka. They passionately repeated all the reasons why they believed acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration terms would mean the complete and utter destruction of Japan and its centuries-old institutions, then pleaded with Anami to do all he could to prevent the Suzuki government from caving in to Togo and the peace faction. Although the war minister himself favored rejection of the Byrnes ultimatum once the official version of it arrived, he was hesitant to throw in his lot with the conspirators without first determining which other senior officers were willing to support a coup. Because any revolt would fail completely without the army’s support, the first man Anami had to quiz regarding his position on surrender was General Umezu.

  Steeped as he was in his nation’s cultural and societal traditions, the war minster sought to confirm the chief of staff’s views indirectly. Before dawn on the morning of August 13 Anami therefore dispatched his military secretary, Colonel Saburo Hayashi, to Umezu’s home bearing a verbal message. The war minister, Hayashi was to say, was considering asking Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, commander of the Hiroshima-based Second General Army, to make a personal appeal to Hirohito that the emperor reject the Allied terms and continue the fight. Whether Anamai was aware that Hata was, in fact, in favor of ending the war quickly is unclear. And it may not have been important anyway, for telling Umezu about the proposed overture to Hata was simply a covert test; if the chief of staff supported the idea, then Anami would know he could most probably be trusted to lend the army’s support to the coup. The gruff chief of staff had made it very clear during meetings of the Big Six and cabinet that he also believed that Japan should fight on, so Anami was fairly certain his response would be a positive one from the conspirators’ point of view.

  It was, therefore, a huge shock when Hayashi returned to Anami’s home just after sunrise with Umezu’s answer. Though the army chief of staff found the Allied surrender terms to be repugnant, he had sorrowfully—and apparently rather suddenly—come to the conclusion that continuing the war was pointless. Given that the Americans seemed entirely willing to keep dropping atomic bombs on Japan’s major cities—and one had to assume, he pointed out, that Tokyo was quite likely next on the target list—attempting to continue the war would most probably only result in millions more dead Japanese and the conversion of the Home Islands into a continuous landscape of radioactive rubble.

  Umezu’s stunning response was undoubtedly on Anami’s mind when he climbed into his staff car just hours later, at around 7:00 on Monday morning. A meeting of the Big Six had been set for 9 A.M., and before attending it the war minister wanted to converse privately with Lord Privy Seal Kido, a key supporter of the emperor’s decision to accept the surrender terms. Indeed, so widely known were Kido’s pro-peace views that he’d been receiving death threats from diehard military officers, and for his own protection he had moved from his suburban home into the imperial household building on the palace grounds. Anami had known the emperor’s counselor for nearly two decades, and although the two men were not close friends, the war minister was apparently convinced that he could win Kido over to his point of view through a forceful but respectful recitation of the calamities that would befall the nation should Hirohito insist on accepting the Allied surrender terms.

  Yet when Anami was finished with his presentation—during which he assured his “honored friend” that Japan’s military forces would absolutely refuse to lay down their arms and would gladly die fighting alongside the entire civilian population in a final, decisive battle against the invaders—Kido remained unmoved. The emperor, he pointed out, did not himself object to the harsh realities of the Allied terms and had already announced his acceptance of them to the members of his government and to the Allies. If Hirohito were to suddenly change his mind and call for continued war, he would look like a liar and a fool and, more important, the Allies would almost certainly employ their terrible new bombs in attacks throughout the Home Islands. The Japanese people would hold the emperor personally responsible for the resulting devastation, Kido said, and would likely turn on him and the entire imperial system. Was that an outcome the war minister really wanted? It wasn’t, of course, and as he rose to leave, Ana
mi said, almost as though he were pursuing the continuation of the war only as a way to appease the diehards in his own organization, “You don’t know what it’s like in the Ministry.”18

  Whatever Anami’s true feelings might have been about continuing the war, he walked into the 9 A.M. Big Six meeting in the prime minister’s bomb shelter still advocating rejection of the Byrnes ultimatum. Admiral Toyoda, the navy chief of staff, continued to support the war minister’s point of view. And, strangely, so did the army’s General Umezu, despite his earlier declaration to Hayashi that he privately supported acceptance of the Allied terms. His public solidarity with the “hawks” might well have been simply an expression of service solidarity or personal loyalty to Anami—or perhaps of mere self-preservation—but the practical effect of Umezu’s stance was that the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War remained deadlocked. Moreover, when he and Toyoda were called out of the meeting so that Hirohito could personally ask them not to order any offensive military action that might prompt an overwhelming Allied response, Umezu responded by saying that both services would refrain from provocative, offensive moves but that they would also be authorized to defend themselves if fired upon.

  Just days later, Umezu’s almost offhand statement would have dire consequences for members of the 386th Bomb Squadron.19

  THE BIG SIX ADJOURNED their meeting in the early afternoon of August 13, then reconvened as part of a full cabinet meeting that began at 4 P.M. Three hours of argument and counterargument did not break the previously existing logjam regarding the Allied surrender ultimatum. When Suzuki asked the ministers for their positions three remained opposed, twelve favored immediate acceptance, and one was still undecided. The prime minister then announced that the continuing lack of unanimity left him no choice but to ask Hirohito for a second imperial decision.