"Jewel Voice": Japan's Road to Surrender

The surrender of Japan in August 1945 ended the Second World War and began the long road to the reorganization and rebirth of the Japanese nation. Yet the process of surrender was not a simple one. To most Japanese political and military leaders, unconditional surrender was unacceptable, even when it became obvious Japan could never hope to win the war. Those on the side of peace advocated for a negotiated settlement, which the Allied Powers would never accept. Stalemates, coups, and assassination attempts threatened to continue the war even after the atomic bombings and Soviet invasion. Far from a quick and easy choice in the face of unprecedented destruction, the decision to surrender was only made by a demand from the Emperor himself after months of unrest and disagreements, which, if unchecked, could have taken the Pacific War in an entirely different direction.

By early 1945, the Americans began drafting a plan to invade the Japanese home islands, codenamed Operation Downfall. The Japanese, for their part, anticipated this move and started preparing a defensive strategy, which they named Ketsu-Go. Japan’s leaders watched the American advance across the Pacific and knew they could not hope to defeat them. Instead, they planned to make the war as costly as possible for the Allies to erode what they considered the Westerners’ “inferior fighting spirit” and force them to the negotiating table. A negotiated peace would allow them to secure more favorable terms for Japan instead of the unconditional surrender the Allies had been committed to since the Casablanca Conference in 1943.

American codebreaking allowed the U.S. to read Japanese transmissions and stay abreast of their plans. They were aware that Japan was preparing for an invasion of their islands and used this intelligence to plan their strategy and numbers in early 1945. However, as the summer went on, it soon became clear that their plan to have more than 750,000 men in the invasion of Japan would not be enough. The Japanese raised new armies on Kyushu, where they (correctly) guessed the Americans would land, and had begun to mobilize civilians. Women, children, and the elderly were given the barest of combat training with wooden spears or were handed makeshift weapons such as awls or small knives to kill the invaders when the time came. Planes were reserved mainly for kamikaze attacks. Scores of men were taught to destroy American tanks by rolling beneath the tracks and blowing themselves and the vehicles up with a hand grenade. American battle philosophy stated that a 3 to 1 ratio was a recipe for victory; by late summer 1945, it was clear that the Japanese defenders nearly matched the American invaders 1 to 1. Estimated casualties numbered hundreds of thousands of men, with some guesses nearing a million total of both Americans and Japanese. Other alternatives were desperately needed.

Atomic Bomb

On 16 July, after three years and billions of dollars of research, the first atomic bomb test was conducted at Alamogordo, New Mexico. President Harry S. Truman had only recently found out about the Manhattan Project after suddenly becoming president on 12 April, less than three months before the test. Now, during the Potsdam Conference with China, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, Truman received the news that the atomic bomb had been successfully detonated. This weapon was the alternative the Americans were hoping for. On 26 July, China, Great Britain, and the United States issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding Japan’s unconditional surrender and promising “prompt and utter destruction” if the Empire did not comply. Outside of the Allied leaders, very few people were aware of the atomic bomb’s existence, and Japan’s leaders could only guess at the true meaning of the phrase.

The Japanese had known for months that they could not hope to win the war and had been looking for alternatives to unconditional surrender. Some on the Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the “Big Six,” hoped the Soviet Union could act as a middleman to help Japan negotiate for more agreeable terms. Foreign Minister Togo had tasked the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union with arranging such mediation, but no one in the Big Six could agree on terms with which to approach the Soviets. By the time the Potsdam Conference convened, the attempts were still proving unfruitful. Once the conference’s declaration was issued, it was clear that it was pointless.

The Declaration laid out the terms under which Japan would surrender, but these were terms decided by the Allies, not determined by the Japanese. Japan's leaders still saw this as unacceptable. Rather than reject the declaration outright, Prime Minister Suzuki announced to the people that Japan’s stance was mokusatsu, meaning “to kill with silence.” The Japanese saw the Declaration as proof that the resolve of the American people was weakening, and all they had to do was persevere until the Allies had no more fight left and sued for peace. Instead, Suzuki’s words were taken by the Allies as a rejection of the Potsdam Declaration, and the Americans made their next move; unleashing the “prompt and utter destruction” they had promised.

In the early morning hours of 6 August, Colonel Paul Tibbetts launched the B-29 Enola Gay from the American base at Tinian and headed for Japan. At 8:15am, the Enola Gay deployed the uranium bomb Little Boy, which detonated over Hiroshima in a blinding flash of light. The resulting destruction was unlike anything the world had ever seen from a single weapon. The Japanese leaders, however, refused to be impressed. Japan had been subject to the Americans’ extensive strategic bombing campaign for months, and significant portions of almost every major city had been reduced to charred ruins. Many Japanese who heard about the atomic bomb did not understand how it was different than the bombings they had already suffered. Members of the Big Six refused to believe that the weapon at Hiroshima was an atomic bomb. Japan had begun its own nuclear research and concluded that creating enough fissionable material to create an atomic bomb required vast amounts of resources that Japan simply did not have. Even if the Americans did have an atomic bomb, the Big Six insisted, they couldn’t possibly have more than one. Disagreements about the war continued, and the Council scheduled a meeting on 9 August to discuss this new development.

Escalation

The Soviet Union had agreed during the Yalta Conference to get involved in the war against Japan, even though the two countries had a non-aggression pact from 1941 still in effect. When the Soviets announced they would not be renewing the pact, the Japanese were not immediately worried. Despite the growing number of Soviet troops amassing near the border of Russia and China, the Japanese believed they had nothing to worry about until the pact expired in 1946. As it turned out, they were wrong. On 8 August, the Soviet Red Army marched into the Japanese-occupied territory in Manchuria and inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese Kwantung Army as well as Chinese civilians.

From the start, American planners knew they would have to drop at least two atomic bombs, to prove that they not only had an atom bomb but had multiple, and would use them if Japan refused to surrender. The day after the Soviet invasion, on 9 August, pilot Chuck Sweeney flew Bock’s Car off the runway at Tinian towards the Japanese city of Kokura. In the bomb bay sat Fat Man, a plutonium bomb. While Tibbett’s mission had gone almost perfectly, Sweeney’s mission was riddled with mishaps from the start, including heavy smoke over the primary target. Bock’s Car couldn’t drop the bomb over Kokura and had to switch to the secondary target, Nagasaki. When the bomb was finally released, it missed its target by nearly a mile. It detonated in a valley, which shielded Nagasaki from the majority of the blast, but the devastation was still immense.

Although he had no legal power or real input in governing Japan, the Emperor’s status as a sacred ruler gave incredible weight to his opinions. Hirohito met with Prime Minister Suzuki before the meeting on 9 August and conveyed his wish that the war be ended immediately. The Big Six was determined to insist on their own terms for accepting the Potsdam Declaration, but they were split as to what these terms should be. One half wanted to accept the declaration with the one provision that the Emperor be allowed to retain the throne. The loss of the emperor, they felt, was unacceptable, with Privy Council Minister Hiranuma going as far as to say:

The other half of the Big Six not only wanted the emperor to remain on the throne but also demanded to conduct their own war crimes trials, handle Japan’s disarmament themselves, and remain free from Allied occupation. They believed that the Americans had used their only atomic bomb at Hiroshima and that a decisive battle on Japanese soil would still be possible if the Americans chose to reject their four provisions. As this claim was being made, the news of the Nagasaki bombing reached the Big Six. Here was proof that the Americans had more atomic weapons. Even so, the diehard military leaders would not accept defeat, and the Big Six remained split.

Prime Minister Suzuki called a meeting with Emperor Hirohito late that night to lay the Council’s arguments before him. The Emperor heard from each minister in turn, with each man arguing for either the one condition or four conditions, and then, in an unprecedented move, the Prime Minister turned to the Emperor and asked him for his decision. Without hesitation, Hirohito stood and relayed his desire to accept the Potsdam Conference with the single condition. He immediately left the room, leaving the Council members weeping with the realization of defeat.

Acceptance

The conditional acceptance was relayed to the Allies. The Allies did not want to promise anything specific, but knew that to refuse would ruin the progress made thus far. Their response was a vague one, restating the retention of a Japanese leader under the authority of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, without any promises of who that leader would be. This sparked heated arguments within the Big Six again, with some fearing that this response meant the refusal of their one condition. Another meeting with the Emperor was called, and Hirohito again spoke up, declaring that Japan should accept the Allies’ response and that he personally would deliver a message to the people of Japan to publicly accept the Declaration.

The message was prerecorded and the recordings hidden to prevent the interference of military diehards who might try to prevent the announcement. This measure was well warranted. The night before the announcement, a coup staged by young Japanese soldiers saw men overrunning the Imperial Palace looking for the recordings while others set out to assassinate members of the Big Six who advocated for surrender. Both the assassinations and the coup failed, and the Emperor’s message to his people aired as scheduled.

The End

At noon on 15 August 1945, the Japanese people heard the voice of their emperor for the first time. In his speech, now referred to as the "Jewel Voice Broadcast," Hirohito explained that Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration, although he never once used the word “surrender.” He used an archaic and overly formal dialect, and many people had a hard time understanding the emperor’s meaning. Those who did were astonished. Some cried, some became angry, and some were simply relieved. Slowly, over the course of the next month, Japanese commanders in the far-flung reaches of the Pacific laid down their weapons and surrendered to the Allies. The process took time, as many islands had been isolated and bypassed by the Americans in their island-hopping campaign, and some individuals refused to believe they had lost. The last Japanese soldier to surrender was Hiroo Onoda, who had hidden in the jungles of the Philippines and finally turned himself in to the Americans in 1974.

The official surrender took place in a half-hour-long ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945. General MacArthur presided over the ceremony as Supreme Commander of the Allies Powers, and representatives of the Japanese government each signed their name to the surrender document. Japan’s people faced hardships in the immediate aftermath of the war, as the destruction of urban centers and severe food shortages caused by the war persisted. Part of the Allied strategy during the occupation was to rebuild Japan physically, politically, and ideologically, and they brought in emergency shipments to provide for the Japanese people while their own production recovered. Japan’s government was reconstructed as a parliamentary democracy, and although Hirohito remained a figurehead, he was stripped of the illusion of his divine authority. Allied occupation continued in Japan until the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, which restored Japan’s sovereignty as an independent and self-governing nation.

The terrors of World War II continued to be felt for decades, and the consequences can even be seen today. In the last few decades, heated debate has arisen about the necessity of the atomic bombs and the refusal of Japan to accept surrender. By 1945, the outcome of the Pacific War was undeniable, but the road was undecided. Hostile disagreements, deadly coups, or intransigent leadership could have derailed the path to peace at many points. Despite the horrors of atomic warfare and the devastation caused by the atomic bombs, the surrender of Japan in August 1945 spared millions of lives and cut the war short, enabling Japan, the U.S., and the rest of the world to begin the long road to recovery.