Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (126 page)

T
g
sent his last message to Sat
, still asking him to discover the attitude of the Soviet side, on August 7. But by then Stalin knew about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. When American ambassador Averell Harriman met him in the Kremlin on the evening of August 8, Stalin said that “he thought the Japanese were at present looking for a pretext to replace the present government with one which would be qualified to undertake a surrender. The bomb might give them this pretext.”
⁶⁷
Caught off guard by the news of the American destruction of an entire Japanese city, Stalin had decided to enter the war formally the next day, a week earlier than previously scheduled, and a week earlier than President Truman had anticipated.
⁶⁸
By dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Truman inadvertently deepened the Soviet dictator's suspicion of the United States, thereby contributing to the onset of the Cold War.

As the Japanese Foreign Ministry's messages to Moscow were intercepted and decoded by U. S. intelligence and read, at least in part, by Truman, it has been argued that the president could—and
should—have backed away at least somewhat from the unconditional surrender formula. But those messages clearly were always too tentative and vague to be taken for serious attempts at negotiating an end to the war.
⁶⁹

Even the letter that the Foreign Ministry had already prepared for Konoe's projected (but never realized) secret mission as the emperor's special envoy is reported to have aimed mainly at obtaining a Soviet guarantee of the future of the throne and its current occupant.
⁷⁰
Preservation of the
kokutai
was the vital goal, the single condition for peace. Furthermore, the “emperor's letter” implied that the war had been generated spontaneously, like a natural disaster, and that in so far as the United States and Britain insisted on unconditional surrender, they, not Japan, were the obstacle to peace.

Unable to decide to end the war unless the future of the throne and the all-important prerogatives of its occupant were absolutely guaranteed, the Suzuki cabinet and the Supreme War Leadership Council never framed a peace maneuver from the viewpoint of saving the Japanese people from further destruction. They waited, instead, until their foreign enemies had created a situation that gave them a face-saving excuse to surrender in order to prevent the
kokutai
from being destroyed by antimilitary, antiwar pressure originating from the Japanese people themselves. The bomb, followed by the Soviet declaration of war, gave them the excuses they needed. This is why (as Tanaka Nobumasa pointed out) Yonai Mitsumasa could say to Adm. Takagi S
kichi, on August 12, that

Similar reasons of political expediency also account for Konoe's calling the Soviet participation in the war “a godsend for controlling the army,” and why Kido regarded both the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry as “useful” “elements for making things go smoothly.”
⁷²
An incipient power struggle was going on, making it immaterial to the persons involved whether one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand people died, so long as their desired outcome was gained: an end to the war that would leave the monarchy intact, available to control the forces of discontent that defeat would inevitably unleash. In the final scene of the war drama, as in earlier scenes, the Japanese “moderates” found it easier to bow to outside pressure than to act positively on their own to end the war.

Yet another example of ruling elite thinking about surrender terms was the “Essentials of Peace Negotiations” (
wahei k
sh
no y
ry
), a document drafted by Konoe and his adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Sakai K
ji, after Konoe had reluctantly accepted his mission to Moscow.
⁷³
The “Essentials,” which appear never to have circulated, stipulated the preservation of the emperor system (including most of the imperial prerogatives) as the absolute minimum condition for peace. The document defined the “original” or “essential homeland” as including the southern half of the Kurile Islands but showed a willingness to concede to the enemy all overseas territories, including Okinawa and the American-occupied Bonin Islands, as well as the southern half of Sakhalin. The “Essentials” also accepted complete disarmament for an unspecified period of time, thereby compromising on the matter of demobilizing and disarming the armed forces.