Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (358 page)

64.
Tanaka Nobumasa,
Dokyumento Sh
wa tenn
, dai gokan
, p. 439, citing Gaimush
ed.,
Sh
sen shiroku
(Shinbun Gekkansha, 1952), pp. 524–25.

65.
Ibid., p. 440.

66.
Ibid., p. 444.

67.
Cited in David Holloway,
Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956
(Yale University Press, 1994), p. 128.

68.
Tanaka, pp. 461–62. In his memoirs Truman claims not to have been surprised by the Soviet decision. On the initial Soviet reaction to Hiroshima, see Holloway,
Stalin and the Bomb
, pp. 127–29, and the review of Holloway by Vladislav Zubok in
Science
266 (Oct. 21, 1994), pp. 466–68.

69.
Historians of the A-bomb decision generally conclude that Truman knew of the contents of the intercepted and decoded Japanese “peace feelers,” and that Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Army Chief of Staff Marshall were also informed of the cables. But these cables were evidence only of the Japanese government's desire to make peace, not of its commitment to surrender unconditionally, because there was no such commitment prior to Hiroshima and the Soviet entry into the war. What the emperor and Kido were asking for up to that time was not “peace” but the preservation of the emperor's power and the entire monarchical system. On U.S. knowledge, see Walter Millis, ed.,
The Forrestal Diaries
(Viking Press, 1951), pp. 74–77; Robert H. Ferrell, ed.,
Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman
(Harper & Row, 1980), pp. 53–54; and
Memoirs by Harry S. Truman,
vol. 1, p. 396.

70.
Yamada, K
ketsu,
Ososugita seidan
, pp. 212–13. The “emperor's letter” that Konoe was to have carried to Moscow was apparently quite short. A précis of the text can be found in Gaimush
, ed.,
Sh
sen kiroku 3
, pp. 160–61.

71.
On Yonai and Takagi, see Yoshida,
Sh
wa tenn
no sh
senshi
, p. 27; and, for
the full statement quoted here,
Takagi kaigun sh
sh
oboegaki
(Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1979), p. 351, cited in Tanaka,
Dokyumento Sh
wa tenn
, dai gokan
, p. 475.