Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (128 page)
Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
It is doubtful whether the emperor and Kido initially sided with T
gand opposed the four conditions of the senior military leaders. The more likely inference is that both men still sympathized with the diehards, military and civilian alike, who preferred to continue the suicidal war rather than surrender immediately and unconditionally. This may be why, on August 9, Konoe had Hosokawa Morisada go to Navy General Headquarters and urge the emperor's brother Prince Takamatsu to press Hirohito (via Kido) to accept the Potsdam terms, and why, later that afternoon, Konoe also enlisted the help of diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru in persuading Kido to change his stand on four conditions. At the urging of Takamatsu and Shigemitsu, Kido did indeed shift to Tg's position.
83
Credit for ending the war must also be given to the younger generation of bureaucrats who assisted the court leaders: Kido's sec
retary, Matsudaira Yasumasa; Suzuki's secretary, Sakomizu Hisatsune; Tg's and Shigemitsu's secretary, Kase Toshikazu; and the assistant to Navy Minister Yonai, Rear Admiral Takagi. Not only were these men instrumental in pressing the emperor's top aides to accept the Potsdam terms, they also played a major role behind the scenes, after the surrender, in shielding the emperor from the consequences of defeat.
84
The desire to protect the emperor would thereafter limit and distort how the entire process of surrender was depicted. Matsudaira even managed to get the false official version of the emperor's role in the war inserted into
The Reports of General MacArthur
.
85
The manufacture of historical memory of the end of the war began in Tokyo at the imperial conference held in the early morning hours of August 9â10. There the emperor, who had belatedly joined the “peace camp” in June by calling for an early though not yet an immediate surrender, and had thereafter vacillated, formally accepted the Potsdam Declaration, in a speech to his ministers scripted for him by Kido. Shortly before the conference opened, Suzuki asked for and received special permission from the emperor to have Hiranuma, representative of ultraconservative opinion, attend.
86
Sakomizu, who knew beforehand that the forty-four-year-old emperor was going to give a speech that night, came to the midnight meeting prepared to document it. He wrote up the emperor's words in smooth, businesslike language.
Many months later the emperor himself recounted what was most relevant to understanding the motivation for his “sacred decision” (
seidan
) at the Supreme War Leadership Council meeting on the night of August 9â10. Past 2:00
A.M
., with the meeting deadlocked over whether to accept the Potsdam Declaration, Suzuki:
expressed his wish that I should decide between the two opinionsâ¦. Although everybody agreed to attach the condition of preserving the
kokutai
, threeâAnami, Toyoda, and Umezuâinsisted on adding
three further conditions: not to carry out an occupation with the aim of securing specific surrender terms, and to leave disarmament and the punishment of war criminals to us. They also insisted that negotiation on these matters was still possible at the present stage of the war. But four peopleâSuzuki, Hiranuma, Yonai, and Tgâargued against them, saying there was no room to negotiate.
I thought by then that it was impossible to continue the war. I had been informed by the chief of the Army General Staff that the defenses of Cape Inuband the Kuj
kuri coastal plain [in Chiba prefecture] were still not ready. Also, according to the army minister, the matériel needed to complete arming the divisions that would fight the final battle in the Kantregion could not be delivered until September. How could the capital be defended under such conditions? How was a battle even possible? I saw no way.
I told them that I supported the Foreign Ministry's proposal. Hiranuma's revision of the Foreign Ministry's original draft, concerning the phrase “the position of the emperor in the national law,” was accepted, but later on that proved to be a mistake. In any case, this meeting decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration based on my decision and arranged to send a telegram to that effect through Switzerland and Swedenâ¦. The main motive behind my decision at that time was that if weâ¦did not act, the Japanese race would perish and I would be unable to protect my loyal subjects [
sekishi
âliterally, “children”]. Second, Kido agreed with me on the matter of defending the
kokutai
. If the enemy landed near Ise Bay, both Ise and Atsuta Shrines would immediately come under their control. There would be no time to transfer the sacred treasures [regalia] of the imperial family and no hope of protecting them. Under these circumstances, protection of the
kokutai
would be difficult. For these reasons, I thought at the time that I must make peace even at the sacrifice of myself.
87