Returning from Nagasaki, the second crew of atomic bombers learned that Russia was invading Manchuria. B-29s were ranging over the Japanese homeland, sowing the air with millions of pamphlets:
TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE
America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet. We are in possession of the most destructive force ever devised by man…
The message warned, “We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland”; advised readers to cease resistance before they were all exterminated; and urged them to “petition the Emperor to end the war.” It made Occidental sense but bewildered Orientals. Hirohito was a god, not a politician. Gods are not swayed by appeals and referendums. Besides, propaganda was unnecessary now. Confronted by declarations of war from every other major power on earth, the Japanese government was past the point of reason. Various emotional tides were tugging it in different directions. The great struggle was between those who wanted to live and those who wanted to die, and only, much later did American scholars discover how close to fulfillment the national death wish had come.
***
Hirohito, like Hitler, had an air-raid shelter in the ground beneath his palace, and it was there, amid scenes of passion and acrimony, that many of the most crucial meetings were held in that second week of August. In the beginning the government had very little information about the pulverization of Hiroshima. Throughout August 6 Tokyo had been unable to establish routine communications with the city, and no one knew why. At dawn next day Lieutenant General T. Kawabe, deputy chief of the army general staff, received a single-sentence report that made no sense to him: “The whole city of Hiroshima was destroyed instantly by a single bomb.” Subsequent details sounded to Kawabe like ravings. Later accounts to the contrary, Hiroshima had not been without military significance; the Japanese Second Army had been quartered there. At 9:15 August 6 the entire army had been doing calisthenics on a huge parade ground. The Thin Man had exploded almost directly overhead, wiping it out. That was one of the messages which reached Kawabe. It was as though the Pentagon had been informed that the United States Marine Corps had been annihilated in less than a second while turning somersaults.
Although unable to build nuclear weapons themselves, the Japanese did have one nuclear physicist of international distinction, Yoshio Nishina. Nishina was summoned before the Japanese general staff at nine o’clock that morning and provided with a summary of the situation in Hiroshima. While out of touch with his colleagues abroad since Pearl Harbor, he had been worried about the possibility of a nuclear weapon and had even written out rough estimates of the damage such a weapon could do. It corresponded with everything he was told now, and he said so. This offered the generals little solace, and they dismissed him. Later, a reporter from Domei, the official Nippon news agency, called at Nishina’s laboratory. The Americans were circulating stories that they had atomic bombs, said the newspaperman; it was impossible, wasn’t it? The scientist turned away. He was almost certain now. The government then flew him over the desolate city, and as Nishina later told American officers who questioned him, “As I surveyed the damage from the air, I decided at a glance that nothing but an atomic bomb could have created such devastation.”
On Thursday, August 9, word of Stalin’s declaration of war against Japan reached Tokyo just before sunrise, proverbially the darkest hour of the day, but at 11:01 A.M. an even darker word reached the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, then in session: a second nuclear device had just exploded over Nagasaki. The SCDW promptly moved in a body to the Imperial Palace, from which Hirohito had just sent a covert message to Premier Suzuki urging immediate acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. The emperor, his premier, and their civilian advisers were in unanimous agreement, and in any other part of the world that would have guaranteed instant capitulation. Not here; the country was going down in flaming ruin, but Japanese custom required that great care be taken to save face, Hirohito’s above all. That could be accomplished if the armed forces joined everyone else. The emperor could then vanish into his palace and behave as though the war had been none of his doing.
There was an obstacle, however. The armed forces weren’t going along. In the palace they rose one by one, holding their jeweled samurai swords stiffly, and stated their terms. War Minister General S. Anami, General Y. Umezu, army chief of staff; and Admiral S. Toyoda, navy chief of staff, insisted that Washington accept three conditions: Japanese officers were to disarm their own troops, war criminals would be tried in Japanese courts, and enemy occupation must be limited in advance. In a less savage conflict these stipulations might have been acceptable, but from the outset this had been a war without quarter, and the Americans were in no mood to bargain. Foreign Minister Togo said as much. Japan was defeated, he reminded them; immediate peace was mandatory. Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda looked grim and folded their arms. It was a stalemate.
Next a cabinet meeting raged for over seven hours, interrupted only by shocking dispatches from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Manchurian front. At 9:30 on the evening of that August 9, Suzuki and Togo called upon the emperor to report that both the SCDW and the cabinet were deadlocked. They suggested that the SCDW meet as an Imperial Conference in the air-raid shelter with the emperor in the background. Hirohito agreed, and the session began at 11:30 P.M. Hour after hour the wrangling went on, with the two generals and the admiral holding the civilians in check. They were asked for their solution, and their response reveals how well MacArthur had read the enemy’s mind. Thus far, they stubbornly insisted, the war had been confined to indecisive skirmishes. Now was the time for Japan’s finest hour—to “lure” the Americans ashore and then “annihilate” them, as the original kamikaze “divine wind” had wiped out Kublai Khan in 1281. It sounded very much like Goebbels’s words of encouragement to Hitler when Roosevelt died. Reminded that this had been their strategy in defense of Iwo and Okinawa, they answered sullenly that whatever happened, “national honor” required “one last battle on Japanese soil.” Suzuki finally appealed to the emperor for an “Imperial Decision.” This was unprecedented; the Son of Heaven traditionally limited himself to hovering around, blessing them by his presence. Nevertheless, Hirohito replied at once. He rose, said their only choice was to end the war immediately, and left the room. As the council broke up Suzuki declared that “His Majesty’s decision should be the decision of this conference as well.”
The military, it appeared, had been defeated. But nobody dies harder than a warlord. Outwardly, the finer points of protocol were carefully observed. The cabinet went into session as the council broke up—it was now 3 A.M., Friday, August 10—and unanimously approved identical messages to Washington, London, Moscow and Chungking accepting Truman’s Potsdam Declaration with the understanding that the emperor would remain sovereign. The cables went out at 7 A.M. The momentous news was kept from the Japanese public—still under the impression that Nippon was winning the war—for fear of a coup. The fear was justified. That same morning General Anami, the highest-ranking officer in the Empire, summoned all Tokyo officers down to the rank of lieutenant colonel and told them what had happened. Here, if anywhere, the seeds of incipient revolt would find rich earth. Many did take root; by evening growing restlessness was reported at the War Ministry and in the fleet. All the conspirators needed now was time, and in Washington the Americans were unwittingly giving it to them. Truman, Byrnes, Stimson, Forrestal, and Leahy were pondering the possibility of political repercussions when the American people knew that Hirohito would remain on his throne. Once more the buck stopped with Truman. He decided to let the Japanese keep their emperor, and so advised Suzuki via Switzerland. That was on Saturday, August 11. Now, maddeningly, Hirohito seemed to stall. For the next three days Radio Tokyo was silent, a silence so ominous that the President contemplated a resumption of mass bombing. At one point over a thousand B-29s were actually winging toward the Empire before he changed his mind and countermanded the order.
Insofar
as it is possible to interpret Hirohito’s thoughts, the emperor seems to have been determined to bring the militant Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda into line. For three days and three nights the struggle of wills went on in the palace air-raid shelter. At least one of those present, General Anami, knew officers elsewhere in the capital were plotting to seize power, though he stopped short of permitting them to use his name. Shortly after noon on Tuesday, August 14, in Tokyo—still August 13 in Washington—Hirohito invoked his imperial powers. He taped a broadcast to his subjects, who had never before been allowed even to hear his voice, telling them to bow their heads to the coming conqueror and ending, “We charge you, Our loyal subjects, to carry out faithfully Our will.” The tape was to be played over Radio Tokyo at noon next day, after the United States had agreed to the formalities of capitulation.
Truman learned that Japan had quit at ten minutes before four on that Tuesday afternoon. At 7 P.M. he announced it to the country and declared a two-day holiday of jubilation.
Yet the danger in Tokyo remained. During the night of August 14–15—after the emperor had made his decision but before the people had been told—firebrands were still planning to overthrow the government. They approached the general commanding Hirohito’s Imperial Guards Division demanding that he order his troops to disobey the imminent order to surrender. When he refused, they murdered him. Two of his subordinates joined the insurgents and prepared forgeries of imperial orders that would permit them to isolate the emperor and impound the tape of his surrender message. At 8 A.M. the fake orders were ready, and clever counterfeits of Hirohito’s seal were being affixed to them, when another Guards general arrived and put them under arrest.
Throughout Wednesday morning Radio Tokyo alerted the nation to the “most important broadcast” coming at noon. These were violent hours in the capital. Hotheads tried to assassinate Suzuki and two members of his cabinet. General Anami, in despair at the loss of national honor, committed hara-kiri. Four of the leading conspirators followed his example. Inexplicably, to the western mind, the general who had suppressed their coup at eight o’clock that morning also knelt and buried a hara-kiri knife in his abdomen. More fittingly, Admiral Takijishi, father of the Kamikaze Corps, followed his example.
Americans were amazed by the docility with which the Japanese accepted defeat. It was a closer shave than they knew. Generals were reconciled to ceremonial suicide, but among younger officers the plotting and counterplotting continued right down to August 28, when the U.S.S. Missouri sailed into Tokyo Bay to accept the Japanese surrender while armed bluejackets and the 4th Marines landed at Yokosuka. Last-ditch insurgents had sworn to massacre the landing party, and kamikaze bombers were taxiing into position at the Atsugi airfield, their cockpits occupied by airmen who had sworn upon the honor of their ancestors that they would dive-bomb the Missouri and sink her. As she went down, fighter pilots, who were also warming up, intended to strafe the bay until all on the Missouri, including Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur, were dead. Had they succeeded, the vengeance of the American people, confronted with what they would certainly have regarded as a final example of treachery, is terrible to contemplate. Yet it almost happened. In the last frantic hours before the surrender Hirohito was sending members of his family to every stronghold demanding assurances that the imperial promise would be kept. His younger brother, Prince Takamatsu, reached the Atsugi strip just in time to coax the fire-eaters into grounding their planes. It was touch and go right up to the end. To those who later asked whether the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been necessary, Samuel Eliot Morison replied that in the light of all the facts, “the atomic bomb was the keystone of a very fragile arch.”
***
The surrender ceremonies aboard the Missouri on September 2 marked the official end of World War II. For the first time since September 1, 1939, the New York Times observed, no war communiqué had been issued anywhere in the world, and a London headline read, THIS IS THE FIRST UNCENSORED DAILY EXPRESS IN EXACTLY SIX YEARS. But people do not find peace when governments do. For civilian soldiers the war would be over only when they were on their way home. The Army had worked out a sensible demobilization plan in 1944, and ten days before V-E Day it had begun returning the bravest and weariest GIs to the United States.
The plan became famous as “the point system.” Each month in the Army counted a point; each month overseas another one. Presence in a battle was worth five points, and combat wounds and decorations for valor brought five each. Thus a soldier who had been drafted forty months earlier, had been overseas thirty-two months, had come under fire in six separate engagements and had been wounded twice, was on his way home with 112 points. So was every other GI who had at least 85 points, or any WAC with 44. Special provisions were made for fathers, WACs married to men being discharged, and other WACs who had been found PWOP (pregnant without permission).
The system was as fair as any could be, and it enraged sailors and marines, whose services had no arrangements at all. By summer the Navy Department got around to announcing its plans for point counting. The minimum was so high that few qualified, and six marines who wrote their congressmen in protest were put in the brig. Meanwhile Stimson was making more friends by lowering soldiers’ minimum counts. By July 1945 enough red tape had passed through enough hands to launch a great transatlantic passenger movement. On one day seven transports docked in New York with 31,445 GIs. The Queen Elizabeth brought one division; the Queen Mary another. In one 72-hour period the Army Transport Service flew in 125,370 veterans from the European and Mediterranean theaters. By summer over a half-million men were home, even though the federal budget continued to anticipate a long war against Japan.
The Bomb changed that. Before it, fresh divisions were being dispatched to the Pacific on attack transports while high-point veterans waited in Brest or Le Havre for one of the Queens or an empty C-54. Now vessels bound for the international date line were rerouted. One of them was the transport General Henry Taylor, sailing under Captain Leonard B. Jaudon. A few days after the V-J celebrations the transport passed through the Panama Canal, east to west, and headed for the Hawaiian Islands. Abruptly the fo’c’sle bullhorn blared, “Now hear this! This is the captain. Watch the shadow of this ship”—he paused—“as it turns toward New York.” The three thousand men from the ETO cheered. Now they believed it. The war was really over. And they were going home—although home, in 1945, was very different from home as they remembered it. The world had changed, America had changed, and so, though they were unaware of it, had the men on the General Henry Taylor.
Portrait of an American
THE REDHEAD
Appropriately, Walter Reuther was born on Labor Day eve, 1907. Walter’s grandfather Jacob, a Social Democrat, had emigrated from a German farm in 1892 to flee Prussianism. Jacob’s son Valentine became an American Socialist and a fiery leader of the Brewery Workers Union. Valentine, in turn, raised his boys to admire Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, and social justice, and when redheaded Walter and his brother Victor arrived in Detroit from Wheeling, West Virginia, they were already on a collision course with the overlords of the automobile industry.
Working in the factories by day, they finished high school by night and enrolled at Wayne University, where they led a successful student protest against ROTC. In 1932, when Norman Thomas was running for President, Walter made a speech for him and was fired by Ford, whereupon the two brothers pooled their savings and bought steerage tickets for Europe. They defied Nazis in Germany, worked in a Russian plant for two years, crossed Asia on the Trans-Siberian Railway, worked their way across the Pacific in the crew of the President Hoover—and arrived back in Detroit just in time for the sit-down strikes.
Walter led one of the first of them. He had been elected president of Local 174 of the United Automobile Workers (UAW-CIO). Borrowing three hundred dollars, he hired a sound truck, rented an office, and waited by the telephone while Victor got a job working a punch press for 36.5 cents an hour at the
Kelsey-Hayes factory. At Victor’s urging the brake assembly line sat down. A bewildered personnel man begged him to get the men back on the job. “Only Walter Reuther can do that,” said Victor, and the man, innocent of the future, asked, “Who’s Walter Reuther?” Summoned by phone, Walter mounted a packing case and exhorted the men to join Local 174. The anxious personnel man said, “You’re supposed to get them back to work, not organize them,” and Walter, his eyes sparkling, replied, “How can I get them back to work if they aren’t organized?”
In the end an agreement was signed establishing a 75-cent minimum. In six months the local’s membership jumped from 78 to 2,400. Suddenly the redhead was everywhere, signing up auto workers all over town and directing strike strategy. He became a marked man. On May 26, 1947, company goons armed with rubber hoses and blackjacks attacked him while he was distributing UAW leaflets on an overpass outside Ford’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, beating him and another union organizer to a pulp. A year later Ford gunmen invaded the Reuthers’ La Salle Boulevard apartment and threatened his life.
The only result was to increase the redhead’s popularity among Detroit’s workmen. He became director of the UAW’s General Motors department in 1939 and president of the union in 1946. Two years later, on a cool April evening, he was in his kitchen talking to his wife May when a hired killer standing a few feet away fired both barrels of a ten-gauge shotgun loaded with “00” buckshot. Walter collapsed on the floor, his right arm almost gone and his condition critical. While he was still in the hospital an assassin shot out Victor’s right eye and dynamiters tried to blow up UAW headquarters.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 58