Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  The second mission from Yontan was flown by The Lady is Fresh and Hobo Queen II, also on the night of August 13–14. The flight was to be a combined night fighter-shipping search, with the primary objective being to locate, intercept, and destroy Japanese aircraft believed to be ferrying senior military officers across the Korea Strait, the 120-mile stretch of ocean separating the Japanese island of Kyushu from the southeastern coast of Korea. Both B-32s were fitted with bomb-bay fuel tanks, which restricted their bomb loads to nine 500-pounders each. The aircraft took off from Yontan an hour apart and both set out directly to the north. As the first B-32 neared Fukuejima, the southernmost of Japan’s Goto Islands, it veered to the west and then cruised northward along the Korean coastline from Cheju Do island toward Busan, but made no sightings. The other Dominator initially headed up the west coast of Japan’s Tsushima Island, in the center of the Korea Strait, then turned southwest and just after dawn located and bombed a 75-foot sloop about ten miles due south of Yeosu, Korea. No direct hits were scored out of nine bombs dropped, but several near misses caused the vessel’s crew to abandon ship. Thirty minutes later and twelve miles to the northeast the B-32 located a 150-foot-long, four-masted sailing ship, which the Dominator peppered with 4,000 rounds from its .50-caliber machine guns. Although the vessel remained afloat it was in decidedly less seaworthy condition by the time the B-32 departed for the return flight to Okinawa. Both Dominators landed safely on the morning of the fourteenth.56

  The results of the night’s missions were not spectacular in terms of damage done to the Japanese Empire, but they did underscore the Dominator’s ability to undertake long-distance, low-level sorties (minus, of course, the occasional engine fire). That capability was to be utilized in the next mission launched from Okinawa, a two-plane night reconnaissance sortie to southern Korean and western Honshu. Though the flight was primarily intended to monitor and, if possible, interdict Japanese aerial activity over the same part of the Korea Strait that had been the focus of the previous anti-shipping mission, both The Lady is Fresh and Hobo Queen II were loaded with the usual number of 500-pound bombs in case they came across suitable maritime targets.

  The Dominators rolled down the Yontan runway just before sundown on August 15, then formed up and headed north at about 4,000 feet. Their crews settled in for the long transit flight to the patrol area, some of the men opening the simple box lunches provided for them and pouring the first of what promised to be many cups of strong coffee from thermoses each man stashed near his position. But less than three hours into the flight the radio operators aboard each plane received an identical—and potentially monumentally important—message from group headquarters back on Okinawa: the Japanese had accepted the Allied surrender terms and a theater-wide ceasefire was now in effect. The B-32s were to terminate the mission and return to base. The news spread through both Dominators in a flash, and enlisted men and officers alike whooped and slapped each other on the back—the long hard slog that began after Pearl Harbor finally seemed to be over, and they had all made it through alive.57

  But as the two B-32s began the slow, graceful turns that would take them home, events were unfolding in Tokyo that promised to shatter the American flyers’ dreams of peace.

  CHAPTER 3

  CRISIS IN TOKYO

  ALMOST EXACTLY TWENTY HOURS before The Lady is Fresh and Hobo Queen II received the recall message that terminated their mission and so elated their crews, His Imperial Majesty Hirohito1 stepped in front of a microphone set up in the Household Ministry building on the night-shrouded grounds of his bomb-damaged Tokyo palace. Speaking in kanbun, the archaic classical Japanese of the imperial court, the 124th emperor of Japan—his voice high-pitched and tremulous—read a most remarkable document as sound engineers recorded his words and court officials stood nearby, tears rolling down their cheeks.

  Known as an imperial rescript, the text was Hirohito’s official response to the July 26 Postdam Declaration in which the United States, Great Britain, and China outlined their terms for the unconditional surrender of Japan’s armed forces.2 Speaking in the majestic plural, the forty-four-year-old emperor addressed his people:

  To Our good and loyal subjects:

  After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in Our empire today, We have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered Our government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that Our empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration.3

  The emperor went on for another three-and-a-half minutes. Although he never used the word surrender and the overall tone—especially in Hirohito’s obfuscation of his own role in initially supporting the war—was more than a little disingenuous and self-serving, his pronouncement was no less historic. Here was a Japanese emperor acceding to the wishes of foreign governments and telling his people, albeit indirectly, that their nation had lost the war and that he, and they, could “pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come” by “enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.”4

  And yet Hirohito’s people would not hear his historic address for another twelve hours. The imperial rescript was being recorded for delayed broadcast and would not go on the air until after the government of Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki had officially notified the Allies of Tokyo’s conditional acceptance of the Potsdam ultimatum and had, in turn, been assured that the notification had been received. There had thus far been no response to the cables sent to the Allied capitals via Japan’s embassies in neutral nations, so the emperor had more than enough time to read two additional “takes” of the rescript to correct slight errors and lower the pitch of his voice. Those recordings completed, Hirohito walked stiffly from the room. Minutes later, just after midnight on the sultry, windless, and very early morning of August 15, he climbed into the car that had earlier brought him across the palace grounds and was driven back to his private quarters.5

  The diminutive monarch’s recorded rescript would soon announce to his subjects—however obliquely—that the nation had been totally defeated and would suffer prolonged occupation by foreign troops for the first time in its history, yet he was at peace with his decision that the war had to end. A figurehead emperor throughout the conflict, Hirohito had routinely rubber-stamped the decisions made by the six-member Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, but over the preceding months he had come to believe that the only way to preserve Japan as a sovereign nation—and, of course, to protect the hereditary monarchy—was to end the war as quickly as possible. He had initially agreed with those of his advisers who advocated a negotiated peace with the Allies, but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki three days later had convinced him that immediate surrender—even if it meant acceding to the onerous conditions set forth in the Potsdam Declaration—was the only way to save his nation and its people from the “prompt and utter destruction” the Allies threatened to visit on Japan should the nation continue to resist.6

  Indeed, so certain was Hirohito of the immediate need to terminate the war that four days before recording the rescript for broadcast he had taken an uncharacteristically bold step: he’d actually agreed to impose his will upon the fractious Supreme Council. That body’s members were Prime Minister Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Army and War Minister General Korechika Anami, Navy Minister Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Chief of the Army General Staff General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Chief of the Naval General Staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda. Referred to collectively as the “Big Six,” the men were equally divided when it came to the idea of surrender. The “doves,” Suzuki, Togo, and Yonai, all believed fervently that immediate capitulation was the only way to prevent more atomic bombings and ensure the continuation of Japan’s monarchy. The “hawks,” Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda, were fiercely adamant that the nation could and should fight on tenaciously, inflicting such grievous
casualties on the Allied forces expected to invade the Home Islands that Washington and London would agree to negotiate an end to the war on terms more favorable to Japan. The terms the hawks hoped to force the Allies to accept included Japan’s right to disarm herself, Japanese control of any war-crimes trials, and absolutely no Allied occupation of the Home Islands.7

  On the afternoon of Thursday, August 9, the division of opinion between doves and hawks had caused the Supreme Council to adjourn an emergency meeting without deciding on how to respond to the Potsdam Declaration. Suzuki then took the question to his full cabinet. Because several members of that larger body shared the hawkish point of view, the outcome of the meeting was predictably inconclusive—no decision about the question of surrender had been reached by the time the cabinet meeting ended about two hours before midnight. Tradition demanded that the Japanese government—in this case, the members of the Big Six and the cabinet—had to agree unanimously on a policy before seeking the emperor’s formal permission to enact that policy, so the impasse essentially guaranteed that Japan would be incapable of responding to the Allied demands. That lack of response, in turn, could very well bring the Potsdam Declaration’s threat of “prompt and utter destruction” into horrendous reality.

  In a last-ditch effort to avert catastrophe, Suzuki and Togo agreed on a bold and unprecedented plan. They would ask Hirohito to step down from the lofty heights of total impartiality to which tradition and Japan’s constitution relegated him and intervene personally to break the deadlock between doves and hawks. They would, in short, call upon the emperor to personally decree that the immediate acceptance of the Allied terms set forth in the Potsdam Declaration was his divine will and the only way to save the nation. Though as a constitutional monarch he actually had no such power to dictate policy, the traditional and mystic reverence for the person of the emperor—believed by his people to be the direct lineal descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of Shintoism—ensured that his deadlocked government would hear and obey his will. Or so Suzuki and Togo hoped.

  The two men had put their plan in motion by summoning the chief cabinet secretary, Hisatune Sakomizu, and asking him to convince Admiral Toyoda and General Umezu to put their names to a petition that would allow Suzuki to convene a meeting of the Big Six in the emperor’s presence. The military chiefs of staff were to be told that the measure was simply a way to ensure that such a meeting could be called quickly if made necessary by fast-changing events; the two senior commanders accepted that explanation and signed the petition. Suzuki and Togo then hurried to the palace for an audience with Hirohoto, during which they explained the deadlock in the council and their point of view that any further delay in accepting the terms set forth in the Potsdam Declaration would be catastrophic for the nation. The emperor heard them out and agreed with their logic, and then directed them to convene the Big Six immediately.

  A few minutes before midnight on August 9 the emperor, the members of the Supreme Council, and several staff assistants and court officials had gathered in the cramped and humid imperial bomb shelter. Suzuki read out the Potsdam demands in their entirety, explained the nature of the impasse within the Big Six and the corresponding disagreement within the larger cabinet, and then gave various men in the room the opportunity to voice their opinions. Finally, at just after 2 A.M. on August 10, Hirohito rose and in a low but steady voice expressed his opinion that there was no reason to prolong a war that was so obviously already lost. He reflected on the suffering of his people and the devastation visited on his empire, then ended his remarks by saying he sanctioned Foreign Minister Togo’s proposal to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration as presented, with the sole condition being that the national polity8—Japan’s sovereignty as vested in the position and influence of the emperor—not be diminished in any way.9

  When Hirohito finished speaking Suzuki quickly adjourned the meeting, for there was much left to do. The emperor’s pronouncement had apparently quelled the dissent within the Big Six, but the only government entity with the constitutional authority to ratify the surrender was the cabinet. All of the Supreme Council members therefore immediately left the bomb shelter for the prime minister’s official residence, where the follow-on cabinet meeting was to be held. By four in the morning that body had hammered out the wording of the conditional surrender message to be sent to the Allies via the Japanese embassies in Sweden and Switzerland, and upon transmission of those cables Hirohito had finally taken to his bed, believing that his intervention had eliminated discord within his government and would result in a swift and orderly transition from war to peace.

  Unfortunately, he was wrong on both accounts.

  DESPITE THE DEFEATS IT had endured and enormous losses in men and matériel it had suffered thus far in the war, in August 1945 the Japanese army arguably remained the single strongest and most structurally coherent organization in the country.

  The army was also permeated by the principles of Bushido, the ancient “way of the samurai” that during the first decades of the twentieth century had been cynically distorted by Japanese militarists into a virulently nationalistic code that demanded unquestioning loyalty from soldiers of all ranks and emphasized that surrender to one’s enemies was so dishonorable that suicide—both personal and national—was vastly preferable. Although the Japanese navy was also steeped in the traditions of Bushido, it was the army that styled itself the protector of both the monarchy and the nation’s sacred honor. As a result, the service’s members had repeatedly shown an almost cavalier willingness to take the law into their own hands when they believed that “mere politicians” were acting against the interests of the military, the emperor, or the nation. In February 1936, for example, some 1,200 members of the army’s Tokyo-based First Guards Division—one of three similar formations that on a rotating basis undertook the protection of the emperor, his family, and the imperial palace—had risen against the government because they objected to a proposed transfer of their unit to Manchuria. Before the three-day revolt was crushed by loyal units, the rebels had assassinated Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Makoto Saito, Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi, and several senior officers, and had badly wounded the emperor’s grand chamberlain.10

  Nine years later that grand chamberlain, now Prime Minister Suzuki, was only too aware that in seeking to break the deadlock between doves and hawks in the Big Six and cabinet he and Togo were quite probably putting their lives on the line. And he was right: news of the emperor’s intervention during the August 9–10 meeting, and of the government’s subsequent decision to conditionally accept the demands set forth in the Potsdam Declaration, had spread like wildfire through the senior levels of the army, emanating from no less a source than Army and War Minister Anami. Scant hours after Hirohito retired to his bed in the early morning hours of August 10 the squat general had called senior War Ministry staffers together to tell them of the night’s developments. Anami’s announcement was met with stunned disbelief that quickly turned to outrage as the gathered officers realized the full import of his words—most believed to the depth of their souls that surrender would not only mean the utter disgrace and degradation of the nation, they knew without a shred of doubt that it would also result in the complete and ignominious dissolution of the army.

  As a chorus of angry voices swelled around him Anami firmly reminded his listeners that they were all soldiers and that they must not deviate from strict military discipline. In the crisis facing Japan, he told them, one man’s uncontrolled actions could bring ruin upon the entire nation. When a younger officer stood up and directly asked Anami if he himself supported the surrender, the general slammed his swagger stick onto the top of a table and stonily replied that anyone who chose to disobey his orders would have do so over his dead body.11

  Anami’s exhortation notwithstanding, he himself had grave reservations about the decision to surrender. Several of the officers in the crowded room knew of their commander’s doubts. One of them, Lieutenant Colo
nel Masao Inaba, decided in his capacity as Anami’s speechwriter to draft a statement on the general’s behalf that urged overseas army units to continue combat operations against Allied forces until the proposed surrender actually occurred. The finished statement was read and approved by several senior officers, though not by Anami. He had left for the Foreign Ministry building to help draft an official but purposely vague cabinet statement to be broadcast to the Japanese people that afternoon announcing, essentially, that momentous news regarding the conduct of the war would soon be forthcoming.

  Before Anami returned to his office, and before he had the opportunity to read “his” statement, the text was picked up by Lieutenant Colonel Masahiko Takeshita, a staff officer who also happened to be Anami’s brother-in-law. Takeshita conveyed the message to the same central Tokyo radio station that was scheduled to broadcast the cabinet statement. When Hiroshi Shimomura, the director of the government’s official information bureau, heard about the unexpected “army proclamation” bearing Anami’s name he immediately telephoned the general, who said he knew nothing of it but added that he was under increasing pressure from restive junior officers to disavow the decision to surrender. Fearing that Anami would be assassinated if the proclamation were not broadcast, Shimomura directed that it be read in conjunction with the cabinet statement.

  So it was that when those Japanese who still had working radios tuned in to the regular afternoon news broadcast on August 10 they heard two wildly conflicting communiqués. The first, issued in Anami’s name and titled “Instructions to the Troops,” stated in part:

  We have but one choice: we must fight on until we win the sacred war to preserve our national polity. We must fight on, even if we have to chew grass and eat earth and live in the fields—for in our death there is a chance for our country’s survival. The hero Kusunoki [a fourteenth-century samurai] pledged to live and die seven times in order to save Japan from disaster. We can do no less.12