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Stanford Nuclear Age Series
The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals
Over sixty years after the end of the Pacific War, the United States and Japan have still not come to terms with the consequences; despite their postwar alliance, memories of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima-Nagasaki continue to remind that the decision to drop the bomb remains a contentious issue. While many Americans believe the bombing directly influenced Japan's decision to surrender, the bombing's impact on Japan's decision making, as well as the role of the Soviet Union, have yet to be fully explored. This book offers state-of-the-art reinterpretations of the reasons for Japan's decision to Which was the critical factor, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Soviet Union's entry into the war? Writing from the perspective of three different nationalities and drawing on newly available documents from Japan, the United States, and the former Soviet Union, five distinguished historians review the evidence and the arguments―and agree to disagree. The contributors are Barton J. Bernstein, Richard Frank, Sumio Hatano, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and David Holloway.
- GenresHistory
352 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2007
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About the author
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
17 books14 followersTsuyoshi Hasegawa is a Japanese-American historian specializing in modern Russian and Soviet history and the relations between Russia, Japan, and the United States. He taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was director of the Cold War Studies program until his retirement in 2016.
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September 9, 2014
THE END OF THE PACIFIC WAR, Reappraisals. Edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.
Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA 2007.
“Introduction.” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 1-8.
1. “Introducing the Interpretive Problems of Japan’s 1945 Surrender: A Historiographical Essay on Recent Literature in the West.” Barton J. Bernstein 9-64.
Good summary of the literature on the end of the Pacific War. Highly complex. I think that Bernstein is in a middle kind of position.
9. “The Japanese government’s mid-August 1945 surrender constitutes an unusual case in warfare. A large industrial nation with a still-powerful military, despite some then-serious weaknesses in training and equipment, surrendered without the enemy having landed in its homeland.”
2. “Ketsu Go: Japanese Political and Military Strategy in 1945.” Richard B. Frank. 65-94
Good summary of Frank’s position.
p. 90 “To give primacy to the atomic bombs as the key factor in motivating Hirohito’s crucial intervention and undermining Ketsu Go, however, is not to deny a role for Soviet intervention. No less than American officials, Japanese leaders questioned whether the emperor’s soldiers and sailors would obey an order to surrender. Not only did events prove these doubts well founded, but code breaking too captured a disturbing portrait of the volatile situation for the United States.
p. 93 “It may well be that one particular intercepted message during this period and the ultimate compliance of the overseas commands with the surrender played a major role in the emperor’s fate. On August 15, the navy minister in Tokyo sent a dispatch to all commands seeking to establish the bona fides of the surrender order. In that message, he “respectfully submit[ted] a report on events which led to the Empire’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.” The navy minister described expressly how the deadlock within the government had been broken by the emperor’s personal intervention. This revelation, from an absolutely impeccable source, showed that the emperor could be useful to occupation/ authorities—provided, of course, that the overseas commanders obeyed the surrender. …
p. 94. The end of the Pacific war is and will continue to be fertile soil for speculation about the paths that history did not take. [counter-factual] Any realistic attempt to explore this subject, however, must grapple with the facts of 1945, not the wishes of later years. …. American leaders confronted military realities in the summer of 1945 that confounded any optimism about how and when the war would end. Moreover, radio intelligence gave them ample knowledge of just how far from any acceptable end to the war Japan remained. Failure or refusal to confront these realities leads, not simply to paths history did not take, but to paths history could not have taken.
3. “The Atomic Bomb and Soviet Entry into the War Of Equal Importance.” Sumio Hatano. 95-112.
p. 103 August 9 Kido had an audience with the emperor at about 4:30 pm and secured Hirohito’s understanding on the need for intervention at the coming imperial conference. … Initially Kido did not consider the “sacred decision” necessary, since he believed that the Big Six meeting had already agreed on the four conditions. However, Shigemitsu, Konoe, and Prince Takamatsu, all of whom thought it inevitable that negotiations for surrender would collapse once the four conditions were communicated to the United States, succeeded in persuading Kido to support a “sacred decision” scenario, indicating only one condition (preservation of the emperor system).
p. 111 [Hiranuma – alienation of people from imperial throne, terminating war and imperial system. “For the same reasons, Navy Minister Yonai viewedthe atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war as a “gift from heaven.”
p. 112 When told of the soviet entry by Hosokawa Morisada, Prince Konoe Fumimaro said: “[I]t may be gift from heaven for containing the army. In short, the leadership had been facing the dilemma that a hasty termination of the war might invite an army rebellion, while the protracted continuation of the war would provoke public hostility to the emperor system.”
4. “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: Which was More Important in Japan’s Decision to Surrender?” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 113-144.
pp. 113-114 [Directly attacks Sadao-Frank position by arguing that Soviet entry had a more decisive effect on Japan’s decision to surrender. Goes on to say] 114 I argue that Soviet entry into the war against Japan alone, without the atomic bombs, might have led to Japan’s surrender before November 1, but that the atomic bombs alone, without Soviet entry into the war would not have accomplished this.”
125 [Hasegawa argues that Asada’s conclusion “that since the army had assessed that the Soviet attack might take place, the soviet invasion into Manchuria was not a shock to the Japanese military.”
pp. 136-137 [Hasegawa goes into psychological factors which allowed for manipulation of facts by those interested. I note that much of the counter-factual discussion sounds like arguments over different possibilities at Gettysburg.]
pp. 140-144 “Counterfactual Hypotheses” Ah, ha. Another word for speculation. 140-141. Does admit the error of the Summary Report (Pacific War) of the USSBS 1946 which “concluded that Japan would have surrendered before November 1 without the atomic bombs and without the Soviet entry into the war. This conclusion has become the foundation on which the revisionist historians constructed their argument that the atomic bombs were not necessary for Japan’ surrender. Since Barton Bernstein has persuasively demonstrated in his devastating critique of the U.S. Bombing Survey that its conclusion is not supported by its own evidence, I need not dwell on this supposition. It suffices to state that, contrary to its conclusion, the evidence the Strategic Bombing Survey relied on overwhelmingly demonstrates the decisive effect of the atomic bombs and Soviet entry on Japan’s decision.
p. 144 top of page suggests that revisionist historians’claims that the atomic bomb delayed rather than hastened Japan’s surrender merits consideration but on bottom of page concludes that atomic bombs tipped balance in favor of peace party and Soviet intervention toppled scale itself.
5. “Jockeying for Position in the Postwar World: Soviet Entry into the War with Japan in August 1945.” David Holloway, 145-188.
Fascinating article on a part of history that was always in the background. Stalin was a nationalist and realist who remembered the Treaty of Portsmouth. He got Sakhalin back and got the Kuriles. He got his opening to the Pacific but not the whole of the sea of Okhost, refused as he was by Truman on occupying Hokkaido.
p. 148 “… two questions about Soviet policy before, during, and after the war. The first is: why did the Soviet Union enter the war? … Thesecond question is: what impact did the atomic bomb have on soviet policy, both before and after Hiroshima?”
pp. 160-161 On March 22, the GRU rezidentura (i.e. Soviet military intelligence) in Tokyo reported:
“Among Japanese, the opinion has recently been spreading that a Japanese victory is impossible. They think that the moment has come when it is necessary to conclude peace with America through the mediation of the Soviet Union; however, before concluding/ peace they consider it necessary to choose a suitable moment to give decisive battle to the Americans using all the Japanese armed forces.”
pp. 165-66 Negotiations with China. [[good faith?? My question]]
p. 170 There is no clear evidence that before August 6, Stalin’s policy was driven by the fear that the United States would use the atomic bomb to end the war at a stroke; indeed, Shtemenko’s testimony suggests otherwise.[170] … This interpretation differs from that of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who claims that the atomic bomb was a factor in Stalin’s calculations about the war against Japan as early as 1943. This claim seems implausible, and Hasegawa offers no evidence to support it.
178-180 Truman acceded to Yalta but did not agree to add Hokkaido. Stalin unhappy but did not try to fight it and allowed US to take over South Korea.
p. 185 Stalin’s decision on August 7 to advance entry into the war by forty-eight hours suggests that Hiroshima took him by surprise and that he was worried by the possibility of an immediate Japanese surrender.
6. “The Soviet Factor in Ending the Pacific War: From the Neutrality Pact to Soviet Entry into the War in August 1945.” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 1289-227.
210 His conclusions, taken from his work Racing the Enemy, are basically that Stalin wanted to prolong the conflict so as to ty to get into the war to make sure of Yalta promises, indeed, to expand on them (Hokkaido, Kuriles, ports). [a discussion of Hopkins’ “promise” that Stalin and the Soviet Union would be in on the joint declaration.??]
225 “The Soviet Union played a central role in the drama of the ending the Pacific War. Stalin was determined to enter the war against Japan in order to obrain the geopolitical gains promised at Yalta. He had to balance Japan and the United States for this purpose.”
7. “Conclusion: The Interpretive Dialogue: 1989-2005, and Various Proposals for Understanding the Ending of the War and Why and How Japan Surrendered.” Barton J. Bernstein. 228-242.
Pp 228-29. “To some scholars in history and political science, and in the often political-science-related communities of strategic studies and policy studies, the division in America (far more than elsewhere) between political science and history in dealing with Japan’s surrender may suggest the need to close the gap between political science theory and historical research. That may be an admirable hope, and even a worthy aim.
But that gap is, in practice, hard to bridge for most practitioners in these disciplines, particularly in the United States. It is often a difference about what the important questions are, what kinds of evidence (and thus research) count, how to assess evidence, how to focus the dialogue, and what literature is relevant. Related to that is the political science quest, often shared by many in strategic studies and policy studies for larger generalizations (“theories” and frequently the distrust by historians for such a quest on the grounds that it erodes crucial differences in studying events.”
Really superb analysis of the problems of studying the end of the Pacific War and the infinity of questions that can be asked. As I said somewhere, the field is like the study of what would have happened at Gettysburg if…, counterfactual studies if ever there were any!
Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA 2007.
“Introduction.” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 1-8.
1. “Introducing the Interpretive Problems of Japan’s 1945 Surrender: A Historiographical Essay on Recent Literature in the West.” Barton J. Bernstein 9-64.
Good summary of the literature on the end of the Pacific War. Highly complex. I think that Bernstein is in a middle kind of position.
9. “The Japanese government’s mid-August 1945 surrender constitutes an unusual case in warfare. A large industrial nation with a still-powerful military, despite some then-serious weaknesses in training and equipment, surrendered without the enemy having landed in its homeland.”
2. “Ketsu Go: Japanese Political and Military Strategy in 1945.” Richard B. Frank. 65-94
Good summary of Frank’s position.
p. 90 “To give primacy to the atomic bombs as the key factor in motivating Hirohito’s crucial intervention and undermining Ketsu Go, however, is not to deny a role for Soviet intervention. No less than American officials, Japanese leaders questioned whether the emperor’s soldiers and sailors would obey an order to surrender. Not only did events prove these doubts well founded, but code breaking too captured a disturbing portrait of the volatile situation for the United States.
p. 93 “It may well be that one particular intercepted message during this period and the ultimate compliance of the overseas commands with the surrender played a major role in the emperor’s fate. On August 15, the navy minister in Tokyo sent a dispatch to all commands seeking to establish the bona fides of the surrender order. In that message, he “respectfully submit[ted] a report on events which led to the Empire’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.” The navy minister described expressly how the deadlock within the government had been broken by the emperor’s personal intervention. This revelation, from an absolutely impeccable source, showed that the emperor could be useful to occupation/ authorities—provided, of course, that the overseas commanders obeyed the surrender. …
p. 94. The end of the Pacific war is and will continue to be fertile soil for speculation about the paths that history did not take. [counter-factual] Any realistic attempt to explore this subject, however, must grapple with the facts of 1945, not the wishes of later years. …. American leaders confronted military realities in the summer of 1945 that confounded any optimism about how and when the war would end. Moreover, radio intelligence gave them ample knowledge of just how far from any acceptable end to the war Japan remained. Failure or refusal to confront these realities leads, not simply to paths history did not take, but to paths history could not have taken.
3. “The Atomic Bomb and Soviet Entry into the War Of Equal Importance.” Sumio Hatano. 95-112.
p. 103 August 9 Kido had an audience with the emperor at about 4:30 pm and secured Hirohito’s understanding on the need for intervention at the coming imperial conference. … Initially Kido did not consider the “sacred decision” necessary, since he believed that the Big Six meeting had already agreed on the four conditions. However, Shigemitsu, Konoe, and Prince Takamatsu, all of whom thought it inevitable that negotiations for surrender would collapse once the four conditions were communicated to the United States, succeeded in persuading Kido to support a “sacred decision” scenario, indicating only one condition (preservation of the emperor system).
p. 111 [Hiranuma – alienation of people from imperial throne, terminating war and imperial system. “For the same reasons, Navy Minister Yonai viewedthe atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war as a “gift from heaven.”
p. 112 When told of the soviet entry by Hosokawa Morisada, Prince Konoe Fumimaro said: “[I]t may be gift from heaven for containing the army. In short, the leadership had been facing the dilemma that a hasty termination of the war might invite an army rebellion, while the protracted continuation of the war would provoke public hostility to the emperor system.”
4. “The Atomic Bombs and the Soviet Invasion: Which was More Important in Japan’s Decision to Surrender?” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 113-144.
pp. 113-114 [Directly attacks Sadao-Frank position by arguing that Soviet entry had a more decisive effect on Japan’s decision to surrender. Goes on to say] 114 I argue that Soviet entry into the war against Japan alone, without the atomic bombs, might have led to Japan’s surrender before November 1, but that the atomic bombs alone, without Soviet entry into the war would not have accomplished this.”
125 [Hasegawa argues that Asada’s conclusion “that since the army had assessed that the Soviet attack might take place, the soviet invasion into Manchuria was not a shock to the Japanese military.”
pp. 136-137 [Hasegawa goes into psychological factors which allowed for manipulation of facts by those interested. I note that much of the counter-factual discussion sounds like arguments over different possibilities at Gettysburg.]
pp. 140-144 “Counterfactual Hypotheses” Ah, ha. Another word for speculation. 140-141. Does admit the error of the Summary Report (Pacific War) of the USSBS 1946 which “concluded that Japan would have surrendered before November 1 without the atomic bombs and without the Soviet entry into the war. This conclusion has become the foundation on which the revisionist historians constructed their argument that the atomic bombs were not necessary for Japan’ surrender. Since Barton Bernstein has persuasively demonstrated in his devastating critique of the U.S. Bombing Survey that its conclusion is not supported by its own evidence, I need not dwell on this supposition. It suffices to state that, contrary to its conclusion, the evidence the Strategic Bombing Survey relied on overwhelmingly demonstrates the decisive effect of the atomic bombs and Soviet entry on Japan’s decision.
p. 144 top of page suggests that revisionist historians’claims that the atomic bomb delayed rather than hastened Japan’s surrender merits consideration but on bottom of page concludes that atomic bombs tipped balance in favor of peace party and Soviet intervention toppled scale itself.
5. “Jockeying for Position in the Postwar World: Soviet Entry into the War with Japan in August 1945.” David Holloway, 145-188.
Fascinating article on a part of history that was always in the background. Stalin was a nationalist and realist who remembered the Treaty of Portsmouth. He got Sakhalin back and got the Kuriles. He got his opening to the Pacific but not the whole of the sea of Okhost, refused as he was by Truman on occupying Hokkaido.
p. 148 “… two questions about Soviet policy before, during, and after the war. The first is: why did the Soviet Union enter the war? … Thesecond question is: what impact did the atomic bomb have on soviet policy, both before and after Hiroshima?”
pp. 160-161 On March 22, the GRU rezidentura (i.e. Soviet military intelligence) in Tokyo reported:
“Among Japanese, the opinion has recently been spreading that a Japanese victory is impossible. They think that the moment has come when it is necessary to conclude peace with America through the mediation of the Soviet Union; however, before concluding/ peace they consider it necessary to choose a suitable moment to give decisive battle to the Americans using all the Japanese armed forces.”
pp. 165-66 Negotiations with China. [[good faith?? My question]]
p. 170 There is no clear evidence that before August 6, Stalin’s policy was driven by the fear that the United States would use the atomic bomb to end the war at a stroke; indeed, Shtemenko’s testimony suggests otherwise.[170] … This interpretation differs from that of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who claims that the atomic bomb was a factor in Stalin’s calculations about the war against Japan as early as 1943. This claim seems implausible, and Hasegawa offers no evidence to support it.
178-180 Truman acceded to Yalta but did not agree to add Hokkaido. Stalin unhappy but did not try to fight it and allowed US to take over South Korea.
p. 185 Stalin’s decision on August 7 to advance entry into the war by forty-eight hours suggests that Hiroshima took him by surprise and that he was worried by the possibility of an immediate Japanese surrender.
6. “The Soviet Factor in Ending the Pacific War: From the Neutrality Pact to Soviet Entry into the War in August 1945.” Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. 1289-227.
210 His conclusions, taken from his work Racing the Enemy, are basically that Stalin wanted to prolong the conflict so as to ty to get into the war to make sure of Yalta promises, indeed, to expand on them (Hokkaido, Kuriles, ports). [a discussion of Hopkins’ “promise” that Stalin and the Soviet Union would be in on the joint declaration.??]
225 “The Soviet Union played a central role in the drama of the ending the Pacific War. Stalin was determined to enter the war against Japan in order to obrain the geopolitical gains promised at Yalta. He had to balance Japan and the United States for this purpose.”
7. “Conclusion: The Interpretive Dialogue: 1989-2005, and Various Proposals for Understanding the Ending of the War and Why and How Japan Surrendered.” Barton J. Bernstein. 228-242.
Pp 228-29. “To some scholars in history and political science, and in the often political-science-related communities of strategic studies and policy studies, the division in America (far more than elsewhere) between political science and history in dealing with Japan’s surrender may suggest the need to close the gap between political science theory and historical research. That may be an admirable hope, and even a worthy aim.
But that gap is, in practice, hard to bridge for most practitioners in these disciplines, particularly in the United States. It is often a difference about what the important questions are, what kinds of evidence (and thus research) count, how to assess evidence, how to focus the dialogue, and what literature is relevant. Related to that is the political science quest, often shared by many in strategic studies and policy studies for larger generalizations (“theories” and frequently the distrust by historians for such a quest on the grounds that it erodes crucial differences in studying events.”
Really superb analysis of the problems of studying the end of the Pacific War and the infinity of questions that can be asked. As I said somewhere, the field is like the study of what would have happened at Gettysburg if…, counterfactual studies if ever there were any!
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