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by
Ian W. Toll
Started reading
September 1, 2020
General Cho added a postscript instructing, “Do not suffer the shame of being taken prisoner. You will live for eternity.”
In the end, as intended, nearly the entire army was lost, amounting to nearly 90,000 combatant and service troops killed, and 11,000 captured.
According to the Okinawan prefectural government, 94,000 Okinawan civilians died during the battle;
Leahy was the White House chief of staff and the chairman of the JCS. What steps did he take to ensure that the vice president was properly briefed? Who else had that duty, if not himself?
At a State-War-Navy meeting on May 1, Jim Forrestal told his two colleagues that it was time to “make a thorough study of our political objectives in the Far East.”
Leading figures in the navy and the Army Air Forces roughly agreed on one point: that an invasion of Japan was unnecessary and should be avoided.
As the two Pacific offensives converged on Japan, it was growing harder to sustain the case for two autonomous theater commanders.
ADMIRAL BARON KANTARO SUZUKI, the prime minister who assumed power in April 1945, was a decrepit old man of seventy-seven years,
During the aborted army coup d’état of February 1936, he had been shot and nearly killed.
When the time was ripe, it was agreed, the emperor would be invited to issue a “sacred decree” to end the war. At the same time, every figure in the leadership was cognizant of the threat of military uprisings, assassinations, and even civil war.
The main decision-making body of the government remained the six-headed Supreme War Direction Council (SWDC), of which all the aforementioned were members.
The same institutional defects that had produced Japan’s irrational decision to launch the war in 1941 now prevented a rational decision to end it. There was no real locus of responsibility or accountability in Tokyo.
A sudden turn from war toward peace would require the compliance of many widely scattered interests and players, including officers in the middle ranks of both services.
“unusual time-lapse between the top civilian political decision to accept defeat and the final capitulation.”25
we should so entreat,” said Toyoda, “so the decision was that something must be done to continue this war.”
Caught between competing impulses to seek peace or go on fighting, the SWDC moved to do both.
It involved a climactic, spasmodic effort to pour substantially all of the nation’s remaining military and economic resources into countering an invasion.
and an unprecedentedly large kamikaze assault on the Allied fleet.
In April and May, as U.S. forces overran Okinawa, the Imperial Japanese Army began transferring units from Korea and Manchuria, and mobilized new and reserve divisions at home. By July 1945, a two-stage mobilization had brought the total to thirty frontline fighting divisions, twenty-four coastal defense divisions, twenty-three independent mixed brigades, two armored divisions, seven tank brigades, and three infantry brigades.
Every citizen-fighter was exhorted to kill at least one barbarian invader before dying in turn. These preparations proceeded under the new national slogan: “The Glorious Death of the 100 Million.”
In July, about 9,000 aircraft were in reserve throughout the home islands; virtually all, including trainer aircraft, would be deployed as kamikazes against the U.S. invasion fleet.
many of the prospective kamikaze flyers could do nothing but take off and perform basic aerial maneuvers.
The Japanese navy was also pouring major efforts into producing suicide submarines and speedboats, as well as suicide gliders to be launched from mountain peaks.
The point of Stalin’s characteristically devious game was to get his country into the last phase of the war against Japan, thus gobbling up territory on the cheap.
they could not yet face up to the stark reality of their total defeat.
aerial minelaying ultimately proved to be one of the single most productive uses of the B-29s.
Using radar alone, the specially trained aircrews could hit their targets with deadly precision, even when bombing through impenetrable cloud cover.
huge strikes involving six hundred or seven hundred Superfortresses—hit Japan two to three times a week.
An armada of 105 ships, including seventeen aircraft carriers and eight battleships, was arrayed in three task groups. By a fair margin, it was the most powerful naval striking force ever assembled in history.
On the sixteenth, Task Force 38 withdrew to the east and rendezvoused with its fueling and logistics group. Sidling up alongside the fleet oilers, the great fleet drank 379,157 barrels of fuel. Simultaneously, 6,369 tons of ammunition and 1,635 tons of supplies and provisions were transferred from the storeships into the fleet’s storerooms and magazines. The entire process was completed in about eighteen hours. Admiral Radford did not exaggerate when he called it “the greatest logistic feat ever performed on the high seas.”
They paid special attention to the remaining units of the Japanese fleet anchored off Kure Naval Base.
In a coup de grâce on July 26, carrier planes pulverized two dozen Japanese warships riding at anchor, effectively wiping out the last remnants of Japanese naval power. “By sunset that evening,” wrote Halsey, “the Japanese navy had ceased to exist.”53
but of major significance will be the degree to which most of the Japanese continue to believe that the Allies intend: a. To kill, torture or enslave the Japanese people; b. To destroy the Japanese way of life with its Emperor and related values.
series of broadcasts modifying or at least clarifying the meaning of the “unconditional surrender” doctrine.
Japan had come to a fork in the road, said Zacharias, and the nation faced a categorical choice: “One is the virtual destruction of Japan followed by a dictated peace. The other is unconditional surrender with its attendant benefits as laid down by the Atlantic Charter.”
They wanted a blank check for a project whose details were also left blank, and they got it. The total cost of the Manhattan Project eventually grew to $2 billion.
As vice president he had been told nothing more, in conformity with the strict need-to-know stricture enforced upon the project.
The welter of major policy decisions taken by American leaders between May and August 1945 were among the most complex in the nation’s history. Purely military strategy was amalgamated into high considerations of foreign policy; all minds, including those of senior generals and admirals, were turning toward the postwar order.
But he privately argued that Hirohito must play a role in the war’s final act, because he alone possessed the power to compel all his forces at home and overseas to lay down arms.
Churchill traveled to Potsdam, but during the second week of the conference he was replaced by a new prime minister, Clement Attlee, whose Labour Party had won a landslide victory in Britain’s first national election since 1939.
The test was scheduled for dawn on July 16, 1945.
THE FIRST REPORT ARRIVED IN POTSDAM later that day, at 7:30 p.m. local time.
He did not know or suspect that Soviet espionage had successfully penetrated the Manhattan Project, and that the Russians were already well informed about the bomb.
Sato could read the meaning between those lines: the regime was hopelessly divided, and the intransigent militarists abhorred any terms resembling unconditional surrender. Togo’s hands were tied, and so were Sato’s.
“We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”
Stimson had struck Kyoto off an earlier list. Reasoning that the ancient capital’s historical and cultural significance made it unique, Stimson worried that destroying it would arouse the hatred of future generations of Japanese.
By order to the Twentieth Air Force, those four cities had been set aside—preserved, quarantined, left intact, spared the fury of LeMay’s incendiaries, so that the atomic bombs could destroy them at one stroke.
To what extent should the Allies spell out intentions for the occupation of Japan?
favored giving an assurance that the imperial dynasty could continue as a constitutional monarchy.
It was based upon the recommendations of the Interim Committee and its subcommittees, as approved by the cabinet and the president.
