The Surrender

The President had to get on with the overwhelming business of history. Last week, having loosed a new force upon the world and welcomed a new ally into the Pacific war, a part of his business was to wait and to wonder, like other men, whether all that he had done had been worthwhile.

Friday morning he was up early as usual, and was about to leave his rooms on the second floor of the White House when a War Department messenger arrived with a radio dispatch. The President took the piece of paper and read:

"In obedience to the gracious command of His Majesty the Emperor. . . ."

Three years, eight months, three days and 75,000 American lives after Pearl Harbor, the Japs were beaten. They knew it, and they wanted to quit "as quickly as possible."

Harry Truman, President for four months, still got a thrill out of great events and his part in them. The bright hazel eyes of the plain man from Missouri raced across and down the yellow page:

". . . The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated . . . at Potsdam on July 26, 1945 . . . with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogative of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler. The Japanese Government hope sincerely that this. ..."

There, broken in midsentence, it ended. It was unofficial: a Domei dispatch broadcast by Radio Tokyo at 7:35 a.m. (Truman time), picked up by listening monitors on the Pacific Coast, and teletyped to Washington. It was nothing that a President could formally discuss with his Allies, or reply to. But a man could talk about it. The President wanted to talk to somebody, and he immediately summoned four men: Admiral Leahy and Secretaries Byrnes. Stimson, Forrestal.

Truman told them to hurry. Byrnes, pleased and excited, almost ran through the lobby and into the President's office. Half an hour later, when they left, Forrestal was taut and hopeful. The reporters, he said, ought to have something within 30 minutes. Forrestal was wrong.

Hell & High Water. Across the world, over the uncertain radio channels between Tokyo and Europe, the same message in diplomatic code creaked along via the neutral governments of Sweden (for relay to Russia and Britain) and Switzerland (for relay to the U.S. and China). While the world throbbed with the known news, the President went on with his day's work.

His first scheduled caller was Representative Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Congressional authority on Asiatic affairs. Afterward, Mansfield felt free to say publicly that the U.S. should not and could not guarantee to leave intact "the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler."

Truman talked over that condition with other callers, and before the day was out his attitude was well known. He was inclined to make no concessions whatsoever to His Majesty the Emperor (the earthy President would normally think of the Son of Heaven as "that bastard"). Come hell or high water, Harry Truman was in a mood to demand complete surrender, qualified only by the original Potsdam terms and their predecessor, the 1944 Cairo Declaration.

Around the President in Washington, and over the Allied world, a great debate raged. A doughface in the Philippines yelled: "Let 'em keep their Emperor--I'll throw in a pair of pants!" Admiral William F. ("Bull") Halsey, who had said that he would like to hang Hirohito and ride his white horse through ruined Tokyo, bellowed "No!" when asked if he had changed his opinion. Senators divided--"Execute him . . . Keep him." Suddenly, the Imperial issue was the issue of the Pacific peace. Upon it, the life or death of many men was about to turn.

The Powers of Heaven. In the welter of wonderment about the mysteries of the Jap mentality, certain facts were often overlooked. The "prerogatives" which the victors were asked to preserve included four main powers:

P: The Emperor is the central authority of civil government.

P: He is supreme commander of the Army and Navy.

P: He is head of the state religion (Shinto). But he is only the third of his line of 124 emperors to be so. State Shinto and the emphasis on Imperial divinity are modern creations of an expansionist Japanese regime.

P: He has supreme authority in foreign affairs, declarations of war, the making of treaties (including treaties of surrender).

The powers implicit in these prerogatives are literally without limit to the masses of Japan. The Emperor is Japan.

One power in particular seemed all-important to Harry Truman. So far as he could see, the Emperor alone could effectively order the surrender of all the Jap forces still scattered across the torn face of Asia and the Pacific. Some of the President's advisers reasoned that for this reason, if no other, the Emperor had best be left untouched. The President reasoned just the other way: the Emperor must bow specifically and unmistakably to the victor.

The Turning Wheel. The official version limped in at last, first by telephone from

Minister Leland Harrison in Bern, and then in proper code (11 hours late).

Truman now had something to discuss -- through diplomatic channels. Franklin Roosevelt almost certainly would have been on the world telephones, chinning with "Uncle Joe" and talking guardedly with that mild, new quality at No. 10 Downing Street, Clement Attlee. Lacking telephone connections with China, a spate of personal dispatches would have flown between Chiang Kai-shek and Roosevelt.

But Truman did not use the telephone; he left the communications to Jimmy Byrnes and his State Department. Yet it was the President, and none other, who had patterned the great events now coming to a climax.

The latest turn of the wheel had really begun at Potsdam. On his way to his first Big Three conference, the President had made clear to his companions that his No. 1 objective was to bring Russia into the Pacific war at a moment best calculated to end the war quickly.

Some sort of promise to come in, if necessary, had certainly been made by Stalin at Yalta, and probably at Teheran.

Stalin had told at least two U.S. diplomats-- Cordell Hull and Admiral William Standley, former Ambassador to Moscow -- that he was going to fight Japan. He had added (to Standley) that he would open fire within 90 days of Germany's surrender, and he had repeated the statement at Yalta. The men who heard him believed that Stalin would keep his word.

Yet, for reasons best known to himself, President Truman expected to talk hard & fast for what h-wanted. Just what he said, how toughly he had to say it, and what (if anything) he had to promise, were still the secrets of his official family last week.

The upshot was that the President got exactly what he wanted: Stalin's definite pledge to come in on a definite date (August 15, said the best available sources). Now, whatever the political implications to be faced later in Asia, the U.S. armies would not have to help the Chinese dispose of Japan's formidable forces in Manchuria, and Japan's last chance to prolong the war had disappeared.

Was the atomic bomb a persuader at Potsdam? Only the secretive conferees knew for certain. The President later said that Russia agreed to come in "before being told of our new weapon" (he may have referred to the Yalta agreement --in principle).

While Harry Truman was sailing homeward, the atom burst upon the Japs and upon all mankind.

At 3 p.m. on Aug. 8, seven days be fore the supposedly agreed date and just 90 days after Germany's surrender, Harry Truman smiled at some 50 newsmen, pulled happily on a cigaret, and announced

"Russia has declared war on Japan."

"Thank You, Mr. Molotov." Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov was somewhat nervous when correspondents entered a room paneled in Karelian birch. He held a papirossa (cigaret) near its lighted end, and the smoke curled about him as he read an announcement:

The Soviet Union, "at the request of its allies ... as a loyal ally," was keeping its promise. Tokyo's failure to heed the Potsdam terms--terms to which the Soviet Union now subscribed--had rendered the previously denounced but legally binding Russian-Japanese neutrality treaty null & void. (For once, the western allies had no mind to belittle a soviet cynicism.)

At the end of his dry reading, Molotov smiled shyly and peered at the correspondents. The smile seemed to say: "Well, gentlemen?" A correspondent said: "Thank you, Mr. Molotov. Thank you very much." The newsmen then filed their stories and returned to the dreary Hotel Metropole, where the luggage of Jap diplomats and newsmen had already been piled on the stairs. It was 9 p.m. in Moscow, three hours before the beginning of Russia's second war with Japan.

At the Chinese Embassy, another batch of luggage had just been moved in. A U.S. Army plane had brought Chungking's Prime Minister T. V. Soong and his new Foreign Minister Wang Shih-chieh to Moscow for a second series of talks with Molotov and Stalin. Better than anyone else, the Chinese visitors and their Russian hosts understood the full importance and impact of the Soviet declaration.

Russia's Red Banner armies, driving into Manchuria, strengthened Russia's hand, and weakened China's, in the coming game for Asia. President Truman, welcoming the blow, preferred to think later of the later game. He concentrated on Tokyo.

His Majesty, Our Servant. The pressure on the President was tremendous. His people at home, the men of his armies and fleets thought that peace had all but come. Some of his most trusted advisers argued that the Japanese condition would mean little in practice--certainly not enough to justify a postponement of peace. Chiang Kai-shek presumably let him know that China sided with him against any concession to the Emperor. Britain's Attlee passed the buck. Stalin's views, if any, were known only to Truman.

Jimmy Byrnes, the skilled old master of strong compromise, finally took a hand, wrote a reply that seemed to please all concerned except the Japs and (probably) the Chinese. It was forthright, unmistakable--and it was undoubtedly a crushing blow to Tokyo's peace party. Some 27 hours after Tokyo's offer had first been heard, OWI transmitters in San Francisco, Honolulu, Saipan were broadcasting Byrnes's note (for the U.S., British, Russian and Chinese Governments):

"From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the supreme commander of the Allied powers, who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms.

"The Emperor will be required to authorize and insure the signature by the government of Japan and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters of the surrender terms necessary to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and shall issue his commands to all the Japanese military, naval and air authorities and to all of the forces under their control wherever located to cease active operations and to surrender their arms, and to issue such other orders as the supreme commander may require to give effect to the surrender terms.

"Immediately upon the surrender the

Japanese Government shall transport prisoners of war and civilian internees to places of safety, as directed, where they can quickly be placed aboard Allied transports.

"The ultimate form .of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam declaration, be established--by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.

"The armed forces of the Allied powers will remain in Japan until the purposes set forth in the Potsdam declaration are achieved."

The Long Wait. The official version of this answer to the Japs was 17 hours on the diplomatic route from Washington to Bern to Tokyo. The Japanese press and domestic radio, silent on the proposals and counterproposals themselves, alternately prepared the Japanese people for surrender and for a finish fight.

Premier Suzuki's Cabinet took control of the People's Volunteer Corps from the Army and Navy. War Minister Anami ordered his Kwantung troops to fight to the death (Moscow said they were surrendering in droves). A Jap torpedo hit a U.S. warship off Okinawa, and Admiral Nimitz ordered the hovering Third Fleet, silent for two days, back into action (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).

Radio Tokyo broadcast a high-command communiqui announcing renewed offensives on all fronts, then withdrew it. The Emperor called in Foreign Minister Togo. A Tokyo radio operator, chatting with a station in Switzerland, said that an important message was expected but still unfiled. The Japanese press played up two possible successors to Hirohito: his eleven-year-old son, Crown Prince Akihito, and his 40-year-old brother, Prince Takamatsu. Radio Tokyo referred vaguely but constantly to the comings & goings of the Emperor's elder statesmen.

A flash on United Press wires--JAPAN ACCEPTS--set off a few more celebrations around the world. In Sydney, Australians attacked firemen and wrecked their trucks when the authorities tried to water down a victory riot. In the two minutes before U.P. discovered that somebody had played a dirty trick (see PRESS) the U.S. and Canadian radio had gone overboard, and thousands were roaring in the streets.

On the third day of the long wait, Press Secretary Ross took pains to point out that the signing of actual surrender terms would take two or three days and that the President would not proclaim final victory until the last formality had been completed.

At every whisper from Tokyo, Allied hopes rose. On the fourth day, after 18 straight hours of rising hopes, the President called in reporters. Said he: "I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese Government ... a full acceptance-of ... unconditional surrender."

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