Tokyo Endgame: 'No Surrender But...'

As we approach the 80th anniversary of Victory Over Japan (VJ) Day on 15 August, the exact manner of, and motivation for, Japan's surrender in 1945 still remains a matter of some debate. The long-held dominant narrative has been that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally pushed Tokyo over the line, forcing Emperor Hirohito (the only person in Japan whose decision ultimately counted) to insist that his reluctant military bow to necessity. This has certainly been the explanation favoured by the Americans, who were anxious to end the war quickly without having to invade, at likely huge cost, the Japanese home islands. It's also a plausible explanation. After all, the two atomic bombs together killed at least 150,000 Japanese civilians more or less outright - though we now know that the Nagasaki bomb could have killed many more had the American bomb aimer on the day, whether deliberately or not (there's some suggestion it was the former), not dropped 'Fat Man' on an outlying suburb rather than the city centre. In recent years, however, some historians have speculated whether another factor was equally or more decisive in the Japanese capitulation, namely the Soviet advance into Japanese-held Manchuria, which began in the early hours of August 9, shortly before Fat Man detonated over Nagasaki. It's often forgotten that even at this late date Japan still had a very large army in China which was essentially undefeated. Its elite units formed the Kwantung Army, the force that had occupied Manchuria since 1932. This army had been soundly defeated in battle by the Soviets in 1939 (during border hostilities) and it suffered a much worse humiliation in the days following August 9, 1945 - as Stalin made good on his promise to help the Allies defeat Japan once Hitler's regime had been destroyed. By the time the Soviet campaign ended on August 20, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and northern Korea, as well as Japan's Kuril and Sakhalin islands, had fallen to the Red Army. These rapid military defeats dramatically reduced any possibility that Japan might fight on, while the prospect of a Communist partition of the home islands (Stalin had his eye on Hokkaido too) horrified Tokyo's right-wing leaders. Thus the imperial decision to surrender to the United States on August 15 simply acknowledged that Japan was out of options - in particular, as Tokyo saw it, the negotiated surrender it sought was was no longer on the table - and should accept, as quickly as possible, the least of all evils: unconditional American occupation. 'Surrender' of course did not figure in the vocabulary of the Japanese military, and in the formal radio broadcast to his people Hirohito spoke only of the 'termination of the war' - suggesting he was ending the conflict for the nation's own good, not because they had been defeated. More eloquent, however, at the final meeting of his war cabinet the day before, were the emperor's tears and the loud sobbing from those seated around the table. In the hours and days that followed Hirohito's broadcast, several units of soldiers mutinied in protest and nine leading Japanese generals and admirals (including the Minister of War) committed ritual suicide. Indeed, the unrest in the country meant the formal signing of Japan's surrender (on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay) was postponed until September 2 to allow time for sufficient American forces to be deployed on Japanese soil to meet any resistance that might be expected. In the event, the crisis passed relatively peacefully. As with VE Day, the real complexities that lay behind VJ Day in 1945 are only now becoming part of a new narrative.

The Japanese delegation arrive aboard USS Missouri to sign the surrender document

(US National Archives, C-2719)