8/17/2023 0 Comments Surrender naval actio![]() The United States also knew that the Japanese leadership was seriously split between a few who were in favor of a negotiated peace and those who were in favor of a die-hard fight to the end.Īs of 6 August 1945, the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War was made up of the Prime Minister Admiral (retired) Kantaro Suzuki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Shigenori Togo, Minister of the Army General Korechika Anami, Minister of the Navy Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Chief of the Army General Staff General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Chief of the Navy General Staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda. intelligence was reading the Japanese diplomatic code (Purple) as fast as they were, and was fully aware of the Japanese negotiation attempts and that the Russians were deliberately stringing the Japanese along. What the Japanese also didn’t know was that U.S. At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin promised he would enter the war against Japan 90 days after the defeat of Germany (and he kept his word almost to the day). What the Japanese didn’t know was that Stalin had no intention of keeping the neutrality pact past its usefulness and had promised the Allies at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 that he would eventually join the war against Japan. The Japanese believed that the Russians would help because the neutrality treaty enabled the Russians to send many troops from the Far East at the critical moment to blunt Hitler’s offensive into Russia in 1941. The Soviets and Japanese had signed a neutrality pact in April 1941, two years after a particularly nasty, but short, border war in Manchuria, during which both sides suffered thousands of casualties, but the Japanese were decisively defeated. With the loss of the Marianas and the Philippines, some members of the new Japanese government under Prime Minister Admiral (retired) Kantaro Suzuki got serious about negotiations and approached the government of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin to intercede. The next prime minister only lasted until the United States took the Philippines. Tojo received the blame and was forced out, having lost face. forces in July 1944, senior Japanese leadership understood that the war was effectively lost, and no amount of propaganda could hide the fact. However, when the Marianas Islands fell to U.S. He did not have complete dictatorial power, as the Navy strongly asserted its independence, but he effectively quashed any serious attempts to negotiate an end to the war while he had the power to do so. Tojo was arguably the man most responsible for pushing Japan into the war, although he had plenty of support. In the early years of the war, General Hideki Tojo held three of the six positions on the Supreme Council prime minister, minister of war (army), and chief of the army general staff. war objective of “unconditional surrender.” From the very beginning, the United States had no interest in negotiations. The problem for the Japanese was that the perfidy of the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor led to an unwavering U.S. ![]() Although this was the objective, it was not until the very end that the Japanese considered initiating such negotiations the idea was to force the United States to offer terms first. forces that the American people would tire of the war and force the U.S. As the war continued and went badly, the Japanese objective was to inflict so much cost in blood on U.S. Pacific Fleet to force the United States to negotiate. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto recognized this at the very start, and the whole point of the Pearl Harbor attack was to destroy the U.S. Thus, the Japanese objective was to play for a negotiated end to the war on terms as favorable to Japan as possible. Most (but not all, especially in the army) senior leaders of Japan understood that an outright victory against the United States was unlikely and that sooner or later the overwhelming industrial might of the United States would overpower Japan. Nevertheless, the emperor rarely directly told any government, army, or navy leaders what to do. ![]() Emperor Hirohito was routinely kept informed of the course of the war, and it became increasingly common for senior leaders of the army and navy to apologize to the emperor when something went badly. ![]() However, making mistakes is bad for a divinity’s reputation, so the emperor only directly intervened on rare and extremely important matters. The ultimate decision maker in Imperial Japan was Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese believed to be divine. Three of the members were active duty or retired Imperial Japanese Navy admirals. At the time of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, senior decision-making authority in Japan was vested in the six-member Supreme Council for the Direction of the War.
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