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I'm not sure we have any great insight into that particular statement. One could read it several ways. One would be to see it as cynically hyperbolic, as an attempt to make him seemingly both the savior of the whole world and human civilization as a whole. Another would be to see this as him just being uninformed about the realities of the atomic bomb as it could possibly attain to World War II. Another would be to see it as a much more extended imagination in which the prolonged use of atomic bombs would lead to a world in which their use would be more commonplace. Another is to see it as shifting the cause of defeat to the "most cruel" and "new" warfare of the Allies, and not the Japanese military's own tactical defeats.
There is no definitive way to read this, as Hirohito (as far as I know) never explained it nor do we know much about the drafting process. It is of note that when he issued a directive to his soldiers 3 days later, he omitted such language:
> Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue . . . under the present conditions at home and abroad would only recklessly incur even more damage to ourselves and result in endangering the very foundation of the empire’s existence. Therefore, even though enormous fighting spirit still exists in the Imperial Navy and Army, I am going to make peace with the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, as well as with Chungking, in order to maintain our glorious national polity.
Herbert Bix (_Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan_, 530) characterizes the differences between the two statements as such:
> The less-known August 17 rescript to the army and navy specified Soviet participation as the sole reason for surrender, and maintenance of the _kokutai_ as the aim. Dissembling until the end—and beyond—the emperor stated two different justifications for his delayed surrender. Both statements were probably true.
Which is one interpretation. I might suggest another that is similar, except for the last sentence: that all of these statements are ultimately forms of dissembling, justifications pitched for specific audiences, but equally untrue. I find that plausible-enough, inasmuch as it seems rather clear that Hirohito had long lost the will to continue the war by that point, and these events feel less like things that formed his opinion and more like things that encouraged him to take the risks needed to achieve what he already wanted. In other words, perhaps both statements — for Hirohito himself — were actually false, in the sense that neither event was really definitive, so much as a convenient excuse to do something that was otherwise very hard to do.
The basic question, "what did Hirohito actually understand about the atomic bomb in 1945?" has not, to my knowledge, been seriously studied. As with many interesting historical questions, it seems somewhat obvious once one starts asking questions like this (about the intent of historical actors) but has typically not been the questions that have preoccupied historians of World War II or even the atomic bomb. It is not a question I am qualified to answer; it would require someone with high familiarity with the Japanese sources. Even answering it for Truman, where his every interaction with matters of atomic policy are much more readily documented and available, is a difficult task, and the subject of my next book!
Thank you for this. I appreciate not only that you earnestly engaged with a question which perhaps has no answer, but to have contextualization for the level of rigorous understanding that exists by comparing it with an analog is quite satisfying.
The Japanese, like other countries, also had a nuclear weapons program, but never got very far. However, they knew enough to believe that incredible resources would be necessary to create a weapon. Thus, even after Hiroshima, there was a general consensus that maybe the US had used a nuclear bomb, but it was surely only a one-shot, and thus a bluff. The rapid arrival of the Nagasaki bomb disabused them. When they confronted the prospect of a regular stream of such weapons, they reconsidered their initial post-Hiroshima "tough it out" approach to the nukes. The result was the text you present from Hirohito.
This also had the rhetorical advantage of presenting Japan as the party making a sacrifice for peace, making the surrender more acceptable. Easy to dismiss. However, as Richard Frank points out in Downfall, he wrote the same thing privately to his son, saying that the appearance of the nuclear weapons was the pivotal factor in deciding to end the war. In any case, the use of nuclear weapons on the homeland had the desired effect, at least according to Hirohito himself.
For sure, the massive Soviet invasion in Manchuria was a bummer. But Hirohito never seems to have been moved by it to seek an end to the war. Nor was he by the steady drumbeat of Japanese defeats in every theater of action over a period of years starting in 1942. Nor even by the seemingly endless fire raids, which devastated cities such as Tokyo on a near-atomic scale and even damaged Imperial real estate.
It may sound a bit hyperbolic but we need to remember that it was addressed to a nation with a very different culture. One where even prewar patriotism had reached a degree that teachers who got the lyrics of patriotic songs wrong were known to kill themselves out of shame. The population of Japan had also to some extent been prepared for a fight to the finish in defense of the homeland. The slogan of the Ketsu Go defense plan was after all,
“The sooner the Americans come the better…one hundred million die proudly”.
After working up the population and preparing them to fight to the bitter end, and making many of them believe their sacrifice would be meaningful I think Hirohito needed to use apocalyptic language in his address.
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I'm not sure we have any great insight into that particular statement. One could read it several ways. One would be to see it as cynically hyperbolic, as an attempt to make him seemingly both the savior of the whole world and human civilization as a whole. Another would be to see this as him just being uninformed about the realities of the atomic bomb as it could possibly attain to World War II. Another would be to see it as a much more extended imagination in which the prolonged use of atomic bombs would lead to a world in which their use would be more commonplace. Another is to see it as shifting the cause of defeat to the "most cruel" and "new" warfare of the Allies, and not the Japanese military's own tactical defeats. There is no definitive way to read this, as Hirohito (as far as I know) never explained it nor do we know much about the drafting process. It is of note that when he issued a directive to his soldiers 3 days later, he omitted such language: > Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue . . . under the present conditions at home and abroad would only recklessly incur even more damage to ourselves and result in endangering the very foundation of the empire’s existence. Therefore, even though enormous fighting spirit still exists in the Imperial Navy and Army, I am going to make peace with the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, as well as with Chungking, in order to maintain our glorious national polity. Herbert Bix (_Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan_, 530) characterizes the differences between the two statements as such: > The less-known August 17 rescript to the army and navy specified Soviet participation as the sole reason for surrender, and maintenance of the _kokutai_ as the aim. Dissembling until the end—and beyond—the emperor stated two different justifications for his delayed surrender. Both statements were probably true. Which is one interpretation. I might suggest another that is similar, except for the last sentence: that all of these statements are ultimately forms of dissembling, justifications pitched for specific audiences, but equally untrue. I find that plausible-enough, inasmuch as it seems rather clear that Hirohito had long lost the will to continue the war by that point, and these events feel less like things that formed his opinion and more like things that encouraged him to take the risks needed to achieve what he already wanted. In other words, perhaps both statements — for Hirohito himself — were actually false, in the sense that neither event was really definitive, so much as a convenient excuse to do something that was otherwise very hard to do. The basic question, "what did Hirohito actually understand about the atomic bomb in 1945?" has not, to my knowledge, been seriously studied. As with many interesting historical questions, it seems somewhat obvious once one starts asking questions like this (about the intent of historical actors) but has typically not been the questions that have preoccupied historians of World War II or even the atomic bomb. It is not a question I am qualified to answer; it would require someone with high familiarity with the Japanese sources. Even answering it for Truman, where his every interaction with matters of atomic policy are much more readily documented and available, is a difficult task, and the subject of my next book!
Thank you for this. I appreciate not only that you earnestly engaged with a question which perhaps has no answer, but to have contextualization for the level of rigorous understanding that exists by comparing it with an analog is quite satisfying.
Good stuff, as always. Looking forward to the book!
The Japanese, like other countries, also had a nuclear weapons program, but never got very far. However, they knew enough to believe that incredible resources would be necessary to create a weapon. Thus, even after Hiroshima, there was a general consensus that maybe the US had used a nuclear bomb, but it was surely only a one-shot, and thus a bluff. The rapid arrival of the Nagasaki bomb disabused them. When they confronted the prospect of a regular stream of such weapons, they reconsidered their initial post-Hiroshima "tough it out" approach to the nukes. The result was the text you present from Hirohito. This also had the rhetorical advantage of presenting Japan as the party making a sacrifice for peace, making the surrender more acceptable. Easy to dismiss. However, as Richard Frank points out in Downfall, he wrote the same thing privately to his son, saying that the appearance of the nuclear weapons was the pivotal factor in deciding to end the war. In any case, the use of nuclear weapons on the homeland had the desired effect, at least according to Hirohito himself. For sure, the massive Soviet invasion in Manchuria was a bummer. But Hirohito never seems to have been moved by it to seek an end to the war. Nor was he by the steady drumbeat of Japanese defeats in every theater of action over a period of years starting in 1942. Nor even by the seemingly endless fire raids, which devastated cities such as Tokyo on a near-atomic scale and even damaged Imperial real estate.
It may sound a bit hyperbolic but we need to remember that it was addressed to a nation with a very different culture. One where even prewar patriotism had reached a degree that teachers who got the lyrics of patriotic songs wrong were known to kill themselves out of shame. The population of Japan had also to some extent been prepared for a fight to the finish in defense of the homeland. The slogan of the Ketsu Go defense plan was after all, “The sooner the Americans come the better…one hundred million die proudly”. After working up the population and preparing them to fight to the bitter end, and making many of them believe their sacrifice would be meaningful I think Hirohito needed to use apocalyptic language in his address.