The Rationale of Japanese Surrender

Abstract

JAPAN SUBDUED is the last of the five admirable studies in which Herbert Feis has set forth the diplomatic of the United States from the events that led to Pearl Harbor to the surrender ceremony on the U.S.S. Missouri. Diplomatic history in the conventional sense is actually an inadequate description, for Japan Subdued is not limited to the doings of the diplomats; it follows the actions of the extraordinary group of men in the United States government concerned with winning and ending the war, using or not using the atomic bomb; it describes, in sharp contrast, the doings of the unhappy group of vacillating and conflicting statesmen, military and civilian, who surrounded the Emperor of Japan and the Emperor himself. To Feis diplomacy encompasses the actions of scientists, politicians, and generals and is never limited to diplomatic negotiations and the formal interchange of diplomatic messages. In the opening chapters of the book, Feis lays out with brilliant clarity the three separate but overlapping plans for securing Japanese surrender that our government had decided on in the spring of i945: (i) Combined Assault. This was the direct military approach, with an initial landing on Kyushu, followed by a final attack on Honshu. The plans for this were given final approval, and our armed forces were turned in this direction immediately after V-E Day. Originally it was in support of this plan that Russian entrance into the war seemed so important; by May i945 neither Marshall nor King regarded Soviet participation as essential, but Marshall particularly, mindful of the losses that we might well sustain, wanted Russian help to reduce our burden and speed up the end. There is no doubt that an American invasion would have brought about total Japanese defeat; and it is hard, almost impossible, to believe, regardless of the Japanese military code (Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!) and the honorable status of military suicide, that at some point the Emperor would not have stepped in and insisted on