The U. S. Army, Unconditional Surrender, and the Potsdam Proclamation

Abstract

O N August 10, 1945, the Japanese government finally announced its willingness to surrender on the sole condition that the imperial institution not be prejudiced. In roundabout ways, the American government met the request, one which virtually everyone had anticipated and which many in Washington had long been prepared to make. Still, for both governments these gestures represented an abandonment of intransigent postures adopted in wartime propaganda. The postwar world might have been very different if the timing had been other than what it was. If the surrender had occurred later, the Russian military position in China, Korea, and Japan would have been much stronger. Conversely, if Tokyo and Washington had reached an agreement earlier, the atomic bomb would not have been used, Russia would not have entered the war in the Pacific, the Yalta agreement on the Far East would have remained a dead letter, and the American military position in Europe would have been much stronger. The many possibilities revealed by an awareness of this contingency and the importance of timing have stimulated an enormous amount of speculation by historians and the public at large. Two broad trends can be recognized in this speculative enterprise. At the height of the Cold War many Americans felt that the bomb alone had ended the war, that Soviet entry in the Far East should not have been encouraged, and that Russia had reaped the Yalta rewards without any sacrifice. Presumably communist sympathizers within the state department had duped the government into prolonging the war to make Soviet entry possible. Historians have recently turned this interpretation on its head. Agreeing that the war had been unnecessarily prolonged, they contend that the purpose was to terrorize the Soviets by demonstrating