Potsdam Declaration Research Articles

Japan's foreign policy in the settlement of territorial disputes

Territorial disputes are a key element of Japanese security, directly aff ecting Tokyo's relations with all three of its closest neighbors: China, Russia and South Korea. Because of its complex history of repeated invasions as well as militaristic expansion, Japan has accumulated a tangled legacy of confl icts and disputes with its neighbors over the three contiguous territories, namely Senkaku, Dokdo, and the Kuril Islands, claiming or disputing sovereignty over them. The disputes discussed in the article are a direct result of Japan's involvement in World War II and the often ambiguous language used in treaties and other documents signed at the end of it. The article presents Tokyo's position based on Japanese documents and the positions of Beijing, Seoul and Moscow based on the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration and the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The author illustrated her arguments with maps. During the analysis physiographic and historical approaches were used. The author's examination of these disputes provides a clear picture of how the changing security environment has aff ected the position of Japan and its neighbors over time. In the 2000s, Tokyo introduced a special term — territorial diplomacy "redogayko" which goal was international recognition of the legitimacy of Japanese sovereignty over disputed territories. The Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Japan conducts an active policy to inform the world community about the rights of Tokyo to the Senkaku Islands, Takeshima, and the socalled "Northern Territories". During the analysis of the positions of the concerned countries the author concludes that Japan successfully defends the ownership of the Senkaku Islands, but so far has no proper results with Dokdo and the Kuril Islands. Russia's attitude to these disputes cannot be passive. First, Moscow is a direct party to one of them. Second, South Korea and China are basing their arguments on Japan's imperial past and, like Russia, on World War II documents.

Foreign Minister Tōgō’s Bitter Struggle and the Acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration

Abstract Japan’s decision to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration was one of the most pivotal events in the country’s modern history. Most students of the decision-making process agree that Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori was the principal motive force supporting acceptance of the Allies’ demands throughout the debate over the action. Some recent historiography in Japan has questioned Tōgō’s approach, focusing particularly on his decision to seek the mediation of the Soviet Union and on the question of why he did not bring hostilities to an end sooner. Historical materials that were previously unavailable to scholars shed some light on these questions. In combination with Tōgō’s daily planner (in the author’s possession), his memoirs, and the author’s own recollection of anecdotes his parents told to him, these materials make possible a detailed examination of Tōgō’s thoughts and actions in the days leading to the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. This shows that Tōgō, facing stubborn resistance from the military and from public opinion, nevertheless persevered in his quest to bring the war to an end. He also maintained the trust and respect of not only Emperor Hirohito, but also of Army Minister Anami Korechika, his principal antagonist in the debate.

The Basis and System of Fundamental Human Rights Guaranteed by the Constitution of Japan

The concept of human rights (natural rights), which stepped into the limelight of human history in the latter half of the eighteenth century, rapidly disappeared from the limelight in the nineteenth century and was replaced by the legal positivist concept of rights (in Japan, it was strongly advocated at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in the latter half of the nineteenth century but rapidly faded away). After World War I, human rights came to be strongly advocated in the realm of international law, especially in the face of the tyranny of totalitarian regimes, and the United Nations Charter adopted at the San Francisco Conference in June 1945 proclaimed human dignity and respect for human rights. The Potsdam Declaration of July of the same year (accepted by the Japanese government in August) strongly called for “the establishment of respect for human rights.” Initially, the Japanese government and people did not take the meaning of this seriously but in February 1946, the General Headquarters strongly demanded that the Constitution stipulate the guarantee of human rights. The Constitution of Japan, which was enacted in the form of an amendment to the Meiji Constitution, sets forth that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights” (Article 11) and calls for “the supreme consideration” for “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Article 13).(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan by Sherzod Muminov

Reviewed by: Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan by Sherzod Muminov James D. J. Brown Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan. By Sherzod Muminov. Harvard University Press, 2022. 384 pages. ISBN: 9780674986435 (hardcover; also available as e-book). The history of Japanese imperialism and the end of World War II in East Asia can seem like a competition between victimhood narratives. Within this contest, the [End Page 355] Siberian internment usually loses out to other tales of woe. Even when not neglected, the story of the 600,000 Japanese former soldiers and civilians interned within the Soviet Union after 1945 is too often told with trite uniformity. Some accounts give the impression that every Japanese internee was an innocent victim, slaving away in a frigid Siberian wilderness, where temperatures fell to minus fifty degrees Celsius, and surviving on a diet of three potatoes a day. Sherzod Muminov's Eleven Winters of Discontent: The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan is a welcome corrective to this literature of wailing melancholy as the author sets out to "challenge the popular perception that the internment was only about suffering, injustices, and deprivation" (p. 80). Muminov highlights nuance at every turn and takes an international rather than a national perspective. He also makes use of internees' memoirs in Japanese, as well as Russian-language files from the Soviet archives. The result is an excellent account that enables the reader not only to understand the details of the Siberian internment but to reflect on its significance to the Cold War and the development of postwar Japan. The book's particular merit is in treating the internees as participants in their predicament rather than mere victims. However, it also covers the basics well. The story begins with Joseph Stalin's secret decree of 23 August 1945. This ordered the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi komissariat vnutrennikh del, or NKVD) to select up to half a million Japanese "physically fit to work in the conditions of the Far East" and to transport them to the Soviet Union (p. 2). This position was a reversal of the one from 16 August, when the Soviets had expressed their intention not to intern Japanese on Soviet territory. Stalin's decree also ignored Article 9 of the Potsdam Declaration, which, in setting the terms of Japan's surrender, promised: "The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives" (p. 26). In assessing the reasons for Stalin's decision, Muminov considers economic motivations, including the need for labor to make use of the enormous quantities of "trophy equipment"—primarily industrial machinery—that Soviet forces expropriated in Manchuria and used to equip their own factories. He also takes account of the internees' value as political bargaining chips, which is indeed how they were used during the talks that led to official Japan-Soviet ties being restored in October 1956. Muminov even draws readers' attention to the conspiracy theory that Japan's Kwantung Army offered Japanese soldiers to the Soviet Union as a workforce during a meeting held at Zharikovo on 19 August 1945. However, ultimately the author concludes that the decision to intern the Japanese soldiers was not a premeditated move. Instead, it was Stalin's instinctive response to US president Harry Truman's rejection of the Soviet request for an occupation zone on Hokkaido. Denied the chance to occupy any of the Japanese main islands, Stalin chose to occupy Japanese personnel instead. In addition to clearly charting the origins of the Siberian internment, the book does a fine job of communicating its scale. Soviet documents reveal that 639,776 [End Page 356] Japanese army service personnel were taken prisoner. These included humble farmhands but also Konoe Fumitaka, the Princeton-educated eldest son of former prime minister Konoe Fumimaro. Uno Sōsuke, who briefly served as prime minister in 1989 before resigning because of an affair with a geisha, was also among those interned. There were also more than 30,000 Koreans, Chinese, and Mongols, as...

Hiroshima, Mokusatsu and Alleged Mistranslations

This paper revisits the issue of the importance of context and critical thinking in translation and translation training by examining the linguistic controversy over the translation of the word mokusatsu in the statement of Japan’s Prime Minister Suzuki in response to the Potsdam Declaration. There is a widespread belief that the bombing of Hiroshima in August of 1945 was caused by a translation mistake. The author sides with the opposing view, i.e. that such an approach takes one word of the statement out of context in order to shift the focus of the problem from politics to linguistics. The message of the statement is unambiguous when analyzed in its entirety. As a result, it is obvious there was no translation mistake and the bomb was dropped for reasons other than translation quality. Sadly enough, the myth lives on as a textbook example of ‘the worst translation mistake in history” whereas it should be taught as an example of probably ‘the worst translation myth in history’.

The Chinese Practice of Treaty Law - Examining the Sino-Japanese Dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from the Perspective of Treaty Law -

The sovereignty dispute between China and Japan regarding the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands has captured global media attention and is the cause of some tension between the two countries. One of the major claims of both countries is whether the Islands have been ceded to Japan, and if so, have they been reverted to China.Cession and reversion were completed through a series of treaties as follows: the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), the Wartime Declarations (the 1940s)(the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration),the San Francisco Treaty (1951), the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (1952), the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (1960) , and the Okinawa Agreement (1971). The sovereignty dispute over the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands has been illustrated sufficiently from the point of view of history, jurisprudence and international law. However, it is not common to analyze it and then demonstrate the rationality of Chinese claims to the sovereignty of Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands from a treaty law perspective. Therefore, this paper explores the dispute by evaluating and analyzing the treaty law, such as the terms of treaties, the interpretation of treaties, the legal force of treaties, treaties and third states, the confliction and invalidity of treaties and so on. From the perspective of treaty law and in pursuit of the spirit of Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands have been China's territory since the ancient times and there is no legal basis for Japan to claim the sovereignty of Diaoyu / Senkaku Islands.

The Clandestine activities of Japanese settlers in colonial Korea on US-Korea alienation after US occupation after Liberation

The purpose of this study is to examine the perception of the situation of the Japanese Government General of Korea, the Japanese settlers in colonial Korea toward Japan defeat, and the intention of the conflict between South Korea and the US by the Japanese return group, especially the Japanese Relief Society, during the period of US military in South Korea. The Japanese government decided that the sovereignty of the Korean peninsula remained in Japan until it ratified a peace treaty that would define Japan’s postwar status, and informed the Japanese Government General of Korea on August 24 1945. The Japanese government retained the conventional view that Japan’s sovereignty over colonial territories, including the Korean Peninsula, was not in the signing of the Potsdam Declaration to surrender to the Allies, but in a signing of a treaty with the Allies even after the defeat. After the defeat, the Japanese Military Police and the Tokodai movement was very significant. They were planning to form a subterranean secret organization to distract South Korea’s order, and to alienate between the US military and Koreans. Another secret organization was under investigation by the US military intelligence agency in October 1945, when a clandestine group of former military policemen, who led the operation of the US-Korea separation after US occupation, was being caught by the US military’s CIC. The object was the organization of Japanese Relief Society. These groups advocated private organizations aiming for the safe return of Japanese citizens, but they were formed with enormous financial support and support from the Japanese Government General of Korea and the Japanese Military Command in Korea. In addition, the ‘Kim Ke Cho incident’ was revealed. Kim Ke Cho, a pro-Japanese leader sponsored by the Japanese Government General of Korea, was brought to trial after being caught by the US military in preparation for the work between Korea and the United States in connection with the Japanese Relief Society. In other words, this event can be evaluated as showing that the space of liberation was not free from the influence of Japanese imperialism, and thus the space of continuity is stronger than disconnection.

Premodern Ideas “kokutai” as Essential Elements of Modernization in Japanese Historical Process

Modernization in historically later developed countries is an amalgamated process, where all its elements must be analyzed both as a whole picture and as variety of its components. Early Japanese Marxists thinkers, scrutinizing political systems that emerged after the Meiji revolution, found traces of so-called “feudal remnants” in the public consciousness of people. These “remnants” still make modern researchers to question the role of the elements in Japanese modernization. Modernized state should be not only sovereign, but also be a nation state “kokumin kokka”, therefore it is worthwhile to look upon the prehistory of the creation of the first Japanese constitution “Dainipponn teikoku kenpoo” (1889), which reflected the national ideas “kokutai”. It is also necessary to analyze a number of socio-political reasons that entailed the issuance of an imperial decree addressed to the soldiers “gunjin chokuyu” (1882) and the imperial speech on public education “kyouiku chokugo” (1890). These documents along with the constitution contained the ideas of “kokutai”, which represented the element of the feudal world. Under the right conditions, a nation is born and develops on its own, but when the historical prerequisites and conditions do not form, it is necessary to create them artificially. At the end of the 19th century Japan faced the similar situation. In 1925, the Chian iji-ho Law of Public Peace Preservation was published, in its first article the word kokutai could be found, however it does not contain a definition of this term. In 1932 and in 1936, military putsches occurred, it should be noted that participants of these accidents were ardent supporters of the “kokutai” ideas. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese government conveyed the intention to adopt the Potsdam Declaration under one condition, namely the preservation of the “kokutai”, thereby they extended the existence of the kokutai ideas until the surrender of Japanese empire.

Erasure of Voice in Postwar Japan: Derrida, Caruth, Ōe

Erasure of Voice in Postwar JapanDerrida, Caruth, Ōe Michiko Shimokobe (bio) Introduction The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941 (Japan time) marked the entry of the Empire of Japan into World War II. On August 14, 1945, Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration and surrendered to the Allied powers. How has Japan as a nation historicized the events of the war, the most important issue for the nation? The answer depends on which part of the entire course of the war you focus on: the outbreak of the war, the five years of being forced to endure ongoing warfare, or the conclusion to the war and the postwar period. In an exchange of letters with Einstein ("Why War?"), Freud says, "There is no question of getting rid entirely of human aggressive impulses" (1933, 358). In Freud: A Life for Our Time, Peter Gay comments on Freud's reaction to the reality of World War II: "the war had degenerated into a conflict more bloody than any of its predecessors and had produced that 'virtually inconceivable phenomenon,' an outburst of hate and contempt for the enemy" (2006, 355). The phrase "virtually inconceivable phenomenon" expresses a violent and immediate hatred for the enemy; it is the most disagreeable form of what Freud refers to as "humanity aggressive impulses." In his essay on war, Freud focuses primarily on human nature, coming up against "the great changes that have already taken place or are beginning to" (1915, 61). To research the causes of war and how war is executed is definitely a [End Page 73] fascinating theme for psychoanalysis. However, in this article, I will analyze the psychological mechanisms of individuals and nations at the termination of the war and its aftermath. How did World War II end from Japan's perspective, and how did Japan, a defeated nation, make the transition to postwar society? "Why War?" mentions "an instinctual inclination" (Freud 1933, 350) within men that is satisfied by killing an enemy. With regard to Einstein's anxiety, Freud explains men's susceptibility to murderous hatred as follows: You express astonishment at the fact that it is so easy to make men enthusiastic about a war and add your suspicions that there is something at work in them—an instinct for hatred and destruction—which goes halfway to meet the efforts of the warmongers. (355) If this is the case, it is important to examine how, once the war is over, the citizens of a defeated nation manage to deal with the "instinct for hatred and destruction" that spurred aggressive actions by the nation and individuals before and during the war. There are two obstacles to constructing history after a defeat. First, it is difficult to put a stop to the powerful psychological energy retained in the collective that was supported during the war, by the aggression in the human mind. Second, complex psychological work is required to acknowledge the enemy as a real person because the nation has been exposed to distorted images and the exaggerated falsehoods of propaganda to emphasize patriotism. Seen in this light, Japan had fought for a great cause in World War II, but the following problems arose as the war drew to an end. How did Japan process the aggression at the time of the unconditional surrender? How were the images of the Americans, the former enemy, transformed in the minds of the Japanese? The process of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II began on August 14, 1945, when the Japanese government notified the Allied powers that it would accept the Potsdam Declaration. On August 15, Japan's unconditional surrender was announced by Emperor Hirohito on the radio.1 On August 30, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), arrived in Tokyo tasked with rebuilding the devastated nation. Following the surrender, President Truman approved the US [End Page 74] Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan on September 6.2 For the next six years until the end of the occupation in 1951, the military government was conducted solely by the United States. The occupation ended with the conclusion of the Treaty of San Francisco on September 8, 1951...

The Defence Response to the Crimes against Peacee Charge at the International Military Tribunals

The day before the opening of the trial of the German leaders at Nuremberg on 20 November 1945, the defence lawyers jointly presented a motion to the Tribunal addressing the ‘crimes against peace’ charges. In this submission, signed by Goring’s lawyer Otto Stahmer, they stated that while public opinion had demanded that those who waged unjust wars be held to account, this idea had not yet been accepted as international law. This meant that the Nuremberg Tribunal, when dealing with aggression, was imposing ‘a penal law enacted only after the crime’ – and, as a retroactive imposition, this was ‘repugnant to a principle of jurisprudence sacred to the civilized world’.So began the defence assault on the ‘crimes against peace’ charges, first at the Nuremberg Tribunal, and later at the Tokyo Tribunal. At Nuremberg, it was Hermann Jahrreiss, counsel for Alfred Jodl, who led the most sustained challenge to the prosecution’s central argument that the Kellogg-Briand Pact provided the legal basis for the crimes against peace charges, and he who compelled the British Chief Prosecutor, Hartley Shawcross, and Shawcross’s chief legal advisor, Hersch Lauterpacht, to defend their position. Taking a strictly positivist line, he deployed the doctrine of absolute sovereignty against the prosecution’s double premise that aggression was a crime and that individuals were personally liable for it. He rejected the prosecution’s proposition that the Kellogg-Briand Pact represented a major shift from one set of international arrangements (war as an institution of international law) to another (war as ‘high treason’ against international law), because it failed to take into account the signatory states’ reservations on the right to self-defence, which demonstrated their unwillingness to submit to general obligations.At the Tokyo Tribunal, the defence lawyers also took a positivist line, maintaining that because aggressive warfare had not been criminalised before the Second World War, individuals could not be prosecuted for initiating it. Reprising themes that had already been rehearsed at Nuremberg, they maintained that the charges had been retrospectively conceived or were inapplicable within international law. Takayanagi Kenzo, defence counsel for Shigemitsu Mamoru, for example, addressed the Potsdam Declaration, which had promised that ‘stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners’. He argued that the Declaration’s reference to ‘justice’ referred to justice according to the law, ‘administered by established legal rules and principles, not according to the sense of right and justice of the judge, however good or wise he may be’. The Tokyo Charter, with its illegitimate and retroactive charges, betrayed these principles by offering not justice ‘but the Hitlerite “justice” of vague “popular feeling”: the antithesis of justice according to law’.

La politique soviétique envers le Japon pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale

AbstractThis paper argues that Soviet policy during World War II in Europe was from the very beginning integrally connected with its policy toward the Far East. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin agreed to join the war three months after Germany surrendered in return for the war trophies promised by Franklin D. Roosevelt. In April, the Soviet government notified the Japanese government that it had no intention to renew the Neutrality Pact, but assured the Japanese that the pact would be in force until it expired in April 1946. Hiding behind the cloak of neutrality, the Soviet Union transported troops and equipment to the Far East in preparation for the war against Japan. In July, the Japanese government sought Moscow’s mediation to terminate the war. Stalin took advantage of the Japanese request to prolong the war. Despite his expectations, however, Stalin was excluded from the Potsdam Declaration at the Potsdam Conference. The race began between Harry S. Truman, who wanted to force Japan to surrender with the atomic bomb, and Stalin, who intended to enter the war before Japan’s surrender.

Side-stepping Geneva: Japanese Troops under British Control, 1945–7

The grave political, humanitarian and economic crises facing Britain in Southeast Asia in August 1945 were first reflected in a remarkable ad hoc policy towards surrendered Japanese. To the alarm of civilian officials in London, the Geneva Convention was effectively suspended. Subsequently, the British used Japanese troops against nationalists and detained other Japanese for use as coolies, in clear breach of the Potsdam Declaration. These extreme measures — and frequent pleas for cheap American repatriation shipping — underlined Britain's lack of capability and starkly limited options. Nevertheless, Britain's influential status as victor also allowed it to impose controls unilaterally on prisoners, leaving a legacy that continues to reverberate in contemporary warfare.

Response to Review by James J. Orr

Response to Review by James J. Orr Tsuyoshi Hasegawa In his review of my chapter in my edited volume, The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (JJS, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2008), James J. Orr argues that “Hasegawa interprets ambiguous and sometime unambiguous statements in peculiarly convenient ways” (p. 527). It is important to respond to his criticism because Orr’s criticism questions the significance of the cabinet meeting on August 7 and thus goes to the heart of the contentious issue of whether dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 directly resulted in the Japanese government’s decision to surrender. Two issues are involved in assessing the significance of the August 7 cabinet meeting. The first issue is whether this cabinet meeting was the decisive turning point for Japan’s decision to surrender. Sadao Asada, who thinks it was, claims that “he [Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori] proposed the surrender be considered at once on the basis of terms presented in the Potsdam Declaration.” 1 Similarly, Orr argues that Cabinet Secretary Sakomizu Hisatsune’s postoccupation memoir makes it clear that “there was an argument advocating the quick termination of the war by accepting the Potsdam Declaration,” and thus it is difficult for Orr to accept my conclusion that “neither the cabinet nor Tōgō himself believed that any change of policy was necessary on the afternoon of August 7” (p. 527). Orr omits, however, an important passage in my chapter that lies between my reference to Sakomizu’s statement and my conclusion: “but in view of the army’s opposition, the cabinet merely decided to send the investigation team to Hiroshima” (End of the Pacific War, p. 115). As far as the government’s position was concerned, Asada and I are in agreement here, since Asada also states: [End Page 501] “Given the army’s intransigence, it was impossible for the cabinet to take up Togo’s proposal.” As far as the cabinet was concerned, the August 7 meeting did not make any decision to alter the previous policy, namely, to seek termination of the war through Moscow’s mediation. The second issue is how to interpret Tōgō’s statement at the cabinet meeting. Did his statement, if not endorsed by the cabinet, nevertheless mark the departure from the previous line he had pursued? After the Potsdam Declaration was issued on July 26, Tōgō’s position had been to secure a peace settlement through Soviet mediation with the Potsdam terms as the starting point of negotiations. On July 27, Tōgō reported to the emperor that “since the Potsdam Proclamation [Declaration] is a broad, general statement, and it leaves room for further study of the concrete terms, we plan to find out what these concrete terms are through the Soviet Union.” 2 The crucial question here is whether Tōgō, after the shock of the atomic bomb, abandoned this policy and called for surrender directly to the United States and Britain by accepting the Potsdam terms, as Asada contends. I argued in my chapter in End of the Pacific War that although the atomic bomb contributed to Tōgō’s sense of urgency to secure speedy termination of the war, the basic line for seeking the negotiated peace through Soviet mediation did not change. On August 7, the day the cabinet meeting was held, Tōgō sent an urgent telegram to Ambassador Satō Naotake in Moscow, instructing him to meet Soviet Foreign Minister Viacheslav Molotov to find out the Soviet reaction to Japan’s pending request for mediation for peace. Sakomizu’s memoir cited above by Orr also stresses that the attention of the entire government was focused on the answer Satō would receive from Molotov (End of the Pacific War, p. 119). Tōgō’s alleged advocacy for surrender at the August 7 cabinet meeting did not represent a change of the previous policy. The Japanese government and Tōgō himself did not confront the issue of whether Japan should respond directly to the United States and Britain and accept surrender on the Potsdam terms until the Soviets entered the war on the morning of August 9. In my view, Orr seems to have...

What is the Top Priority on Climate Change?

What should be the West's top priority for climate-change policy? This article is a revised and updated version of my talk to the Global Sustainability Symposium (which drafted the Potsdam Declaration presented to the 2007 UN Climate Change Conference in Bali).

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (review)

Reviewed by: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Bruce Vandervort and Thomas A. Julian American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. New York: A. A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 0-375-41202-6. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 591. $35.00. This sympathetic biography by two well-known revisionist historians of the brilliant and still controversial physicist who directed the World War II Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb is clearly meant to be definitive. By invoking the Greek legend of Prometheus, who was punished by the gods for giving man fire, the authors seek to dramatize both the heroic and tragic elements in Oppenheimer's life and career. According to the authors' preface, a quarter of a century in the making, the book contains an impressive bibliography that includes many manuscript and government document collections, including FBI files, as well as over one hundred interviews. The authors cover much already familiar ground concerning Oppenheimer's public career, including his fall from grace as a result of the 1954 hearings regarding his security clearance, but they also provide much new personal information about his family background and troubled marriage. The New York Times, among others, has reviewed the book favorably, and the History Book Club has selected American Prometheus as one of its featured offerings. Notwithstanding these positive attributes, the book is seriously marred. The authors' prose reflects their continuing animus at the original decision by the Truman administration to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They still assert, despite the conclusive evidence to the contrary recently summarized brilliantly by J. Samuel Walker in Diplomatic History ("Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground," April 2005), that Japan was already defeated and wanted to "surrender," rather than the actual situation that the military clique running Japan sought not to surrender unconditionally, as required [End Page 201] by the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945, but rather to end the war by negotiating results for Japan that went well beyond merely retaining the emperor. Because the authors say Oppenheimer was never told of the asserted Japanese desire to surrender, he thus becomes even more of a "Promethean," since they imply such knowledge might have caused him to refuse his acquiescence to using the bomb and even helping "weaponeer" its employment by specifying the height at which it should be detonated. The authors also ignore disturbing evidence provided from former Soviet sources that Oppenheimer might have provided information to the Soviet Union about the U.S. atomic bomb project during the course of the work at Los Alamos. If true, this would not necessarily mean that Oppenheimer acted as a Soviet agent, since such an action could well have been motivated by his previous idealistic and sympathetic view of the Soviet Union, a view shared by many educated American elites during the years of the Great Depression. It certainly would have been consonant with his association with Communists and their "front" groups in the San Francisco area, possibly even party membership, prior to the war. Even the sympathetic David Cassidy, still skeptical of the charges, has pointed out in his Oppenheimer and the American Century (New York: Hi Press, 2005), that as late as 1942, long after the Nazi-Soviet Pact had caused the disaffection of many party members and fellow travelers (a category into which Oppenheimer placed himself during later testimony), Oppenheimer was still supporting Communist causes. Not to at least describe and discuss, even if only ultimately to provide counterevidence and dismiss, such charges, is to undermine seriously Bird and Sherwin's claim to either objectivity or completeness. Whatever questions some scholars like Amy Knight may have raised about the evidence, particularly the oral memoir of Pavel Sudoplatov, who says he was the Soviet secret police official in charge of penetrating the Manhattan Project, it is at least curious that Russia's President Vladimir Putin, in a CNN interview with Larry King in 2000, reportedly asked King why America's leading scientists at Los Alamos had cooperated with the Soviets in helping them build their initial atomic bomb...

Foreword: The War in My Diaries and Memories

AbstractDuring the war, I was a grade school pupil in Tokyo. Our teachers encouraged us to keep a diary, and I did. Unfortunately, it is now lost, and I did not resume my diary writing until 19 August 1945. I have kept most of my diary entries since then. But I wish I had written down something on 15 August 1945 to record my reaction to the emperor’s radio broadcast, announcing that he had decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Between 19 August 1944 and 31 July 1945, I was in Nagano Prefecture, having been evacuated from the city to that mountainous province in order to avoid air raids that were expected to commence at any moment. I wrote home many letters from Nagano, but they too have been lost.

Approaches to Postwar Japanese Literature: Introduction

For many japanese the events of August 1945 placed their country in a special position. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave Japan the dubious distinction of being the only country to have sustained atomic bomb attacks. Acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration meant that the military government was eradicated overnight, along with the extraordinary status of the emperor who had presided over it. Although the emperor himself remained on the throne, democracy came to Japan, and with it an entree into the international economic community.

Completing Japan's Political Reorientation, 1947-1952: Crucial Phase of the Allied Occupation

THE desire of the Japanese tof forget the Allied occupation, which lasted from September I945 to April I952, is matched only by our lack of interest in it. But this curious state of affairs does not alter the fact that the occupation was perhaps the most remarkable peacetime diplomatic experiment we have ever conducted, or that it drastically affected the entire fabric of Japanese society and life.1 Nor does it mean that the full story of that historic confrontation between West and East has already been told. On the contrary, many aspects of the occupation have been glossed over, but none more conspicuously than progress toward democracy during the five years following the effective date of the American-inspired Constitution in May I947. Most students of the subject persist in the belief that during the first two years or so of the occupation the peaceful and responsible government contemplated by the authors of the Potsdam Declaration was established.2 It is the purpose of this study to correct that erroneous impression by rendering more intelligible the salient features of the final five years of Japan's American Interlude. The reader should bear in mind that although General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) from the beginning of the occupation until his dismissal in April I95I, executed occupation policy in masterful fashion, he did not make it. Policy goals, political and otherwise, were fixed in Washington by the high-level StateWar-Navy Coordinating Committee, known as SWNCC. That body's fundamental policy for occupied Japan was outlined in five papers: the Potsdam

Re The Validity of Cabinet Order No. 325 of 1950 (Sakagami Case).

Belligerent Occupation — Effects of — Termination of Occupation — Continuance of Validity of Legislation Enacted by Government of Occupied State — Law Contrary to Constitution of Occupied State — Allied Occupation of Japan — Acceptance of Potsdam Declaration — Directives of Supreme Commander for Allied Powers

The Japanese Legal System 1945-1955. Changes in Retrospect

Ten years have passed since the end of the war, and although this is a very short period, many changes have taken place since then in the legal system of Japan. By accepting the Potsdam Declaration (including the Cairo Declaration), defeated Japan obligated herself to remove from her society all imperialistic and militaristic tendencies. She was to become a democratic and peace-loving nation respecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual. If we take a broad view, we may say that the changes in the Japanese legal system during the ten year period have been a step toward such a democratization and demilitarization; but the road has not been an easy one, particularly in view of the post-war division of the allied powers. To proceed in the face of these difficulties has required much idealism on the part of the Japanese people. Although progress has been halting during these ten years, the legal system of Japan has made great strides. There can be no doubt that in spite of many imperfections and excesses these ten years have been used to lead the nation back from the mis-