| The End of WWII page 2 |
| Suddenly, and only after being advised about the buildup of Japanese forces and fortifications by Magic intelligence, MacArthur medical staff revised its pre-invasion needs for hospital beds upwards by 300%. MacArthur's chief surgeon, Brig. Gen. Guy Denit, estimated that a 120-day campaign to invade and occupy only the island of Kyushu would result in 395,000 casualties. Marshall then learned from the Magic Summaries, just before the Potsdam Conference convened on July 17, 1945, about behind-the-scenes negotiations between Japan and the Soviet Union. From June 3-14, 1945, Koki Hirota, a Japanese envoy with Emperor Hirohito's blessing, had met with the Russian ambassador to Tokyo to propose a new relationship between the two countries. Japan proposed to carve up Asia with the USSR. According to the Magic Diplomatic Summaries of July 3, 1945, Hirota told the Russian ambassador: "Japan will increase her naval strength in the future, and that, together with the Russian Army, would make a force unequaled in the world...." The Magic Summaries further revealed that throughout June and July 1945, Japan's militarist leaders were adamantly determined that they would never surrender unconditionally to the British and the Americans. On July 4, 1945, the British agree to the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. On July 16, during the Potsdam Conference, the first A-bomb was successfully tested. A way had been found to end the war quickly and decisively. This was the situation on July 26 when the U.S., Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan to surrender unconditionally, "The alternative," said the declaration, "is complete and utter destruction." On July 25, Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki announced to the Japanese press that the Potsdam declaration was to be ignored." Meanwhile, the Magic Summaries revealed that Tokyo was demanding that Moscow accept a special envoy from Emperor Hirohito, presumably to cement the deal offering to divide Asia between Japan and Russia while Moscow brokered a Japanese surrender with the U.S. and Britain that would be acceptable to Tokyo. |
| This is what the Americans President Truman, Secretary of War Stimson and Gen. Marshall knew the day before the first atom bomb fell on Japan. Confronted by an enemy leadership that was self-deluded, neither prepared to surrender nor to negotiate seriously, the Americans decided that the only way to end the war quickly would be to use overwhelming force: nuclear weapons. Two bombs were dropped. The Russians invaded Manchuria. On August 10, Emperor Hirohito overruled his militarist advisors and accepted the Potsdam declaration. Japan surrendered. Propaganda Campaign But the Americans continued to read the Japanese codes. Almost immediately; the Magic Summaries revealed that the new foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, had begun a world-wide propaganda campaign to brand the Americans as war criminals for using nuclear weapons. Tokyo's goals included keeping Emperor Hirohito from being tried for instigating a war of aggression, and diverting Western attention away from the many Japanese atrocities committed since the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. "Since the Americans have recently been raising an uproar about the question of our mistreatment of prisoners [of war],'' Shigemitsu instructed his diplomats in the Sept. 15, 1945, Magic Summary, "I think we should make every effort to exploit the atomic bomb question in our propaganda. That propaganda campaign has borne its final fruit in the revisionist account of the bombing of Japan. Yet the evidence is crystal clear. The use of nuclear weapons to end World War II quickly and decisively averted the death or maiming of hundreds of thousands American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. It also saved the lives of some 400,000 Allied prisoners of war and civilian detainees in Japanese hands, all of whom were to be executed in the event of an American invasion of Japan. Above all, it saved untold hundreds of thousands more Japanese-perhaps millions-from becoming casualties of pre-invasion bombing and shelling, followed by two invasions and forcible occupation."1 "The Japanese were prepared to absorb massive casualties. According to Gen. Korechika Anami, the War Minister, the military could commit 2.3 million troops. Commanders were authorized to call up four million civil servants to augment the troops. The Japanese Cabinet extended the draft to cover most civilians (men from ages fifteen to sixty and women from seventeen to forty-five). The defending force would have upwards of 10,000 aircraft, most of them kamikaze. Suicide boats and human torpedoes would defend the beaches. The Japanese Army planned to attack the Allied landing force with a three-to-one advantage in manpower. If that failed, the militia and the people of Japan were expected to carry on the fight. Civilians were being taught to strap explosives to their bodies and throw themselves under advancing tanks. Construction battalions had fortified the shorelines of Kyushu and Honshu with tunnels, bunkers, and barbed wire."2 "World War II would eventually cost the United States more than a million casualties. It consumed the nation's energies and resources to an extent never experienced before or since. When Truman became President in April 1945, US casualties were averaging more than 900 a day [emphasis mine]. In the Pacific, the toll from each successive battle rose higher."2 |
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| General MacArthur accepted Japan's formal surrender September 2, 1945 on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. |
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| If the war had not ended at that time it is obvious to me that I would have had to go to war somewhere in Japan. Just a few months later, on March 10, 1946, my 18th birthday, I knew that a call from the draft would soon arrive. To try to have some control over my military life I joined the Army Air Corps. On April 6, 1946 I was on my way to Buckley Field east of Denver Colorado. |
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| I have quoted most of Reference #1. Reference #2 adds much more detail and is required reading. |