American Experience (1988–…): Season 17, Episode 9 - Victory in the Pacific - full transcript

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In June 1944, a vast American
armada began the siege of Saipan

in the Mariana Islands
of the central Pacific.

Its airfields would put American
bombers within range of Tokyo.

The end of the war against Japan
seemed in sight.

The landing at Saipan would be
as decisive

for the war against
Emperor Hirohito

as the Normandy landing
a few days earlier

would be for the war
against Hitler.



The loss of the Marianas was
of critical importance to Japan,

and the leaders knew it
immediately.

You even have an entry
in the confidential war diary

that says,
"All we can expect now is

a slow and steady road
to defeat."

But they don't give up.

They're beaten from this point
on, but they don't give up.

In dictionary of Japanese army,

there's no term "surrender."

You have to fight to the end.

This, for most Americans,

placed the Japanese
simply beyond the pale...

Not merely people
of a different race

but virtually
aliens from another galaxy.

Banzai!

These are, to a lot
of American troops,

monkeys with machine guns.

And to the Japanese,

the Americans are
big, hairy red beasts

who are going to defile
our culture, rape our women.

This is a war that's going
to fly out of control.

It becomes a war
of racial savagery

that culminates in a decision
to drop an atomic bomb

as an act of liberation
to end the thing.

We tend to focus today
on the bomb

as some kind of key decision
of 1945,

that all these leaders
are agonizing

whether to use the bomb or not.

They weren't agonizing
about that at all.

In the annals of warfare,

the final year of the war
in the Pacific stands alone.

It would be
as brutal as war gets,

a death embrace between America

demanding
unconditional surrender

and Japan desperate to resist.

By 1944, the fierce resistance
of the Japanese imperial army

was familiar to American troops.

After the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor,

as they began to retake
the Pacific,

they saw it
in the Gilbert Islands,

where, of a Japanese garrison
of almost 2,600 on Tarawa,

only eight did not
fight to the death.

They saw it
in the Marshall Islands,

where, of almost 5,000
Japanese troops on Kwajalein,

only 79 survived.

And in the Marianas,

they saw 30,000 on Saipan
reduced to 1,000.

The day after the battle
for Saipan ended,

they saw something
they had never witnessed before.

A marine told TIME correspondent
Robert Sherrod,

"There were hundreds of Jap
civilians up here on this cliff.

"In the most routine way,
they would jump off.

"I saw a father throw
his three children off

and then jump himself."

My father told me,
so I just follow people,

people... and lot of people
jump the cliff.

So everybody jumping,
so I just jump myself.

Branch caught me... save me.

Anyway, I can laugh now
because I am here.

"Banzai."

"The sea is so congested
with floating bodies,"

a naval officer told Sherrod,

"we can't avoid
running them down."

"Saipan is the first invaded
Jap territory populated

with more than a handful
of civilians," Sherrod wrote.

"Do the suicides mean
that the whole Japanese race

will choose death
before surrender?"

And he said,
"I wonder if this is

"what the Japanese leaders
want us to believe

"and maybe to get us to back off
unconditional surrender,

because it'll be
such a slaughter."

By January 1945,

the Japanese navy had been
nearly eliminated.

Japan was dependent on oil
and food from its Asian empire.

Much of its merchant fleet
was gone.

The Imperial Army developed
a plan to save Japan

from humiliating defeat.

It was based
on death before surrender.

It predicted Americans
would assault Iwo Jima,

then Okinawa, where they hoped
their fierce resistance

would force a negotiated peace.

They also prepared for an
invasion of Japan from Okinawa.

The range of American
fighter planes indicated

where the landing would be:
on the island of Kyushu.

From Kyushu, the Americans
would try to launch

an invasion of Tokyo.

If the final, decisive battle
had to be fought

on Japan's main islands,

its soldiers would fight
to the death

alongside civilians armed
with sharpened bamboo spears.

The army called the plan
ketsu-go.

The premise of ketsu-go was that
American morale was brittle.

Japanese leaders believed
with great conviction

that a great deal
of bloodletting

in an invasion of Kyushu would
compel American politicians

to negotiate out
an end to the war

on terms that the Japanese
would find acceptable.

Those terms essentially
involved preservation

of an old order in Japan, an old
order in which the militarists

and the imperial institution
were dominant.

Japan's military government
had expanded its empire

from Korea and Manchuria

to China, Southeast Asia,
the Philippines

and the southwest
and central Pacific.

It totaled more than
five million troops.

Their commander in chief was
Emperor Hirohito.

Hirohito was considered divine,

the 124th descendant
of Amaterasu, the sun goddess.

I just remember when
I was in grade school,

history lessons consisted
of just memorizing

all those
124 Japanese emperors' names,

and you got the higher grade

the more names
you could remember.

I could never remember
more than 20 or something.

Every day
before classes started,

we all recited, in a sense,
a pledge of allegiance.

But this is
the allegiance to the emperor,

saying that we are all
children of the emperor

and that the emperor
could do no wrong,

he had never been defeated,
he's watching over our fate,

that nothing could go wrong.

Japan's objective was
to preserve its old order,

the emperor presiding
over a military regime.

The Allies' objective was

to defeat and dismantle
the old order.

President Franklin Roosevelt

and British prime minister
Winston Churchill demanded

unconditional surrender of both
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

When you're fighting an enemy
that are antithetical

to all the values
that you stand for,

these systems have
to be expunged

by wars that are,
in a sense, revolutions

that overthrow regimes... that
don't just defeat the regime

but that eliminate them entirely
so that Japan never goes

on another war of conquest
in Asia again.

So, that's the purpose
of unconditional surrender.

On January 20, 1945, Emperor
Hirohito approved ketsu-go.

The plan itself was

a very horrifying thing,

because I think the idea was

to turn every soldier,
Japanese soldier,

and every civilian
into kamikaze.

It was suicidal.

The emperor was concerned enough

to consult seven
former prime ministers.

All urged him to fight
the decisive battle except one.

Prince Fumimaro Konoe
feared defeat

and with it a resurgence
of communism.

He remembered the uprisings
Japan had repressed

in the 1920s and '30s.

Konoe was saying that it's over.

There's no way Japan can win.

We should now pursue
a peace settlement

of the Pacific war now.

And if we keep on fighting,
what is dangerous is...

oh, well, of course, a nation
will be in smithereens,

but what's more dangerous is

that Japan's defeat
wil create social upheaval,

and there will be a communist
revolution in Japanese society,

and that ultimately will
undermine the imperial throne.

Emperor Hirohito shared
the concern about revolution,

but he, too, wanted
one last, decisive battle.

"What worries me," he confided,

"is whether the nation will be
able to endure it until then."

He worried about
a popular reaction

against the "ordinary hardships"
of war.

The hardships his nation
was about to endure

would be anything but ordinary.

Major General Curtis LeMay
arrived in the Mariana Islands

in mid-January 1945 to take over
the 21st Bomber Command...

The B-29s.

The B-29s had been rushed into
service without proper testing.

No matter.

LeMay was told to get results.

Curtis LeMay was probably the
most innovative air commander

of World War II.

He really became
the air force's problem solver.

You had a tough problem,
you gave it to LeMay.

When he was in Europe,
he developed

the tight defensive formations
they used for bombing.

He developed the way
they did their bomb runs.

Very strong-minded, -willed.

"Iron Pants" LeMay,
I guess you could say.

You didn't say no to him.

You said, "Yes, sir!"

Called the Superfortress,

the B-29 was the most advanced
bomber in the world.

Production of B-29s
would cost more

than developing the atomic bomb.

141-foot wingspan,

99 feet long,
four powerful engines on it

and electronically
remote-controlled gun sights,

two bomb bays.

Oh, boy,
that was something else.

And to think that they could
take an airplane, a bomber,

and pressurize it

so that we could feel
the same at sea level

as we do at 30,000 feet...
It just blew my mind.

It could fly
for about 18 hours...

Comfortably 3,700 miles.

From the Marianas, Guam,
Saipan and Tinian

all the way up to Tokyo...

Two, three hours in the air
over Tokyo and back.

And so it's almost
perfectly designed

for the long-distance fighting
in the Pacific.

The first B-29 mission
over Tokyo from the Marianas

was on November 24, 1944.

It was so important
to the army air forces,

they made a film about it,

narrated by
Captain Ronald Reagan.

Within a radius of 15 miles
of the Imperial Palace

live seven million Japanese,

a people we used to think of
as small, dainty, polite,

concerning themselves only
with floral arrangements

and rock gardens and
the cultivation of silkworms.

But it isn't silkworms
and it isn't imperial palaces

these men are looking for.

In the suburbs of Tokyo is the
huge Nakajima aircraft plant.

Well, bud, what
are you waiting for?

The film overlooked the problems
that plagued the B-29s.

The biggest problem
was something

that the air force discovered

that nobody ever knew about
or heard about,

and that is a jet stream.

If we were going
with the jet stream,

our bombs were going
over the target,

and if were going against it,

the bombs would be
short of the target.

We had a lot of bombs
miss the target.

Only 24 of the 111 planes
on the first mission over Tokyo

dropped bombs
near the aircraft factory.

Damage was negligible.

For two months,

LeMay had the same problems
with high-altitude flights.

The jet stream and bad weather
over Japan

forced him to try
something bold,

something that had
never been tried before.

This quaint-looking jellyfish
contains enough gasoline

to spread fire of 1,000 degrees
over 30 square yards.

When dropped from a plane,

it pancakes and spreads
consuming flame like a fountain.

The incendiary jelly napalm
had just been developed in 1944

by DuPont and Standard Oil.

The incendiaries were clusters
of bombs all bundled together.

When the bomb hits,
the jelly gasoline spreads.

It starts little fires.

And his great hope was that
the little fires would converge

and create a large fire...

An all-consuming
urban conflagration.

Here's Tokyo:

houses made of tarpaper,
houses made of flimsy wood...

You know, a bonfire that just
needed a match to strike it,

and napalm is perfect for that.

LeMay's gamble was
not using napalm;

it was flying at low altitudes
to avoid the winds...

Low altitudes
like the mission he had sent

against Holland in 1943
with B-26s.

"Not one B-26 came home
that day," he remembered.

"So that's what happens
at low altitudes."

To us, that was totally absurd.

We couldn't conceive
of taking that airplane,

designed for
high-altitude bombing,

and bring it in there
like it's a B-26 Marauder.

We thought, "They could throw
the kitchen sink up there

My crew says, "I think those
generals lost their marbles."

What are we doing here
with an airplane at 5,000 feet,

when it was... we were trained
to do missions

above 20,000 feet?

When the B-29 crews heard

that he was also taking away
most of the armaments...

The only bullets being left
on board were for the tail guns;

he was disarming
the other guns...

They were really disturbed.

They felt
they were going in defenseless.

In his memoirs, LeMay recalled
the anguish of his decision.

"Dear General:

"This is the anniversary
of my son Nicky

"being killed over Tokyo.

"If we go in low at night,
I think we'll surprise Japs..."

"You killed him, General."

"Not only take out the guns
and ammunition,

take out the gunners, too...
Less weight..."

"I'm going to send you
a letter each year

on the anniversary of his death
to remind you."

"Dear General...
Dear General..."

"We don't think their night
fighters amount to anything.

"We don't think their night
fighters amount to anything...

And we could be wrong as hell."

"Dear General:
This is the anniversary

of my son Nicky
being killed over Tokyo."

"Dear General... Dear General...
Dear General..."

On March 9, 1945, General Curtis
LeMay dispatched 325 B-29s

armed with incendiary bombs

on the first low-altitude
mission against Japan.

Among the targets
in the Sumida district of Tokyo

were several large factories
that made airplane parts.

War production was also
dispersed in small factories

and hundreds of households
with drill presses and lathes.

It was one of the most densely
crowded areas in the world.

Yoshiko Hashimoto's family lived
in the Sumida district.

From the beginning of 1945,

the B-29 bombers flew
over Tokyo more frequently.

They came almost every night,

and we would go to bed with our
regular clothes on every night.

Then we had the air raid
the night of March 10.

LeMay stayed up that night

for the radio reports
from his lead pilot.

The early ones read
"Large fires observed.

"Flak: moderate.

Fighter opposition: nil."

The later ones read
"Conflagration."

Warehouses lined up on both
sides of the river were burning.

Women's hair and men's clothes
caught on fire.

My mother took off her
protective hood from her head,

put it on my head
and looked into my eyes.

Without a protective hood,

my mother's hair
must have caught on fire

after I jumped into the river.

She must have died in agony.

I cannot hold back my tears
whenever I think about it

and cannot forget her sad face
looking into mine.

When we got over the target,

uh... it was like a thousand
Christmas trees lit up all over.

And you could feel the heat
when you're there,

and... and you could smell
the smoke

and the... and the stench
of human and animal flesh

as that city is being consumed

by millions of fires all over.

And they can't extinguish them.

It's awesome... it's awesome.

The next night,
LeMay was shown the photos.

An aide remembered
a full minute of silence.

"All this is out,"
LeMay then said,

running a hand over
several square miles of Tokyo.

"This is out... this... this."

"It's all ashes,"
another general said.

"All that... and that...
and that."

LeMay's B-29s had flown
far below the jet stream...

Too low for
the heavy anti-aircraft.

His gamble had worked.

The military targets were gone.

As many as 100,000 civilians
died that night.

No bombing raid in the war
had been more destructive.

I'm sort of a religious person.

I was brought up
with a strong faith.

And I couldn't understand

why there was a God
that would permit that to happen

and use me to see that
it was being done, you know.

And it bothered me a lot.

It bothered me a lot.

And I never forget... I wrote
home to my pastor about that,

and he says, "You know, that's a
secret that's known only to God.

He did what
he wanted to have done."

Naturally, we knew

that there was going
to be civilians killed,

and I don't think
we ever got to a point

that "Hey, this is awful,"
you know.

"Let's quit."

We were directed to do these
missions, and we did them.

"Congratulations,"

Army Air Forces Commander
General Henry Arnold wired

from Washington.

"This mission shows your crews
have the guts for anything."

Sixteen square miles
of Tokyo lay in ruins...

267,000 buildings...
About one quarter of the city.

"We don't pause," LeMay would
write, "to shed any tears

"for uncounted hordes
of Japanese who lie charred

in that acrid-smelling rubble."

"The smell of Pearl Harbor fires

is too persistent
in our nostrils."

He ordered more raids...

on Nagoya, with its
huge aircraft plants...

Osaka, with its shipyards
and steel mills...

Kobe, Japan's major port...

back to Nagoya.

"I thought it would be
possible," he later recalled,

"to knock out all of Japan's
major industrial cities

during the next ten days."

LeMay never got the chance.

He ran out of bombs.

You know, when you kill
100,000 people, civilians,

you cross some sort
of moral divide.

Yet at the time,
it was generally accepted

that this was fair treatment,
that the Japanese deserved this,

that they had brought this
on themselves.

These are easy and simplistic
wartime rationalizations.

In retrospect, though,
some divide had been crossed.

Civilians were now fair game.

This is the great escalation
in the air war.

It's a lot easier,

once you've incinerated
100,000 Japanese in Tokyo,

to drop an atomic bomb

that's going to kill
less than that on Hiroshima.

LeMay was later asked about the
morality of the fire bombing.

"Every soldier thinks something
of the moral aspects

of what he is doing,"
he answered.

"But all war is immoral,
and if you let that bother you,

you're not a good soldier."

"I suppose if I had lost
the war," he added,

"I would have been tried
as a war criminal."

Emperor Hirohito
inspected the ruins

nine days
after the fire bombing.

An aide noted ctims
"digging through the rubble

"with empty expressions
on their faces

that became reproachful as
the imperial motorcade went by."

The rebellion the emperor feared
seemed more plausible.

He counted on his subjects
to endure... and did nothing.

When you talk
about Japan's leadership,

you have to bear in mind
that all the important players

who really had a role
in deciding

what was going to happen
to Japan were in Tokyo.

These men watched Tokyo

be burned down around them,

and what is astonishing is
when you go back

to the records
of their meetings,

you can go through
this entire period

and find but one perhaps stray
reference by one of these men

to the fact that
they are watching Tokyo

burn down around them

and it's having no effect
on their position

with respect to what to do.

Absolutely awesome.

I couldn't believe
what I could see.

It was over the horizon...
That many ships.

Ships everyplace...
thousands of them,

as far as you could see.

As the emperor toured Tokyo,
the largest fleet ever assembled

approached the Japanese
island province of Okinawa.

There were more
than 40 carriers,

18 battleships, 200 destroyers.

It was vaster than
the invasion fleet at Normandy.

Nearly 200,000 troops
had boarded at 11 ports

from Seattle and San Francisco
to Leyte in the Philippines.

We had that feeling
of confidence

because all these big guns
were firing in the air.

And we thought, "Well,
with all this artillery,

they'll probably kill most
of the Japs, so it'll be easy."

Their mission, as the Japanese
high command had predicted,

was to take Okinawa
and use it as a staging area

for an invasion of Japan's main
islands only 350 miles away.

The troops who landed knew

this could be
the Imperial Army's last battle

before it defended
the main islands.

They knew the Japanese
would fight to the death.

Oh, man, you're scared to death.

I mean, there's
no question about it.

You're as frightened
as a man could be as you go in.

But there was
no shooting going on.

Nothing happened,

which was real strange.

Once in a while, you would hear
a gunshot someplace,

but then nothing happened.

Nothing.

Zero.

Everybody was shocked.

There was no resistance at all.

They went in on April 1,
anthey thought,

"What is this,
an April Fool's joke?

Where are the Japs?"

We got all this big buildup
on the boat.

They told us about
the ferocious snakes

and the Japs are worse
than the snakes,

and we're going in there

and it's going to be
maybe the final battle.

And then there's nobody
on the beach?

For five days,
American forces were unopposed

as they headed south.

An admiral radioed
Chester Nimitz,

commander of the Pacific fleet,
"I may be crazy, but it looks

as if the Japanese have quit the
war, at least in this sector."

And Nimitz wired back,

"Delete everything
after 'I may be crazy.'"

General Mitsuru Ushijima
could smile

from his mountain headquarters
beneath ancient Shuri Castle.

He was luring his enemy
into a trap.

Ushijima was very smart.

He followed a theory.

The Americans called it
the "cornered rat" theory.

Terrain is everything here,

and the southern part
of the island,

the terrain explains... it's a
series of ridges in the south.

So he builds steel, concrete
and coral garrisons

inside the mountains.

So he has two things
that you need to win a battle.

He has concealment and he's got
the advantage of height.

The first major line of defense
was at Kakazu Ridge.

Ushijima's command post
was under Shuri Castle

four miles south
in the main line of defense.

These ridges ran
the width of the island.

There were no open flanks.

The army's commander decided
to storm the ridges.

You got up every morning,

and there'd be another
craggy, rock-piled hill,

and the army, infantry
would take off

over whatever
open ground there was.

The Japs would then
lay into them,

and we'd try to keep them down
with our machine guns.

And that was like a continuum.

Every day it was the same story,

only different guys got hit
and different guys got killed.

I used to look
at those infantry guys

go across...
go across those fields.

God, it's tough to believe.

The army sent in tanks.

We student conscripts

were ordered
to deliver bombs to Kakazu

for destroying U.S. tanks.

We carried ten-kilogram bombs
on our shoulders

and headed for Kakazu at night.

The Americans launched
a star shell,

and then came the gunfire.

We had to hide in the shade
whenever a star shell was up,

but finally we managed
to deliver the bombs to Kakazu.

I heard that the next morning
when the tanks came,

they armed the bombs and made
suicide attacks into the tanks.

After nearly a month
of attack and counterattack,

marines relieved
a shattered army division.

We get down there,

and we were
in a particular place

where wounded were left
on stretchers.

They had to evacuate
very quickly.

And we found
the wounded Americans,

uh... dismembered
and mutilated horribly.

And, uh... we found them
laying there

with their heads cut off
and their hands cut off

and their private parts
in their mouths.

We just hated them.

God, did we hate them.

And we wanted to kill them.

You talk to the average marine,
he enjoyed it.

That sounds bloodthirsty,
but it's true.

You enjoyed it.

That was one less Jap
you had to worry about.

They had not been killing men,
a veteran recalled.

They were "wiping out
dirty animals."

We just looked at them...

They were just...
just something to eliminate.

We... but we didn't
think of them

as humans or anything like that.

"If you see him, shoot him."

And that's the way we all felt.

When you're fighting an enemy
that will not surrender,

that considers
surrender disgraceful

and punishes prisoners who
do surrender for being unmanly

and treats them that way...

This is a war that's going
to fly out of control,

and the atrocities
really begin to mount.

The battle of Okinawa
was just beginning.

These pilots would help make it

one of the most terrible
in the history of warfare.

Those who assembled on air bases
on Kyushu on April 6, 1945,

belonged to "special attack
forces"... kamikazes.

The last desperate effort
of the Japanese air force

was to send pilots
on a one-way mission.

Corporal Masayuki Shimada
remembers the ritual.

This is a headband
painted with my own blood.

When I wrote my farewell letter
in the barracks,

I cut my little finger,

used the blood to paint
a Japanese flag on the headband

and wore it when I flew out
the next day.

The next morning,
I went to the airfield

right before 9:00 a.m.,

where my superior officer made
a speech of encouragement

and we had a farewell toast.

The 12 of us shook hands,
said to each other,

"See you at Yasukuni."

Their reward would be
a place of honor

among the spirits
of the war dead

who dwelled at Yasukuni, the
great Shinto shrine in Tokyo.

There, even the emperor
would bow.

The pilots were told
they would protect the empire

as the "divine wind"...
The kamikaze...

Had seven centuries before.

Kublai Khan
and his huge Mongol armies

invaded twice
in the 13th century,

only to be destroyed
at the last minute by typhoons.

These pilots would be
the first wave of ten

to try to cripple the U.S. navy
supporting the siege of Okinawa.

"Remember the carriers,"
their commander urged.

"The enemy has many ships.

Do not attack
the first ship you see."

In my plane, I found
a message card.

"We wish success
to Corporal Shimada.

From the maintenance crew."

I was moved by it very much.

Then, at a sign from the
captain, we took off right away.

355 planes began the attack
on April 6.

Kamikazes had attacked
the navy before

but never on such a scale.

One and a half hours passed,
two hours passed,

and we came near Okinawa.

I could no longer hold in
my emotions

and shouted out with the loudest
possible voice, "Mother!"

I don't remember calling
for my father,

but I do remember
I called for my mother.

That same morning, a Japanese
battleship slipped her moorings

in Japan's Inland Sea
and headed for Okinawa.

The Yamato bore
the ancient name for Japan.

With 18-inch guns, she was the
largest battleship ever built.

She had no fighter escort.

The symbol of Japan's pride had
embarked on a suicide mission.

As the Yamato left
the Bungo Strait,

the captain gathered
the officers

and everyone on the crew
to the deck

and read out the orders
he had received

from the commander
of the Imperial Navy.

"Our country is
in a critical situation.

It is time for all
the 100 million Japanese people

to stand up and prepare
for the final battle."

"And we, the Yamato crew,
should take the lead."

The Yamato's mission was
to attack the fleet off Okinawa.

She never got that far.

Her contribution would be

to attract fighter planes
from the U.S. carriers

and leave the fleet more
vulnerable to kamikaze attacks.

I was up high

and saw the five wakes
of torpedoes coming toward us.

The captain calmly accepted
the situation.

He did not react at all
to the sound of the explosions.

The torpedoes slammed
into the side of the ship.

I clearly remember the scene.

The Yamato looked
like a potato stabbed

with hundreds of steel sticks.

It would take 11 torpedoes and
eight bombs to sink the Yamato.

Most of the crew, more tha
3,000 men, went down with her.

Lieutenant Yoshio Emoto
was one of 269 survivors.

Westerners often ask me

how the Japanese could choose
death over surrender.

I have to bring up the
traditional notion of sacrifice

and heroism in the defense of
thnation... "Yamato damashii."

It comes largely
from the spirit of the samurai.

We were taught that
Yamato damashii was a virtue,

a fundamental principle
of the Japanese people.

To be taken captive was
against this principle

and the biggest shame
and disgrace to us.

On one mission,

one of the men in my unit
was shot and critically wounded.

He was young and had a wife
and small children.

I asked him whether he wanted
to leave a message for anyone.

He said there was
no message to leave.

Then he faced the direction
of the Imperial Palace,

threw his hands in the air

and said, "Long live
the emperor," and died.

I do not think

that Westerners can fully
understand this behavior.

"There was
a hypnotic fascination

to a sight so alien
to our Western philosophy,"

an admiral observed.

"We watched each
plunging kamikaze

"with the detached horror of one
witnessing a terrible spectacle,

rather than
as the intended victim."

A lot of these kids
were pretty clear-thinking.

They were college graduates,

the best and the brightest,
many of them, in... in Japan.

They're thinking in terms
of community, family,

which is everything
to the Japanese...

Protection of your parents,

protection of your brothers
and sisters,

protection of your home village.

If they could stop an invasion

that would destroy
their country, their culture,

their emperor
and their villages,

they will have done
great things.

So they took to the air...
Hero gods of the sky.

Two kamikazes attacked
the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill

on May 11.

Both of them were strafed
over my head, fortunately.

But the second one dropped
his bomb into the ready room

that I had just left
five minutes before,

and then he turned his plane
and dove into the carrier.

And then the gasoline lines
that were laid out on our deck...

We were being refueled,
ready to fly again...

Those caught on fire.

And then whatever ammunition was
laying out on the carrier deck...

Those all exploded.

As soon as one plane
would explode,

it would set another on fire,
and then that would explode.

If there were bombs in
the bomb bay, they would go off.

You couldn't breathe it.

It was intense.

I mean, thick.

There was no oxygen anywhere.

The wind was coming back
to the stern where we were.

There's no place for us to go,

except get out of that smoke,
get away from that heat.

It's going to kill you
if a bomb doesn't.

Death on these ships
was really awful.

Everybody in the Pacific that
served on the hospital ships

said the worst scarring
and the worst victims

were the victims
of the oil fires,

you know, burned
from head to foot.

Everyone said that to see a
burn victim in a state of agony

was the worst kind of experience
anyone could have in the war,

except to be the victim,
you know, himself.

And this mentality
of constantly being on alert...

The warning, the attack,
the warning, the attack,

and a plane coming
right in on you...

Drove a lot of guys berserk.

In the ten waves
of kamikaze attacks off Okinawa,

Japan lost 1,900 pilots.

Corporal Shimada
was not one of them.

He had maintenance problems...
An oil leak...

And crashed off a small island.

After six weeks, he managed
to get back to his base.

I said, "I wish to go
on another mission.

Please prepare a plane for me."

To my surprise, the officer
was angry and yelled at me:

"How can you come back alive?!

"You must have spared
your own life.

You idiot!"

I was angry.

My hands were trembling
with rage.

They called us war gods.

For the first time, I realized

that I was regarded merely
as part of the plane.

Isn't it natural that I decided
not to sacrifice my life again?

In the sea off Okinawa,

the U.S. navy suffered
its greatest losses

of World War II...
Almost 10,000 killed or wounded.

The Japanese sank 30 American
ships and damaged 368 others.

Chester Nimitz, admiral of
the Pacific fleet, was appalled.

In April he had agreed
to a strategy of invading Japan.

After two months
of the Okinawa campaign,

he cabled Washington that
he could no longer support it.

Many on the front lines
shared his concern.

We started getting instructions
on invading Japan,

and we... considered ourselves
dead men.

We really did.

We knew we wouldn't survive.

In May 1945

U.S. forces in Europe celebrated
victory over the Nazis.

Some would occupy Germany.

Others would return home.

Many would redeploy
to the Pacific

for the invasion of Japan.

Imperial Army troops in China

had already begun
pulling back to Japan

to thwart the anticipated
American invasion.

The joint chiefs of staff met
May 25 to plan the iasion.

Army Chief of Staff
George Marshall took the lead.

It wasn't only because
Marshall was an army man

that he pushed for an invasion.

Marshall believed
that a democracy

really just couldn't fight
a seven-years' war.

He didn't know how much longer

the American people
could endure this.

If that was the case,

then it was imperative to end
this war as soon as possible.

The most direct way to do that

was through an invasion
of Japan.

- The chiefs set a date...
- November 1.

The island of Okinawa,

once secure, would be
a staging area for the invasion.

In early May,
after a month of fighting,

U.S. forces approached
Japan's main defensive line.

There was a hill on it
marines called Sugar Loaf.

One remembers it
as "a pimple of a hill."

"You could have run
the 600 yards across that plain

and up Sugar Loaf Hill,"
he recalled, "in a few minutes."

The defenses
of General Mitsuru Ushijima,

Japan's commander on Okinawa,
were so thorough

it would take the Sixth
Marine Division seven days

and 14 attempts.

By some counts,
the battle for Sugar Loaf Hill

was the hardest for Americans
anywhere in World War II.

When we first went
up Sugar Loaf Hill,

we had a number
of people shot in the back.

Couldn't believe it.

How do you get shot in the back
when you're assaulting a hill?

But it was coming
from all sides,

and the Japs were
just zeroing in on us.

Marines encountered fire

from positions dug
into the front of the hill...

mortars lobbed
from the back of the hill,

fire from neighboring hills...

and artillery from Shuri Castle
almost a mile away.

Sugar Loaf could be
resupplied by tunnels.

They ran from Shuri Castle
to all the supporting hills.

If Sugar Loaf fell,

General Ushijima's main line
of defense would collapse.

Marines soon realized
it was not about to fall.

We found out that
Okinawa had been used

for a Japanese artillery range
for over 50 years.

So they knew every inch of it,

and they could drop a shell
in your back pocket.

So we were completely exposed,
going up that hill.

The marines tried again.

We just went down there,
and when we got on the hill,

and all this open ground
behind us, they shot us up

and killed a lot of people
and wounded a lot of people...

At least a third of our company.

Sacrificial charges... they get
repelled again and again.

They actually get to the summit,

get in a fire fight
with the Japanese

and get pushed off the rock,
pushed off the hill.

The marines kept assaulting
Sugar Loaf Hill.

- We took that hill 13 times...
- 13 times.

In the night, they'd come back
from the back of the hill,

from under the hill,
from beside the hill,

and they'd counterattack.

We suffered terrible casualties,

and we'd have to pull back
a little bit.

Torrential rains and mud
also hindered their advance.

There was no way
to bury the dead.

The marines lived among them.

Nighttime brought
its own terrors.

These sneak attacks at night...
it's psychological warfare.

And it works in a lot of cases.

It drove a lot of marines nuts.

This one person...
he was right next to me.

And it was a trench
that we were in,

waiting for the word
to move out.

All of a sudden,
he started crying

and pulling grass out
and putting it in his mouth

and stuff like that.

More than 1,200 marines

would leave the battle
of Sugar Loaf Hill

with what was called
"combat fatigue."

On the seventh day,

the artillery fire
that softened up Sugar Loaf Hill

and its neighboring hills
was unusually heavy.

Then the marines cleared out
the side hills.

Tanks encircled Sugar Loaf and
attacked the back-side caves.

After seven days, the battle
of Sugar Loaf Hill was over.

Okinawa's main line of defense
began to crumble.

General Ushijima began
to retreat.

American casualties at Sugar
Loaf Hill were more than 2,500.

Emperor Hirohito wanted
a final, decisive battle.

General Ushijima was trying
to wage it.

The idea is to bleed
the Americans.

It's a dual strategy.

You can't win the war,
but you can bleed them

to such an extent that
we can get better peace terms.

The longer we prolong it, the
longer that fleet sits out there

and is susceptible
to kamikaze air attack.

They thought
the combination of the two...

A long war of savage attrition,
taking casualties

and then the slaughter at sea...
Might convince the Americans

that an invasion
would be insanity.

As the Imperial Army lost ground
on Okinawa,

Japan prepared for
the final, decisive battle

on the main islands... ketsu-go.

The plan was
to destroy troop ships

before they reached the beaches.

Japan had more than
5,000 conventional warplanes

to defend against an invasion...

more than 5,000 kamikazes...

1,300 miniature
suicide submarines...

several hundred piloted bombs.

It was really little more
than a rocket with a man in it,

just to aim into a ship.

The Japanese were going
to use suicide frogmen,

with explosives strapped
around them,

to go and blow up landing craft.

The Imperial Army planned
to counterattack the U.S. forces

that made it to land.

Civilians, attached
to military units,

were prepared to fight
with sharpened bamboo spears.

My Japanese professor was about
11 or 12 years old in 1945,

and he told me they were taught
to rush at an American tank

with a satchel charge
full of explosives,

roll under the tank
and set it off.

I mean, he was actually
being trained to do this.

The Japanese had
a substantial basis to believe

that ketsu-go could deliver
something to them

better than
unconditional surrender.

General Korechika Anami became
war minister in April

and the head of the pro-war
faction in the government.

He was a passionate
defender of ketsu-go.

General Anami was really
the personification

of a Japanese soldier's soldier.

He was athletic.

Anami was quite good at Japanese
stick fighting, or kendo.

He seemed to be
the typical samurai

who cared about his troops,

who told staff officers,
"Get the hell out of my way.

What are we doing
for the troops?"

Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo
began to doubt

if Japan could continue the war.

A report he commissioned warned
people were growing critical,

even rebellious.

The U.S. blockade and fire
bombing had taken a toll.

I was about down to 44 pounds,

and I remember writing
to my mother about it,

and she was so upset, because
that sounded like a complaint,

that I was complaining
about something.

We were all undernourished
and all kind of skin diseases.

I mean, there's... lice was...
they were all over your hair.

I mean, there was no sanitation.

You would not want
to turn these ten-year-olds

into any kind
of fighting soldiers.

They couldn't even fight
the lice.

Togo warned the military
ketsu-go would destroy Japan.

"If we cannot fulfill our
responsibility to the throne,"

replied a furious Anami,

"we should offer
our sincere apologies

by committing hara-kiri."

At an imperial conference
on June 8, Anami argued

that the entire nation
should fight to the death.

Then Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma,
an adviser to the emperor,

presented the report
Togo had commissioned.

Hiranuma comes in
and says, "Well, wait.

"Our industries are wrecked.

"We're short of food.

"If we have a poor harvest,
the people will starve to death.

"There's beginnings
of popular unrest

"the way this war has gone.

We've had a series of defeats."

And everyone says,

"Well, yes, but let's fight
to the bitter end."

The extremity of their situation
actually propels them

to seek a decisive battle

before their condition
becomes so hapless,

they can't even do that.

The emperor had hoped

the final, decisive battle
would be on Okinawa.

On Okinawa, the U.S. army
and marines were destroying

the last line of Japanese
resistance cave by cave.

You'd get the interpreter up
there, beg them to come out,

and they wouldn't come out.

They might send somebody out
and shoot at you

or something like that,
so you'd just seal them up.

A lot of them that were sealed...
They'd get a bulldozer in there

and just cover up
the entrance to the cave.

The horrible thing about flame
is, it doesn't have to hit you.

It sucks out all the oxygen.

And you'd see people
in the caves...

Soldiers, Japanese...
Not a mark on them.

They suffocated because
there was no oxygen to breathe.

It was gone.

Marines learned not to trust
those who surrendered,

even civilians.

Some people came out.

And this old lady in a kimono...
She looked old...

And, uh... she pulled out
a grenade from under her armpit

and threw it at a corporal.

It was an American grenade.

I don't know where she got it.

But she pulled the pin and threw
it and blew him to kingdom come.

And I saw her do it.

And, uh...

so I shot her.

And quite a few others.

Many civilians in the caves,
like those on Saipan,

preferred death
before surrender.

Forty-six student nurses
shared a cave with the army.

Suddenly, I heard a call
for surrender coming from above:

"Are there any soldiers
or civilians in the cave?

"Come out naked if you are a man

"and come out waving
a handkerchief

if you are a woman."

He repeated the call again
and again, but no one responded.

We had been told
not to be captured.

Captives would be despised
as traitors,

forever bringing shame
to themselves

and to their entire family.

We had also been told

that the Americans
would kill men instantly

and women would be raped
and run over by tanks.

Again, the voice said,

"We are going to blow up this
cave if you don't come out!"

Still, no one responded.

Some Japanese soldiers
started firing.

And in response, the American
soldiers threw in a grenade.

I clung to the rugged rocks
and raised my head

only to be choked.

Everybody started screaming,
"Mother, help me!"

"Father, help me!"

"Teacher, help me!"

"I can't breathe!"

"Help! Help!"

I don't remember waking up,
but my friend told me later

that I was buried
under dead bodies.

Only seven of the 46
student nurses survived.

As Americans approached
General Ushijima's cave,

he retreated to its depths.

For a general, death before
surrender entailed a ritual.

He knelt, facing north
toward the Imperial Palace.

After 82 days,
the battle of Okinawa was over.

More than 70,000 died
trying to defend it.

More than 12,000 died
trying to take it.

An additional 36,000
were wounded.

Almost one-third of the
invasion force were casualties.

The survivors
would invade Japan.

Reporters are saying
that the Japanese are

the best cave and hill fighters
in the world,

and Okinawa is just an inkling

of what's going to come

when we actually hit
the main Japanese islands.

The American people were anxious
to end this thing.

There's a sense
of "over by '45."

But nothing in the character
of these battles

gave any indication

that the Japanese were going
to surrender.

How do you end this,
on both sides?

I mean, you have to achieve
an understanding.

Now, with the Nazis
it was pretty easy.

The understanding was "We've
walked over your entire country.

You've surrendered."

Well, Japan hadn't been
walked over.

What was the understanding,

what was the basis
for war termination?

Because the Japanese
wouldn't say "surrender."

How do you end it?

How do you end it quickly?

How do you end it efficiently?

These questions faced

America's new president,
Harry Truman,

who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt
after he died in April.

Okinawa was Truman's first
battle as commander in chief,

and it weighed heavily on him.

"Shall we invade Japan proper
or shall we bomb and blockade?"

he wrote in his diary
on June 17.

"That is my hardest decision
to date."

When he met with his advisers
the next day,

Truman was more concerned
about casualties

than a quick end to the war.

Army Chief of Staff
George Marshall

was less concerned
about casualties

than ending the war quickly.

He presented the invasion plan
the chiefs had agreed on.

To establish air bases,

the U.S. would invade southern
Kyushu with nine divisions.

Intelligence predicted
six Japanese divisions

would have to defend
the entire coastline.

On beaches in the south,

invaders would outnumber
the defenders by three to one.

The Kyushu bases
would facilitate air support

for an assault on Tokyo in 1946.

Truman never got a forthright
answer on potential casualties.

Marshall essentially evades

giving a direct answer
to that question.

At one point, Admiral Leahy,

Truman's chief of staff,
suggests it'll be like Okinawa...

35% of the committed forces.

Since we're talking about using
about 776,000 men on Kyushu,

that works out to more
than 200,000 casualties,

but nobody works that out.

This is really
the five-star general

talking to
the World War I captain,

ten weeks or so in office,

still new and uneasy
in the position.

And here's a older,
seasoned warrior...

A man who commands
great respect, Marshall...

And he lectures the president.

And at one point, he tells
the president basically,

"Don't delay things
and be irresolute.

It's important to make tough
decisions and be a leader."

Hoping to avoid what he called

"an Okinawa from one end
of Japan to the other,"

Truman approved
only the Kyushu landing

and only after
all the chiefs endorsed it.

He postponed a decision
on invading Tokyo.

Only two weeks
after committing himself

to a fight to the finish,

the emperor summoned
his war cabinet.

It was June 22, the day
Okinawa fell to the Americans.

The emperor's conference
with this inner cabinet

was indeed a critical moment

and extremely unusual in
the nature of Japanese politics,

because the emperor,
in fact, took the lead,

indicated that he wanted
the government

to actively pursue
a diplomatic option

mediating an end to the war...

Not surrendering;

mediating an end to the war that
would be acceptable to Japan.

The diplomatic option
also had to be acceptable

both to General Anami,

who led the military faction
in the war cabinet,

and to Foreign Minister Togo,

who led an emerging
peace faction.

The emperor had been warned

the Soviet Union might enter
the war against Japan.

Nonetheless,
the war cabinet decided

to ask the Soviet Union
to mediate.

For military,
I think it is very important

to keep Soviet out of the war.

They were quite aware

that they couldn't afford
to have a two-front war.

And Togo thought

that Moscow approach, I think,
is crucial to terminate the war.

There was no decision

on what peace terms
Japan might offer.

As Hirohito made overtures
to the Soviets,

Truman set off to meet
their leader, Joseph Stalin.

He went to the Berlin suburb
of Potsdam

to discuss postwar Europe
with Allied leaders

and to see that
Stalin kept a promise

to enter the war against Japan
after Germany was defeated.

The Allies had promised Stalin
territorial concessions

if he entered the war.

Stalin told Truman he would...
On August 15.

Truman's diary entry
that night read:

"Fini Japs
when that comes about."

In Potsdam, Truman received word

from the director
of the Manhattan Project.

The atom bomb
had been tested successfully

at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

"Believe Japs will fold up
before Russia comes in,"

he wrote.

"I'm sure they will

when Manhattan appears
over their homeland."

Within days after these
optimistic diary entries,

intelligence from intercepted
Japanese military cables,

called Ultra, was alarming.

In June, the invasion planners

projected three Japanese
divisions in southern Kyushu.

By July, there was evidence
of nine divisions...

Triple the number
in just one month.

Ultra told a startling story
in July of 1945.

Japanese units were moving
into southern Kyushu

at an alarming rate.

It was as if the very
invasion beaches were magnets

drawing the Japanese forces
to those places

where the Americans
would have to land

and fight their way ashore.

It was very clear
in the messages

that the Japanese intended
to fight to the bitter end.

These intercepts were so secret
that no one who saw them,

including the president, was
supposed to write about them.

There is some evidence Truman
saw the intercept dated July 25.

With Truman, we have this
extraordinary entry in his diary

on the 25th of July, 1945,

where he talks
about meeting in the morning

with General Marshall
and British admiral Mountbatten,

and they talked

about the "tactical
and political" situation.

Well, there's no place
in the world

that U.S. forces are engaged
in a tactical battle

on the 25th of July.

It seems pretty clear to me

that he must be talking
about the intercepts.

And what Truman is doing
with that entry

is leaving a cryptic message
to us down through the years:

"I saw, I saw, I saw."

That happened to be the night
Secretary of War Henry Stimson

sent a wire authorizing
the use of the atomic bomb.

There was no reason
not to do it.

It made good sense,
and it was not a weighty matter.

In the framework of mid-1945,

for Truman and those around him,
the answer was self-evident.

Nobody around him had
any sustained and serious doubts

about using the bomb.

It was the implementation
of a long-run assumption,

rooted in the
F.D.R. administration

and sharing
many of the same advisers.

There is no way that
any American president,

faced with the expenditures

that's been put
into the project,

faced with the casualties
in the Pacific,

could not have used that bomb.

What would have come out later

if all of a sudden
the invasion went in

and had all these casualties

and the American public
found out later

that we had this super-bomb
but didn't use it

because we thought
we'd kill too many Japanese?

Just couldn't make
that decision.

Nobody knew for sure
what it would take

to get the Japanese to yield.

We're going to do everything
we have been doing

and we're going to add
the Soviets

and we're going to add the bomb

and we're going to add
the invasion

and hope that at some point
in this process

the Japanese crack
and surrender.

Truman was advised
he might save American lives

if he dropped the demand
for unconditional surrender

and allowed Japan
to keep the emperor.

The idea had originated
with Joseph Grew,

former ambassador to Japan,
now the undersecretary of state.

Secretary of War
Henry Stimson also favored

this conditional surrender.

Truman had sailed to Europe
with Stimson's draft

of a warning the Allies
would give Japan.

He recommended
the emperor remain

as a constitutional monarch,
like the king of England.

But it was James Byrnes,
the secretary of state,

who had Truman's ear
aboard ship.

The Nazis had surrendered
unconditionally,

and he believed Americans would
demand the same of Hirohito.

Byrnes is the most
savvy politician

in the administration.

He was a leader of the Senate

at the time that Truman was
really a junior senator.

He was a mentor to Truman.

Byrnes is the kind of person who
worried about the electorate,

who worried
about domestic politics.

It didn't take great perception

to read the polls
of early June 1945

and discover that most Americans
hated the emperor,

hated the emperor system,

wanted the destruction of both
Hirohito and the system

and saw this as responsible
for the war.

Truman sided with Byrnes.

If at Potsdam he had allowed
Japan to keep the emperor,

many historians have argued,
Japan might have surrendered

before the atomic bomb
was dropped.

Intercepts, code-named MAGIC,
of the exchange

between Foreign Minister Togo
in Tokyo

and Japan's ambassador
in Moscow, Naotake Sato,

tell a different story.

Ambassador Sato is very clear:

"The best you're going to get
out of this is"

what he calls
"unconditional surrender."

And then he thinks
better of that

and refines it to mean

"Of course we would retain
the imperial institution.

"But it would still be...
a surrender,

and this is the best
you're going to get."

And all he gets back in response
to that is "No, no, no.

"We can't accept anything
like unconditional surrender,

"and certainly not
simply a modification

to provide for a guarantee
of the imperial institution."

Foreign Minister Togo says that

in the name
of the Japanese government.

That's all enshrined
in black and white

in the MAGIC Diplomatic Summary
of July 22, 1945.

In my view, it leaves
no reasonable room for doubt

that simply offering a promise
about the imperial institution

would have secured
the surrender of Japan.

The Potsdam Declaration,
issued July 26, 1945, was

an ultimatum calling on Japan

to surrender unconditionally
and without delay

or risk "prompt
and utter destruction."

It also offered various terms

for Japan to rejoin
the family of nations.

It was signed by the Allies
in the war against Japan

but not by the Soviet Union,
which had not yet declared war.

When the ultimatum arrived
in Tokyo,

Japan's prime minister,
Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, said

the government intended
to ignore it.

Since the Soviet Union's name
did not appear

as one of the countries

that had signed
the Potsdam Declaration,

why don't we wait
for their final word

with regard to whether or not
they can mediate?

When the Potsdam Declaration
was issued,

within the inner sanctum
of the Japanese government,

even what we regard
as the moderates

deemed the Potsdam Declaration

as a sign
of weakening American will;

that we had already offered
all these terms

before the first drop of blood
was shed in the invasion.

And they were fortified
in the belief

that they should just press on.

The Potsdam Declaration had
said, "We shall brook no delay."

By August 5, after nine days,

Japan had not
officially responded.

Hirohito did not press
his government to accept it.

Instead, he worried about how to
preserve the imperial regalia,

emblems of the legitimacy
of his rule.

The sacred mirror, symbol of
the sun goddess, was worshiped

at the Grand Shrine at Ise.

The sacred sword, symbol
of bravery, was preserved

at the Atsuta Shrine
in Nagoya City.

The sacred curved jewel, symbol
of affection, was enshrined

at the Imperial Palace.

The emperor wanted all of them
at the palace for protection.

Here's a man
who ought to be thinking

about his "children,"
as he called them, his people.

Instead, his insiders say,

he was concerned about the
insignia and symbols of office,

all the things that gave him,
in a sense, sovereignty

and invested him with power.

He was more concerned

about the destruction
of his power

than the destruction
of his country.

On August 6, the day an atomic
bomb destroyed Hiroshima,

Hirohito was still waiting
for a response from Moscow.

It was a response

that Ambassador Sato had said
would never come.

It was to spare the Japanese
people from utter destruction

that the ultimatum of July
the 26th was issued at Potsdam.

Their leaders promptly rejected
that ultimatum.

If they do not now accept
our terms,

they may expect
a rain of ruin from the air

the like of which has never
been seen on this earth.

Behind this air attack will
follow sea and land forces

in such numbers and power
as they have not yet seen

and with the fighting skill

of which they are
already well aware.

General Marshall,
the advocate of invasion,

was having second thoughts.

In July,
the intercepts identified

nine divisions
protecting Kyushu.

On August 6, they identified 13.

For Marshall,
it was a "preview of hell."

The landings at Normandy had
been costly but successful.

Marshall began to question

if the invasion plans for Japan
would succeed.

He asked General
Douglas MacArthur,

who was to command the invasion,

to consider moving the landing
to northern Japan.

Just imagine
you're George Marshall,

and on the eve
of the Normandy invasion

you suddenly tell
Dwight Eisenhower,

"Hey, don't invade Normandy."

"Why don't we reschedule the
whole thing and invade Norway,

where the German defenses
are weaker?"

Well, I mean, the mind boggles
because of all of the work,

all of the effort, all of the
planning that's gone into this.

Yet this is really, in effect,
what Marshall is saying

to MacArthur in August of 1945.

The warning had been raised
by his own intelligence officer,

yet MacArthur downplayed it.

Douglas MacArthur
was determined to lead

the greatest invasion
in the history of warfare.

One way to make an invasion
possible, Marshall thought,

would be to destroy beach
defenses with atomic bombs.

The Manhattan Project
informed him

at least seven would be ready
by November 1.

Marshall is now planning
to use atomic bombs

as... really
as tactical support weapons

against the Japanese
beach defenses,

to precede the landing
by the American units,

almost as if it were
naval gunfire support.

The scientists had calculated

that anybody
who'd be killed by radiation

would have already been killed
by a rock or blast or heat.

You read the contemporary
planning documents, and you see

that there is no appreciation
of the potential danger

of immediate
or lingering radiation.

If this would have happened, the
invaders of the land of the gods

would have entered the world
of the dead, on both sides.

Just before midnight
on August 8,

the Soviet Union declared war
on Japan.

Fearing the atomic bomb would
end the war before he entered,

Stalin advanced the date.

The Red Army launched

the largest land operation
of the Pacific war

against the Japanese
in Manchuria.

At the same time,

U.S. forces were readying
a second atomic bomb.

For three days
after the Hiroshima bombing,

the Japanese government
had not met.

With the hope for Soviet
mediation shattered,

the war cabinet gathered
at 10:30 a.m. on August 9

to discuss
the Potsdam Declaration.

Foreign Minister Togo led
the peace faction,

urging acceptance,
with one condition:

preserving the emperor,
although stripped of his powers.

What prompted peace party is
a profound fear

that the Soviet influence,
if allowed to continue,

then that would lead

to the end
of monarchical system.

"The inevitable has come,"
said General Anami,

who feared a two-front war.

Yet Anami and the militarists,
still confident in ketsu-go,

favored adding
three additional conditions:

there would be no occupation;

the Japanese military
would disarm itself;

and the military would try
its own war criminals.

They really lacked
reality picture.

It's rather amazing
that they were audacious enough

to hammer out such unrealistic,
three conditions

attached to the preservation
of the imperial throne.

Anami told the war cabinet

he was certain America only had
one atomic bomb.

It was at that time, just
before 1:00 p.m. on August 9,

that word reached the meeting
a second bomb had hit Nagasaki.

The war cabinet was divided
over surrender.

The full cabinet then met.

It, too, was divided.

Only the emperor could break
the deadlock.

He met first with his principal
adviser, Marquis Koichi Kido.

And Kido had very important
meeting with emperor

in that afternoon

that lasted for long time,
unusually long time.

That meant
they met substantial issues.

Emperor resisted to accept
Togo's narrowest definition

and expanded it to include
emperor's political rule.

In other words,
that one condition

should not be merely
preservation imperial house,

but the preservation
of emperor's status

within the national law.

He wanted actual power.

The emperor wanted
the powers he then enjoyed,

the powers granted
his grandfather

under the constitution of 1868.

When the emperor's inner circle
met with him that night,

Baron Hiranuma,
a Shinto fundamentalist,

tried to further solidify
the emperor's powers.

Hiranuma's argument was
the constitution was irrelevant.

The imperial line predated
the Meiji constitution of 1868.

The origin of Japan was the
origin of the imperial house,

and that was a divine event,

because the imperial family
descended from the gods

long before
any constitution existed.

It was irrelevant to discuss
the emperor's prerogatives

in terms of legal arrangements.

The emperor transcended
those worldly forms.

He was a transcendent being.

The emperor broke the deadlock.

Japan sent word to Washington.

It accepted the Potsdam
Declaration with one condition:

that it did not "prejudice
the prerogatives of His Majesty

as a sovereign ruler."

These prerogatives
would give the emperor

the power to prevent the U.S.

from demilitarizing
and democratizing Japan.

This was not the powerless,
symbolic emperor

like the king of England
that Togo...

And some of Truman's advisers...
Had imagined.

Japan's response
to the Potsdam Declaration

arrived in Washington August 10.

Even after two atomic bombs, no
one expected surrender so soon.

Secretary of War Stimson
dropped vacation plans

to attend a cabinet meeting.

Stimson took the lead.

He urged Truman to accept
the Japanese offer.

Stimson told Truman that
if we don't use the emperor

to obtain
an organized capitulation

of the Japanese armed forces,

we could be facing a score
of Iwo Jimas or Okinawas

across the Asian continent,

in Southeast Asia
and the Pacific,

and that's an analogy
to a casualty figure

somewhere between 600,000
and almost a million.

And Stimson isn't even talking
about the home islands.

Truman told his cabinet

that telegrams
he had already received

were overwhelmingly against
accepting Japan's offer.

To Secretary of State Byrnes,

these expressions
of public opinion mattered.

Byrnes said, "This will mean the
crucifixion of the president."

Wonderfully dramatic metaphor.

That is,
if the president accedes

to retaining the imperial system

and, presumably, the emperor,

he... the president... is
going to be destroyed at home.

This is the fear
of the backlash.

Byrnes got support
from an unexpected quarter.

Retaining the emperor
had been the idea

of Undersecretary of State
Joseph Grew

and Japan experts
in the State Department,

including Joseph Ballantine.

They were derided by some
as "emperor worshipers,"

but they knew
what Baron Hiranuma meant

by "imperial prerogatives."

Ballantine immediately...

He said,
"Oh, this is bad news."

This is "imperial prerogatives."

That means we are
going to maintain

the source
of Japanese militarism.

And that would be
in contradiction

with the basic objectives
of the United States.

Byrnes was in a tough position.

To reject Japan's offer
might prolong the war

and give the Soviets
a foothold in Japan

and a role in the occupation.

The response Byrnes drafted
for Truman

sidestepped the fate
of the emperor

but made it clear
he would not be in charge.

"From the moment of surrender,"
it read,

"the authority of the emperor
and the Japanese government

shall be subject to the Supreme
Commander, Allied powers."

When Byrnes's response
arrived in Japan,

the war cabinet was
once again split.

For three rancorous days,

General Anami led
those opposing surrender.

On August 14, the emperor
intervened once again

and imposed his will.

"It is my belief,"
he said with sadness,

"that continuation of the war
promises nothing

but additional destruction."

Just before midnight,
he recorded a surrender message.

Within the hour, junior officers
launched a coup d'état

with the murder of two leaders
of the palace guard.

The rebels ransacked
the Imperial Palace,

hoping to destroy
the surrender message.

They burned the homes
of Prime Minister Suzuki

and Baron Hiranuma, calling
them pro-American traitors.

General Anami never
condemned the coup,

but he never backed it.

Without his support,
it was doomed.

Anami's last act was that
of a proud Japanese warrior

who had fought his battle
and lost.

Anami's ritual suicide, I think,

was a very, very important
symbolic meaning,

because this is the end
of Imperial Army.

So that's a clean break.

This is the end of the army.

In a radio broadcast
at noon on August 15,

Japanese people heard something
they had never heard before:

their emperor's voice.

He never mentioned
"defeat" or "surrender."

In essence,
what the emperor says is

"Things didn't
quite go our way":

"The situation did not develop
to our advantage."

I mean, this is one
of the classic understatements

in world history.

When he looks around
at this ruined empire and says,

"Well, it didn't...
didn't quite go as we expected."

Well, okay.

It surely didn't.

This is totally devoid
of personal responsibility

or responsibility of Japan
causing that war.

He also specifically singles out
the atomic bomb

as being a reason
for the surrender,

saying that "the Americans are
so unusually cruel and savage

"that to spare humanity
from further such barbarities,

I will end the war."

The emperor,

who had worried about
a rebellion from his subjects,

helped insure his position
by posing as their savior.

I have received this afternoon

a message from
the Japanese government.

I deem this reply

a full acceptance
of the Potsdam Declaration,

which specifies

the unconditional
surrender of Japan.

In the reply,
there is no qualification.

Word of the Japanese surrender
would soon reach

anxious American forces
poised for the invasion.

You couldn't believe
how happy we were.

It was like getting a...

a death sentence revoked.

You know, it just...
it was wonderful.

The emperor directed
a special surrender message

to his armed forces.

He never mentioned the bomb

but stressed
the Soviet entry into the war.

From the standpoint
of securing their compliance,

Soviet intervention was
a far, far more potent argument.

The prospect
of massive Soviet armies

sweeping down across Asia
and confronting them

was a very real
and intimidating prospect.

I think the best explanation
of why the Japanese surrender is

it's because a whole series
of shocks that occur.

Both bombs were important.

And I think that
the Russian invasion

also is very important.

Hard to weight
which are more important,

but I think it's worth saying

that there's
a certain equality there,

that they are both
very important.

In explaining Japan's defeat,
Hirohito wrote to his son,

"Our military men placed
too much weight on spirit

and forgot about science."

His wife, Empress Nagako,
seemed to agree.

A few days after the surrender,
she wrote,

"Every day
from morning to night,

"B-29s, naval bombers
and fighters

"freely fly over the palace,
making an enormous noise.

"As I sit at my desk writing
and look up at the sky,

countless numbers
are passing over."

"Unfortunately," she added,
"the B-29 is a splendid plane."

There's more on
the victory in the Pacific

at American Experience Online.

Screen a 1945 film
on the bombing of Tokyo,

see maps of the Pacific war

and Q & A with historians.

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