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RACING THE ENEMY RACING THE ENEMY stalin, truman, and the surrender of japan tsuyoshi hasegawa the belknap press of harvard university press Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, England 2005 Copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi, 1941– Racing the enemy : Stalin, Truman, and the surrender of Japan / Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01693-9 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939–1945—Armistices. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Japan. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Soviet Union. 4. World War, 1939–1945— United States. 5. World politics—1933–1945. I. Title. D813.J3H37 2005 940.53′2452—dc22 2004059786 In memory of Boris Nikolaevich Slavinsky, my friend and colleague, who did not see the fruit of our collaboration Contents Maps viii Note on Transliteration and Spelling ix Introduction: Race to the Finish 1 1. Triangular Relations and the Pacific War 7 2. Stalin, Truman, and Hirohito Face New Challenges 45 3. Decisions for War and Peace 89 4. Potsdam: The Turning Point 130 5. The Atomic Bombs and Soviet Entry into the War 177 6. Japan Accepts Unconditional Surrender 215 7. August Storm: The Soviet-Japanese War and the United States 252 Conclusion: Assessing the Roads Not Taken 290 Abbreviations 307 Notes 309 Acknowledgments 363 Index 367 Illustrations follow pages 132 and 204 Maps 1 Japan at War, 1945 9 2 August Storm 196 3 Central Tokyo 246 4 Soviets’ Kuril Operation 257 5 Battle of Shimushu 261 Note on Transliteration and Spelling For Russian words, I have used the Library of Congress translitera- tion system except for well-known terms such as Yalta and Mikoyan when they appear in the text; in the citations, I retain Ialtinskaia konferentsiia and Mikoian. Soft signs in proper nouns are omitted in the text but retained in the notes; hence “Komsomolsk” instead of “Komsomol’sk.” I employ the strict Library of Congress transliteration system for the ending “ii” rather than the more popular ending “y”; hence “Maiskii” instead of “Maisky” and “Lozovskii” instead of “Lozovsky.” For Japanese words, I use the Hepburn transliteration system with some modifications; hence “Konoe” instead of the more commonly used “Konoye.” But I use “nenpyo” instead of the strict Hepburn rendering “nempyo.” In addition, I use an apostrophe in some cases for ease of reading; for instance, “Shun’ichi” instead of “Shunichi,” to separate “shun” and “ichi.” Macrons in Japanese names and terms are omitted. Japanese given names come before surnames in the text, but the or- der of surnames and given names follows the Japanese custom in the endnotes, except for Japanese authors of English- or Russian-language books and articles. For instance, Sadao Asada’s Japanese article is cited as “Asada Sadao,” but his English article is cited as “Sadao Asada.” For Chinese geographical names I use the Postal Atlas system. For Chi- nese personal names I follow contemporary style rather than the pinyin system; hence “Chiang Kai-shek” rather than “Jiang Jieshi,” and “T.V. Soong” rather than “Song Ziwen.” For proper names in direct quotes from original documents I retain the usage in the original, although these renderings may not conform to the system I use in the text. Thus, the “Kurils” may appear as the “Kuriles” and “Konoe” as “Konoye” in direct quotes. ix RACING THE ENEMY introduction Race to the Finish ixty years after the dropping of the atomic bomb and the Japa- Snese surrender, we still lack a clear understanding of how the Pacific War ended. Historians in the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union, the three crucial players in the drama of the war’s end, have focused on a small piece of a large picture: Americans on the atomic bomb, Japanese on how Emperor Hirohito decided to end the war, and Russians on So- viet military actions in the Far East. But a complete story has not yet been told. In the United States debate has continued as to whether the atomic bomb was directly responsible for Japan’s surrender. As the 1995 contro- versy over the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum reveals, the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Naga- saki continue to strike America’s raw nerves. But this debate has been strangely parochial, concerned almost entirely with the American story. The intense drama leading to Japan’s decision to surrender in the last days of the Pacific War has likewise fascinated the Japanese. Despite a continuous stream of publications on this subject, no serious scholarly work has critically analyzed Japan’s decision in the broader international context. Until now, Robert Butow’s study of Japan’s surrender has been the most complete scholarly analysis on the topic in both Japan and the United States.1 The works of Soviet historians bear the marks of the ideological strait- jacket the Marxist-Leninist state imposed during the postwar period. 1 2 Introduction These state-approved histories depict the end of the Pacific War as the concluding chapter of the Soviet’s Great Patriotic War, in which the USSR played the heroic role of liberating the oppressed peoples of Asia from the yoke of Japanese militarism and imperialism. During perestroika, some scholars began to look at their country’s history from a new per- spective. Despite the significant new materials that have become available in the wake of the Soviet collapse, however, Russian historians continue to adhere to the interpretations established during the Soviet period. Boris Slavinskii remains the notable exception.2 Significantly, American and Japanese historians have almost com- pletely ignored the role of the Soviet Union in ending the Pacific War. To be sure, the issue of whether the Truman administration viewed the use of the bomb as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviets has created a sharp division between revisionist and orthodox historians in the United States. Yet even here, the focus remains on Washington, and the main point of contention is over American perceptions of Soviet intentions. Standard accounts of the end of the Pacific War depict Soviet actions as a sideshow and assign to Moscow a secondary role at best. An International History This book closely examines the end of the Pacific War from an interna- tional perspective. It considers the complex interactions among the three major actors: the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan. The story consists of three subplots. The first is the combination of competition and cooperation that played out between Stalin and Truman in the war against Japan. Although the United States and the Soviet Union were al- lies, Stalin and Truman distrusted each other; each suspected that the other would be the first to violate the Yalta Agreement governing their re- lationship in the Far East. The Potsdam Conference, which met from July 17 to August 2, 1945, triggered a fierce race between the two leaders. While it became imperative for Truman to drop the atomic bomb to achieve Japan’s surrender before the Soviet entry into the war, it became equally essential for Stalin to invade Manchuria before Japan surren- dered. This book examines how the Allies’ Potsdam Proclamation issued to Japan, the atomic bombs, and the Soviet entry into the war were inter- twined to compel Japan’s acceptance of unconditional surrender. The Soviet-American rivalry is carried beyond the emperor’s accep- tance of unconditional surrender on August 14. Far from abating, Soviet military maneuvers in the Far East accelerated after Moscow learned of Introduction 3 Japan’s intention to surrender, a point often missed in existing accounts of the war’s end. It was only after Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam sur- render terms that Stalin ordered the Kuril and Hokkaido operations. While the Japanese were preparing to accept surrender, Stalin and Tru- man were engaged in an intense tug of war to gain an advantage in the postwar Far East. The second subplot is the tangled relationship between Japan and the Soviet Union, characterized by Japanese courtship and Soviet betrayal. The more the military situation deteriorated, the more Japanese policy- makers focused on the Soviet Union. For the army, determined to wage a last-ditch battle to defend the homeland, it became essential to keep the Soviet Union out of the war. For the peace party, the termination of the war through Moscow’s mediation seemed to offer the only alternative to unconditional surrender. At the same time, Japan’s overtures served Stalin’s interests by providing an opportunity to prolong the war long enough for the Soviets to join it. Even after the Potsdam Proclamation was issued, the Japanese clung to the hope that Moscow mediation would bring about more favorable surrender terms. Thus Soviet entry into the war shocked the Japanese even more than the atomic bombs be- cause it meant the end of any hope of achieving a settlement short of un- conditional surrender. Eventually, the fear of Soviet political influence in Japan’s occupation drove the emperor to accept unconditionally the Potsdam surrender terms. The third subplot is the fateful competition between the war party and the peace party within the Japanese government over the terms of surren- der. While Stalin and Truman were competing in a deadly race to achieve Japan’s surrender, Japanese policymakers were hopelessly divided into two camps: those who wanted to terminate the war as quickly as possible in order to save the emperor and the imperial house; and those who wanted to fight the last decisive battle against the enemy in the homeland to preserve the national spirit embodied in the emperor system.

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