CHAPTER TEN
I agreed to the showdown battle of Leyte thinking that if we attacked at Leyte and America flinched, then we would probably be able to find room to negotiate.
—Emperor Hirohito, 1946
JAPAN'S PLAN for victory against the United States in World War II was straightforward. Run up a string of decisive victories in the first several months of war, smash American military and naval power in the Pacific, establish a stout defensive perimeter, and then present America with the prospect of a long and bloody war. Japan hoped that America would become discouraged and sue for peace, accepting a Japanese empire covering most of the Pacific and East Asia. Japan understood America’s tremendous industrial advantages, and recognized that in a long war, America would eventually be able to wield considerable material superiority.
The plan did not work. America withstood the first six months of Japanese advances, after which Japan achieved no major victories for the remaining three years of the war. Oddly, Japan did not react to its steady downward slide during these three years by seeking to end the war. It did not even open war-termination negotiations until the very last days of war in August 1945.
This is a puzzle. According to the information proposition of chapter 2, the combination of American military victories and the absence of American concessions should have as early as 1942 begun to convince Japan that its initial plan for victory was not going to work. Japan should have improved its assessment of American power and resolve. Further, Japan should have opened negotiations with the United States and offered concessions with the aim of seeking a limited end to the war. However, Japan remained silent until the very end.
In some regards, Japan in World War II is similar to the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Neither Japan nor the CSA sought the absolute defeat of its adversary, and each wanted to achieve its aims by inflicting costs sufficient to coerce its adversary into making critical concessions: accepting the Japanese empire and accepting CSA independence, respectively. As described in chapter 8, commitment credibility fears discouraged the CSA from considering concessions because the CSA feared the Union would renege on any moderate terms. Japan faced a different problem, since the United States demanded unconditional surrender essentially from the outset (see chapter 5), meaning there was not even an American suggestion of moderate terms for them to consider. So, why did the Japanese fight to the very end without offering concessions or even opening negotiations with the United States?
The central answer to this puzzle is that after the June 1942 Battle of Midway, Japanese leaders became convinced that Japan could not enter into negotiations, much less offer concessions, until it had scored an additional major battle victory. The U.S. demanded unconditional surrender, and because Japan had no hope of inflicting absolute defeat on the U.S., Japan’s only hope of pushing the U.S. to abandon unconditional surrender was to raise American estimates of the costs of pursuing unconditional surrender. Hence, consistent with the logic laid out in chapter 3, commitment and information dynamics interacted, as credible commitment fears pushed the U.S. to pursue absolute victory (as described in chapter 5), but Japan hoped to make the attainment of absolute victory a prohibitively expensive luxury, similar to how the threat of nuclear escalation after the November 1950 Chinese intervention in the Korean War made the pursuit of absolute victory in that war prohibitively expensive for the United States. Japan believed it could only accomplish this goal of raising U.S. cost estimates of pursuing unconditional surrender by winning at least one decisive battle. Entering negotiations with the U.S. before attaining a decisive victory would doom such an effort to failure, as without itself facing a battlefield setback the U.S. would not deviate from its commitment to unconditional surrender. Worse, offering an olive branch might also stiffen American resolve to continue, as suggesting negotiations might be taken as a sign that Japanese resolve was flagging. Japan waited for a great victory to allow it to negotiate from a position of strength, a victory that never came.
THE JAPANESE STRATEGY FOR VICTORY
Even before Pearl Harbor, many in the Japanese government recognized America’s industrial superiority, and conceded that Japan could not win a long war with the United States. Japan’s strategy for victory was not to seek the literal conquest of the U.S. but rather to accumulate enough initial combat successes and to promise enough future punishment to persuade the United States to accept a massive Japanese Asian and Pacific empire and seek peace. At a September 6, 1941 Imperial Conference, this strategy was laid out as follows: “Although America’s total defeat is judged utterly impossible, it is not inconceivable that a shift in American public opinion due to our victories in Southeast Asia or to England’s surrender might bring the war to an end.”1 The leadership developed a strategy of inflicting a string of defeats on American forces, establishing a strong defensive perimeter in the Central Pacific, and then presenting to the United States and the American public in particular the prospect of a long and bloody conflict. The American public could not stomach a long and costly war, Japanese thinking went, and faced with such a war the public would force the American government to seek terms and accept an extensive Japanese empire.2 Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto put it colorfully: “One thing we could do now is disperse as many submarines as possible around the South Pacific so as to make the other side feel they’ve been set upon by a swarm of hornets. If the hornets around it buzz loudly enough, even a hefty animal like a horse or a cow will get worried, at least. American public opinion has always been very changeable, so the only hope is to make them feel as soon as possible that it’s no use tackling a swarm of lethal stingers.”3
Japan began the war with substantial war aims, seeking to expand the Japanese empire as far east as the central Pacific, as far south as Australia, as far west as India, and as far north as the Aleutian Islands. In the six months following Pearl Harbor, Japan rolled up a string of victories that helped advance these goals. In early March 1942, it reaffirmed its prewar strategy, committing to expanding its Pacific offensive to break the American will to fight.4 The limits of Japan’s World War II conquests are illustrated in figure 10.1.
The tide turned against Japan in mid-1942. In May, American forces turned back the planned Japanese landing at Port Moresby in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Soon after, American forces inflicted substantial damage on Japanese naval and air assets and rebuffed an invasion force headed for the island of Midway. In August, American forces invaded Guadalcanal, marking the beginning of America’s island-hopping campaign. The decline in Japanese military ventures was slow but steady over the next three years, as in particular the American island-hopping campaign enjoyed success and slowly marched westward. The vulnerability of the Japanese home islands to aerial attacks accelerated in 1944–45, with the capture of the islands of Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. August 1945 saw the twin blows of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan. At last, in mid-August Japan abandoned its dreams of empire and surrendered.
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THE JAPANESE QUEST TO NEGOTIATE FROM STRENGTH
What was the nature of Japanese war-termination behavior? The information proposition from chapter 2 predicts that the string of defeats from summer 1942 forward should have reduced the divergence of the expectations of the two sides about the future course of the war, and in particular should have pushed Japan to make concessions in an attempt to end the war short of absolute defeat. However, Japan made no official concessions and did not even open negotiations with the Allies until August 11, 1945, after the two atomic bombings and the Soviet entry into the war, when Japan offered a conditional acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation. Notably, the lack of peace negotiations between Japan and the Allies was not a product of the absence of diplomatic contacts, as there were discussions about peace settlement terms between a Japanese naval officer and U.S. intelligence in Switzerland, but as late as May 1945 the Tokyo government refused to use this conduit.5
Importantly, the Japanese leadership was not blind to its declining military fortunes. As early as February 1942, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Koichi Kido expressed to Emperor Hirohito his concerns that the war would not end in swift success given the inevitable rise in American military strength, and that the Pearl Harbor attack had had the unexpected effect of unifying American opinion in support of the war.6 In late 1945 interviews with American officials, a number of Japanese naval officers, including Admiral Soema Toyoda, Navy Minister and Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff Osami Nagano, Rear Admiral Toshitane Takata, and Admiral Kichisaburo ̄ Nomura, indicated that they considered the June 1942 defeat at Midway and/or the successful 1942 U.S. invasion of Guadalcanal to be the turning points of the war.7 As the war progressed, the Japanese leadership recognized a variety of danger signs, including growing American material superiority, the steady destruction of the Japanese naval and maritime fleet by American submarines, and the rapid American construction of airfields in the central Pacific. The military leadership saw that Japan was in danger of losing the Solomons and New Guinea area, the Marshall and Caroline Islands, the two Aleutian islands it had seized, and the Burma–Sumatra–Java defensive perimeter. Worrisomely, the loss of these areas could expose the Japanese home islands to American bombing.8 Even archhawk Prime Minister Hideki Tojo began to temper his public optimism.9
The Emperor’s confidence in Japanese military prospects began to ebb after Midway. Following a major sea battle in late October 1942, Hirohito issued a message congratulating the navy for sinking the American aircraft carrier Hornet and a destroyer, but tempered his message by remarking that “the war situation is critical. Officers and men, exert yourselves to even greater efforts.”10 In the latter half of 1942, Hirohito’s recognition that the Japanese-held island of Guadalcanal was doomed to American capture coupled with his concerns about Axis fortunes in Europe encouraged him to cancel Operation Gogo ̄, a major ground offensive in China.11 Through early 1943, the Emperor remained very concerned about the course of the war, in part because of Germany’s worsening fortunes.12
The Japanese leadership reacted to these adverse developments from mid-1942 on by adjusting its military strategy and ambitions, rather than by opening negotiations with the Allies and/or offering concessions. In reaction to Allied successes, the Japanese leadership de facto retracted its war ambitions, without formally declaring a reduction of demands as part of negotiations with the Allies. Following the first American victory at Midway in early June 1942, Japan canceled plans to invade the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa, and plans to expand into the Indian Ocean.13 As noted, they soon after canceled a major offensive in China.
On September 30, 1943, the Japanese leadership approved the establishment and reinforcement of an “absolute defense perimeter.” The goal was to strengthen Japan’s defenses in preparation for the coming Allied offensive (see figure 10.1). This new perimeter was a reduction of territory in comparison to the high water mark of Japanese expansion in mid1942, and included only the Japanese home islands, the Kuriles, the Bonin Islands, Iwo Jima, the Marianas, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean. It excluded Rabaul, the central Solomons, eastern New Guinea, the Marshalls, Makin, and Tarawa. This move recognized Allied successes, the growing threat of further Allied advances, and finite Japanese resources. Regarding this last point, forces on mainland Asia were transferred to the new absolute defense perimeter in the Pacific.14 Not all saw this shift as a panacea. At the meeting where the leadership proclaimed this new defensive perimeter, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Naval Staff General Admiral Nagano stated that even with a new perimeter and even if annual aircraft production more than doubled to 40,000 aircraft per year, “I cannot assure the future of the war situation.”15 Two months later, Rear Admiral So ̄kichi Takagi assembled and presented to two other high-ranking naval officers a comprehensive report on the war, which concluded that Japan could not win.16
Japan’s military fortunes did not improve significantly over the next several months. A June 1944 report from the army general staff’s Conduct of War Section conceded that there was “now no hope to reverse the unfavourable war situation.”17 The July 1944 fall of Saipan was recognized by all as a major setback, convincing the army leadership that the war was lost. The defeat forced Emperor Hirohito to remove Prime Minister Tojo from power.18
In reaction to its decline in military fortunes, Japan also sought to amass more power. To that end, it recognized that it would need greater cooperation from other Asians. Japan decided in 1943 to offer more rights and independence to Japanese-controlled areas in China and Southeast Asia in the hopes that under better political conditions Asians would be more willing to contribute to the war effort against the Allies. Like Lincoln’s decision to free the slaves, Japan was manipulating its (colonial) war aims in order to increase its military power.19
Why did Japan not offer concessions to the Allies as these battle defeats accumulated? A cluster of factors contributed to Japan’s refusal to negotiate as it approached literal immolation. Centrally, the Japanese leadership took American demands of unconditional surrender as genuine rather than as strategic posturing. For some, such as Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, the reiteration of the unconditional surrender demand in the Allies’ December 1943 Cairo Declaration confirmed Allied aims.20 The Japanese deeply opposed unconditional surrender, as they at all costs wanted to maintain the institution and personal safety of the Emperor and the integrity of the Japanese polity (kokutai) more generally.21 As late as July 12, 1945 the Emperor ruled out the option of direct negotiations with the United States, knowing that the U.S. demanded unconditional surrender, which would mean the destruction of the kokutai.22 As the U.S. steadily marched across the Pacific from mid-1942 forward without any major setbacks, the U.S. gave no indications that it was ready to back down from its unconditional surrender demand. Hence, Japan had no motivation to offer concessions, as Japan perceived that concessions would not be reciprocated by an Allied abandonment of unconditional surrender. Further, as discussed in chapter 2, the mere act of offering concessions might be taken as a signal of Japanese weakness.
If Japan could not use negotiations to get the U.S. to retreat from its unconditional surrender demand, what options were left for saving the Emperor and the kokutai? The outright conquest of the United States was inconceivable even to the most deluded militarist. This left as Japan’s only option persuading the U.S. to abandon its demand for unconditional surrender. Japan had to somehow convince the U.S. that pursuing unconditional surrender would be prohibitively costly. If the U.S. reached that conclusion, it might then be ready to make concessions. This was a natural evolution of Japanese strategy from the beginning of the war, when it hoped to threaten a war long and bloody enough to persuade the Americans to accept the new Japanese empire. Now, as that empire was being broken by American industrial might and a string of successful island campaigns, Japan sought to persuade America that the last phase of conquering Japan itself would be extraordinarily costly, enough so that America would have to accept the endurance of the Japanese monarchy, albeit one shorn of much of its Asian and Pacific conquests.
The Japanese believed that winning a decisive battle was the best and perhaps only way to persuade the U.S. that pursuing unconditional surrender would be unacceptably costly. The idea that a decisive battle could turn the course of the war and break the will of the opponent was perhaps driven by the Japanese interpretation of the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War, during which the Japanese victory at the naval battle of Tsushima was seen as the critical blow forcing Russian capitulation.23 In the late December 1942 discussion about withdrawing from Guadalcanal, the Emperor urged Japanese military leaders to work towards achieving a victory over American forces that would move the Allies to negotiate.24 This approach pushed the Emperor to put heavy emphasis on offensive tactics especially in late 1942 and 1943, looking to capture a decisive victory in the face of setbacks in the South Pacific.25 Indeed, as conditions continued to worsen in mid-1944, the Emperor’s reaction was not to consider concessions to the Allies as the information proposition posits, but rather to seek a decisive victory as at Tsushima. He exhorted Vice Chief of Staff Admiral Shigetaro Shimada on June 17, 1944, “Rise to the challenge; make a tremendous effort; achieve a splendid victory like at the time of the Japan Sea naval battle [of Tsushima].”26 Talking after the war about the October 1944 decision to fight a major battle at Leyte in the Philippines, Hirohito remarked, “I agreed to the showdown battle of Leyte thinking that if we attacked at Leyte and America flinched, then we would probably be able to find room to negotiate.”27
Many in the Japanese government opposed negotiation until after a great victory had been won. In early January 1944, Kido developed a proposal for opening negotiations, but opposed presenting the proposal to the Allies if Germany collapsed. That is, negotiations could not be risked in the context of growing Japanese weakness.28 That fall, Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso framed Japanese strategy in this manner at a meeting of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, that Japan would negotiate an end to the war after achieving one decisive victory. For Koiso, the alternative of negotiating terms right after Saipan would have doomed Japan to “merciless terms,” and perhaps a serious domestic political crisis. The Council officially approved Koiso’s plan in August 1944.29 Around this time, the Japanese leadership laid out a specific plan, called Sho-Go, for achieving such a decisive victory, aiming to lure American forces into a decisive battle in one of four areas, the Philippines, Formosa (Taiwan) and the Ryukyu Islands, the Japanese home islands other than Hokkaido, and/or Hokkaido itself.30
By early 1945, Japanese strategy began to focus on preparing for a decisive battle on the Japanese home islands. On January 20, the Emperor approved a new strategy that called for the use of the home islands for the final decisive battle of the war, again as part of the larger strategy of creating the proper conditions for inducing American retreat from its unconditional surrender demands.31 On February 14, 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe urged immediate negotiation to end the war, but Hirohito disagreed, noting that ending the war would be “very difficult unless we make one more military gain.”32 Hirohito placed his faith in particular on the ability of Japanese spiritual superiority to trump American military superiority, and on Japanese kamikaze tactics.33 Around this time, General Yoshijiro Umezu and the navy advocated luring the U.S. into a decisive battle off of Taiwan, as a decisive Japanese victory would then make negotiations possible.34 At the same time, the Imperial General Headquarters drew up a report emphasizing that Japanese military weakness could be offset by exploiting American casualty sensitivity. This idea was the center of the Ketsu-go defense strategy adopted in March.35 In June 1945, General Korechika Anami, the Army Minister, demurred on a suggestion from Kido to immediately negotiate an end to the war, commenting that a diplomatic initiative would be more likely to succeed if it was launched “after the United States has sustained heavy losses.”36 Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki agreed with Anami, at least initially.37 The army leaders understood the great material disadvantage they faced, but they felt that they could accomplish the political goal of encouraging American concessions only by promising exorbitant costs. The Imperial General Headquarters staff held out hope for this strategy in mid-1945, after Germany had surrendered:
The enemy is mustering enormous and overwhelming military power for use against us; the issue will be joined between now and next spring. Although Japan is faced with an exceedingly precarious overall situation, certain circumstances are working to her advantage. While the end of the war in Europe has given the USA a comfortable reserve of national war potential, industrial mobilization and reconversion have already begun, due to the desire to grab postwar profits. The fighting morale of the United States is being weakened by fear of large casualty tolls. There has been an increase in labor strife, criticism of the military, and agitation from the ranks to engage in a precipitous demobilization. Should the USA be defeated in the battle for Japan itself, public confidence in the President and military leaders will decline abruptly, fighting spirit will deteriorate in the flurry of recriminations, and Japan will find herself in a much more favorable strategic position.38
The chief of the Japanese intelligence section, Lieutenant General Arisue Seizo, told American interrogators after the end of the war: “If we could defeat the enemy in Kyushu or inflict tremendous losses, forcing him to realize the strong fighting spirit of the Japanese Army and people, it would be possible, we hoped, to bring about the termination of hostilities on comparatively favorable terms.”39 Notably, although the army hoped to use the invasion of Japan as its last, best opportunity for inflicting a decisive defeat on the U.S., the navy had abandoned its optimism for such an outcome after the June 1945 loss of Okinawa, at which its surface fleet was destroyed and its air strength decimated.40
The obsession with demonstrating strength led to some odd perceptions within the Japanese leadership. Indeed, as late as early August 1945 (although before Hiroshima) some in Japan interpreted the July 26 Allied Potsdam Declaration, which called for unconditional surrender, disarmament, regime change, military occupation, and the prosecution of war criminals, as an indication of buckling Allied resolve because it also allowed for the possibility of Japan reentering the world economy. Prime Minister Suzuki remarked on August 3 (three days before the first atomic bombing), “For the enemy to say something like that means circumstances have arisen that force them also to end the war. That is why they are talking about unconditional surrender. Precisely at a time like this, if we hold firm, then they will yield before we do. Just because they broadcast their declaration, it is not necessary to stop fighting. You advisors may ask me to reconsider, but I don’t think there is any need to stop [the war].”41
The strategy of trying to convince America that pursuing total victory would be too costly had a dark side for Japan. Because Japan could at this stage only inflict costs through ground combat (as opposed to bombing the American mainland), part of the signal about the high costs of continued war would have to be that Japan would be willing to accept high costs in its effort to inflict high costs on the U.S. This point was made rather bluntly by the War Journal of Imperial Headquarters after the failure in the Marianas in July 1944, “We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan’s one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight.”42 Similarly, Prince Higashikuni remarked, “If Japan’s determination to be annihilated is comprehended abroad, then Britain, America, and Russia might hesitate to wage a battle to the finish with us, and might reconsider matters.”43 As a result, by 1945 high Japanese casualties in campaigns such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa supported the Japanese strategy since the Japanese willingness to suffer such casualties without offering concessions offered proof to the U.S. that Japan would be willing to suffer exorbitant casualties in the defense of its homeland, as it sought to slaughter the invading American troops.
In sum, Japan framed its war-termination strategy in informational terms: its central military objective was to win a major battle in order to convince the United States that Japan could inflict high casualties if the war continued, and it wanted to avoid sending a signal of Japanese weakness by making concessions following battle defeat. However, the information proposition in chapter 2 does not describe Japanese wartermination behavior well. Because the Allies enjoyed relatively steady military success from mid-1942 onwards, the Japanese should have made concessions, but they did not. Rather, they refused to take any real diplomatic steps towards ending the war until they achieved a great battle victory. Perhaps ironically, at least some on the American side upheld the same view, that concessions should be considered only after victory. That is why Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy rejected an internal proposal in May 1945 to lower the American war-termination offer below unconditional surrender, because Okinawa had not yet been conquered. McCloy felt that an American concession before victory might send a signal of weakening resolve, especially in the context of the stalwart and bloody resistance then being offered by Japanese forces at Okinawa.44
A SOBER RECOGNITION OF IMPENDING DEFEAT
Slowly, the course of combat events became sufficiently clear that the Japanese leadership at last began to see the need for negotiations even without a decisive battlefield victory. A crucial event for many was the American capture of the island of Okinawa in June 1945. Kido saw in June that negotiations could not wait for a decisive victory, but rather that negotiations should begin immediately before things worsened even further and Japan might “not attain even our supreme objective of safeguarding the Imperial Household and preserving the national polity.”45 When Chief of Staff Umezu laid out his thoughts on peace negotiations in June, the Emperor asked him directly if he meant that peace moves should be delayed “until after we strike yet another blow at the enemy.” Umezu indicated that that was not what he meant.46
Hirohito finally decided formally at a June 22 conference to pursue a negotiated peace using the Soviet Union as an intermediary. The significance of this decision should not be exaggerated, however, since no consensus was reached by the top leadership as to what terms for peace would be offered to the Allies or even what terms would be acceptable for Japan.47 The decision can be seen as partially supportive of the information proposition from chapter 2, in that battlefield setbacks eventually moved the Japanese to consider concessions, but it is evidence of the inefficiency of battlefield information towards causing diplomatic movement because the decision to negotiate was made after three consecutive years of bad military fortunes. Also, the decision itself was limited, in that no actual concessions were decided upon, and the decision was only to open negotiations to draw the participation of a third-party mediator, as opposed to opening negotiations directly with the adversary.
The decisive change in Japanese war-termination behavior came in the second week of August, after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, attacking Japanese forces in Manchuria. These events all happened within four days, from August 6–9, and on August 10 Japan decided to accept the Potsdam Proclamation, which essentially demanded unconditional surrender, with the proviso that the “prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler” not be compromised.48 The United States in its reply (the so-called “Byrnes Note”) finessed the Japanese condition, holding to the letter of the Potsdam Proclamation, but repeating that the Proclamation allowed for the Japanese form of government to be chosen by the Japanese people. This vague assurance of the protection of the Emperor ultimately proved sufficient for Japan, and Hirohito broadcast Japan’s surrender on August 15.
Scholars differ on exactly why Japan surrendered, with most arguing that surrender was caused by the atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war, the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine, and/or the collapse in Japanese confidence in its homeland defenses.49 Lack of faith in homeland defenses was especially damaging to the Japanese strategy, which was predicated on the ability to inflict high casualties on American forces invading the home islands. Hirohito and other members of the Japanese government had grown increasingly pessimistic about the ability of Japanese forces to achieve a decisive victory against American invasion forces, and correspondingly became increasingly willing to end the war. On June 12 and 13, 1945, Hirohito received a pair of reports declaring preparations for defense of the home islands to be severely inadequate. One report concluded that the war must be ended immediately.50 These and other reports were steadily undermining the army’s claims of strong invasion preparedness.51 Two months later, after the decision to surrender had been made, Hirohito told the imperial princes that one reason for the decision was because he had lost faith in the military due to its record since the 1944 Leyte operation.52
Importantly, these interpretations, attributing the surrender to the atomic bombings, to Soviet entry into the war, and to lack of Japanese confidence in Japanese defensive capabilities, offer evidence favoring the information proposition.53 The atomic bombings provided new evidence of American military superiority, and critically the American ability to punish Japan without suffering (American) casualties. The Soviet intervention provided information that Japanese hopes for Soviet mediation were now completely baseless, provided new information about the balance of forces facing Japan, and undermined confidence in the effectiveness of Japanese ground forces, which would be used to parry an American invasion of the home islands.
However, looking at the entire war provides a more nuanced view of the role of information in war termination. The information proposition of chapter 2, that combat outcomes affect war-termination decisionmaking, was unsupported over much of the war, given the Japanese refusal to negotiate in the face of a steady course of military setbacks. Notably, the American decision to make the slight concession on unconditional surrender is inconsistent with the information proposition of chapter 2, as in the face of good military and diplomatic news (the successful atomic bombings and the Soviet entry into the war), the information proposition would predict that the U.S. would hold fast to its demands, and not make concessions. Secretary of State James Byrnes made this exact point that the concession was being offered as both sides were collecting more information about the decline in relative Japanese military capability, fretting that “at Potsdam [in June 1945] the big-3 said ‘unconditional surrender.’ Then there was [no] atomic bomb and no Russia in the war. I cannot understand why now we should go further than we were willing to go at Potsdam when we had no atomic bomb, and Russia was not in the war.”54 However, Japanese refusal to negotiate even in the face of military decline can be put in an information framework, albeit one different from that described in the information proposition of chapter 2. The Japanese ignored their setbacks not because they were indifferent about sending signals, but because they knew that to do otherwise might send a signal, specifically a signal of weakness. Simultaneously, the Japanese sought to send a signal of their own, winning a decisive battle to send a credible signal of their military power. As described in chapter 3, Japan thought that if they could convince the Americans that pursuit of unconditional surrender would be prohibitively costly, perhaps the Americans would accept a deal leaving the Japanese imperial leadership in place, their credible commitment fears notwithstanding.
JAPANESE DOMESTIC POLITICS AND THE TERMINATION OF THE PACIFIC WAR
What of the role of domestic politics? Like World War I Germany, World War II Japan was a moderately repressive, semi-exclusionary state, making relevant the Goemans domestic politics proposition that leaders of such states may raise their war aims and/or engage in gambles for resurrection to maintain their holds on power and avoid severe personal punishment.55 In both World War I Germany and World War II Japan, there was a monarch with limited powers, a formal parliament with limited powers, and jockeying among special interest groups and military branches in particular for control of foreign policy. In both regimes, democracy and freedom deteriorated as war progressed.56 Although World War II Japan was certainly not a democracy, it also should not be classed as a dictatorship. No single individual (or branch of the military) ruled Japan as Hitler did in Nazi Germany or Stalin did in the Soviet Union, although Prime Minister Tojo began to aggregate political power before he fell from power in 1944. Although the party system had been essentially abolished, there was a quasi-democratic structure called the Imperial Rule Assistance Association established in 1940, which held elections in April 1942. Although officially recommended candidates ran in these elections, nonrecommended candidates did run and sometimes even won. Wartime prime ministers, including Tojo, were neither all-powerful nor puppets. There was political repression of the opposition, although not as severe as in Nazi Germany, as political opponents such as Communists who were imprisoned were released after renouncing their political beliefs. There were no concentration camps, and no extermination of opposition figures. One former parliamentary member actively attempted to overthrow (peacefully) the Tojo government in 1943, and although he was initially imprisoned he was soon released by judicial order. There was also jostling among factions within the government, including between the army and navy, and between the civil bureaucracy and the military.57
Domestic political institutions aside, Goemans’ theory should apply well to World War II Japan. The war was fought over private goods (economic empire), the war was long, the costs of war escalated as the war progressed, and Japan suffered a steady string of military setbacks from mid-1942 forward. Goemans’ theory should predict that as the war continued and the costs of war escalated, the Japanese leadership ought to have increased its war aims in order to increase the payoffs to coalition members to maintain political support. Although Japan’s bid for empire was already ambitious, it could have expanded its war aims further by seeking greater territorial conquests in India, the Soviet Union, or North America. Or, the mixed regime hypothesis might predict that Japan could have decided in 1944–45 to abandon its 1943 “absolute defensive perimeter,” reestablishing its more extensive imperial goals of 1941–42. Further, Japan might have engaged in a risky military strategy, a gamble for resurrection, in a desperate effort to secure a decisive war victory providing substantial territorial or other gains at the risk of increasing the chances of total defeat.
Contrary to the predictions of the theory, none of these patterns of behavior came to pass. Japan did not increase and if anything decreased its de facto war aims as its military fortunes declined. In other words, as the war progressed the leadership took actions that reduced the amount of private goods it would have at its disposal to distribute to coalition supporters. It trimmed its expansion plans following the defeat at Midway in 1942, and canceled an offensive in China. It decreased its war aims by deciding in September 1943 to fall back to its absolute defense perimeter, and did not reverse this decision in the last years of the war. Further, perhaps in contrast to the Goemans hypothesis, the Japanese leadership was willing to make concessions, including concessions on economically profitable private goods. In 1943, the Emperor instructed Foreign Minister Shigemitsu that retention of the colonies should not stand in the way of a speedy end to the war.58 In January 1944, Tojo announced an agreement with the pro-Japanese Wang-Ching Wei regime in Nanking, China in which Japan abandoned its treaty-port settlements and extraterritorial privileges in China. It was hoped that doing so would allow the redirection of troops from China to the Pacific.59 In September 1944, the Japanese leadership approved a number of concessions to the Soviet Union to improve Soviet–Japanese relations and secure Soviet mediation, including offering maritime and commercial fishing concessions, abandoning the Chinese Eastern Railway, returning southern Sakhalin, surrendering the Northern Kurils, exiting the Anti-Communist Pact and the Tripartite Pact, permitting peaceful Soviet activities in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, China, and elsewhere in East Asia, and recognizing Soviet spheres of influence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.60 Similar concessions were offered to the Soviet Union in July 1945 talks between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Japanese ambassador to Moscow Naotoke Sato.61 Around the same time, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo declared in secret correspondence that in war-termination negotiations mediated by Moscow Japan would declare that it “has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war.”62
On the military strategy side, Japan did not engage in any gambles for resurrection. Three strategies are worth discussing as possible gambles for the resurrection of Japan during the 1944–45 period. The first is a Japanese diplomatic gambit to secure a favorable Soviet attitude, either a renewed commitment to neutrality, mediation of a negotiated termination, and/or an alliance with Japan. One Japanese military officer who favored the approach to the USSR framed Japanese diplomacy as a gamble. In an April 29, 1945 report circulated at very high levels, Colonel Suketaka Tamemura compared the Japanese position to a sumo wrestler nearly pushed out of the ring. The wrestler’s only hope of victory is a desperate backwards move with only a one-in-ten chance of success. For Tamemura, Japan was in such a situation, and needed to pursue the improbable gamble of securing a favorable Soviet attitude in order to win the war.63 Although Japan did attempt to engage Soviet mediation from at least late 1944 onward, this was not truly a gamble as intended here. Despite it being a strategy with a low probability of success, it was a maneuver without danger, especially since—when the Japanese did approach the Soviets—they did not present an actual set of concessions they wished the Soviets to pass on to the Allies. Further, the Soviet gambit would not have fit well with Goemans’ theory, as the Japanese were offering substantial economic concessions to attract Soviet interest, but within Goemans’ theory the point of the gamble for resurrection was to secure decisive victory and acquire more economic gains for distribution to coalition members.
The second possible gamble-for-resurrection candidate is the strategy of launching kamikaze missions. Kamikaze missions, suicide attacks by Japanese aircraft and naval vessels against American naval vessels in particular, are in some sense the definition of desperation, foregoing conventional attacks in the hope that suicidally ramming the enemy might more effectively degrade enemy forces. However, Japanese suicide attacks did not constitute a gamble for resurrection, either, for the simple reason that these attacks were a relatively efficient use of Japanese military resources.64 By 1943 especially, Japanese air forces were suffering from increasing barriers to effective operations, including steep declines in the number and quality of Japanese pilots, improvements in interception by American fighter aircraft, and the development of the proximity fuse for anti-aircraft shells. Kamikaze tactics reduced some of these problems since such attacks could be conducted with more basic flying skills and more obsolete aircraft. Further, a Japanese plane struck by a proximityfused shell could still ram its target, although it would likely be unable to deliver a bomb or strafe its target.65 Kamikaze attacks inflicted heavy damage on U.S. forces. Air attacks sank or put permanently out of action 164 Allied vessels. Another eighty-five experienced substantial structural damage, human casualties, or both, and minor damage was inflicted on a further 221. About sixty kamikazes collided with B-29 bombers in midair. Suicide boats sank eight small vessels, heavily damaged an additional eight, and caused minor damage to seven. Human torpedoes known as kaiten sank two vessels.66 More casualties were caused by suicide attacks on U.S. vessels off Okinawa than were inflicted on U.S. troops fighting on the ground there.67 Consider also the results of a conventional air–sea battle fought off Formosa on October 15, 1944. The Japanese Navy heavily damaged two American cruisers at a cost of 126 aircraft, in comparison with a kamikaze attack ten days later that sank one aircraft carrier and damaged six others at a cost of sixteen aircraft.68 Two historians have asserted that in the face of kamikaze attacks, “No other power [aside from the United States] could have sustained such losses and continued to fight an offensive naval war.”69 One might rebut that it was mere luck that kamikaze attacks just happened to work, and that it was a true gamble to see if they would succeed. However, kamikaze attacks were relatively low in cost, because attacks were launched initially in a very piecemeal fashion, so the utter failure of the attacks would have meant the loss of a very small number of men and aircraft. In contrast, Germany’s 1918 Operation Michael and December 1944 Ardennes offensives were more committing, as each required the decisive commitment of final reserves, and the failure of the attack would (and did) mean exhaustion and rapid military collapse. Also, Germany’s 1917 unrestricted submarine warfare was politically committing, since the diplomatic risks of incurring American involvement in the war were incurred as soon as the campaign began.
A third possible gamble-for-resurrection tactic would have been the widespread use by Japan of biological weapons against Allied troops or civilians. Japan had a massive biological weapons program, probably the most substantial of any belligerent in history. It could have deployed biological weapons towards the end of the war as a desperate gambit, increasing the chances for victory by inflicting massive casualties, but also increasing the chances of decisive defeat by steeling the resolve of the Americans to fight to the finish and prosecute Japanese political and military leaders for war crimes.70
However, Japan did not embrace biological weapons only as their fortunes worsened in 1944 and 1945. The Japanese leadership approved the use of biological weapons against American troops in the first months of war, during the initial period of great Japanese success. Plans were drawn up as early as March 1942 for the deployment of 1,000 kilograms of fleas infected with the plague against Allied troops in the Philippines, although Japanese forces achieved victory there before the fleas were ready for dispersal. Other plans for the use of biological weapons were also considered. Further, when defeat did loom in 1945, Japan ultimately declined to use biological weapons against American civilians. In March 1945, the Japanese Chiefs of Staff approved operation “Cherry Blossoms at Night,” a plan to use submarine-launched planes and ship-borne commandos to distribute cholera and bubonic plague among civilian populations in southern California. The head of the chiefs of staff, Umezu, canceled the operation before it could be carried out because he recognized that such a mission would accomplish no military objectives and would only stoke American fury.71
A further question is whether internal political dynamics within Japan fit the hypothesized internal processes forecast by the Goemans hypothesis. Did Hirohito and the Japanese leadership fear they would be thrown from power in the event of moderate defeat? Did they fear that such an eventuality would cause them to suffer severe political punishment such as death or imprisonment?
Japanese leaders did not make domestic political calculations in this manner. There was a fear of domestic internal threat, but the leaders believed this threat would be heightened by continuing the privations of war, not from terminating the war with insufficient private goods to distribute. As early as February 1943 in the aftermath of the defeat at Guadalcanal, Prince Konoe expressed the view, to the agreement of Kido and Marquis Matsudaira, that immediate war termination was imperative to prevent the emergence of a Communist threat within Japan.72 Konoe returned to this point two years later when the war looked much worse, urging Hirohito to begin war-termination negotiations immediately to avert a Communist revolution, which might overthrow the kokutai, because of growing economic strains and popular discontent.73 Although Hirohito rejected Konoe’s suggestion, he did recognize (in February 1945) the dangers in letting the war continue indefinitely, remarking later that day, “If we persist in this war, I’m absolutely convinced of victory, but until then I worry whether or not the people will be able to endure.”74 Domestic political threats were discussed at an April 4 meeting, at which Kido fretted that the recent surge in antimilitarism could lead to public upheaval.75An official high-level report issued in May 1945 worried about the possibility of worsening food shortages and even famines that might undermine domestic order.76 On July 11, internal correspondence from the Foreign Minister declared that the government was moving to terminate the war “because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad.”77 Indeed, the Emperor’s intervention on August 10 to command conditional acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was motivated by concerns over threats of domestic upheaval from the continued privations of war, as well as fears of the atomic bomb and Soviet intervention.78 In the high-level deliberations following the Nagasaki bombing and Soviet intervention, Baron Kiichiro ̄ Hiranuma expressed grave concern about domestic conditions and food shortages in particular. He predicted that the “continuation of the war will create greater domestic disturbances than would termination of the war.” Prime Minister Suzuki concurred, arguing that the people “cannot withstand the air-raids any longer.”79 After the decision to surrender had been made, one Japanese observer saw the atomic bombings and Soviet intervention as fortunate, since these events facilitated surrender before domestic disorder might have erupted: “I think the term is perhaps inappropriate, but the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war are, in a sense, gifts from the gods. This way we don’t have to say that we quit the war because of domestic circumstances. I’ve long been advocating control of our crisis, but neither from fear of an enemy attack nor because of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war. The main reason is my anxiety over the domestic situation. So, it is rather fortunate that we can now control matters without revealing the domestic situation.”80 One August 1945 police report noted a substantial increase in antiwar sentiment in comparison to 1943 and 1944.81 The Japanese historian Saburo Ienaga noted that by the summer of 1945, “The ruling classes’ judgment that to continue the war endangered the ‘national polity’ had ample basis in fact.”82 In short, the Japanese leadership saw the solution to domestic political threats to the government as terminating the war rather than expanding it.
Myths of Empire?
The Goemans hypothesis proposes that leaders of mixed regimes like Japan are motivated to increase war aims and gamble for resurrection when they face moderate military defeat. A related proposition is that such mixed regimes embrace ambitious war aims and imperial overexpansion to hold together ruling coalitions. Specifically, such regimes are often led by oligarchic coalitions of military and industrial interests, and such coalitions are prone to logrolled foreign policies aimed to satisfy all of its members. However, such logrolling can cause a state to bite off far more that it can chew, as satisfying all members of the coalition means an aggregate foreign policy that confronts more enemies than the state has the capability to confront. Relatedly, other scholars have claimed that these dynamics coupled with insufficient press and speech freedoms and weak civilian control of the military spawn pro-imperial mythmaking. Branches of the military and militarist economic sectors encourage the spread of ideas that encourage the embrace of imperial adventures, such as exaggerating the state’s own national power, emphasizing the importance of attacking first, and so on. These ideas have been applied to explain Japan’s pursuit of empire in Asia in the 1930s and its attack on Pearl Harbor.83
These theoretical ideas could also be applied to understand Japanese war-termination decisions during the Pacific War. The general prediction might be that the Japanese leadership should be slow to negotiate settlement terms because of domestic political forces. The various members of the oligarchic coalition would resist abandoning foreign policy goals that they had championed. Further, pro-imperial myths might blind the government to the discouraging course of the war, pushing the government to resist concessions even as losses mounted. Relatedly, information monopolies of the military branches in particular might slow the process by which the government came to understood that the war was going badly.
Although the Japanese leadership was willing to give up its empire as the war worsened, the other claims deserve close consideration. Notably, as described earlier and contrary to the speculations of the mythmaking theory, many members of the government inside and outside the military recognized the basic course of the war, that it was a steady tide of bad news from Midway forward, although to be sure there were instances in which some members of government were given inaccurate accounts of battle outcomes, such as following the battle of Midway, the March 1944 airstrike against Majuro, during clashes in the Marianas in mid-1944, and in the early stages of the autumn 1944 Leyte campaign.84
One piece of evidence favoring the mythmaking theory might be Prime Minister Tojo’s famous postwar complaint that he “did not hear of the Midway defeat till more than a month after it occurred. Even now I do not know the details.”85 Tojo’s postwar claim made to American interrogators, conveniently diminishing his own guilt in prolonging the war, may have been disingenuous, however. There was in Japan public discussion of the disaster at Midway as early as a few days after the battle. On June 10, 1942, a spokesman for the Japanese navy was quoted in the Asahi newspaper that “one cannot always expect victories and we must be able to stand losses.” A few days later, Tokyo radio conceded that the losses at Midway were “not inconsiderable” and that they were “the greatest suffered since the beginning of the war.”86 Tojo himself did get a flow of information about the course of the war. His wife recalled that Tojo was informed, and shaken, when American forces recaptured the Aleutian island of Attu in May 1943. His public language slowly turned less confident throughout the war. He even allowed for the possibility of defeat in public remarks in March 1943, and the following January conceded that “there is only a hairbreadth between victory and defeat,” and that the Japanese nation would face “more and more severe” difficulties.87
That being said, Tojo at times refused to accept gloomy reports about the course of the war, occasionally killing the messenger, literally. When a colonel presented a report in early 1944 recommending an end to the war, Tojo responded by ordering the colonel’s transfer to the China front the following day.88 Major Tsukamoto also voiced his doubts about the course of the war to Tojo in 1944, and found himself transferred to Saipan the following day, where he was killed in action. Ultimately, Tojo transferred at least seventy-two individuals who voiced opposition to his war plans, who presented political threats, or whom he simply did not like.89
However, as described, many key members of government beyond Tojo were reasonably well-informed, and few could avoid seeing the handwriting on the wall as the war progressed. Although some members of government did not get a complete briefing on the outcome of the Battle of Midway, the navy leadership understood what happened at Midway, the Emperor himself was fully briefed, and the public was informed at least in general terms of a significant defeat.90 As noted, many high-ranking leaders recognized that Midway, or perhaps Guadalcanal, was the turning point in the war. In other instances, an initially rose-colored report on a battle outcome was eventually disproved by further battlefield developments. For example, the promising October 1944 reports about the Leyte campaign had to be abandoned when the Imperial Headquarters declared the battle lost in December, and the Emperor himself became worried by American successes there.91 Tojo’s May 1944 claim that Saipan was invulnerable to conquest was, of course, completely discredited when the island fell in early July, and the deflation of Tojo’s outlandish boast contributed to his ouster on July 18.92 The army certainly understood the seriousness of the loss of Saipan.93 In November 1944, Premier Koiso claimed publicly that Japan could turn the tide of the war in the Philippines, equating the fighting there to a battle fought in Japan in 1582 when General Hideyoshi won a critical battle at Tenno ̄zan mountain in the Kansai district of Japan, which in turn paved the way for his rise to power. Koiso’s claim that “If Japan wins on Leyte, she wins the war!” backfired to Koiso’s embarrassment when the U.S. announced on Christmas 1944 that Leyte had fallen.94 The continued attempts of the government to claim that Leyte, then Luzon, then Iwo Jima, then Okinawa would be the new Tenno ̄zan grew increasingly incredible to the Japanese population at large, as some Tokyo residents joked that Koiso apparently had the power to move mountains.95
In sum, the evidence indicates that it would be inaccurate to characterize the Japanese leadership as completely deluded in its contemporary assessment of the progress of the war. This contrasts with the rosy and exaggerated hope for Japanese victory before Pearl Harbor. It may be that myths about one’s own superiority and the enemy’s weakness are much easier to make when combat is not actually taking place. Once real war starts, it is increasingly difficult to maintain such myths when territory is being lost, cities in the homeland are being bombed, and friendly casualties accumulate.
A slightly different domestic politics hypothesis might be that weak civilian control of the military, a frequent aspect of mixed regimes, slowed war termination. The hypothesis would propose that civilian leaders, with more of a concern for the national good and a more clear-eyed view of Japan’s military prospects, wanted to end the war sooner. Therefore, the war would have ended sooner had there been firmer civilian control of the military, reducing civilian fears of a military reaction or even a coup d’e ́tat to block serious peace moves. Certainly, differences existed between some civilians and some members of the military over exactly when such negotiations should occur, although notably there were civilian hawks and military doves. Some supported peace negotiations in the first flush of victory, as early as December 1941.96 The more hawkish elements waited in vain for a decisive military victory, opposing negotiations even after the atomic bombings and Soviet intervention in August 1945.
Did a coup d’etat threat slow war termination? The Japanese military certainly took an active role in political life, to the point of assassinating disliked civilian politicians. The 1930s were rife with such actions, including most infamously the February 26, 1936 incident, in which rogue military units assassinated the finance minister, the privy seal, and the inspector-general of military training, among others.97
The Emperor and other members of the civilian leadership did worry about the possibility of a coup during the war. In 1946, the Emperor recalled that in 1941 there was sufficient confidence in Japanese military strength that if he had stifled advocacy of war after the American oil embargo had been imposed, he would have risked inciting a coup.98 However, it may have been politically convenient for Hirohito to claim after the fact that he was forced into war by a domestic military threat; notably, many modern scholars proposed that Hirohito supported the decision to attack Pearl Harbor.99 Prince Takamatsu privately expressed concern in May 1943 that the demands of the military would be a significant barrier to peace negotiations, although he noted that royal intervention for peace could keep the military in line.100 In July 1944, before Tojo stepped down, Konoe told Kido that the army was planning on removing the Emperor to Manchuria or replacing him with a prince less inclined to pursue peace negotiations.101 In April 1945, during discussions over the formation of a new cabinet, both Kido and Tojo expressed concern that the emergence of a more pro-negotiations cabinet might incite military resistance, although former Prime Ministers Keisuke Okada and Baron Reijiro Wakatsuki disagreed.102 The historian Edward Drea proposed that Hirohito’s general timidity and conservatism prevented him from pursuing peace with the Allies in June 1945, even following the June 22 decision to formally seek Soviet mediation. Drea noted that part of this timidity was Hirohito’s lingering fear of a military coup if he moved to end the conflict too quickly.103 The Emperor also claimed after the war that he feared that any mention of peace during the war would have incited tremendous internal violence. His chamberlain went farther, proposing that anyone even mentioning the word peace would have been assassinated by the military.104 Eventually, the Emperor decided on August 10, 1945 to agree to a conditional version of the Potsdam Declaration, accepting the threat of a coup. There was talk of a military coup at the highest levels immediately after the Emperor made his decision, but the leaders of the military met separately and not only agreed to follow the Emperor’s decision, but put their decision to follow the Emperor in writing. There was, however, a coup attempt made by lower ranking officers, who unsuccessfully attempted to seize the recording the Emperor had made announcing his surrender decision, scheduled to be played on broadcast radio on August 15.105
These coup fears may have made an earlier move to negotiations less likely, but these effects should not be exaggerated. Many civilians, including the Emperor, opposed entering negotiations at least until Japan had scored a major victory. The Emperor clung to this strategy well into 1945. Even after the loss of Okinawa in June 1945, the Emperor hoped that perhaps a victory over American and British forces at Yunnan might provide some hope, although the army and navy leadership recognized that such an attack was logistically infeasible. The army focused on the American invasion of Japan itself as the last best chance to inflict a decisive defeat.106 Further, both groups advocated a diplomatic approach to the Soviet Union to secure Soviet neutrality and to attract Soviet mediation to end the war. The war faction saw that Soviet neutrality was necessary to permit a successful defense of the home islands, and the peace faction saw Soviet mediation as the best hope for jumpstarting negotiations with the United States and Britain.107
As for the Emperor himself, it would be inaccurate to view him as a closet dove, fearful of speaking out until catastrophe loomed for fear of being thrown from power. In truth, the Emperor supported the attack on Pearl Harbor, and an aggressive pursuit of victory. He was not politically isolated from the hawks. For example, the Emperor supported the archhawk General Tojo when the latter was prime minister, and looked unfavorably on plots to overthrow Tojo in 1943.108 Further, the Emperor often intervened in Japanese politics and military planning, forcing an outcome at odds with military preferences. Before the war, he helped bring down the Tanaka cabinet in 1928, he helped stop the rebels during the February 26, 1936 incident, and his objections helped prevent the 1938 Changkufeng Incident with the Soviet Union from escalating. He was occasionally able to guide military decisions directly during the war, as when he forced Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama to renew Japanese attacks on American forces in the Bataan peninsula of the Philippines in January 1942, pushed Sugiyama to redeploy air assets to support the Guadalcanal campaign in autumn 1942, ordered an immediate offensive against New Guinea once the order to withdraw from Guadalcanal had been given, overrode one of his general’s requests by ordering an attack on Leyte in October 1944 rather than a defense of Luzon, and ordered a counteroffensive on the island of Okinawa after America’s 1945 landing there.109
Some might argue that biases made the Japanese military overoptimistic about its ability to inflict such a decisive defeat on the Americans. Severe bias in the Japanese military would be evidence for the importance of domestic politics, as false military confidence in the ability to inflict casualties, coupled with the inability of the Emperor and civilian leaders to override military preferences on peace talks, caused the war to drag on longer than it should have. It is of course difficult to assess the accuracy of judgments about events that did not happen, specifically, whether Japan could have inflicted enough casualties on American forces invading Japan to move Truman to make concessions permitting the continuation of the kokutai as part of a peace deal. However, while the faith in the Japanese military to inflict decisive casualties in the event of an American invasion of the home islands may have been inflated, it was not completely detached from reality. Of course, such a battle would have meant utterly titanic Japanese civilians and military casualties, but this was a cost supporters of the “decisive battle in Japan” strategy were willing to accept in order to save the kokutai. In August 1945, Admiral Takijiro Onishi, Vice Chief of Naval General Staff, expressed the extreme form of this view, demanding that Japan continue the war: “we are prepared to sacrifice 20,000,000 Japanese lives in a special attack [kamikaze] effort, victory will be ours!”110
American casualties following an invasion might have been enough to encourage major American concessions in negotiations, such as leaving the Japanese political system intact. Estimates of U.S. casualties from an invasion made at the time and after the war vary widely, ranging from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands.111 More importantly, it is at least conceivable that such casualties may have been sufficient to move the American government to make concessions. Some American leaders at the time were concerned about invasion casualties and their political consequences. Chief of Staff General George Marshall was concerned about the political effects of such gigantic casualties from an American landing in Japan, urging General Douglas MacArthur to reject planning estimates of over 100,000 American casualties.112 In May 1945, Admiral Chester Nimitz argued that because of the likely heavy casualties and insufficient preparation, the Allies might be better off eschewing invasion and instead embracing a strategy of isolation coupled with naval and air attack.113 Some contemporary historians have argued that absent the atomic bombings or Soviet entry into the war, Ketsu-go might have succeeded in its goals of pushing the Allies to make substantial concessions after having faced massive casualties in an invasion of the Japanese home islands.114
ENDING THE PACIFIC WAR
The accumulation of information from the string of combat setbacks from mid-1942 forward should have pushed Japan to negotiate much earlier, according to the information proposition of chapter 2. Japan’s decision to fight on without negotiating was the result primarily of a mix of information and commitment dynamics. Negotiations would be useless until the U.S. could be forced to budge from its demand for unconditional surrender. As described in chapter 6, the U.S. advocated unconditional surrender because of credible commitment concerns. The only way to move the U.S. from unconditional surrender would be to convince the U.S. through a great military victory that pursuing unconditional surrender would be prohibitively costly. Until such a victory could be achieved, Japan feared entering negotiations, as doing so might send a dangerous signal of weakness. Fear of a possible military coup in reaction to peace negotiations might also have delayed peace talks, although there is no support for the hypothesis that moderately repressive semi-exclusionary states fighting long losing wars like Japan in World War II raise their war aims in order to have more goods to distribute to their supporters.