bring back, to restore the area to a completely safe, livable place. so when i think about that, i always think about the past 70 years that we have been speaking against nuclear weapons, and i wish we had also spoken about the nuclear reactors and expressed strongly that we are against it. [ speaking japanese ]

>> translator: even when my life ends, the dangers of radiation and fears of radiation will live on because i have passed on my genes to my sons and my grandsons and granddaughters. and because there are still nuclear reactors in japan and around the world, there is the possibility that new hibakushi will be born in this world. so in order to prevent any more disasters from happening in the future, i would like to do my best to pass on my story to many people around the world so that we can truly work for a nuclear-free and nuclear power-free world. thank you so much for listening. >> thank you very much.

[ applause ] during this last week of congress' summer recess, the c-span cities tour continues at 6:00 p.m. eastern. we head to wheeling, west virginia, to travel the national road. the first major highway built by the national government. we look at civil war battle flags and recount senator joe mccarthy's red dating enemies from within speech which he delivered in wheeling in 1950.

our visit to wheel, west virginia, begins at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. a signature feature of book tv is our all-day coverage of book fairs and festivals from across the country with top nonfiction authors. here's our schedule. beginning this weekend, we're live from the 15th annual national book festival from our nation's capital. near the end of september, we're in new york for the brooklyn book festival cell braebrating tenth year. the southern festival of books in nashville. the weekend after that, live from austin for the texas book festival. near the end of the month, two book festival oz the same weekend from our nation's heartland. the wisconsin book festival in madison and the boston book festival. at the start of november, we'll be in portland, oregon, for wordstock followed by the national book awards from new york city. and at the end of november, live

for the 18th year in a row from florida for the miami book fair international. that's a few of the fairs and festivals this fall on c-span 2's book tv. coming up next, james perry examines diplomatic relations in world war ii and the impact on military strategies in the pacific. this program is part of a symposium that marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the pacific war. it's about an hour. >> our next speaker is john kuehn who has combat experience over bosnia and iraq. he's teaching at an army institution as far from the ocean as you can be, ft. leavenworth. he's a military historian and is

going to speak on the succession of miracles that occurred in august '45. >> thank you, james. well, somebody's got do it. somebody's got to go to the middle of the country and do it. and i love doing it. thank you for having me out. thank you to our hosts. i'm going to start out somewhat esterically at noon local time august 15th. the radios crackled. we've already heard some references to this. they crackled in japan. and the alien voice of hirohito, also known as the shoa emperor. you get that after your rain. shoa means bright harmony or bright piece. the voice of the shoa emperor came over the radio. it's a voice most japanese had never heard. the famous photographs of the events show many japanese.

i've got one of them down here. it's on the cover of john dower's book "embracing defeat." he asked them to endure the unendurable. notice he doesn't say surrender. endure the unendurable. and surrender implicitly their sacred soil to the triumphant geijing, the barbarics. some of the japanese couldn't understand. we heard from our guest the formal court japanese dialect. they couldn't understand it. it was such highly formalized. it would be like someone from canton going up to beijing in the 13th century. you just wouldn't understand the chinese that was being spoken in both places. a lot of them really didn't understand. but they understood enough to know one thing. they had lost. only a week earlier the first

atomic bombs had been dropped on the cities of hiroshima and n nagasaki by the united states army air force. so that's what happened. i'm going to kind of go through after this happened after u.s. submarines and an aircraft essentially destroyed red blood ce cells, the merchant fleet. the transoegssic empire relied on that. this happened after the united states navy and its allies, principally the united states navy, had practically annihilated the imperial japanese navy and cut the main sea lines of communication to the south, to the southern resource area of the indieies,

the dutch. there's a reason it stops at brunei. that's where the oil is. after allied air power gained the ability to dominate the skies temporarily. temporary command of the sea. temporary command of the air from the sea. they wipe out what little naval aviation the japanese have left off formosa, the philippines and punishing battles. after ally forces had defeated and liberated many of the post-december 1941 conquests. after allied forces had landed on sacred japanese soil to include the mariana saipan as japanese sacred soil, iwo jima. after b-29s and other forms of

allied air power had made the rubble bounce and burn, after they had dropped two atomic bombs, vaporizing that same rubble, after the ussr had declared war on japan. as the soviet mechanized armies were overrunning manchuria against the once vaunted -- once vaunted, not anymore vaunted -- army. after a military coup failed to destroy the recording that the emperor had made. but these with the possible exception of the failed coup are not what i'd term miracles. i'm going to focus this talk about what's a miracle? we've heard that word used before. a miracle is luck. a miracle is serendipity. murphy's law. 180 degrees out. so we'll talk about that. they weren't those. they were -- those weren't the miracles i want to talk about.

the miracles are sort of the effects between people inside the japanese polity who were making the decisions and pretty much worried as rich frank told us earlier that their lifetime of being able to make important serious, effective decisions that might affect the course of things that they might not have much longer to do that. so as you can see, i've fallen prey to the classic historians dilemma. how far back should i go. all these actors take us pretty far back. but from june 1944 on, it had been one disaster after another. and there were a lot of disasters prior to that. but by 1944, the disaster -- you had an entire army fall apart in burma and then starve to death during the retreat. there's a lot going on in the japanese empire. there's a lot going on. just a reminder, kind of why we

have this end game. there is an act of war committed against the united states. and not just here. i think if this had never happened, if the japanese, if yamamoto had not convinced the imperial general staff and army navy sort of committee that approved these things to attack pearl harbor, that would be a picture of cavite smoking and flaming. so i'm not completely convinced that without pearl harbor we don't have world war ii. i had to go pull this off the internet. this is -- that's a battleship in a floating dry dock in 1944. that's the "west virginia." okay. i think it's off of spirit du santu. i don't think they'd moved it to the philippines yet. we had ten advanced based docks like this one.

the one who broke the codes at midway commanded one. it was a positive indication he'd be able to command something that cost the u.s. taxpayers something that cost so much to build. before the end of world war ii, we had over 100 floating dry docks in the pacific. not all of them were this big. you don't just improvise those overnight after 1941. so the interwar peace that norman talked about is incredibly important to explain how we get to the end game. well, i want to talk about a couple of things. first, let's think about some shaping components here. again, i show this to my students at ft. leavenworth, and i have to explain the japanese polity and again, i have to do some mirror imaging, which you shouldn't do, but i have to because you have to have a frame of reference. but japan is not -- it doesn't

operate to say everybody thinks they operate the same. a secretary of navy. secretary for war. they have this. the systems are so different between the two. and i agree. i tend to agree with those who say we didn't have a good understanding of how things work inside the upper levels of the japanese polity. we didn't have a really good understanding of how much the army and the navy hated each other in japan. fighting over the budget. we didn't -- and again, they thought it was for patriotic reasons. each of them considered themselves alone all that was necessary to protect something called the cocuti. we did not understand the navy hated the navy. inside the navy there were factions. inside the army were factions that hated each other and they'd assassinate each other. that political assassination was a socially acceptable mode of political communication in

japan. and we forget that. we forget that after the london conference, a bunch of japanese guys who were thought to have sold the farm were assassinated. and so we kooind of forget thes things. there was a coup. almost replaced it with a military government. but -- so i agree with norman that we just don't understand this. i do want to talk to some of this. okay. so we need -- that's part of the shaping. aagain this miracle piece, those are really disasters that came before. they are not -- a lot of serendipity. quite a bit of innovation and power. and with the exception of the failed coup, we need to review

all these events as sort of just a string. one darn disaster after another. and the way they happen was very fortuitous. but it was not planned. it was contingency. the contingent element in history is too often dismissed. some of the other speakers said, we know how it turned out. they didn't, okay? so we go, wow. that really lined up nicely. atomic bomb, soviet invasion. atomic bomb, end of war. a really smart guy that put that one together. wow. that's not how it happened. it was not synchronized as we might say. so a miracle is an event we have trouble explaining logically. we shrug them off. miracles aren't talking about the process of how the japanese polity came to some decisions.

and who controlled grand strategy of policy? all right. and grand strategy in policy, you know, it's not like, okay, rich wright controls grand strategy and that's the way it's going to be for the next ten years. it's always in flux. and particularly in a consensus driven polity like the japanese had, the centers of power, the decision flowed around the emperor. so it's not anything you can just say, oh, i understand how they do business in 1942. that's good for the rest of the war. no, it's not. it changes. in fact, in a week from august 6th all the way up to the surrender it changed almost every day, okay, how the decision-making goes on, and how we get to this miracle of the japanese surrender. there's two big things to talk about. the first is cocuti.

i'm going to read one of my favorite scholars of japan on it. it's still the best thing i've ever read on it. it's the most emotive force. it becomes the japanese war aim. it's the notion of imperial japan as a unique nation by virt virtue. it remains difficult to define concisely because the concept meant different things to different groups in japan. two examples for hirohito, it meant responsibility to his imperial ancestors to preserve the unbroken imperial isle. or his imperial army it meant the preservation of the imperial system. it became the repository for the

values and virtues of the imperial army. those two things are different. hirohito, if he dies, that's it. cocutie is done. if the imperial relics are vaporized, you can't go out and get a new one. for the army, it's the system that puts that emperor up there in this iconic. they have different views of what it is. and sort of this idea inside the japanese imperial army and imperial navy as well. it's not just the emperor. it's not just the imperial relics and family. it's the imperial spirit. if somehow that spirit gets polluted with unrighteous acts, that that is -- you may as well fight to the death. it's a critical component because it's going to drive the

bus on decision making. the other thing and rich frank mentioned it. i think james perry mentioned it. i'm not sure who else. this idea of decisive victory. the japanese spend the whole war searching for the decisive victory. just one. they're just going to fight one. that's all they need is that one decisive victory. the nature of the decisive victory and what it chose to accomplish changes as the war goes on. and by the summer of 1944, not 1945. by the summer of 1944, the idea is that what we need to avoid is we need to avoid an occupation of japan. we need to maintain the cocuti in its broadest sense which may mean retaining stuff we had in china, prior to 1937 or prior to

1941. people start to compromise. for me a decisive recipe would mean no -- the four things riched talked berler. the emperor's vision becomes compromised and he doesn't think. he loses faith in the decisive victory. he never loses faith in cocutie. there's two groups and we've already talked about him. that's why i've got this up here. this is one of the few line diagrams i have. we talk about the big sticks. something in the supreme military council for the direction of the war. when the emperor joins this council it becomes an imperial

council. don't get confused between a sitting council and a meeting. the imperial conferences are meetings that include supreme council for the duration of the war with the emperor and his most trusted with him. keep that in mind. who are these guys? we'll talk about them. the senior officers of the japanese army. we've gotten into some of that. that's an area ripe for more research is the japanese army officers who are in charge. there's been some great books done on this. it's a great place to start but there's much more research needed to kind of understand what's going on with all of these guys. there's a treasure trove out there. they are scattered from rangoon

to -- they are spread out all over the place something. something not discussed -- we've already heard human beings are not fundamentally rational. freud tolds that. what you need to understand is the guys running japan after hirohito resigns are the moderates. after tojo resigns are the moderates. tojo is a moderate from the control faction of the japanese army. the radicals are defeated in 1936 and the moderates take over. they're still militarists and have this expansive aggressive japanese foreign policy. they can be very brutal on the

ground. but they're the moderates. in some sense we're lucky the imperil wave faction is defeated. they're far less rational than the control factor which is composed of tojo. we always talk to the students at ft. leavenworth, you've got to relate politics to military results. and at the battle of the philippine sea and also some stuff going on in china there's these disasters. june 1944. japan's government changed. they think japan's government changes on august 15th, 1945. no, it changes in june of 1944. tojo resigns in disgrace after the failure of the campaign, the ego campaign against retaking the marianas islands. japanese sacred soil and other

things going wrong. he's replaced by somebody from the korean government, koiesa. there's still some of what we call the treaty factions or bellicose folks inside the japanese navy in certain places. but for the most part they've been so discredited by all of these horrible defeats that have been inflicted on them. the people running japan are from what we call the treaty faction, the moderates. suzuki who becomes prime minister as an admiral. admiral yone. he's also a moderate. so there's a lot more moderates in the japanese government in 1945 than you might imagine, all right? which makes this more problematic. let us take a look at the

supreme council during the week of fire. the reconstitution of this council. they created it earlier in the war to give advice to the emperor. it was going to include the army minister, naval minister. uniformed officers. the japanese equivalents. loosely efquivalents to our secretary of the navy. imperial general's staff and the prime minister who has just resigned, okay? and there's a new one. and the foreign minister who has already been mentioned, togo shiganori. those are the six rich was talking about. admiral toyoda is the chief of the naval general staff -- not chief of general -- yeah, chief of the naval general staff. it might be regarded as a minor miracle that's put back

together. here's the people. hirohito. prime minister suzuki. there he is in the middle. suzuki is a fascinating guy. he's a very fire brand, wants japan to expand, build an empire. he's very supportive of expannionism in china. but he supports the treaty faction and he is almost assassinated by young officers. he becomes the prime minister of japan. almost assassinated by fanatical army officers and he survives that assassination attempt. and he is the premier. he's the prime minister. admiral suzuki. retired admiral. togo shiganori, the naval minister and chief of the imperial general staff, admiral yone and admiral toyoda. we'll talk about general anani.

kind of a young dynamic guy compared to some of the other generals. and then the chief of the imperial general staff is general yumetsu. so there's key members of the cabinet who aren't members of this decision-making body. why is that? the answer to that question is, it's mostly military officers, if you hadn't figured it out. suzuki. shiganori. but they don't trust the politicians or cabinet rule. so that's why the supreme council for the direction of the war doesn't have all these other civilians up here on the thing. by the time of the defeat of okinawa, which is a disaster, not a miracle, three key holdouts sort of remain. the hard-liners. those hard-liners were general anami, the warminster, general yumetsu, the chief of the

imperial general staff and admiral toyoda. doesn't mean suzuki, yone, shiganori weren't like all excited if japan could win some sort of decisive victory and keep the emperor, avoid occupation, try their own war criminals and all these sorts of things. but they were the moderate faction. these other guys are the hard-liners. they absolutely continue to sort of wield influence whenever they have an imperial council vetoing things. as you'll notice, both of the army guys are on this. the army is the key holdout. this is all the way up until august 9th, all right? this is really sort of the split. shiganori, maybe suzeky.

he goes back and forth. yone and kito. hirohito essentially straddles the fence. but more and more, he's leaning toward the moderates, okay? but he is straddling the fence. he's very unhappy. the army has had prime minister resign because of losing so much face the year before. and i think they all had their suicide packages put together because things were so bad. i'm probably going to fail the emperor like these other guys did and have to commit suicide. is he going to stand aside. is yumetsu going to stand aside. the navy doesn't agree with the decision but we'll agree to go along with the decision. and none of this is occurring

the way i'm talking about it. it's all sort of cross-talking, hidden messages and somebody will talk to somebody in the hallway. somebody will write something in their diary saying the emperor looked this way when he should have looked this way. these were the moderates. i want to emphasize that. so hirohito finally learns in mid-june from two of his chief military advisers that the army and navy do not think they can properly defend japan. june 1945. not even to august yet. the army and navy come to the emperor and say we can't defend japan. they'll surrender, right? rational, right? no, no. yumetsu also says they've decided if the soviets invade manchuria they'll do a fighting retreat, back to sort of a bastion in korea.

that's the word i'm looking for. so hirohito's hope in decisive victory is fatally compromised and should now be properly considered after june 1944 in the camp. he really wants an out to save the kokutai as he sees it. he'll be emperor after. hirohito would accept the terms that come out pottsdam. it's not until july. but the end of june, evidence suggests he's ready to accept potsdam. everyone is relying on the soviet hope. as we know that hope is completely misplaced. and the united states knows that this is japan's last hope and

they know it's misplaced. i'm looking into rich's hand. he's not looking into mine. hirohito keeps this attitude close to his vest about where he is. by mid-july, the fire bombings had caused fear for hirohito's life. this gets glossed over in all the histories i've read. they create this cheyenne mountain or what's the place over in virginia or west virginia where the president is supposed to go and hide? anyway, the japanese have one of those, too, in world war ii. it's in the mountains at matsushira. they tell hirohito, wee want you to get on a train. mid-july. go to the mountains. that way the bombers won't kill you. and hirohito refuses. he's the prize. he is the prize, and he does not want to eliminate his field of

action by giving the army absolute control. good decision when we see what happens with the mini coup the guards division tries to do. by the end of july, the emperor gives up on decisive battle once and for all. it's not going to happen. the aircraft carriers are roaming the pacific at will. they're off japan. they can bomb japan. it's really a mess. and the thing that pushes him over the edge. that's the most sacred place in japan. it's the most sacred place in japan. it's like the vatican. and so if the japanese military can't protect the shrine, they can't protect him, they've really lost their mandate as far as hirohito is concerned.

then the potsdam declaration comes up. its conditions for unconditional surrender. it's unconditions. that's review. the beginning of august, still relying on the soviet initiative. it's hopeless and potsdam should close the lid on that. they're still hoping for something. they haven't attacked us yet. so maybe, who knows? and we don't want the americans to know what our bargaining position is. nobody wants to go on the record as saying, well, here's what we'll settle for. because that might encourage the allies. may encourage the allies to ask for more or might give them the sense that -- so they don't want to give up their bargaining position even though we know what their bargaining position is. and again, the war aim at this point by all parties, everyone knows they lost. by the end of july it's clear

we've lost militarily. the japanese empire, prior to 1941, is not going to be that way after 1945. the war aim is survival of the kokutai. but what does that look like? by that time, hirohito was ready to say, if it's just me and all these other goes get tried as war criminals, i'm fine with that. and i've got a note here to myself. despite the potsdam implication the ussr is a full party to potsdam. so let's talk about the miracles. it's a matter of timing. it's a matter of timing. who talked to who, and when? it's also going to be a matter of writing the imperial rescript. i wish we had roger brown here to do a talk on that. there's a lot of effort put into the imperial rescript which gets read by the emperor.

the first bombing of hiroshima. we've already talked about that. but it gets everyone's attention. that's the effect. so the effect is confusion. it's not decision. it's confusion. and what are we all saying? who is my navy guys? what's the first report? it's always wrong, right? we've got to figure out. we heard they blew up hir meeos. maybe it's not so bad. we military guys are kind of trained to think you get disastrous news. first thing you think is it's not as bad as they're telling me it is. sometimes it is. pearl harbor under attack. all right. well, now we get into time zones. time zones are a problem here. if you read all of this, you -- and you try to set up a timeline, you have to do it in different time zones. washington, moscow, tokyo, beijing, shanghai.

okay. so august 8th, august the 8th, 2300 local time in moscow, the soviet yen delivers. they break off diplomatic relations with japan and some evidence that they have already crossed the frontier. maybe with some reconnaissance. but they declare war almost simultaneously as they attack. kind of like who? who does that? declares a war simultaneously as they attack? kind of like the japanese. the effect is cumulative. they have to wait for the information to flow to tokyo. it's got to all flow in. this is war radios, rickety hf communications, teletype. the information is not moving the way it would on this computer and the internet, right? august 9th, ten minutes after midnight on a new day, the soviet forces do cross the frontiers. which is a little later.

initiating combat operations with the empire of japan. and david talked a little bit about that august storm. essentially sort of three army groups. the soviets call them fronts. maybe one of them is more of an army than an army group. but they -- and that completely takes the -- they get operational surprise. they really do. and what do the japanese military trying to do with this? they were surprised. and here's just another thing that undermines their credibility with each other. did you know the russians are going to attack? and with the emperor. so that's going back and forth here, too. but it's got to give time to develop. this whole idea this is going to develop quickly is nonsense. it happens as quickly as it does is a miracle. so you continue to get this effective thing. what's gone now?

the diplomatic option is gone. what does that mean? that means yone, shiginori and suzuki jump ship. two of them are sailors, so that makes sense. suzuki still waffles every now and then. he's worried he may get assassinated again. we need to keep that in mind. august 9th, 11:02 local time. the soviets have declared war. soviets have invaded. and in a b-29 drops the fat man plutonium bomb on nagasaki. this is like -- i don't know if there's a great bbc where napoleon is in moscow, sitting in the kremlin and the city is burning and people are running in with bad news. this is kind of what happens on august 9th at the imperial conference. it's a scheduled meeting. is there more urgency in the meeting because of all of these things happening? there certainly is on august

9th. then the nagasaki news comes in. you get all this bad news starting to flow in. none of this is synchronized by the hour. it's all accidental how this all lines up. so the plutonium bomb gets -- and it really undermines those who are arguing the americans only have one of these things. well, they've demonstrated they have two. and chances are they've got three. all right? they don't know that the third one already blew up in mexico. but there's more on the way, okay? but the japanese, as far as the japanese, they have to judge from the evidence they have. the evidence is they drop one. two days later, they drop another one. who would be stupid enough to drop their only two bombs in three days? so it's some of that going on there. and the effect is a -- is on the mighting of the imperial counsel. 2350. boy, this is fun. 11:50 at night, ten minutes to

midnight in the garden of the gods, the imperial council, again, the supreme council with the war meet and despite the protests of general anami and general kumetsu and toyoda, they all want to avoid occupation, it's decided as you saw to accept potsdam sort of in principle, right? and there's some good lawyerly language that they're thinking about issuing. i think some of this has to do with the fact that, hey, let's take this slow. the army hasn't decided to revolt again. let's go slow on this. the other thing we've got the soviets that are having military success and by now they really know they have a problem in manchuria. there's also this. okay? we've talked about, well, nobody knew about raid logical

poisoning. maybe scientists knew, but the other thing for the japanese is the defense of kyushu. i'm not going to my command voice now. the defense of kyushu could be fatally compromised if the yankee devils have more than one of these things. they can sanitize the beach. in addition to some of the other factors some of the other speakers talked about, the japanese army has to do a military assessment. if you are counting on inflicting the majority of casualties with manned kamikaze torpedoes and boats and aircraft, this militia with spears and swords and sort of doing the personnel borne ied thing, if that's all vaporized, your plan to kind of get that one last decisive victory is fatally compromised. and so that needs to be considered. we may be making too much out of this. it may be more just the fact the

americans can just stand off and jam as we say in the navy. stand off and blow japan apart with atomic weapons. you have to consider the tactical implications and the americans already were considering that. so the soviets and bombs foreclose all options. but things are not over. remember, the army is not quite signed on to any of the worst case scenario which is complete unconditional surrender. no guarantee the emperor will survive as an imperial institution, occupation, all those things. the allies notify that the emperor had decided in principle to accept the potsdam declaration. the language is really interesting and it's been talked about. unspoken with determination by the emperor n hoand holdouts. they still want to come out of

this with the kokutai in place. each had a different understanding of this. the emperor's understanding turns out to have probably been more rational understanding. they could have all still gone wrong. suzuki still had doubts. they were concerned about the army and especially general ana aname not remaining loyal. aname is the second most important man in japan between august 9th and august 15th. he really hoilds some powerful cards. not just him. the council of the retired admirals and field marshals. when the admiral goes to him to get some support for potsdam, they both keep saying keep fo t fighting. all the great war horses say, hey, let's keep fighting.

hirohito, however, manages, despite all of this, to consolidate his position with the royal princes. and with sort of the political level with suzuki and the cabinet. so he is -- but it's still in flux. japan is almost without a government. by august 11th and 12th, japan's almost -- it's on the verge of becoming a failed state. hirohito is walking a thin line. he can get kidnapped or killed at a moment. killed and either his son or one of his brothers placed in his place. and he knows that. because there's precedence for that in japanese hiftrey. if we go back in japanese history we'll see emperors getting retired and new emperors brought up. so there is precedence for that, and he knows it. all right. 11 and 12, the americans respond affirming that japan has

accepted -- this comes back to the japanese as a diplomatic transmission. you've accepted the potsdam declaration. it causes immense -- what does that mean? does that mean occupation? the emperor stays? war criminals? do we get to keep manchuria while the soviets are conquering it? instead of causing clarity, it causes more confusion. the emperor has his speechwrite i ers working overtime. trying to come up with the right language for this. that's august 11 and 12. hirohito took more and more positive action. you have the emperor here. there's the supreme council of the direction of the war. we move past august 9th. hirohito takes more and more and more action. every decision he makes could be his last. and he knows it. i'm not trying to make a hero

out of hirohito. he doesn't overrule his generals when they commit all those atrocities there. but he's walking a very fine line. and we'll talk about his motivation. what really seals the deal is april 14th, the americans decide, well, everybody in japan needs to know the japanese government has accepted the potsdam declaration. so we do information warfare. we drop leaflets saying the government has accepted the potsdam. now what is he going to do? what is he going to do? his hand has been forced, all right? luckily for us in japan, not making the decision is a decision. if he does nothing, that's a decision. okay? which means that whatever the sort of prevailing consensus is gets sta s established. that's essentially what anami decides to do. i'm not going to fight this. there's more research needed on

toyoda and yumetsu. he's the ring leader. where he goes, they go, too. he starts working on his ritual suicide. this is also the day that hirohito meets with the admirals and marshals and they tell him to keep fighting. he's already made his designation. you have to give credit to these old warriors. they took the equivalent of the fehr in their imperial rescript that the meiji empire. and he really puts it to them, and they keep it. that's something of a miracle, too. hirohito records his famous broadcast. the guards division, part of the guards division revolts. they contact anami. he says don't bother me. leave me alone. i'm not supporting you. and loyal army troops outside the guards are brought in and put down this coup.

it's really a mad search for a dvd. that's what it is. and they are running out of time and know it. there's a second one on august 16th. like three officers try to kidnap the officer. by this time the guards division is totally loyal and they spirit these guys away. i think one of them might have committed suicide. why does hirohito decide to surrender? he was simply trying to save the kokutai as he saw it and his legacy to his ancestors. in the imperil rescript of sorry re -- surrender, the key is this line that says we're willing to undergo the humiliation of 10,000 years so the bright harmony and peace emperor can leave to his an seftsors the legacy of an unbroken line of imperial rule in japan. and he does. all right. rich offered the vision of a japan in chaos with concerns the government is going to break

down. that we are going to get what the japanese call geko fujo, field initiative. massive subordination across the board. the peasants begin to revolt and they go running up and down the streets in mobs behaving eratsicalley, irrationally, like people in missouri maybe. but that happens. hirohito, others have attributed to cowardice. trying to save his own skin. and this is the only way he sees he can do it. but the effect is the emperor makes the broadcast. and to endure the unendurable. with a 10,000 years line, we'll endure the unendurable for 10,000 years if we can keep our

emperor. he's making a gamble the americans are going to keep him. but he thinks -- he guesses that this is probably -- this is probably the way to go. who is to know? i'm sure he is the has of the -- he's the pope in japan, too. you knew that, right? he's the head of the japanese religious institutions as well. so he's certainly praying, all right? maybe not praying the way we think about it in the west but certainly praying. who is to say how that influenced his decision making. two miracles occur after the broadcast. they've already been discussed. for completeness i'll wrap them up. fir first, why should the japanese people obey? we heard primary source evidence post facto why they should obey. but they'd never heard this guy before. most of the stuff coming off the radio had been lies. they'd been recently lied to

about these huge victories that had taken place in the pacific. specifically formosa when they supposedly sank the 3rd fleet. if they sank the 3rd fleet, well, the 5th fleet. they were the same ships. so why should they believe the emperor? how should they even know this is the emperor? so i think this is rather fascinating japanese culture that this was widely accepted as the legitimate of the direct descendant of the gods. this topic needs more attention, a bottom-up look at this. a lot of these people are dead or dying. there's been a lot collected over the years as the world war ii generations die off. the more we can look at this, i suspect quite a bit in japanese. the japanese people get over

there and start turning some of that into english. it deserves more attention. i think the japanese people knew. their cities were going up in flames one after the other. word gets around even when your transportation and communication systems have been fatally compromised. they'd never seen defeat. 2600 years they'd never surrendered. they saw something like it for 115 years during the war in states period in the 15th and 16th century. but it was spread over 150 years and moved from state to state. fire has always been a japanese method of warfare. so i think that's -- the other one is the armed forces. the japanese armed forces surrendered, and so you get all of this collapse. we've already heard it's not a done deal. they have to send members of the imperial family out to talk to

the generals. before september 2nd happens, there's a lot of moving around. the army still not completely convinced it might have to take charge. they move some of the imperial relics out of tokyo on august 20th and hide them. that tells me a lot. that's something that's often glossed over. the army is doing funny things. did they have hirohito's permission to do that? it doesn't seem like it would be something that hirohito would buy into. you'd think hirohito would control what they do with the imperial rel ics. how do we get these 2.5 million, 5 million, however many million it is who are not in japan to surrender on all these different islands. thousands and thousands of garrisons. some of them huge, some not so huge. here's where the soviet piece is really important because they surprise the army.

yeah, the japanese had planned to retreat anyway. pretty much of a drubbing if you read david's two books on august storm. they are getting beat up pretty good. and so there's this idea, well, i'm not the first to surrender. we've had some surrenders already. or somebody is getting beaten so that doesn't mean i'm the first. i'm not the one that got beaten. that's the final thing. bottom line, the pacing and occurrence of these. the bombing on the 6th, the bomb on the 9th combuined in a miraculous way to cause the decision process to get all of these things to occur quite unexpectedly. the end of world war ii in the pacific is unexpected. we really need to get that out. i'll close with asada, something that he wrote. soviet entry was important for implementing the surrender. the atomic bomb was the crucial

factor in the decision to surrender. thank you very much. okay. questions? okay. questions. yes, sir? >> this may be not a very rationale view, but it seems that we had some kind of irrational fear of the emperor. we didn't bomb them when obviously we could have, we allowed the japanese to hang on to the emperor when maybe it would have been best to remove him. why do we have this view of the emperor? >> why is the emperor so important and why does it seem like he's so important to americans, an allied decision making. is that the question? >> yes. >> we talked about sort of people not being culturally astute on the military side and

intelligence and all this stuff. but there are some people who know what's going on. there are some people with some familiarity with japanese culture. some of them have never been to japan. but there is some understanding, particularly inside the state department, okay? so -- and there's some understanding, i think there's sort of a meeting of the minds here for sort of these iconic, you know, figures. i mean, mcarthur is almost a perfect guy to have go up there. he thinks he's an emperor. so he's mirror imaging. well, if i was -- yeah, if i was the emperor, i'd keep the emperor because i looim like emperors. i think that's a powerful explanation. but there is -- it's not just mcarthur. he's being advised by people. but there's people inside the state department that have already recommended, hey, don't tell this to the japanese, but, you know, who is going to make everybody obey? and then the japanese emperor

makes everybody obey. and gets everybody to surrender. now, he has a lot of help, but it's really him. do you really want to throw that away? and i think there's some understanding of that before the surrender. inside the united states. and luckily, it's still a contingent view. we could still decide we want to try hirohito as a war criminal and go a different way. and who is to say? it's hard to say, you know? some have argued that was a big mistake, not trying hirohito as a war criminal and that's why every man, woman and child in japan doesn't necessarily think they lost, okay, because they got to keep the emperor. and the difference is there today. look at japan and germany, okay? who has the problems? you know, with the public relations, you know? who has a problem facing their past honestly, okay?

germans will forget over time. they always do. but at the end of the day -- what do you guys think? >> second stinson was one of those at the top level who had -- maybe it was not well founded, but he thought he knew what was going on in japan and he recognized the importance of the emperor and he's going to argue about that. that's very important as we come down to august. the other thing that i've always thought was one of the great insights was that in this process of convincing the japanese armed forces to surrender, imperial navy sends out a message to all hands, in effect, explaining sort of the background of the decision process in tokyo. and we intercept ed and basicaly this is solid gold evidence. we don't have to guess. we don't have to look behind the

curtain. this seems like it's a real deal and it emphasizes the role of the emperor in securing this surrend surrender. anyone who read that mess aenl, that intercept about the role of the emperor was going to be powerfully impressed by the notion that this was a guy who could serve our purposes in securing the surrender. and the other thing that's going to become critical in this, we get to japan and we find out that they're in this horrendous situation with respect to the food supply. and we're looking not simply at the issue of the geopolitical considerations and the emperor, we're looking at the prospect of millions of japanese starving to death and the emperor is sanctioned behind rationaling systems is going to be vital. so i thought about this issue a lot and i don't agree -- i think it would have been very rash and ill considered to try to remove the emperor right away. because, a, we weren't entirely sure we got a secure surrender

look at iraq. and secondly, we had this food crisis situation going on for a couple of years. the big mistake in my view was, ideally, keep him for a year, two years, maybe three. at that point, insist on advocatation and taking responsibility and that would solve a lot of the problems we had today. but i think knowing what we knew in 1945, it would have been a rash, ill considered and possibly disastrous act to ax hirohito at that moment. >> yeah. and, again, as we ail know, not everybody surrendered. people wandering out of the woods in the philippines, in guam. in 1947, the marine -- attacked by japanese junior officer with 17 or 18 guys and then they pull back into the caves and pellaliu is almost iconic