he is a military historian and is going to speak on the succession of miracles in august of 1945. >> thank you, james. some has got to do it. go all over the country and do it. i love doing it. thank you for having me out. thank you to our hosts. i'm going to start out somewhat esoterically at noon local time, august 15, the radios crackled. we have already heard some references to that. , hero he told, ,, thenown -- hirohito voice of the emperor came on the radio and it is a voice that most japanese have never heard to the famous photos of the most have not seen

you. they show the japanese kneeling in reference before -- reverence for the radio freedom they have to endure the unendurable. notice he does not say surrender. [laughter] i will get to that if i have time. surrender implicitly their sacred soil to the barbarians. that was an account that some japanese could not even believe they heard from the formal court dialect it would -- dialect. it would be like someone from canton going to someone in beijing in the 13th century. a lot of them did not understand. they understand enough to do one thing -- they had lost. only a week earlier, the first

atomic bombs had been dropped on the cities of hiroshima and nagasaki by the united states army air force. it was still the army air force at that time. that is what happened. i will go through after. this happened after u.s. submarines and aircraft essentially destroyed japanese red blood cells of the maritime empire, her merchant fleet, especially the heavy movers, the oilers. economy reliedc on that. they cut the main see lines of the southern east indies, brunei, all of that.

there's a reason that korea stops at brunei. that is where they were. after allied air power had gained the ability to dominate the skies, at least temporarily, what you: the navy eight temporary -- what we call in the navy a temporary command of the sea, they do this prior to the invasion of the philippines and they wiped out what will -- little naval aviation the japanese have left for most of the philippines in punishing battles. after allied forces had defeated and liberated many of the post-december 1941 construct, after allied forces landed on , saipan,panese soil iwo jima, and okinawa. after other airpower made them

bounce and burn, after they bombs, two atomic after the ussr had declared war on japan. as the soviet mechanized armies overran muncher area against the once -- manchuria after the once-font it japanese -- once army, afterpanese the japanese army failed to destroy the recording the emperor made, there were miracles. we have heard the word used before. a miracle is murphy's law, 180 degrees out. we will talk about that. they were not those. those were not the miracles that i'm going to talk about.

the miracles i want to talk about are effects between people in japanese policy making the decisions and are worried that their lifetime of being able to make important, serious, effective dns tecisiot might affect the course of things, they might not have much longer to do that. as you can see, i have fallen prey to the classic historians classic dilemma, how far back should i go? from june, 1944 on, it has been one disaster after another there . there were a lot of disasters. government fall support in

1944 by committee an entire army , fall apart in burma, and then starve to death during the retreat. there is a lot going on in the japane empire. there is a lot going on. just a reminder why we have this and game -- there is an act of war committed against the united states. and i think this had never happened, if the japanese and yamamoto had not convinced the imperial naval general staff of the army-navy committee that approved these things to attack pearl harbor that would be a , picture of kavita, smoking and flaming. i not completely convinced that without pearl harbor we do not have world war ii. i had to pull this off the internet. norman made me think of that. that is a battleship in a floating drydock in 1944. that is the west virginia. i think it is off of spirit tucson to -- spiritu santu. i don't think they had moved it to the philippines yet. we had 10 advanced talks this side.

people have said he was being punished. joe regarded it as a positive indication that he would be allowed to commands something that cost u.s. taxpayers a lot of money to build. by the end of world war ii, before the japanese surrendered, we had over 100 floating drydocks in the pacific. not all of them were this big. you don't just improvise those things overnight after 1941. it is incredibly important to explain how we get to the endgame. but i want to talk about a couple of things. first, let's think about some shaping components.

again, i show this to my students at fort leavenworth, and i have to explain to them the japanese policy. i did do some terror imaging, which you should not do, but have to because you have to have a firm of reference. japan does not operate the same way. they have a secretary of the navy of the secretary for war, the systems are so different between the two. i agree with those who say we did not have a really good understanding on how things work inside the upper levels of the japanese policy. we did not have a good understanding about how much the army and the navy hated each other in japan. they fought over the budget for patriotic reasons. each of them considered something thate was necessary to protect the kokutai. we don't understand the navy hated within each other, the navy factions. they hated each other. they assassinated each other. inside the army, there were factions that hated each other. political assassination was a

valid mode of political communication in japan. forget that. we forget after the london conference, a bunch of japanese guys who were thought to have sold the farm were assassinated. we forget these things. we forget that in 1936 there was a coup that almost through the government and replaced with a modern military government. i agree with norman that we just do not understand it. i want to talk to some of this. that is part of the shaping. again, this miracle piece -- those things are really disasters that came before. they are not so much miracles. there is a lot of hard fighting. quite a bit of serendipity, quite a bit of innovation, quite a bit of willpower. there is some on the japanese

side, too. aside from the failed coup, it is just a string of one darned disaster after another. the way they happened was very fortuitous. -- the way that they happened was very fortuitous, but it was not planned. it was contingency. the contingent element in history is too often missed. as the other speakers said, we know how it turned out they did not. that really lined up nicely, the atomic, and the invasion, the end of war, those were smart guys who put that together. [laughter] that is not how it happened. it was not synchronized, as we might say. we have trouble explaining something logically, it is a miracle. i'm dealing with the process of how japanese policy came to this decision.

and who controlled grander strategy and policy. grand strategy and policy, it is not like rich thorton control policy, and that is the waves going to be for the next 10 years, it is always in flux. particularly in a consensus driven policy like they japanese head, the centers of powers and decision float around the emperor. it is not anything you can just kind of say i understand how they do business in 1942 that is good for the rest of the war. no, it's not. it changes. it changes almost every day -- in a week from august the sixth, all the way up until the surrender, it changes almost every day, how the decision-making goes on and how we get to this miracle of the japanese surrender. there are things we need to talk

about, and the first is kokutai. i'm not eloquent on this, so i will read one of my favorite scholars of japan on kokutai. it is still the best thing i have ever read on it. it is the most powerful emotive force. it becomes the japanese war aim, the preservation of the kokutai. what is the kokutai, is it a bottle of water in a refrigerator? no. what is it? it is the notion of imperial japan as unique nation by virtue of its sacred emperor. kokutai remains difficult to define, precisely a few words because the concept met -- meant different thing to different groups in japan. to, it meant responsibility to his imperial ancestors. to preserve the unbroken imperial line. for his imperial army, is not the preservation of the imperial system, which became the repository for the values and

virtues of the imperial army. those two things are different. for hirohito, it is if he dies, the unbroken line of succession is done. that is it. the unbroken line is done. you cannot go out and get another one. for the army, it is the system that puts the emperor up there. they have different views of what it is. for the army, it is putting that system in place. it is not just the emperor, it is not just the imperial relics, not just the drill family, it is imperial era. -- the imperial family. it is the imperial spirit. if the spirit gets polluted with on right should -- unrightw eous acts, you might as well

fight to the death. is a critical aspect of all these miracles. it will drive the bus of decision-making. things james perry mentioned it, i'm not sure who was but this idea of decisive victory. the japanese spend the whole war searching for the decisive victory. there is just there's going to one. fight one. that's all they need, just the one decisive victory. the nature of the decisive victory and what it is supposed to accomplish changes as the war goes on. 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 kokutai in its broadest sense, which main we may have to retain the stuff we had in china prior to

1937 or even 1941. you have to remember this decisive victory, as time goes on, people began to compromise. well, for me a decisive victory means no american army, we try our own war criminals, those things talked about earlier. emperor's vision of what decisive is becomes compromised and he eventually loses faith in the decisive the -- decisive victory. he does not ever lose faith in the kokutai. two groups. this is one of the few line diagrams that i have. we talk about the big six. they are in the supreme military council for the direction of the war. when the emperor joins this counsel, it becomes the imperial council. don't become confused between a

sitting counsel, a sitting and a meeting. the imperial conferences are actually meetings that include the supreme council for the direction of the war with the emperor and his most trusted people with him. keep that in mind. who are these guys? we will talk about them. the second group was senior officers in the japanese army in -- army. we have gotten into some of that and i think that is an area that is ripe for more research. the japanese army officers in charge. there has been a great book done on this. the japanese army is a great place to start, but there is much more research needed to understand what is going on with all of these guys. i think there is a treasure trove out there. they are scattered from rangoon

to sakali. they are scattered all over the place. something that is not discussed ideais whole ideal of -- of the rational actor theory. we have already heard, human beings are not fundamentally rational. they are fundamentally irrational. freud told us that. some of the time, we are irrational. what you need to understand is the guys running japan after hirohito resigns are the moderates. or, after tojo resigns. tojo is a moderate. tojo is from the control faction of the japanese already. the radicals are defeated in 1936, and the moderates take over.

there's the military, and they still have aggressive foreign-policy, but they are actually the moderates. we are lucky that the faction was defeated because they are far less rational. we always talk to the student for leavenworth. you have to relate politics to military results. at the battle of the philippine sea and all of the stuff in china, there are disasters. japan's government changes. a lot of americans do not know that. they think japan's government changes in 1945. no. it changes in june 1944. tojo resigned in disgrace after the failed campaign of retaking the mariana islands.

japan's idea of sacred soil. this policy for the direction or resigns.and he i wanted to do that. in the navy by 1944, there is still the treaty faction. the bellicose people inside the japanese navy in certain places, but for the most part they have been so discredited by the horrible defeats inflicted against them they are going to , be the ones running japan. they are the moderates. suzuki becomes prime minister. he is an admiral. there are a lot more moderates in the japanese government in 1945 and you might have imagined which makes this even more problematic. let us take a look at the supreme council during the week

of fire. the reconstitution council of the -- in it self is a minor miracle. they created this to give advice to the emperor. it was going to include the army, the navy minister, foreign officers, or the japanese equivalents. secretary of navy and secretary for war, the imperial chief of staff and chief of general naval staff. the prime minister, who has just resigned. there is a new one. a foreign minister who has party anori.entioned, togo shig admiral toyota the chief of the general staff -- not the chief, -- yeah, he is the chief of the general naval staff. it might be regarded as a minor miracle to put back together, so

here are the people. hirohito, prime minister suzuki, and here he is in the middle. suzuki is a fascinating guy. sort-ofy he is a firebrand. wants japan to expand and build an empire in china, very supportive of expansion in china. but he is also supportive of the treaty officer. he becomes prime minister in japan. he was target of a clinical assassination attempt, with a sword, if i remember, and he survived that assassination attempt. he is the premier, the prime stir, admiral toyota, and the a young,ter, kind of

dynamic guy compared to the other generals and the chief of the imperial general staff. keeper of the privy seal. there are key members of the cabinet that were not part of the decision-making body. why is that? it is mostly military officers if you have not figured it out. they do not trust the politicians. that is why the supreme council in the war does not have all these civilians. by the time of the defeat of okinawa, which is a disaster, not a miracle, the three key holds outs remain. the three hardliners. they were the war minister, the chief of the imperial general staff, and admiral toyota.

it did not mean the other guys, shiganori, were not all excited if japan could he could keep and their emperor, try their own were criminals, but they were the moderate faction. they absolutely continue to wield influence when they have an imperial council vetoing thing. the army is the key holdout. this is all the way up until august 9. this is really sort of the splits. to negotiate, ray a surrender if mediated and broken by the soviet union, and we have already heard, are yonei, andsuzuki,

kito. hirohito essentially straddles the fence. eaningnd more, he is l towards the moderates. the army has had the prime minister resign because of losing so much face before and i think they all had their suicide packages put together because things were so bad. they probably felt that, you know, i'm probably going to fail the emperor like all the others did and commit suicide. he certainly had everything ready to go in the time came. is he going to stand beside? his toyota going to say, all right, the navy does not agree with the decision but we will agree to go along? none of this is occurring the

way i am talking about. talking, hidden messages, and somebody will talk to somebody in the hallway, someone will write something in their diary and said the emperor looked this way and probably should have this way. and these are the moderates. from two of his chief military advisers that the army and navy don't think they can defend japan. the army and the navy come to the emperor and say we cannot defend japan. they will surrender, right? the next step, right? rational, right? no. [laughter] havealso said that they decided if the soviets invade manchuria, they will do a fighting retreat back to the

bastion in korea. ryrohito's in decisive victo is fatally compromised and should probably be considered after june 1944 really in the cast of moderates. he really wants out to save the kokutai as he sees it. which means he will be emperor after the war is over. by the end of june, evidence suggests hirohito would accept the terms coming out of potsdam. potsdam is not until the end of july. the evidence seems to suggest that hirohito will accept what comes out of pots them -- p potsdam if the soviets will media. that hope completely misplaced. the united states knows it

is the last chance. it is like playing poker. he is looking at their hand. he is not looking at mine. it is really well-known. hirohito keeps this attitude close to his vest about where he , is. by mid july, the firebombing had caused fear for hirohito's life. this gets glossed over, but they create this cheyenne mountain, or what is the place where the place in west virginia where the president is supposed to hide? anyways, the japanese have one of those in world war ii. it is in the mountains. they tell hirohito, hey, we want you to get on a train, this is in mid july, and go to the mountains. this way the bombers won't kill you. hirohito refuses. he did not want to eliminate his

field of action by giving the army control over what he says and does. good decision when we see what happens with the mini-coups the guards division tries to do. july, the emperor gives up on decisive victory once and for all. it's not going to happen. aircraft carriers are roaming the pacific at will. they are off japan. they can bomb japan. it is really a mess. the thing that pushes him over the edge is the bombing of the imperial shrine. that is the most sacred place in japan. it is like the vatican. if the japanese military cannot at ise, theyhrine

cannot protect hirohito. they have lost their mandate. then the potsdam declaration comes out. it is the condition for unconditional surrender. begin reviewing. in august they are relying on soviet initiative to achieve their basic war in, give notice -- even though it is absolutely hopeless and they hope that will come with something. we do not want the americans to know what our bargaining position is. nobody wants to go on record as saying here is what we will settle for. that might encourage the allies to ask for more. it might give them the sense -- they don't want to give up their targeting position, even know everyone knows what their bargaining position is. the war at this point -- by all parties everyone knows they have , lost.

by the end of july, the japanese empire that existed prior to 1941 is not going to exist like that after 1945. what does that look like? by that time, hirohito was ready to say that if it is just me and all these other guys, we can try these were criminals and work through this. i'm fine with that. i have a little note to myself, despite the implications that the ussr are a full party to -- let's talk about the miracle. it is a matter of timing. who talked to who, and when. it is also a matter of writing the imperial rescript. i wish we had roger brown to have another talk on that. i will not go into that, but there was a lot of effort put into the imperial rescript that gets put on the radio in the thin, reidy voice

of the emperor. first bombing of hiroshima. we talked about that array. it gets everyone's attention. that is really the effect. the effect is confusion. it is not decision, it is confusion. with we all say. who is my navy guy? what is the first report? it is always wrong. we have to figure out what we got here. we heard that they blew up hiroshima with this horrible weapon but we have to confirm for ourselves what is going on here. maybe it's not so bad. we military guys are trained to get disastrous news. sometimes it is not as bad as they are telling you. sometimes it is. [laughter] pearl harbor under attack. now we get into time zones. if you read all of this and try to set up a timeline, you have to do it in different time zones. washington, moscow, tokyo, beijing, shanghai.

23:00 local time in moscow, the soviet union delivers. they break off diplomatic relations with japan. there's some evidence that they had already crossed the frontier and maybe with some reconnaissance forces. they declare were almost simultaneously -- war simultaneously as they attack. almost like -- who else does that? kind of like the japanese. the effect here is cumulative. they have to wait for the information to flow to tokyo. after all flow in. this is before radios, hf communications, teletype. information is not moving the way it would on the computer. august 9, 10 minutes after midnight, the soviet forces to cross the frontier. it is actually a little bit

later. in mongolia and manchuria, initiating combat operations with the empire of japan. essentially, three army groups. the soviet call at the front up there. maybe one of them is more than an army group. that completely takes the -- they get operational surprise area what -- operational surprise. what does the japanese military do? they are surprised. here is another thing that undermines their credibility with each other. they go, hey, the russians are going to attack? they got you, didn't they? and with the emperor. that is going back and forth, too. the idea that this is going to happen quickly is nonsense. that it happens as quickly as it does is a miracle, i think. what is gone now?

the diplomatic option is gone. what this that mean? that means that yonei, shigenori, and suzuki jump ship. makese sailors so it sense that jump ship. one is worried they will be assassinated. keep that in mind as well. ime.st 11, 11:02 local t the soviets have declared war. man29 drops the fat plutonium bomb on nagasaki. there's a great bbc thing where napoleon is in moscow, sitting in the kremlin, the city is burning, and people are running in with bad news. this is kind of what happens on august 9 at the imperial conference. it is a scheduled meeting. is there more urgency in the meeting because of all the things happening? yes, there certainly is on

august 9. then the nagasaki news comes in. you get all this bad news starting a business i allies. it is all accidental how this lines up. the plutonium bomb -- and it really undermines those who were saying the americans only have one of these things. now they have demonstrated they have two. chances are they have three. they don't know that the third one had already who up -- blew mexico.w they have to judge from the evidence they have. days later they drop another. who would be stupid enough to drop all their bonds in only two days? immediately on the

council. in the garden of the gods, they councilouncil, bring with the direction of the emperor, they meet. despite the protests of the generals, they all wanted to avoid an occupation. it is decided, as you saw, to accept pottsdam in principle. there is some good lawyerly language they are thinking about issuing. some of this has to do with the fact that they take this slow. the army has not decided to revolt against. we will go slow on this. the other thing, we have the soviets that are having military success, and by now they really know that they have a problem in manchuria. there is also this. we talked about how nobody knew about radiological poisoning in all these other things.

maybe scientists knew, but the other thing with the japanese is the defense of -- i'm going to go into my command voice now -- the defense could be fatally compromised if the yankee devils have more than one of these things. they can sanitize the beaches. army has to do a military assessment. if you are counting on doing the majorities of your casualties with manned, causey aircraft, kazitia, -- manned kame aircraft, and if that is all vaporized, your plan to get that one last decisive victory is fatally compromised. that needs to be considered. we might be making too much out of this. it may be just the fact that the

americans can stand off and jam, as we say in the navy, stand off and pull japan apart with atomic weapons. you have to consider the applications and americans are , already considering up. things are not over. the army is not quite signed on to any of the worst-case scenarios, which is complete , unconditional surrender. no guarantee that the emperor will survive as an imperial institution. that thes notified emperor was ready to accept the pot stem resolution -- pot stem resolution - potsdam resolution. they still want to come out of

this with with the kokutai in place. the each had a different understanding of this. the emperor's understanding turns out to have been the most rational understanding. they could have all still gone wrong. suzuki still had doubts. concerned about the army, especially about a general not remaining loyal. he's the second most important man in japan between august 9 of august 15. he really holds some powerful cards. not just him. there's the council of the retired admirals and the council of the retired field marshals. and when the admiral -- emperor goes to them and tries to get support of how to except potsdam, they both say fighting. all the old warhorses from the

previous wars and disasters in siberia, they all say keep fighting. hirohito manages, despite all this, to consolidate his position with the royal princes. and with the political level, with suzuki and the cabinet. it is still in flux. japan is almost without a government. by august 11 or 12, japan is on the verge of becoming a failed state. hirohito is walking a very thin line. he could be kidnapped or killed at any moment all the way to the mountains or killed and one of his sons or his brothers placed in his place and he knows that. there is precedent for that in japanese history. if we go back in japanese history, we always see emperors getting retired and new emperors being brought up. there is precedent for that and he knows it.

this comes back to the japanese as a diplomatic transition. you have accepted the pot stem potsdamon -- resolution. what does that mean? instead of causing more clarity, it causes more confusion. the emperor has his speechwriters working overtime. five guys using this confusion to come up with the right language for this thing. hirohito took more personal action to control offense. there is the supreme council of the direction of the war. hirohito takes more and more action or every decision he takes could be his last and he knows it. he is really walking a line. i'm not trying to make a hero out of hirohito. he is the supreme warlord. he is the guy in charge of japan

when they go into china. they do not -- he does not overrule his generals then. i do want to say he is walking a very fine line. we will talk about his motivation. what really seals the deal is april 14, the americans decide that everyone in japan needs to understand the japanese government accepted the resolution at potsdam. they do informational warfare. they drop leaflets saying they had agreed to the agreement. what do they do? his hand has been forced. if they do nothing, that is a decision. whatever kind of prevailing consensus this is has been established. that is essentially what the general decides to do. you know what? i'm not going to fight this. there is more research needed on

toyota, but he is the ringleader. they go -- and he visibly starts working on his ritual suicide. is also the day that hirohito meets with the admirals and marshals and they tell him to keep fighting, but he has already made his decision. you have to give credit to their old warriors. they took the equivalent of the -- theymperial rescript swore a loaf of loyalty -- an oath of loyalty to the emperor and they keep it. that is something of america, too. part of the guards division -- something of a miracle, too. part of the guards division revolts. they contact anami. he says, don't bother me. i'm getting ready for seppuku.

they put down the coup. they are running out of time. there is a second one on three august 16. officers tried to kidnap the emperor, and the guards division loyal and they spirit these guys away. one of them might have committed suicide. why does hirohito decide to surrender? some say hirohito was trying to save the kokutai as he sought and his legacy to his ancestors. in the imperial script of surrender, the key is this 10,000 years line. it says we are willing to undergo the humiliation of 10,000 years so the bright harmony and peace emperor can lead to his ancestors the unbroken line of the imperial rule in japan. and he does. japan is in chaos, concerned the

government will rake down, that we -- breakdown, that we will get what the japanese call field initiative. we are going to get massive insubordination all across the board. not by the army, the navy, but japan has history of when order begins to break down, the peasants revolt and they go running up and down the streets in mobs, behaving erratically, irrationally, like people in missouri, maybe. anyway, that happens. hirohito, others have attributed it to cowardice on hirohito's part. he is just trying to save his own skin. this is the only way he sees he can do it. the effect is that the emperor makes the broadcast, and to endure the unendurable. not to surrender -- but the 10,000 years from the confucian texts. we will in due or -- we will

new asian for 10,000 years in the event we can can keep our emperor. they are making a gamble here. he's making a gamble that the americans are going to trade and keep it. he thinks this is probably the way to go. he is the head of the japanese, he is the pope in japan as well. he is the head of the religious in additions as well. he is certainly praying. maybe not the way that we think of in the west but praying. , two miracles occur after the broadcast. they have been already discussed. why should the japanese people obey? we heard primary source evidence post-fact the about why they should obey. they had never heard this guy before. most of the stuff coming off the radio had been lies.

they had recently been lied to about these huge victories that had taken place in the pacific. specifically, formosa, when they supposedly sank the third fleet. if they sank the third fleet, -- the third fleet and the fifth fleet were the same ships. why should they believe the emperor? how should they know this is the emperor? i think this is rather fascinating in japanese culture. legitimate will of the direct descendents of the gods especially because no one ever , heard his voice. the topic deserves more attention. we need more bottom-up. a lot of the people are dead, dying, or gone. there has been a lot collected more over the years as the world war ii generation is dying off. i suspect there's quite a bit in japanese. the japanese people can over there and start turning it into

english. it deserves more attention, but i think the japanese people, they knew. their cities are going up in flames one after the other, word gets around, even if your transportation and education systems have been fatally compromised. they had ever seen defeat. 2600 years, they never surrendered but in 2600 years they had never seen this. they saw something like it for one or 15 years during the warring states period. that was spread out over 150 years. not everybody was burning up the same time. fire has always been a japanese method of warfare. the other one is the armed forces. the japanese armed forces surrendered and so you get all of this collapse. but we have already heard it is not a done deal. they have to send members of the imperial family out to talk the generals.

before september 2 happens there is a lot of moving around. the army is not completely convinced it might not have to take charge. they move some of the imperial relics out of japan, out of tokyo until august 20 and hide them. that tells me a lot. that is something that is often glossed over. they are doing some funny things. do they have hirohito's permission to do with that? the other thing is how do we get these 2.5 million, however many million it is or not in japan to surrender on all these different islands? thousands and thousands of garrisons? some of them huge, some of them not so huge. this is where the soviet presence is really important.

japanese army has the plan to retreat anyways. it is pretty much a drubbing. if you read these books on august storm, they are getting beat up pretty good. there is this idea that i am not the first to surrender. we have had some surrenders already, or somebody's getting beaten, so that does not mean i'm first. that is the final thing. bottom line, the pacing of these events, the bomb on the sixth, declaration of war, the bomb on the combined with all of these ninth, other things, combined in a very miraculous way to cause the decision process to get all of these things to occur quite unexpectedly. the end of the world war ii in the pacific is unexpected. we really need to get that out. close with something they wrote. soviet entry was important for implementing the surrender.

-- atomic tom was the bomb was the crucial factor in the decision to surrender. thank you very much. [applause] questions? yes. >> this may not be a very rational view, but it seems if we had some time of irrational fear of the emperor. we did not bomb then when we could have killed him. we allowed the japanese to hang onto to the emperor with maybe it would have been best to remove him. why did we have this view of the emperor? prof. kuehn: why is the emperor so important and why does it s so important to americans and the allied decision-making, that is the question? we talked about people not being culturally astute from the military side in intelligence and all the stuff.

but there are some people who knew what was going on. there are some people with familiarity with japanese culture. some of them have never been to japan, but there is some meeting of the minds here for some of these iconic figures. macarthur is almost the perfect guy to go up there. he thinks he is an emperor. he is mere imaging. -- mirror-imaging. if i was the emperor, i would keep the emperor because i like emperors. i think that is a very powerful explanation. it is not just macarthur, he's advised by people. there is the movie that came out with tommy lee jones. inside the state department that

not tellmmended to japanese, but who is going to make everybody ok. and then the japanese emperor makes a video base. and gets everybody to surrender. he has a lot of help, but it is really him. do you really want to throw that away? there is some understanding of that before the surrender and start the united states. luckily, it is still a contingent view. we could still try hirohito as a war criminal and go a different way. it is hard to say. some have argued that was our big mistake not to try hirohito as a war criminal, and that is why every man, woman, and child does not necessarily think they lost because they got to keep the emperor. the difference is there today. look at japan and germany. who has the problems with their public relations? who has the problems facing the past honestly? the germans will forget over

time. they always do. the japanese forget a whole lot quicker, don't they? there are a lot of things in play. secretary of war stimson -- >> secretary of war stimson thought he knew what was going on in japan and argued he understood the emperor in japan. the thing i thought was one of his great insights is in this process of convincing the japanese armed forces to surrender, the imperial navy sends out a message to all hands, explaining the background of the decision process in tokyo. we intercepted. basically, this is solid gold evidence. we do not have to guess. we do not have to look the hind the curtain.

it seems like it is the real deal about what the story is. it emphasizes the role of the emperor in securing the surrender. it is an inference, but i still think it is a very powerful one that anyone who read that message, that intercept, about the role of the emperor is going to be impressed by the notion that this was a guy who could serve our purposes in securing the surrender. the other thing that is going to become critical in this, we find out that there in the surrender situation with respect to their influence of life. -- with respect to their food supply. we're not looking simply not only in the geopolitical considerations, the prospects of millions of japanese starving to death and and the emperor sanctioned behind rationing systems and other things is going to be vital to keeping the japanese alive. i have thought about this issue a lot. i don't agree -- i think it would have been very rash to try to remove the emperor right away . we were not entirely sure we had the secure surrender.

look at iraq. we have this food crisis situation for a couple of years . the big mistake in my view was that we should have keep him for a year or two years, maybe three, and at that point at that we could insist on application -- abdication and taking responsibility. knowing what we do in 1945 it , would have been a rash, possibly disastrous act at that moment. prof. kuehn: as we all know, not everybody surrendered. people wondering out of the woods in philippine, guam. alu, the armyal garrison is attacked by japanese junior officers 17 or 18 guys battled like. they go back to the cave they

. eiliu is almost iconic. they have send that out without you guys to surrender. not everybody did surrender. they kept fighting and they fought really well. i tend to go there. if you read these messages coming out, the emperor's role in this decision-making, the way we perceive it was critical, the way we presented it. more questions? is that the last one? one more question. >> target of hiroshima and nagasaki? why were those cities the target? prof. kuehn: they were close to the invasion area. when it's in a key protected nrea, the inland -- one is i

a key protected area, the inland beaches. that is a good place if you want to pre-sanitize the beaches. but there's also the targeting considerations. they use strategic arming calculus for it. who is producing what and why not tokyo? tokyo is the emperor thing. we do not want to incinerate the emperor. he might be the only hope for a surrender. hiroshima was a mustering area. there was an enormous complex of japanese army bases in regime of. it was also the primary port of embarkation for japan's overseas ventures. and nagasaki was not the original primary target.

original target. the weather was a factor in what made nagasaki. it was a tremendous shipyard, also famously the bomb burst in the air. >> it was a reset target. >> are watching american history tv, all weekend, any weekend on

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