Kamikaze (14 page)

July 24, 1945

Late in the day, at the end of the Big Three session, Truman walked around to Stalin’s chair and, aided by his interpreter, said casually, “You may be interested to know that we have developed a powerful new weapon of unusual destructive force.”

Stalin smiled blandly and showed no special interest.

“I’m glad to hear that,” the Russian said. “I hope you make good use of it against the Japanese.”

Later, as they were waiting for their cars, Churchill asked Truman, “How did it go?”

“He never asked a question,” the president replied.

“Ike’s against dropping the bomb.”

“Why, Harry?” Byrnes asked, topping up his bourbon.

“According to what he told Stimson, the Japs are already defeated. At the moment, they’re seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. Ike has grave misgivings about shocking world opinion by using a devastating weapon that’s no longer mandatory to save American lives.”

“The Pacific isn’t Eisenhower’s theater. He’s supreme commander in western Europe.”

“That’s another problem. MacArthur’s supreme commander in the Pacific, and he also thinks the bomb’s unnecessary from a military point of view. Know what he told his staff when he learned that the Japs had asked Russia to negotiate surrender with us? ‘This is it. The war is over.’”

“I don’t see MacArthur here at Potsdam to make the decision. And we won’t consult him.”

“He’ll be livid, Jimmy.”

“There’s much more at stake here than Japan, Harry. We’ve got to stop the Russkies from gobbling up the globe. What’s that story you told me about your granddad and the Injuns?”

“Solomon Young ran a wagon train from Independence, Missouri, to San Francisco. The redskins bothered the other trainmasters, but they didn’t bother him. He scared ’em. My granddad let the Indians know that he had the guns and the ammunition, and that he’d shoot them if they gave him any trouble.”

Byrnes raised his glass. “You gotta let your enemy know you got the guns. The Russkies have to
see
the bomb explode in Japan. They’ll know there’s an ominous bulge in our pocket after that. And any time we want to use atomic diplomacy, I can say to Molotov—or to Stalin—‘You don’t know Southerners. We carry our artillery in our hip pocket. If you don’t cut out all this stalling and let us get down to work, I’m gonna pull an atomic bomb out of my hip pocket and let you have it.’ In all future disputes with the Reds, we can stand by our guns.”

“In eastern Europe.”

“And Asia. Stalin says Russia will enter the war against the Japs on August 8. If they do, he’ll demand concessions in the East. Mongolia, Manchuria, and Korea will gradually slip into Russia’s orbit, then China and, eventually, Japan. But drop the bomb before that and we won’t need the Commies. They’ll have no bargaining chips.”

“That’s a lot of lives,” said Truman.

“Jap lives, Harry. Think of the
American
lives we’ll save.”

“The joint chiefs say invading Japan will cost forty thousand U.S. dead. It’s not like Okinawa. The geography’s
different. And before long, there won’t be a Jap city standing.”

“That’s all the more reason to strike now. If we’re gonna scare the Russians, the bomb needs a virgin background against which to show its strength.”

“That’s a lot of lives,” Truman repeated.

“How many American lives does General Marshall think invading Japan will cost?”

“He says half a million.”

“Well, there you go. That’s the figure we’ll use.”

“We’d better warn the Japs.”

Byrnes shook his head. “They had Pearl Harbor. This will be
our
surprise attack. If we warn the Japs the bomb will be dropped on a given city, they’ll bring in our prisoners of war and use them as shields.”

“Should we give ’em a demonstration? Let the Jap military see our guns?”

“What if the bomb’s a dud and fails to explode? That’ll play into the hands of Jap hard-liners, and we’ll look like fools. Plus, gone will be the element of surprise.”

Truman swirled his whiskey and downed a slug.

“So that decides it?” said the president.

“Tomorrow we give the order.”

“Okay, Jimmy. The bomb drops unless the Japs fold and negotiate surrender.”

“Negotiate? That doesn’t sound like ‘unconditional’ surrender to me, Harry.”

July 25, 1945

Today, the order went out:

TO: General Carl Spaatz

Commanding General

United States Army Strategic Air Forces

1. The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki ...

2. Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff ...

 

Truman recorded in his diary: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th.”

July 26, 1945

In the end, it all came down to the emperor. That was the only condition Japan tried to negotiate.

“Unconditional surrender” was a slogan that Truman had inherited from Roosevelt. At a press conference in Casablanca after FDR met with Churchill in January 1943, the American president told reporters, “Some of you Britishers know the old story. We had a general called U.S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in
my, and the prime minister’s, early days, he was called ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese, and Italian war power means their unconditional surrender.”

The term was a war slogan. The words were propaganda designed to stimulate support from other nations and to help energize the war effort at home. But as soon as Truman came to power, he embraced Roosevelt’s slogan as if it were gospel in a VE day speech to the American people. “Our blows will not cease until the Japanese military and naval forces lay down their arms in unconditional surrender,” he vowed.

Now, as Japan tried to surrender, it was time to issue the Potsdam Declaration.

Everyone knew that Japan would not agree to any deal that threatened the status of the emperor. To his people, Emperor Hirohito was a god, the soul of Japan made incarnate. The country would fight to the last man if he was jeopardized.

At Potsdam, Churchill tried to reason with Truman.

“It’s best to leave the Japanese some show of saving their military honor, and some assurance of their national existence,” the PM argued. “The emperor is something for which they’re ready to face certain death in very large numbers, and this might not be so important to us as it is to them.”

“After Pearl Harbor,” Truman said, “I don’t think the Japs have military honor.”

The secretary of war agreed with Churchill.

Let Japan keep the emperor.

“I heard from Byrnes,” Stimson said later, “that they”—Byrnes and the president—“preferred not to put it in.”

Consequently, the Potsdam Declaration demanded unconditional surrender from the enemy. “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”

Without an assurance regarding the emperor, the Japanese rejected the ultimatum.

On August 6, Truman was sailing home on the
Augusta
with—in his words—“my conniving secretary of state” when they received word that Hiroshima, a target still undamaged by the conventional air war, had been obliterated by an A-bomb.

Truman issued a statement. “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor,” he declared. “They have been repaid many fold ... If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

On August 8, Russia declared war on Japan.

On August 9, Nagasaki was devastated by an A-bomb.

On August 10, Truman wrote in his diary: “Ate lunch at my desk and discussed the Jap offer to surrender which came in a couple of hours earlier. They wanted to make a condition precedent to the surrender. Our terms are ‘unconditional.’ They wanted to keep the Emperor. We told ’em we’d tell ’em how to keep him, but we’d make the terms.”

On August 14, the day Japan surrendered but kept its emperor, the flag flying over the White House was the
same Stars and Stripes that had flown in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hickam’s flag.

Time
magazine named Harry Truman its “Man of the Year.” Alongside his cover photo, the magazine ran an image of a fist as mighty as the hand of God clenching lightning bolts in a mushroom cloud.

That autumn, a new sign appeared on the president’s desk at the White House.

One side read: “I’m from Missouri.”

The statement on the other side referred to a practice common in Wild West poker games. A knife with a buckhorn handle marked the player whose turn it was to deal. If a player declined the deal, he’d pass the “buck” to another player.

The expression on Truman’s sign meant, If there’s a decision to be made, I’m the man to make it.