The World at War (83 page)

YOSHIHIRO TOKUGAWA

After the Emperor returned to the Fukiage Pavilion we went to the next room where the Grand Chamberlain had his office and just at that time the NHK [Japanese Broadcasting Corporation] man came in. He had the two recordings and he had put them into a can and he said, 'Shall I take it back to the broadcasting station?' I said I will take it with me and I put it in this room where I usually stay, it has a small safe where I placed the recording for safekeeping. At three o'clock I was awakened from my sleep and told by the guard detachment that rebel soldiers had come into the palace grounds. I felt I should have to inform the people at the residence of the Emperor and so I started to get ready to leave and as I went out I met the Minister of the Imperial Household and also the Home Minister. So I took them to a safe place underground and I went to the Fukiage Pavilion. On my way back I bumped into the officer who was leading the rebel soldiers but nothing happened and I managed to get back safely. Later I bumped into the officer again and he started to ask me all sorts of questions, but since we had known of the situation the day before we had taken pains to hide the recording, and besides the Home Minister was safe and also the Imperial Household Minister, so I was not worried in the least.
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TOSHIKAZU KASE

The surrender
ceremony took place on board the American battleship on 2nd September. I did not like to take part in this ceremony. The Foreign Minister [Shigemitsu] was chosen as the principal delegate, I was sure he would ask me to accompany him to this ceremony and finally I was caught. It was customary in those days for the principal delegate to proceed to the palace and greet the Emperor before starting a mission of importance, so I went to the palace and I prepared Shigemitsu's greetings to the throne. I did not know what to write because I was completely exhausted, my brain refused to function, but I knew that this greeting would be left as a document, would be preserved as a historical piece long after the surrender ceremony. So I collected my wits and wrote something to this effect, it was the substance of the address in the concluding paragraph to the throne: 'We deem it most regrettable that Japan, who has never experienced defeat, is now forced to surrender. But we are determined to make this day a starting point for reconstructing our dear fatherland. We know that that is exactly the Emperor's wish and believing that this is the wish of the throne, we shall bravely face the ordeal of the surrender ceremony and pledge this day be the first step on the road forward to work the democratic of Japan.' The Emperor raised his eyes, evidently to check a tear falling down – that was a very impressive sight for me.

MARQUIS KIDO

When the Americans dropped leaflets demanding surrender I thought that a troublesome thing had happened. The people and the soldiers in all posts all over the country were completely unaware of developments. If they should find out that the government was negotiating peace with the United States then the situation would have become impossible. It might even have led to a revolution, so I felt that we must push things to the conclusion as fast as possible. I think this shows the difference in thinking between Japan and America. The United States probably thought that by letting people know it would have the effect of starting a mass movement for peace, but that is wrong.

TOSHIKAZU KASE

Battleships in three lines, in the forefront as I waited for General MacArthur to come forward, 1 saw many thousands of sailors everywhere on this huge vessel, and just in front there were delegate of the victorious powers in military uniforms glittering with gold. And most particularly I noticed the Soviet representative, and there was also the Chinese delegate. When I saw the Soviet general I recalled the infamous attack the Soviet Union resorted to as we were crumbling. Then I saw the face of the Chinese; I thought what a pity it was that two Asian nations which should be good neighbours should have fought against one another.

YOSHIO KODAMA

Even if the United States dropped a hundred atom bombs or if they dropped a thousand atom bombs, I felt that Japan should continue fighting to the last man. Japan was undertaking research on the atomic bomb, but it was very small-scale research and they could never have achieved the atom bomb during the war. But if the Japanese had succeeded in developing an atom bomb I am sure they would not have used it in the same way as the United States, they would never have dropped it on a city containing non-combatants.

TOSHIKAZU KASE

The road was very bumpy with holes here and there and we had to move to the battleship. Although I wrote such a brave paragraph nothing made me certain of the possibility of Japan ever emerging as a great power, the destruction was complete. What matters most is the spiritual destruction of national fibre and as I saw our people, they were simply a collection of wonder because the effect of our Emperor's broadcast to finish the war had come as a tremendous shock to the nation. They did not know where they stood and there were wild rumours circulating among the frightened public that the American Army of Occupation would work havoc upon the people at large. I thought nothing was more pitiable then the plight of our people who were collapsing under the shock of defeat. That was understandable but then I was almost despairing of the future of this nation. Twenty-seven years later, now we see Japan emerging a great prosperous nation, democratically, and as I look back upon the day I feel justified with great sense of gratification that what I wrote in the Foreign Minister's greeting to the throne came true and whenever I see the Emperor I recall this scene, which was very painful and poignant. But I know the Emperor himself also with great joy the fact that Japan has re-emerged as a free nation with future of greatness in front of her.

CHAPTER 33
SETTLING ACCOUNTS

I tend to the view that the entire period between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1990 was, among other things, one long European civil war. It is certainly unarguable that the Second World War did not officially end until East and West Germany and the four powers that occupied Germany in 1945 signed a treaty in Moscow on 12 September 1990 that granted full independence to a unified German state. This was in lieu of the peace treaty that was meant to emerge from the conference on the future of Germany that took place in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam in July–August 1945. The third and last of the Big Three conferences saw the sole meeting between Stalin and Truman, who succeeded to the presidency on the death of Roosevelt, and the replacement of Churchill and Eden by Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin after the Labour Party won the General Election of 26 July.
The World at War
transcripts contained so much excellent Cold War-related material that I have sorted the best of it into two chapters. This, the first, covers the period of flux when American foreign policy was in transition from Roosevelt's high hopes for a New World Order based on the United Nations to the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine of containment in March 1947. At Potsdam the Americans took their eye off the European ball because of concerns that the war against Japan would drag on, and got the first hint of how thoroughly their government was penetrated by Soviet agents when Stalin scarcely blinked when told about the atom bomb. Although 'woe to the conquered' is perhaps the oldest and hardest rule in warfare, some would argue that the revolutionary precedents of international law developed for,
and by, the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal represent the most significant achievement of the Second World War. They are inadequately explained in the transcripts, so I have added the text of the seven principles adopted by the United Nations in 1950 as a reminder that there was right as well as might involved in this greatest of all wars.

AMBASSADOR W AVERELL HARRIMAN

President Roosevelt's Special Envoy to Europe

Recently the high-powered papers of Roosevelt have been made public and there you can see the very tough exchange of telegrams on both sides between Stalin and Roosevelt, which make it very plain that before he died he knew that Stalin was breaking agreements. The Polish situation was one of them. When we got back to Moscow the commission that was set up of Molotov, the British ambassador and myself was making progress, but then Stalin accused Roosevelt of perfidy in connection with the possible surrender of the German armies in Italy and sent him some very rough telegrams accusing him of being treacherous.

SS GENERAL KARL WOLFF

Governor of North Italy 1943–45

I was understandably deeply disappointed that the highest National Socialist leaders did not stand up and answer for the deeds they had done in the past and they had left those of us who could not be made personally responsible in the lurch. I personally thought it was necessary, with a heavy heart, to volunteer to take Himmler's place on the accused bench in the first big
Nuremberg trial. The Americans, however, did not accept my offer because they were worried that I would be called as a witness to the witness stand . . . and that I would be questioned by the Russians about the secret of the Italian capitulation, the revelation of which at this point in time was highly undesirable as far as the Anglo-Americans were concerned.
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So in order to avoid this they declared me mad and they took me to the madhouse in Bamburg on my forty-sixth birthday, where I was locked up in a room with sixteen complete madmen with brain damage, paralytics and syphilitics in the last stages. And it was incredibly difficult to survive this time unbroken and to get out of there alive at all.

AMBASSADOR HARM MAN

There was another issue which was very close to Roosevelt's heart, and that was Stalin did not carry out the agreement we thought we had made to admit our relief teams to contact prisoners of war as they were liberated by the Red Army's advance. We wanted to send them right into Poland and he wouldn't let us do it, and Roosevelt was very bitter about that. Some of the people that I know who agree, talked with him, some of them have written about it. I left as soon as Roosevelt died to go back to see Mr Truman. I wanted to be sure that President Truman understood the position of our relationships because there had been so much folly in the air about the warm relationships that existed with our gallant allies. President Truman was an avid reader, he was a man of very few words, you could carry on a conversation with him in a very few sentences, and I found he'd read my telegrams and understood from those messages the difficulty we were going to have. I didn't have to tell him very much, he asked me some questions but he told me at that time, 'I was not elected President – Roosevelt was elected President. I must understand what Roosevelt wanted to do and carry out what he wanted to do.' So any thought that Truman tried to change Roosevelt's policies was utterly untrue – he tried to do everything he could to carry out what Roosevelt had undertaken to do.

JOHN McCLOY

US Assistant Secretary of War

I don't know who was the first man that told him about the bomb. He wasn't aware of what was going on when he had been Vice President, but Secretary of War Stimson was the first one that really gave him a thorough briefing on what had been done preparing the bomb and what its implications were. He spent a great deal of time with the President on this subject. Mr Stimson was very much involved during the latter part of his term as Secretary of War, this was his main preoccupation – what are we going to do about this, what are its implications not only in terms of the Japanese war but in the post-war period, this great new force that's been introduced into the world. Stimson was quite a religious man. He could be profane on occasion but he was a very devout man and he had a real sense of responsibility for this new force because he really devoted himself to its development and contact with the scientists, so he was anxious to get over to the President all these implications. Mr Truman's reactions were rather stunned, rather amazed, it took him some time to grasp its full implications.

AMBASSADOR HARRIMAN

Stalin was very moved by Roosevelt's death and he felt – he gave an indication that he felt – that the future which they had been building on for the world might be interfered with. He asked me whether Truman would follow Roosevelt's policy and I said I felt sure that he would, and he said, 'Tell him I will give him full support. The world will look upon the situation with the great concern I think.' He was only going to send Deputy Foreign Minister Vishinsky, which was rather a slight, and
Molotov objected at once and whispered in his ear. Stalin brushed him aside but said, 'Molotov, will go.' Although Molotov was far more difficult to deal with than Vishinsky personally, I felt it was of some importance as an indication of his concern – interest in – the
United Nations.

ALGER HISS

Director of the US Office of Special Political Affairs

The United Nations conference was scheduled for 25th April. On the night of the 23rd Molotov, having come to Washington on his way to San Francisco, had a meeting with Truman and some of Truman's top advisers. By that time those who had been on a leash had been removed from their leashes and they were the chief advisers Roosevelt had in preparation for it. By that time the Polish situation had crystallised: the Russians were moving forward, they seemed to be paying no attention to the land of provisional government that the British and the Americans had hoped for, and therefore angry protest were going to the Russians about that. Truman decided to have a showdown – at which he was gifted. On that occasion he accused Molotov in effect of violation of the agreement. This was a strange tiling to do in the midst of a war by no means yet won, with an important ally. And it ended by Molotov saying, 'I've never been talked to like this in my life,' and Truman saying, 'Well, if you keep your agreements, you won't be talked to like that,' just like a schoolteacher. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, who had been present, told me the next morning that he was still shaken and I thought the whole conference was off.