Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (123 page)

6. There must be eliminated for all time the authority
and influence of those who have deceived and misled
the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest,
for we insist that a new order of peace, security, and
justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is
driven from the world.

7. Until such a new order is established and until
there is convincing proof that Japan’s war-making
power is destroyed points in Japanese territory
designated by the Allies will be occupied to secure the
achievement of the basic objectives we are here setting
forth.

8. The terms of the Cairo declaration shall be carried
out, and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the
islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and
such minor islands as we determine.

9. The Japanese military forces after being
completely disarmed shall be permitted to return to their
homes, with the opportunity of leading peaceful and
productive lives.

10. We do not intend that the Japanese shall be
enslaved as a race nor destroyed as a nation, but stern
justice will be meted out to all war criminals, including
those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.

The Japanese Government shall remove all obstacles
to the revival and strengthening of democratic
tendencies among the Japanese people. Freedom of
speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect
for fundamental human rights, shall be established.

11. Japan shall be permitted to maintain such
industries as will sustain her economy and allow of the
exaction of just reparations in kind, but not those
industries which would enable her to re-arm for war.

To this end access to, as distinguished from control
of, raw materials shall be permitted. Eventual Japanese
participation in world trade relations shall be permitted.

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12. The occupying forces of the Allies shall be
withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives
have been accomplished, and there has been
established, in accordance with the freely expressed
will of the Japanese people, a peacefully inclined and
responsible Government.

13. We call upon the Government of Japan to
proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the
Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and
adequate assurances of their good faith in such action.

The alternative for Japan is complete and utter
destruction.

These terms were rejected by the military rulers of Japan, and the United States Air Force made its plans accordingly to cast one atomic bomb on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki.

We agreed to give every chance to the inhabitants. The procedure was developed in detail. In order to minimise the loss of life eleven Japanese cities were warned by leaflets on July 27 that they would be subjected to intensive air bombardment. Next day six of them were attacked. Twelve more were warned on July 31, and four were bombed on August 1. The last warning was given on August 5. By then the Superfortresses claimed to have dropped a million and a half leaflets every day and three million copies of the ultimatum. The first atomic bomb was not cast till August 6.

The closing scenes of the war against Japan took place after I left office, and I record them only briefly. On August 9

the Hiroshima bomb was followed by a second, this time on the city of Nagasaki. Next day, despite an insurrection by some military extremists, the Japanese Government agreed to accept the ultimatum, provided this did not prejudice the

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prerogative of the Emperor as a sovereign ruler. The Allied Governments, including France, replied that the Emperor would be subject to the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers, that he should authorise and ensure the signature of the surrender, and that the armed forces of the Allies would remain in Japan until the purposes set forth at Potsdam had been achieved. These terms were accepted on August 14, and Mr. Attlee broadcast the news at midnight.

The Allied fleets entered Tokyo Bay, and on the morning of September 2 the formal instrument of surrender was signed on board the United States battleship
Missouri.
Russia had declared war on August 8, only a week before the enemy’s collapse. None the less she claimed her full rights as a belligerent.

We could brook no delay in enforcing the capitulation.

Malaya, Hong Kong, and the greater part of the Dutch East Indies still remained in enemy hands, and elsewhere there were isolated forces who might ignore the Emperor’s command and fight on. The occupation of these vast territories was thus a matter of urgency. After his Burma campaign Mountbatten had been preparing to liberate Malaya, and everything was in train for a landing near Port Swettenham. This took place on September 9. Other ports were occupied early in September, without fighting, and on September 12 Mountbatten held a surrender ceremony at Singapore.

A British officer, Admiral Harcourt, reached Hong Kong on August 30, and accepted the formal surrender of the island on September 16.

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There were some in America who believed that Japan’s downfall could have been achieved more economically by a greater use of air-power from bases in China and possibly Siberia. They maintained that her sea communications could have been severed and her power of resistance in the homeland destroyed just as effectively by air action alone, without a long and costly approach by sea as a prelude to invasion. The more advanced exponents of air-power maintained that political objectives elsewhere, in Burma, Malaya, and the East Indies, might have been renounced for the time being and could have been achieved without fighting once the air battle had been won.

The American Chiefs of Staff had rejected these ideas.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell, and was brought about by overwhelming maritime power. This alone had made it possible to seize ocean bases from which to launch the final attack and force her metropolitan Army to capitulate without striking a blow.

Her shipping had been destroyed. She had entered the war with over five and a half million tons, later much augmented by capture and new construction, but her convoy system and escorts were inadequate and ill organized. Over eight and a half million tons of shipping were sunk, of which five million fell to submarines. We, an island Power, equally dependent on the sea, can read the lesson and understand our own fate had we failed to master the U-boats.

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20

Potsdam: The Polish Frontiers

Poland, Germany, and the U.S.S.R. — Polish
Compensation for the Curzon Line — Transfer of
Populations — The First Plenary Session of the
Potsdam Conference, July
17 —
Second Session,
July
18 —
Trouble with the Press
—
A Plan for
Drafting the Peace Treaties —“What is Meant by
Germany?”— My Appeal for the Poles in Exile —

Discussion About Poland’s Frontier in the West —

Germany’s Food and the Eastern Provinces — I
Stress the Urgency of a Settlement
—
IMeet the
Polish Provisional Government, July
24 —
My Plea
for Free Elections — A Talk with Bierut, July
25.

V
ICTORY OVER JAPAN was neither the most difficult nor perhaps the most far-reaching of the problems which confronted us at the Potsdam Conference. Germany had collapsed; Europe must be rebuilt. The soldier must go home and the refugee return, if he could, to his country.

Above all, the nations must make a peace in which they could live together if not in comfort, at any rate in freedom and safety. I do not intend to recount our detailed exchanges in formal conference and in private conversation on all the urgent and multitudinous questions which pressed upon us. Many of them are still unsolved. Poland, for whom Britain went to war, is neither free nor quiet; Germany is still divided; there is no peace with Russia.

Russia’s share of Poland, Poland’s share of Germany, and Triumph and Tragedy

767

the place of Germany and the Soviet Union in the world, such were the topics which dominated our discussions, and to which, for reasons of space, this account must be limited.

We had agreed at Yalta that Russia should advance her western frontier into Poland as far as the “Curzon Line.” We had always recognised that Poland in her turn should receive substantial accessions of German territory. The question was, how much? How far into Germany should she go? There had been much disagreement. Stalin had wanted to extend the western frontier of Poland along the river Oder to where it joined the Western Neisse; Roosevelt, Eden, and I had insisted it should stop at the Eastern Neisse. All three heads of Governments had publicly bound themselves at Yalta to consult the Polish Government, and to leave it to the Peace Conference if we could not agree. This was the best we had been able to do.

But in July 1945 we faced a new situation. Russia had advanced her frontier to the Curzon Line. This meant, as Roosevelt and I had realised, that the three or four million Poles who lived on the wrong side of the line would have to be moved to the west. Now we were confronted with something much worse. The Soviet-dominated Government of Poland had also pressed forward, not to the Eastern Neisse, but to the Western. Much of this territory was inhabited by Germans, and although several millions had fled many had stayed behind. What was to be done with them? Moving three or four million Poles was bad enough.