JAPAN SURRENDERS:

[Nemesis]

September 2, 1945

Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies,
bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was
a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The
Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left
the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans
captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an
invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was
put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named "Operation Olympic" and set
for November 1945.The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne
attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in
terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the
United States secretly detonated the world's first atomic bomb in the New Mexico
desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the
"unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply
would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces
and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." On July
28, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that
his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. U.S. President
Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on August 6, the U.S. B-29
bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more.After the
Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of
the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On
August 8, Japan's desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the
USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in
Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S.
atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.Just before
midnight on August 9, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war
council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister
Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the
understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that
prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council
obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on August 10 the message was relayed
to the United States.Early on August 12, the United States answered that "the
authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be
subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate
about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the
text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the
Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.In the early hours of
August 15, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji
Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime
Minister Suzuki's residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At
noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to
announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his
subjects, "we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the
generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is
insufferable." The United States immediately accepted Japan's
surrender.President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of
Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan's formal
surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen
considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman's native state.
MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until
September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied
powers to arrive.On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at
anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union,
and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo
time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the
Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed
forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature.Supreme Commander MacArthur
next signed on behalf of the United Nations, declaring, "It is my earnest hope
and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world
shall emerge out the blood and carnage of the past." Ten more signatures were
made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France,
the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed
for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through
low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over.