MAKING PEACE Part One

 

I want to remind you of the simple inverse rule of international affairs.  Any idiot can start a war,  but it takes a hell of a lot effort by a lot of very smart people to end one. 

As an example I present the situation on Sunday, 9 July, 1944. On that day, at 16:15 hours (4:15pm local time), the American commander  of the  U.S. Pacific Amphibious Fleet, 59 year old Admiral Richmond Kellly Turner (above) declared the island of Saipan had been secured. 

The battle had been decisive. In the fleet engagement in of the Philippine Sea (a.k.a., the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot) (above), three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk and 600 Japanese aircraft and pilots were destroyed. The United States lost just 123 planes, and 80 of those experienced air crews were rescued. Only 1 American battleship, the USS South Dakota, was damaged by a single 500 lbd bomb and 20 crewmen were killed.

On Saipan itself  of the 30,000 Japanese soldiers engaged,  only about 1,000 surrendered and survived.  In addition, 22,000 civilians died, with about 1,000 throwing themselves and their children off Marpi Point onto the rocks below.  Officially the United States lost 2,949 dead, and 10,364 wounded. Up to this point in the Pacific War that ratio of 10 Japanese dead for every one American dead, had been fairly constant.

Even before Admiral Turner’s pronouncement, 15,000 members of the U.S. Navy Sea Bee's (Construction Battalions) had begun turning the island into the world's biggest airfield, with six 7,900 foot long runways from which 2,000 B-29 heavy bombers would turn Japanese cities now within range, into torches. All this was the predictable outcome of the 7 December, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, when Japan started a war with a nation which had twice their population and ten times their wealth.  

In the 44 months since Pearl Harbor the United States had largely supplied the 48 million allied soldiers (British Empire, Chinese and French) with oil, gasoline and aviation fuel, uniforms and small arms, 86,000 tanks, 193,000 pieces of artillery and 297,000 aircraft, while at the very same time putting 16 million American men into military service. 

Also, during those same 3 years,  the United States had built eight new battleships, 13 heavy cruisers, 2 large cruisers, 33 light cruisers, 18 heavy or fleet aircraft carriers - and were still launching a new fleet carrier each month - 76 light or jeep carriers, more than 600 destroyers and destroyer escorts, plus 4,000 large and 79,000 small landing craft. Since early 1944 almost all of this material was used against Japan.

In the Pacific alone the U.S. Army deployed 22 divisions comprising 2 million men as well as 6 Marine Corp divisions comprising almost half a million additional elite troops.  And with defeat of Nazi Germany in early May of 1945, the U.S. began shipping 400,000 veteran soldiers and equipment directly from Europe to the Pacific, with another 400,000 to pause in the U.S. for retraining before being transferred by June of 1946.  And it was this huge force, supplied in abundance and seeking revenge, which was descending upon Japan that summer of 1944. American had become the single greatest military machine in human history.

 

So what did Japan gain by attacking Pearl Harbor? The day after the sneak attack, the man Time Magazine called "America's Number One Isolationist", anti-communist and pro-Nazi New York Republican Congressman Hamilton Fish, declared Japan had become  a “stark, raving mad” people who, by attacking the United States, had “committed military, naval, and national suicide”.

Just two months before the secret attack on Pearl Harbor, the man who conceived and planned the assault,  Imperial Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (above) told his Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, "In the first six to twelve months of a war...I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success." He warned, "Tokyo will be burnt to the ground three times". 

And it was. So how was it that in June of 1944 that Japan found herself in this doomsday situation.

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An entire generation of Japanese children were indoctrinated in the belief that the nation and the  Chrysanthemum Throne had been synonymous for 2,600 years. In fact the Imperial Cult had really only started after the Mejii Constitution in 1889. Under this document, the Emperor was the head of state, and the religious leader as well. His subjects fought and died  “for the Emperor” even while they took orders from mortal men who ran the government and industry. And hidden in that constitution was a clause which required consultation with the Army and Navy before any individual could be named Prime Minister. 

Despite this, under the Emperor Taisho, who took the throne on 30 July, 1912, Japan was a fledging constitutional democracy. Unfortunately as an infant he had contracted cerebral meningitis, causing a swelling of his  brain which over time produced altered consciousness.  By the time of his death in 1926, most of his duties had been taken over by the 26 year old Prince Regent, Hirohito (above).  He had been raised without much contact with his parents, in a military environment.  He was not expected to publicly offer his opinion.  And even if he did, the business and war lords had a long history of “working around” inconvenient imperial wishes. 

Without a free press Hirohito only knew what his staff and advisors told him. He rarely knew what the military did not want him to know. And with time, that required consultation with military commanders concerning choices for Prime Minister became, first, requirement and then a veto on any candidate who showed any independence. 

On 30 November, 1930, Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi (above, center) leader of the liberal "Constitutional Democratic Party" was stabbed by a member of the right wing Patriot Society (the Aikokusha). Osachi died a year later.

On 15 May, 1932, 11 young Naval officers of The "Blood Brotherhood" (the Ketsumeidan), invaded the home of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi.  Although he was more conservative than his predecessor,  Tsuyshi's crime, in their eyes, was his opposition to the army's unauthorized 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and his refusal in 1932 to officially recognize the ressutant puppet state of Manchukuo.  

He tried to reason with young men, but was told "Dialog is useless", just before, in unison,  they shot him. They then threw hand grenades into the homes of the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and the head of a moderate political party. They also attacked the headquarters of the Mitsubishi Bank, and several electrical substations around Tokyo. 

They had also planned to murder visiting actor Charley Chaplin in hopes of starting a war with America. Cooler heads prevailed, and after a controversial trial, all 11 young officers were executed. 

Then, on the evening of 22 February, 1935 a hastily formed "Righteous Army" set out to murder those in the government they saw as betraying the Emperor and being traitors to the Army. The attack on the home of Prime Minister Keisuke Okada resulted in the murder of 4 policemen and the killing of Okada's brother-in-law, Colonel Denzo Matsuo. This time the prime minster escaped.

That same night. more soldiers marched to the home of the Minister of War, Kawashima, where they handed him a list of demands, including no punishment for themselves, a new commander for the army in Manchukuo, and the removal of other officers who offended the Righteous Army.  Kawashima pleaded he needed to speak the Emperor before signing anything. He was allowed to escape to the palace.

Yet another group of soldiers had driven to the home of Takahashi Kirekuyo, the Finance Minister, found him asleep in his bed and shot him to death (above). Another group broke into the home of Keeper of the Privy Seal, Saito Makoto, and executed him, wounding his wife as well. 

This revolution finally fell apart when members of the Righteous Army arrived at the Imperial Palace (above). Hirohito refused to see them and, with support from his surviving minsters, ordered them to return to their barracks, which they promptly did.  

That same night, 200 additional soldiers burst into the home of Kantaro Suzuki, the Grand Chamberlain, where they shot him twice. Thanks to his wife's quick thinking, he survived. Home Minister Fumio Gotō survived because he wasn't home when the killers came to call.  However 

Jotaro Watanabe, the Inspector General of Military Education, was not so lucky. The soldiers found him armed, but cut him down with a machine gun, and finished him off with a sword, in front of his 9 year old daughter.

This time the Emperor was scared and angry enough to demand action. And it was now, with full support from the Navy, who had 100 ships anchored in Tokyo Bay, and reluctant support from a few generals, that a counter revolution took courage.  Still it took almost 48 hours for martial law to be declared, and the officers leading the Righteous Army either committed suicide or were arrested, Fifteen were executed.

The outcome from all this bloodshed (some 60 political assassinations during the decade) was the terror it inspired in civilian politicians, which destabilized every new government.  Over the next 5 years Japan had 5 Prime Ministers, each time shifting slightly further and further to the right, until, at last, on 18 October, 1941, General Hideki Tojo (above) was appointed leader.  And it was Tojo, the ultra nationalist, who favored war with first China, and then with the United States and Great Britain.  And that is how Japan found herself in this terrible position in mid-1944. 

As historian Doctor Jeffery Record explained the problem, "In attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan elected to fight a geographically limited war against an enemy capable of waging a total war against the Japanese home islands themselves...how did Tokyo expect to compel the United States to accept Japanese hegemony in East Asia?....Or were they simply, as New York congressman Hamilton Fish declared the day after Pearl Harbor, a “stark, raving mad” people who, by attacking the United States, had “committed military, naval, and national suicide”?

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