MAKING PEACE - Six - Second Thoughts

I guess the simplest (and maybe most accurate) evaluation of James Francis Byrnes (above) was offered by dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin, who at the Yalta conference in 1944, called him “the most honest looking horse thief” he'd ever met. Or, to put it in a business school sense, when named Secretary of State by Harry Truman in July of 1945, the converted Episcopalian had finally risen to his “level of incompetence". And in the language of poker, “Jimmy” Byrnes' “tell” was the racism that led him to endorse lynching “in order to hold in check the Negro in the south”. That poison, and his newly discovered incompetence, lead Byrnes to unwittingly help drag the war out a few more weeks and kill one last young American.

Byrnes served in every branch of the federal government. In 1910 he was elected to the House of Representatives from South Carolina – in 1930 to the Senate, where he helped guide much of Roosevelt's New Deal legislation into law. As his reward, in July of 1941, the President nominated him to the Supreme Court. But after little more than a year in the judicial branch, Byrnes resigned and accepted a position in the executive branch, leading the “Office of Economic Stabilization”, proving so successful at balancing prices and salaries that in 1943 Roosevelt also handed him the “Office of Mobilization”, responsible for building war plants across the country. It was that position that brought James Byrnes into contact with the Manhattan District, and the atomic bomb.

It was Byrnes (above, left)  who had written the final draft of the Potsdam Declaration, removing on his own  any reference to retention of the Emperor, and any mention of the Soviets. He was convinced Truman (above, center)  would be “crucified” if he compromised on Hirohito. The lack of oversight of Byrnes was understandable. . John McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War noted, "Everyone was so intent on winning the war by military means that the introduction of political considerations was almost accidental" And this failed oversight favored Byrnes. As a State Department official put, Byrnes approach to foreign policy was a checkers stategy in a chess game.

There is no indication that Truman ever noticed the Byrne's editing of the draft Declaration. Thrust into the presidency in March, Harry Truman instinctivly trusted Byrnes and depended on what he initially saw as a fellow southern politician with foreign policy experience. But with new estimates of casualties for a Japanese invasion from Hoover and the Navy, by August the President was cooling on his summer "bromance" with Brynes. So when the American radio intercepted the Japanese peace offer at 7:33 in the morning of 10 August, 1945 (Washington time) , Truman called in not just Byrnes, but the Secretary of War, Republican Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Admiral William Leahy, head of joint Chiefs of Staff, to consider what the American response should be.

Brynes saw the atomic bomb as forcing an immediate Japanese surrender and giving the U.S. leverage with the Soviets. Admiral Leahy had been opposed to using the atomic bomb at all, calling it “barberous”. Secretary Forrestal (above) had been in favor of offering the Japanesse a “face saving” surrender before the bomb and before the Soviets could enter the war, and was still seeking outside advice on how to achieve this.

And while Secretary Stimson (above, right)  had recommended using the bomb, he had always urged that the Japanese be allowed to keep the Emperor, in the name of internal stability. In effect, Truman had stacked the meeting against Byrnes.

Truman asked each of the men if they considered the reported Japanese note as meeting the Potsdam conditions. Byrnes (above, right)  flatly said no. Stimson (above, center) said yes, warning that without the Emperor, the United States might face “a score of bloody Iwo Jima's and Okinawas” all across Asia. Admiral Leahy said he had no opinion about keeping the Emperor. Byrnes charged ahead, saying “the United States and not Japan” should be setting conditions for the surrender. 

At this point Secretary Forrestal, who had wittnessed the invasion of Iwo Jima (above, center) , urged Truman to coach the Japanese into surrender but with language that reflected “our intent and view”. He suggested saying the Emperor and the Japanese would still rule their country, but subject to the orders of the Americans. The message was clear. Byrnes had lost the debate.

Stimpson now offered a shewed suggestion - a bombing halt It gave Truman room to manuver. He took a hard line, continuting the bombing. But he told Byrnes to prepare a response accepting the Japanese offer as meeting Potsdam. Under Truman's instructions, James Byrnes now showed his true genius. The response written by Byrnes, read, “From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule... shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers...The ultimate form of government of Japan shall...be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.... The Allied Powers will remain in Japan until the purposes set forth in the Potsdam Declaration are achieved."

In black and white it said the Emperor could stay, if the Japanese people wanted him to. And the use of the term “allied powers” included by assumption, the Soviets. But it had finally become clear to the Americans that they wanted the Russia no deeper into the Pacific. Neither the United States, nor the Japanese, wanted Communist troops on the Japanese home islands. And that was now the primary aim of the two enemies.

If Byrnes had included the offer on the Emperor in the original Potsdam Declaration, it was possible the war would have ended before Hiroshima. But that seems unlikely. Too much was happening, too fast. As Truman noted in his diary that night, “This has been a hell of day.”

On Friday night 10 August (Tokyo time), 107 B-29s of 315^th Bombardment Wing launched a peniltimate attack against “gasoline alley”, the Japanese oil refineries. This target, the Nippon Oil Refinery at Amagaski, was hit with 902 tons of high explosives dropped from 16,000 feet. However, since there was almost no oil left to be refined in Japan, the raid was almost meaningless.

The 68 largest cities in Japan had now been attacked from the air, leaving 400,000 dead, 750, 000 injured and 2 million homeless. “Sixty-six of these raids were carried out with conventional bombs, two with atomic bombs.” Over 600 major industrial targets were either destroyed or badly damaged, and somewhere between 1/3 and ¼ of Japans wealth had been wiped out by American bombing. The monetary cost to the United States was minimal. Where the U.S. spent $30 billion bombing Italy and Germany into submission, the air campaign against Japan cost the American taxpayer a paltry $4 billion.

At 7:45 on the morning of Saturday, 11 August, Soviet infantry crossed the border which had divided Sakhalin Island since 1925. But the attempt to carry the first village, Honda, failed against strong of Japanese resistance. Out numbering Japanese forces on the island 20, 000 to 5,000, the Soviets sent tanks south to encircled the town. The next day, Sunday 12 August, they would finally capture the strong points in the town, but would have to kill every Japanese soldier to do it.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, the Japanese military leaders were having second thoughts about their agreement to surrender. 

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PEACE Part Four THE OBVIOUS

I am certain the attack was a total surprise in every way possible. In the south, the Russians came across the mountains and desserts of Mongolia, a path that seemed impossible because they could not be supplied through that line. What the Soviets did here was something new, a method the U.S. would repeat in 1989 in Iraq. Soviet parachute troops captured Japanese airfields far behind the enemy lines and food and fuel were then flown in, turning them into supply depots for the advancing ground troops. The Soviets were clearly driving toward the city of Changchun, where they would meet the equally successful advance of the Soviet armies from the Far Eastern Front. Those pincers would together isolate the entire Japanese Manchurian Army. And there was nothing the Japanese troops could do to stop them.

For the first time the Japanese Army faced a ground campaign against a mechanized army, with troops hardened by four years of vicious warfare with Nazi Germany. If in 1941 the German soldier was the best in the world, by 1945 it may well have been either the American or the Soviet soldier. In the invasion of Manchuria there were one and a half million Russians;  eighty divisions, five thousand tanks, including 3,700 T-34’s, acknowledged as the greatest tank of the Second World War. The Japanese never had a tank or an anti-tank gun to match  the T-34. And there were also almost 4,000 first line Soviet aircraft filing the skies. The Japanese had just 50 front line fighters left in Manchuria.

The Soviet offensive was violent and smart and merciless, which perfectly matched the personality of its planner and commander, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky:, the man who had saved Moscow in 1941, and who had actually directed the Stalingrad counter offensive, and who had been planning this invasion since late 1944. He called the operation “August Storm”, and perhaps as a homage to Vaslevsky, American General Schwarzkopf called his 1989 similar operation “Dessert Storm”.

The one million Japanese troops in Manchuria and Korea were not prepared for what hit them. The best troops in the Kwantung Army had already been transferred to the Pacific and Burma meat grinders. They were now either dead or isolated and starving on bypassed islands or jungle outposts. Instead the Kwantung Army now contained a high percentage of new recruits. The units spent their time in drill and chasing guerrillas. The Imperial Staff was convinced that any Russian offensive could not be launched before October. So, they ignored warnings from the local commanders in Manchuria. And when the Soviet tanks sliced through the stunned Japanese border entrenchments on the morning of August 9th, there was nothing behind them to slow their advance.

In just 24 days the Red Army would capture all of Manchuria, make amphibious landings in northern Korea and capture Sakhalin Island and the Kuril islands, then part of Northern Japan. But a large part of this appallingly bad news was withheld from the "Big Six" by staff officers, in part because they feared their superiors would become defeatist and in part to save their own necks, but mostly because the Japanese communications network had been damaged so badly by the Soviet blitzkrieg that the Japanese military staffs did not know a lot of the bad news themselves

The Japanese commander in Manchuria, General Otozo Yamada, was missing for the first 18 hours of the battle, unable to get back to his headquarters. But the battle developed just as Yamada had warned the supreme command that it would; disastrously.

Finally, on August 9th at about 10:30 in the morning, Prime Minister Suzuli told the "Big Six" that the Emperor agreed with him; the war must be ended as quickly as possible now that Russia had joined the conflict. The Foreign Minister said he could not accept the American position given in the Potsdam Proclamation, because it would require the removal of the Emperor. (Again, no one in Japan had yet told the Americans that this was the primary sticking point.) Terms to be offered the Americans were still that, one, Japan would disarm herself, two, accept no occupation, and three, that Japan would conduct any war crimes trials of Japanese soldiers.

It was all clearly fantasy, and the "Big Six" spent their time this morning arguing these points to be negotiated after the next great bloodbath. They argued until word arrived of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki: so much for the theory that the U. S. had only one bomb. There were now another 70,000 dead (with another 70,000 to follow within days). Still, when the "Big Six" ended their meeting they were still tied, three for continuing the war until Japan could score a "blood victory" against the Americans, and three for immediate surrender.

In fact the U.S. had enough plutonium for several more bombs. The assembly of nuclear weapons was not yet industrialized, but it soon would be. Manhattan Project Commander General Leslie Groves reported to the War Depart that another plutonium bomb would be ready for operations on the 17th or 18th of August and at least seven bombs would be available in time for the invasion of Kyushu, scheduled for September.

The plan was to use the bombs against the island's defenders, to "clear the ground" for American combat troops. But even assuming this worked, and ignoring the likelihood of massive radiation deaths amongst the American invaders, what would have been the cost of such a risky operation?

There were more than one and a half million American soldiers were poised for that invasion. American intelligence services now estimated there were an equal number of Japanese soldiers waiting on the American invasion of Kyushu.

Iwo Jima, where it had been one American for every two Japanese dead; which meant, on Kyushu 1.5 million Japanese dead and wounded, and 750,000 American dead and wounded. Civilian casualty's would probably have more than doubled the Japanese numbers. So, the American conquest of the southern half of Kyushu seemed assured, but at casualty levels not seen so far, even in the bloody Pacific.

That night, the Big Six met again, still tied at three to three. But this time the Emperor in person actually cast his vote, something the Emperor had never done before. The vote was now four for peace, three for continuing the war. It would be peace. The next day Mr. Max Grassli, charge d’Affaires for Switzerland, sent to James Byrnes, the U.S Secretary of State, the following cable:.

“I have the honor to inform you that the Japanese Minister to Switzerland, upon instructions received from his Government, has requested the Swiss Political Department to advise the Government of the United States of America of the following:

"...The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam…with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler. The Japanese Government sincerely hope that this understanding is warranted and desire keenly that an explicit indication to that effect will be speedily forthcoming….In transmitting the above message the Japanese Minister added that his Government begs the Government of the United States to forward its answer through the intermediary of Switzerland….”

Please pardon me, but honestly, it was far past time.

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