* Episode 69.
* Ray’s favourite number.
* Have you actually had one yet, Ray?
* Sister in law?
* Truman had given his final approval to the plan to invade Kyushu, the southern most island of Japan, just two weeks before leaving for Potsdam.
* A Russian invasion of Manchuria and Korea figured prominently in the grand strategy that underlay that plan.
* Second, even an invasion of the home islands did little to solve the problem of the estimated 1.8 million Japanese soldiers in mainland China.
* But the Soviets could handle that problem as well.
* In return, of course, for the new territories they wanted as a result.
* Which were mostly old Russian territories lost during the Russo-Japanese war as we discussed in earlier episodes.
* Getting Stalin into the Pacific War was Truman’s number one goal in Potsdam.
* The Japanese knew of course that this was coming and had been trying to negotiate a way to keep their Neutrality pact in place with the Soviets.
* They had offered the Soviets pretty much everything they wanted - southern Sakhalin Island, Port Arthur, and half of Manchuria in exchange for help in keeping the rest of Japan’s conquests in Asia.
* The Russians had informed the Allies about these offers and their rebuttals of them.
* But still the Americans didn’t trust the Soviets and thought they might cut a deal.
* Of course, Truman need not have worried about Russian desires to join the war against Japan.
* Stalin wanted Russia involved in the war as much as Truman did.
* On June 28, 1945, even before he set out for Potsdam, Stalin told his commanders to begin preparations for a war with Japan “in the greatest secrecy.”
* As later reported, “army commanders [were] to be given their orders in person and orally and without any written directives.”
* Almost without debate, Stalin told Truman early on at Potsdam that Russian forces would invade Manchuria no later than mid-August.
* Truman was as happy as a capitalist pig in shit.
* How to end the war with Japan remained a question of intense debate.
* The Allies had insisted on unconditional surrender for Germany, but several strategists argued that the same insistence for Japan might well prove counterproductive.
* The geography of Japan complicated any attempts at invasion and military dominance.
* Culturally, the Japanese people had an attachment to the emperor that argued against an insistence on his removal.
* If the Americans, whose forces would have to bear the brunt of an invasion of the home islands, insisted on dethroning the quasi-divine emperor, it might force the Japanese to fight on for an abstract goal that had little real strategic or political importance.
* The Americans should, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and others argued, allow Japan to keep its emperor in exchange for ending the war.
* Most senior US military officials agreed, noting that only the emperor could sign or endorse a capitulation that the Japanese people would respect.
* Removing him by force might create anarchy and an untenable situation for occupying forces.
* British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin drew a direct lesson from World War I, arguing that “it might have been better for all of us not to have destroyed the institution of the Kaiser after the last war; we might not have had this one if we hadn’t done so.”
* Thus, he argued, the Allies should remain flexible about the emperor’s future.
* Other officials recalled with bitterness Pearl Harbor and insisted that Japan must surrender unconditionally.
* The still-influential former secretary of state Cordell Hull publicly blasted any concessions to the Japanese as “appeasement.”
* His word choice mattered deeply, as it carried the historical implication of both American weakness and the beginning of another round of conflict.
* He, Byr
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