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Hideki Tojo

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Japan and Spirituality

Japan's military ruling elite saw their nation as a harmonious family under a divine father, the emperor. They saw Japan as spiritual and the one divine nation on earth, which helped serve as a rationale for domination of others. The destiny of Japan, they believed, had been outlined by the gods and nothing could stop Japan from becoming the greatest empire on earth. In contrast, they believed, the Koreans were eaten by vices, the Chinese were corrupted by opium and other narcotics, and their old enemy the Russians were corrupted by their vodka. These Japanese were men from an agricultural and military tradition, and they saw the capitalist West as materialistic, egoistic and founded on exploitation and personal profit. Some rightists in Japan believed that war was basically the work of greedy men in search of profits. They believed that Japan was defending itself, its territory in Manchuria and its interests in Guomindang China. The Japanese were at war believing in their moral superiority, expressed by the poet Takamura Kotaro just after the attack on Pearl Harbor:

We are standing for justice and life,
while they are standing for profits.
We are defending justice,
while they are attacking for profits.
They raise their heads in arrogance,
while we are constructing the Great East Asia family.
Japan's victories seem to prove her moral superiority.

The Tide Turns

After sending troops to various places across Southeast Asia, some of Japan's military strategists wanted to strike in the direction of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India and take control of the Indian Ocean from the British. This was most threatening to the Allies, as the Germans in North Africa were threatening the Suez Canal. The British navy was no longer able to protect India's  eastern seaboard. But other Japanese strategists wished to keep most of Japan's troops in China and Manchuria and to strike at Australia, Admiral Yamamoto believing that with a division or two the Japanese could take control there.

The move toward Australia began in the summer of 1942. The first target was a port just north of Australia: Port Moresby in New Guinea. Having failed to take the port in a naval operation in May - during the Battle of the Coral Sea - the Prime Minister, General Tojo, would now try a land invasion, and in late July a Japanese force of 8,000 landed in New Guinea, at Buna, a hundred miles northeast of Port Moresby. An Australian division - which had fought Rommel successfully at Tobruk - and a U.S. Marine Division were rushed to Moresby and then inland, where they stopped the Japanese advance. And MacArthur, the Allied commander in the Pacific, moved his headquarters from Australia to Port Moresby.

MacArthur wanted to spread out Japan's forces in the area and so he challenged the Japanese on nearby islands, including Guadalcanal, where, on August 7, he sent 11,000 U.S. Marines. Guadalcanal became the main focus of the contest between the Allies and Japan, and for months the battle there raged on, involving U.S. and Japanese aircraft carriers and other ships. The Allies won control of the air over Guadalcanal. The Japanese sent reinforcements.  Japanese submarines put the aircraft carrier Saratoga out of action and sank the carrier Wasp, and both sides lost other ships. The Allies made it difficult for the Japanese to supply their troops on Guadalcanal, who were suffering from hunger, and, in early February, 1943, Emperor Hirohito commanded that  the Japanese on Guadalcanal withdraw. Japan's plans to invade Australia had come to naught. Japan's military described the withdrawal as an "advance by turning," and the public sardonically called it "advancing backwards."

Captives and the Rail Line through Thailand to Burma

Japan was supplying its troops in Burma by ships on a two thousand mile journey southward around the Malay Peninsula, and it was losing those ships to attacks by U.S. submarines. Instead of supplying its troops in Burma by ships, the Japanese decided to build a railway from Bangkok to Rangoon through dense jungle, using Japanese engineers and an abundance of prisoner-of-war labor that it held and the labor of local people - in place of machines. The prisoners-of-war were taken north to Thailand in ships under conditions similar to the "hell ships" that carried American prisoners  from the Philippines to Japan.

On this subject, the movie called Bridge on the River Kwai was almost totally fiction. After the main railway bridge was built - a steel bridge over the River Mae Klong - the laborers were put to work cutting through jungle and laying track. The building of the railway was progressing too slowly, and the Japanese in charge were ordered by Tokyo to speed up. They were suffering from a shortage of labor at the same time that they were reducing their labor supply through mistreatment and lack of care. Again, guards were men low in respect among the Japanese and determined to prove themselves by their brutality against those lower than they - the prisoners. Daily they beat prisoner-doctors trying to protect ill men from being dragged back to work. An estimated 13,000 prisoners of war died from disease, sickness, starvation and brutality. And 80,000 Asian laborers also died.

Australians, the British and Americans, meanwhile were working their prisoners-of- war, but at a reasonable number of hours per day, without the brutality, with sufficient food and medical attention.

More Defeat

By early 1943, the tide in Europe had turned. The Germans had lost in North Africa and the chances of Japan linking up to the Germans via the Indian Ocean was ending. In the Pacific, Japan was now facing difficulty in supplying its far-flung holdings. The battle for domination of the Pacific turned worse for the Japanese in early March, when much of Japan's navy was destroyed in the Bismarck Sea. And Allied submarines, most but not all of them American, began a substantial increase in successful attacks on Japanese shipping.

The Americans decoded a message describing a visit planned by Admiral Yamamoto to the Japanese airbase at Bougainville in the Solomons. U.S. military commanders were reluctant to order his assassination, but orders arrived from Washington, and on April 18 Yamamoto's airplane was intercepted and shot down, killing him. Japan went into mourning. Even in Singapore people were ordered to mourn for one day.

In early May, U.S. forces landed at Attu in the Aleutian Islands. Bitter fighting there lasted through the month, ending with defeat for the Japanese. And the Japanese thought it best to evacuate their 5,000 troops from Kiska, and did so in July.

In November, U.S., Australian and New Zealand forces landed at Bougainville in the Solomons. And in the Gilbert Islands troops were landed at Makin and the more heavily defended coral atoll, Tarawa. These amphibious landings in the Gilberts were supported by a huge armada of ships now possible as a result of both U.S. production and a drop in Germany's threat in the Atlantic. On Tarawa 1,300 Marines were killed and over 2,000 wounded overcoming a force of around 4,500 Japanese. And from the battle at Tarawa, lessons in technique were learned that were applied in a drive north against the Japanese in the Marshall Islands, where air and naval bombardments made landings easier.

The Military Harkens to the Zen Tradition of the Samurai

For the public, the Japanese government was exaggerating its military successes and minimizing its defeats, leaving the Japanese people believing that their nation was winning the war. But the public was becoming suspicious that all was not going well, and the government, sensing it was in trouble, sought a deeper spirituality from the people.

In December 1943, Prime Minister Tojo promoted spirit in a speech to students by describing combat as a fight of the spirit of one side against the spirit of the other side. He said that guns were only advanced technology but that one could fight without them.

The government forbade the showing of American and British films. German and French films were allowed, but, to preserve the wartime spirit, love scenes in these movies were cut - making love appearing an indulgence opposite to the spirit needed in the making of war. Also censored were some Japanese songs with lyrics that were close to suggestive. The government forbade "enemy music," including jazz. But some big city tea and coffee shops continued to play some jazz after they discovered that the police could not distinguish between it and classical music. Then in 1944 the government banned baseball, and electric guitars, the banjo and ukulele.

Textbooks and newspapers vilified the enemy. Newspapers described Americans as depraved, degenerate, corrupt and inhumane. School posters read "Kill the American devils!" Students simulated bayonet charges against images of Roosevelt and Churchill.

The contempt that certain Japanese felt for their enemies helped them commit atrocities and mistreat their prisoners of war. The Japanese, however, were still tolerant of the Jewish refugees they had accepted years before - refugees that made up the one orchestra that played classical music in Japan, whose concerts German officers in Japan attended. Japan was flooded with anti-Semitic literature, which had some influence on attitude toward the Jews, but, during the war, expressions of hostility to the Jewish center in Japan came in the form of only one hostile telephone call.

The Battle for Saipan

After the Marshalls, the U.S. struck at Japan's naval base at Truk - Japan's "Gibraltar of the Pacific." Then, on June 15, 1944, two Marine divisions landed at Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, from which the U.S. could launch its B-29 bombers against Japan. Japan had 30,000 men on the island and almost as many civilians. After three weeks of determined fighting only 921 Japanese surrendered, the rest dying in battle. Only about 10,000 civilians survived, some having killed themselves by jumping off the island's cliffs. Admiral Nagumo, who had led the task force against Pearl Harbor, also committed suicide, in one of the island's caves.

On July 21, the U.S. returned to Guam, and on July 24 they landed at Tinian, 5 kilometers southwest of Saipan. By now the Japanese were back in Burma from their offensive into northeastern India, begun in March. Of the 150,000 who had invaded India, a reduced number made it back to Burma, and they were sick and exhausted. The offensive was Japan's costliest defeat on land to that time.

In late October, 1944, the United States Navy defeated Japan's navy at the battle of Leyte Gulf, on the eastern side of the Philippines, just north of Mindanao - the Japanese losing twenty-four major ships, including four aircraft carriers, three battleships, and ten cruisers. And U.S. forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur, waded ashore at Leyte Island in the Philippines.

Japan's government could not hide the loss of Saipan from the public. The public was now certain that their nation was in deep trouble. Public sentiment and the outrage of fervent patriots forced Prime Minister Tojo to resign. Publicly, the Emperor began to be more closely associated with the war as an incentive for greater effort. And the people were reminded more frequently of the Emperor's deep concerns. All cabinet meetings were now to be held at the Imperial Palace. And louder now was the slogan "revere the Emperor, expel the barbarian."

Among the Japanese, contempt was growing for authority. And responding to reports from his many and varied contacts, Prince Konoye, former Prime Minister, urged Emperor Hirohito to end the war in order to prevent a communist revolution. Communism, he believed, was a greater danger than capitulation to the United States. The prime minister who succeeded Tojo, Koiso Kuniaki, agreed and began exploring ways to end the war.

The Bombing to April 1945

On November 24, 1944 the B-29 bombing run from the Marianas to Japan began. Various superstitions arose among those who endured the bombing. A Japanese couple who survived found their two dead goldfish nearby and concluded that the goldfish had died for them. They put the two goldfish in their family Buddhist shrine and began worshipping them. Word of the goldfish spread, and a run on goldfish began. In the place of real goldfish, porcelain gold fish were manufactured and, with intense demand, sold at high prices.

At Yalta in early February, 1945, Roosevelt expressed his support for intensive bombing of Japan with B-29 bomber squadrons, for the purpose of eliminating the need to invade Japan.  On February 19, 1945, to establish an airbase close enough to Japan for fighter planes to pick up and escort the B-29s into Japan, U.S. forces invaded the heavily fortified, two by five-mile island called Iwo Jima. [note] And a battle followed that was to last to March 16 and take the lives of 4,554 Marines, 363 U.S. Navy men and about 18,000 Japanese.

The first of the American bombing runs on Japan - between late November 1944 and March 1945 - were considered failures. These were "precision" bombings, directed against factories and military installations. Against factories, Army Air Corps strategists noticed little success in destroying production, but they did see that production was slowed most when civilian workers around the plant were killed in substantial numbers.

The man in charge of the Army Air Corps in the Pacific was Curtis LeMay, who had been transferred from Europe, where he had acquired a reputation as a bright, tough-minded innovator. He was the youngest major general in the U.S. Army. LeMay decided to try the "area bombing" that had been shunned by the U.S. in Europe. And for maximum affect he decided to use incendiary bombs. LeMay believed that two-thirds of Japan's industry was dispersed in homes and small shops, with no more than thirty employees. Blanket bombing in cities across Japan, he reasoned, would destroy Japanese industry. Civilians would be slaughtered in great numbers, but the war would be shortened. LeMay said that it made no difference how you slay the enemy. And, he said, "To worry about the morality of what we are doing - nuts."

The dropping of tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo began on March 9 - a little before the annual blossoming of the many cherry trees in Washington D.C. that were a gift from the city of Tokyo as a friendship gesture back in 1912. Tokyo in 1945 was known to be vulnerable to fire. Many of its buildings were of wood and paper. And Tokyo was one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The Japanese had evacuated 1.7 million people from the city, but about six million remained. There were few shelters for people because of a scarcity of materials. The bombing created a firestorm that consumed oxygen and suffocated thousands. Water in the city's canals boiled, and the firestorm sent liquid glass rolling down streets. The city was lighted with an orange glow. The B-29s had attacked at a low altitude (5,000 to 8,000 feet) and American tail gunners were sickened by the sight of hundreds of people burning to death. Ten U.S. aircraft were destroyed by the updraft of heat. And as many 120,000 Japanese died. Maybe as many as 200,000.

LeMay found satisfaction in the destruction of eight industrial targets and a lot of "home industries." LeMay sent his bombers to Nagoya, Japan's third largest city, and then to Osaka and Kobe. Time magazine expressed joy at the bombings, noting that Japanese cities can be burned "like autumn leaves."

Many Americans remembered the Bataan death march and other atrocities, and they perceived the Japanese to be a primitive and cruel race. A poll just after Pearl Harbor, had revealed that 67 percent of the population favored unqualified and indiscriminate bombing of Japan's cities.

A few prominent American educators and churchmen protested the bombing of Japan's cities, as did editors of the Jesuit weekly magazine America, which questioned whether the bombings were "with God's law or the nobility of our cause." In Japan, people viewed the American aircrews as guilty of murder, and in the U.S. people viewed the executions of U.S. airmen as murder and a violation of "rules of civilized warfare."

End of the War

Spiritually Japan was falling apart, and materially as well. By the end of March, many of Japan's major cities were in ruin.  Tokyo had become a ghost town, except for the emperor's palace, which had been spared. The bombing of Japanese cities was proof to the Japanese of American moral depravity, and on March 26, 1945 they saw the forces of the depraved begin their assault on Okinawa.- which they considered to be a part of Japan.

In Japan some of the nation's leaders were still pursuing the fantasy that Japan could win the war. The chief fantasy was that God - Kami, in Japanese - would save Japan as God had done in 1281, when a typhoon wrecked Kublai Khan's armada.  Now the Japanese military put hope in pilots who would intentionally crash the bomb laden planes into enemy craft. The idea arose when a pilot intentionally rammed a B-29 bomber. He was an instant hero for having sacrificed himself. Great numbers of young Japanese men wanted to emulate the hero, and their targets would be U.S. warships. They were called Kami-kaze (God-wind) pilots. They were ordinary young men and volunteers - neither drugged nor chained to their cockpits as some Americans suspected.

The battle for Okinawa was the bloodiest and longest of the Pacific war, lasting almost three months and ending on June 22. The United States lost 12,300 killed and 36,000 wounded. More than half of the U.S. dead were killed by Kami-kaze pilots - whose deaths are counted at around 4,000. Kamikaze attacks damaged 223 U.S. warships and sank thirty. A total of about 130,000 Japanese died, including 40,000 civilians, some of whom  committed suicide.

For the U.S., Okinawa was supposed to be a base from which to attack Japan's major islands, beginning with  the southern island, Kyushu, tentatively set for November 1945. An invasion of the main island, Honshu, was set for March 1946.

Surrender versus Home Defense

A study initiated by Japan's new prime minister, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, found that a lack of raw materials was restricting all aspects of civilian and military life. He found that steel production was extremely low, that aircraft production was a third of what had been planned, that the production of munitions was down fifty percent, that transport was crippled by shortages in fuel and manpower and near total collapse and that the chemical industry was also about to collapse. Also, Japan's oil reserves were depleted, and an attempt was being made to produce aviation fuel from pine roots. Rice production was at the lowest it had been since 1905. The Japanese nation was facing the possibility of starvation, with the government working on a plan to collect acorns. Admiral Kantaro Suzuki's report on Japan's material deprivations was released to the Supreme Council for the Conduct of the War, a body consisting of the prime minister, the foreign minister and the top four military chiefs. They met in May and began struggling with the question whether or how to surrender.

The Japanese still had a substantial number of soldiers, but it had only about 3,000 aircraft. The U.S. ruled the skies over Japan. The bulk of Japan's forces were abroad, mostly in China and Manchuria, with no way to return to defend their homeland. Japan no longer had an effective navy. The United States Navy was able to cut Japan's supply of raw materials and its vital importations of food. The U.S. was in a position to starve Japan into submission. The Chinese could have effectively handled remaining Japanese forces in China and Manchuria. The Korean resistance could have handled the Japanese force in Korea. Little advantage had been gained by inviting the Soviet Union to join the war against Japan.

In early June the Japanese government began trying to use the Russians to negotiate an end to the war, and the Japanese had established a contact in Switzerland, which resulted in a Swedish operative, Per Jacobsson, working with Alan Dulles of the Offie of Srategic Services (OSS) forerunner of the CIA. Moves toward a settlement with the United States were slow and desultory. The Japanese who favored a negotiations wanted a settlement that kept Emperor Hirohito on his throne. But nobody in the United States with the power to do so was ready to promise Hirohito's status.

The next meeting of the leaders of the Allied powers came in July at Potsdam (just a few miles southwest of Berlin). During the Potsdam Conference, Truman was given the news that the first test of the atom bomb, in New Mexico was a success, and Truman was elated. He was annoyed with Stalin because of the kind of government Stalin had created in Poland in June, and he thought that the bomb strengthened his hand vis-à-vis Stalin. The agreement that the Soviet Union would enter the war, however, remained standing.

The option of invading Japan's main islands weighed on Truman's mind. Estimates were that as many as a million Americans could be killed in such as invasion. Against such an invasion, Japan and collected 2.35 million military personnel and 4 million civilians who had been working for the military and a 28 million civilian militia.

On July 27, from Potsdam, Truman cabled the Japanese - a message to be known as the Potsdam Proclamation. The message spoke of the "utter devastation of the Japanese homeland" unless Japan surrendered unconditionally. No mention was made of preserving the emperor.

Moves were made in Japan's Supreme War Council to respond to the proclamation, and care was expressed that Japan not appear to reject it. The council released news of the proclamation to Japan's newspapers, with orders not to editorialize on the issue. Several newspapers editorialized anyway. One newspaper, the Mainichi, called Truman's position laughable. Others wrote that Japan would move its war effort forward "unfalteringly to a successful conclusion." Prime Minister Suzuki was under pressure to belittle publicly the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation. Suzuki announced that he would have no comment on the Proclamation, and the word he used was mokusatsu, which could be interpreted to mean "treat with silent contempt." This was how Suzuki's words were interpreted in the United States. President Truman believed that the Japanese had rejected his proclamation.

President Truman and the War Department were in a hurry to win Japan's surrender. Some have described the U.S. as having been motivated by the Soviet Union scheduled to enter the war against Japan. Some have described the U.S. as wanting to explode the A-bomb in front of the Russians to impress and instill in the Russians a greater fear of the U.S. Why the U.S. was unwilling to wait longer for the Japanese remains unknown. As for dropping the atomic bomb, the U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, believed that the Japanese needed a jolt to bring them around. Truman believed that using the bomb would obviate the need to invade Japan. General George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, approved its use, claiming that it was either drop the bomb or invade Japan. Admiral Halsey did not approve. General "Hap" Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps, believed that conventional bombing could bring an early end to the war. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was adamantly opposed to use of the bomb, stating that Japan was in effect already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.

On August 6, the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Some 80,000 or so died within hours. When rumor spread among the agonized survivors of the atomic blast that the Japanese had just dropped a similar bomb on the United States, it lifted their spirits.

Around the emperor, Japan's leaders dithered for a couple of days. On August 9, the United States dropped another bomb - on Nagasaki. Finally Emperor Hirohito initiated an end to war. He accepted the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation and, on August 15 at noon, he spoke for the first time on the radio. He said:

... In conformity with the precepts handed down by our Imperial ancestors we have always striven for the welfare of our subjects and for the happiness and welfare of all nations. This is precisely why we declared war against Great Britain and the United States.

... It was not our intention to infringe on the sovereignty of other nations or to carry out acts of aggression against their soil.

... Despite the valor of our land and naval forces, despite the valor of our heroic dead and despite the continued efforts the situation has not taken a turn for the better and neither has the aspect of the world situation taken a more favorable turn. Moreover, the enemy has employed its outrageous bomb and slaughtered untold numbers of innocent people.

... Accordingly, to continue the war under these circumstances would ultimately mean the extinction of our people and the utter destruction of human civilization. Under these circumstances how were we to save the millions of our subjects or justify ourselves to save the spirits of our Imperial ancestors.

 ... We must express our regrets to our allies who have fought alongside us for the emancipation of East Asia.

...Let us therefore face the long road, each of us, as one united nation in firm fidelity to the Throne and in full confidence in the indestructibility of our Divine Land, and let us resolve to bend all our energies to future reconstruction. Let us be strong in our moral principles and firm in our ideals.

Soviet Union troops were now moving into Manchuria and Korea, where they found little resistance from Japanese forces. Truman rejected a demand by Stalin that "Russian public opinion" not be "seriously offended" by denial of soviet occupation of some part of Japan proper.

MacArthur was planning to maintain Hirohito as Japan's head of state. He spoke of using "the instrumentality of the Japanese government to implement the occupation." On August 28 an advance party of Americans landed at Asagi airforce base near Tokyo. They were greeted by Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, who offered them orange punch as a gesture of welcome and drank a glass first to show them it was not poisoned.

The advance party arranged for the landing of transport planes carrying an American division - the 11th Airborne - which was accomplished within the next two days. With the airport secured, MacArthur arrived aboard his plane, the Bataan.  And so it was that the occupation of Japan began. At dinner at a luxury hotel where the Americans were quartered, MacArthur joyfully spoke of being "in the enemy's country with only a handful of troops" with nineteen fully armed Japanese divisions nearby. "One false move," he joked, "and the Alamo would look like a Sunday-school picnic." [note]

The Japanese had been training for guerrilla warfare against the Americans, and resorting to guerrilla warfare was still on the mind of the vice chief of staff of the Japanese Army, Lieutenant General Kawabe Torashiro, when he met the Americans in preparation for surrender in August. But U.S. policy of allowing Hirohito to remain on his throne and a "soft" occupation of Japan by the U.S., was keeping the option of guerrilla warfare remote. Largely the nation of Japan was to accept that they had been defeated and were acquiring a readiness to endure at least some of the humiliation that this entailed. In their civil wars, the Japanese had experienced many defeats, and Japan's military and emperor were able to draw from a code that covered defeat as well as victory. This code held that the manly thing to do was to leave everything to the victor and to trust the enemy commander. There would be no guerrilla warfare, saving Americans from a bloody occupation struggle - unlike the Israelis were to experience against the Palestinians early in the twenty-first century. 

On September 2, aboard the battleship Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, representatives of Japan met with the Allies to sign the surrender. One of them, Admiral Tomioka, wondered over the lack of signs of contempt from the Americans for him and his fellow defeated Japanese.

In his speech at the surrender ceremonies, MacArthur said:

The energy of the Japanese race, if properly directed, will enable expansion vertically rather than horizontally. If the talents of the race are turned into constructive channels, the country can lift itself from the present deplorable state into a position of dignity.

Hirohito, listening to his radio, was impressed. His aide, Kase Toshikazu, told him that it was "rare good fortune" that a man of such caliber and character had been designated supreme commander to shape the destiny of Japan. Hirohito agreed.

The war was now officially over. China had lost 2.2 million military men - one in every 200 of its population in 1940. Japan had lost 1,506,000 military men - one in every 46 of its 1940 population. According to Wikipedia, China lost 19,605,000 people, military and civilian, (3.78 percent of it population). Japan lost 2,621,000 (3.67 percent of its population).

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