Salzburger Nachrichten (August 10, 1945)
Mandschurische Grenze überschritten
Nagasaki – das zweite Opfer der Atombombe
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Truman ayant décidé de renouveler l’avertissement…
La deuxième bombe atomique est lancée sur Nagasaki
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U.S. War Department (August 10, 1945)
Memorandum to Chief of Staff
10 August 1945
The next bomb of the implosion type had been scheduled to be ready for delivery on the target on the first good weather after 24 August 1945. We have gained 4 days in manufacture and expect to ship from New Mexico on 12 or 13 August the final components. Providing there are no unforeseen difficulties in manufacture, in transportation to the theatre or after arrival in the theatre, the bomb should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August.
L. R. GROVES,
Major General, USA
8/10/45
It is not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President.
JAMES C. MARSHALL
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (August 10, 1945)
Jeannette pilot wants to return to his P-51 –
Medal winner restless on ground
Maj. Shomo, who received nation’s highest honor for knocking down Japs, remains a flier at heart
By John E. Jones
…
ON THE RECORD —
Atomic weapon might lead to ‘world state’
By Dorothy Thompson
“By God’s mercy British and American science outpaced all German efforts. Possession of these powers by the Germans… might have altered the results of the war… and profound anxiety was felt by the informed.” – Winston Churchill
The atomic bomb was not the product of British or American science, but the result of cooperative efforts of international scientists, the chiefs of whom by the grace of Adolf Hitler came into the world of the western democracies. Dr. Lise Meitner was a German, associate of Professor Otto Hahn, eminent German physicist. She had to leave Germany because she was of the Jewish race. She carried with her knowledge of the work in Professor Hahn’s laboratory and received impetus to further research, which found a key to the mystery, through a report in a German scientific review.
Professor Niels Bohr is a Dane. He also had personal reasons for wishing to use his brain in behalf of the democracies resisting the oppression of his countrymen. Professor Enrico Fermi was an Italian, who used the presentation of the Nobel prize to come from Stockholm to America, and escape the Fascist world. So there is a poetic justice – perhaps the justice of God – in the fact that Hitler’s aggression against the Jews and his neighbors helped deliver into the hands of the western democracies the most terrible weapon that ever existed.
But whether God’s mercy will be associated with its invention, the future will have to record. It is difficult to justify in the name of God the first use to which it was put. The atomic bomb gave us such power that we might have been able to refrain from its use, We could have invited the Japanese premier and the Swedish and Swiss ambassadors to Tokyo to witness its demonstration in an unpopulated desert, and seen to it that their report reached the Japanese people. That would have started the bomb on the right career – as a liberator, not destroyer, of humanity. If the Japanese surrender now, they would have surrendered from the demonstration in the desert, and peace would have started by an act of peace and the salvation of thousands of children’s lives.
I can recall no other discovery decisive for war which was invented primarily and specifically for war and thus found its first use. The two main weapons of this war so far – the tank and the bomber – are the outgrowth of genius in the service of peaceful development, for the conquest of distance and the air.
I hope it is still up to us to decide whether atomic disintegration shall continue to be used for destruction, or become with its development, man’s liberator from the very causes of war. Nature is neutral, and perhaps has no interest in man at all, or even in this particular planet.
At any rate, what happened last month in New Mexico and a few days ago in Japan is an event that puts this whole war into the background. Man has discovered the original source of all energy – the source that warms the earth and creates all its resources: The source that causes the sun, eternally to burn. To put it profanely, he has discovered the source of inexhaustible wealth. Two parables come to mind: The story of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and brought it to man to make him independent, and of the nature of God. And the story of the tower of Babel, which started as a bridge into the heavens, and to God, but which fell through the confusion of tongues.
Both are parables of the revenge of the Gods. For men remained man – not good enough.
With this invention everything we have hitherto done or even considered as a means of preventing war is completely outmoded. Every concept of checking aggression is inadequate. When atomic energy is further developed, along with jet propulsion, no power or combination of powers can check any aggressive state that has this weapon, and no state, however aggressive it may be, will attack another state which has it. Man is not made to fight atomic energy or to go to war against the sun.
The concept of dividing the world into two or three great power spheres, each with strategical thises or thats, is childish. The concept of Balance of power becomes a fairy tale. If Switzerland had this weapon, and the Soviet Union did not, Switzerland would be more powerful than the Soviet Union.
A political deduction as logical as the instinct of self-preservation can immediately be drawn from this greatest of all human discoveries: There must be a world state. There cannot be several states or spheres each with sovereign power to do as it likes, and each, and eventually all, in possession of this weapon in various stages of development.
In the hands of any one power it can become, even without being used, a blackmailing instrument against all human liberty; in the hands of all, and uncontrolled, it will spell doom for mankind. It is not enough, after this, to control German and Japanese laboratories and industries. All the laboratories and industries of the earth must be controlled and that is only possible if the world is under one control. We cannot live politically in the 17th century and scientifically in the 50th.
But since the root cause of all wars is fear of losing or hope of gaining means of subsistence or wealth, this discovery, that ultimately, if canalized in that direction, can provide inexhaustible sources of energy for all mankind, ends all reason for war, and its consequence should be total and universal disarmament. America has the greatest opportunity to save the world ever offered any people. It will not be hers forever.
U.S. State Department (August 10, 1945)
740.00119 PW/8-1045: Telegram
The Minister in Sweden to the Secretary of State
Stockholm, August 10, 1945 — 1 p.m.
[Received August 10 — 11:45 a.m.]
2742
For the President and the Secretary of State. The British Minister has just called to inform me that he and the Soviet Minister had been requested this morning to see Foreign Minister Unden with great urgency. Mr. Unden communicated to them a request from the Japanese Govt that the British and Soviet Ministers in Stockholm be informed of the Japanese Govt’s acceptance of the declaration made at Potsdam regarding Japanese surrender. It was stipulated that Japanese Govt understood that declaration to mean that the sovereignty of the Emperor of Japan would not be touched. Subject to the Japanese Govt’s understanding of this point, the unconditional surrender terms at Potsdam are accepted.
Foreign Minister Unden informed the British Minister that Japanese Minister in transmitting the foregoing had stated that the Japanese Minister at Bern had instructions to request the Swiss Govt to transmit the same offer of unconditional surrender to the US and China through their respective Ministers at Bern, and that he understood that this action was being taken simultaneously with the action at Stockholm.
The British and Soviet Ministers asked Mr. Unden’s permission to inform me and the Chinese Minister unofficially of the foregoing, to which the Foreign Minister agreed. The Soviet Minister is informing the Chinese.
Mr. Unden requested the British and Soviet Ministers to regard this communication as of the highest order of secrecy.
JOHNSON
740.00119 PW/8-1045
Memorandum by Mr. Benjamin V. Cohen, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State
[Washington,] August 10, 1945 — 12:20 p.m.
The British Government has discussed peace message of the Japanese Government. It has sent cables to its embassies in Washington, Moscow and Chungking to make formal inquiry as to the views of its allies on the message.
Foreign Secretary Bevin came out of the Cabinet meeting to advise Winant that no other communication was contemplated by the Cabinet until they had heard from us. The Cabinet wished to be currently informed of our position as it was their desire to keep their policy in line with ours. While they desired to support our position, they were inclined to accept the continuation of the Emperor although they were troubled about the language of the reservation of the Emperor’s prerogations [prerogatives?]. They thought a more precise definition of the reservation was necessary in light of the Potsdam Declaration.
The Ambassador also indicated that we might find it helpful at some stage to use Ambassador Sato at Moscow.
740.00119 PW/8-1045
The Swiss Chargé to the Secretary of State
Washington, August 10, 1945
Sir: 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:
In obedience to the gracious command of his Majesty the Emperor who, ever anxious to enhance the cause of world peace, desires earnestly to bring about a speedy termination of hostilities with a view to saving mankind from the calamities to be imposed upon them by further continuation of the war, the Japanese Government several weeks ago asked the Soviet Government, with which neutral relations then prevailed, to render good offices in restoring peace vis-à-vis the enemy powers. Unfortunately, these efforts in the interest of peace having failed, the Japanese Government in conformity with the august wish of His Majesty to restore the general peace and desiring to put an end to the untold sufferings entailed by war as quickly as possible, have decided upon the following.
The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed by the Soviet Government, 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. Similar requests are being transmitted to the Governments of Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics through the intermediary of Sweden, as well as to the Government of China through the intermediary of Switzerland. The Chinese Minister at Berne has already been informed of the foregoing through the channel of the Swiss Political Department.
Please be assured that I am at your disposal at any time to accept for and forward to my Government the reply of the Government of the United States.
Accept [etc.]
GRÄSSLI
The Pittsburgh Press (August 10, 1945)
Surrender official; Allies weigh terms
Enemy willing to quit if they can retain Hirohito as emperor
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press foreign news editor
Japan today submitted a formal surrender offer to the Allies, accepting the Potsdam terms provided the sovereign prerogatives of Emperor Hirohito are not impaired.
The United States, Britain, Russia and China established diplomatic contacts to consider the Jap offer even in advance of receiving its text.
First indications were that a satisfactory arrangement for the Emperor can be worked out, enabling the Japs to surrender and ending World War II.
The offer was transmitted to the Allies through the Soviet Ambassador Jakob Malik who is still in Tokyo and through the Swedish and Swiss legations in Tokyo.
Stockholm reported the Jap note has arrived there and is being turned over immediately to the British and Russians to whom it was directed.
Identical note sent via Bern
The note through the Swiss was directed to the United States and China. It was understood the texts of the notes are identical.
The Swiss radio reported the Jap note had been received and promptly turned over to the Americans and Chinese.
The speed with which the Jap offer was being transmitted indicated that before nightfall President Truman, Prime Minister Attlee, Generalissimo Josef Stalin and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek will be able to exchange their views on the acceptability of Tokyo’s proposal.
The text of the Jap offer was first made public by the Tokyo radio and was recorded by the United Press in San Francisco.
On the basis of this unofficial text, Mr. Truman consulted with Secretary of State James F, Byrnes and it was believed that the American position may have been already formulated.
As quickly as the four allies agree on their attitude toward the Jap proposal, a reply will be forwarded, presumably through the Swiss and the Swedes.
If the Allied answer satisfies the Japs regarding the position of their Emperor, it was presumed that arrangements quickly will be made for the formal surrender – a procedure which is very complicated due to the widespread dispersal of Jap forces.
Allies likely to follow U.S.
British opinion, it was understood, was favorable toward acceptance of the Jap proposals. However, the British, and it was presumed the Russians and Chinese, will be guided largely by the United States which has borne the brunt of the more than three and a half years of conflict with Japan.
In any event it was estimated it will require some time to work out a formal surrender – possibly as long as a week or 10 days provided the matter of the Emperor is settled to the satisfaction of all parties.
In the interim, the war went on.
American naval and air power continued to hammer the Japs relentlessly in their home islands and in Manchuria the newly activated Red Banner armies of the Far East swept forward more than 100 miles in two days at a rate which suggested the vaunted Jap Kwantung Army was putting up no really effective resistance.
The White House indicated the war would go on as usual on land, sea and air until some official information was received in Washington. No. 10 Downing Street advised the British “to continue work as usual.”
News touches off wild celebrations
However, celebrations were touched off by the news, particularly among the American men on the fighting front. Okinawa troops went wild. There was jubilation in Chungking and London, too.
It came four days after the first atomic bomb was dropped upon Japan and fewer than two days after Russia joined the war and invaded Manchuria, Korea and the southern half of Sakhalin Island.
President Truman in Washington immediately summoned Secretary of State James F. Byrnes and key members of his Cabinet to the White House for consultation.
London reported that Mr. Truman, Prime Minister Attlee and Generalissimo Josef Stalin were making immediate contact by wireless telephone to shape their views on the situation.
The Jap announcement said:
The Japanese government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26, 1945, by the heads of the governments of the United States, Great Britain and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet government with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his majesty as a sovereign ruler.
Allies plan to occupy Japan
The Potsdam declaration called for:
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Unconditional surrender of all Jap armed forces, accompanied by adequate assurances of good faith.
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Occupation by Allied forces of such portions of Jap territory as the Allies regard as necessary for the fulfillment of their objectives.
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Elimination “for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan.”
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Punishment of all war criminals.
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Elimination of Japan’s war-making capacity and elimination of all bars to establishment of a free, democratic regime in Japan.
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Application of the terms of the Cairo Declaration, limiting Jap sovereignty to the four islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku.
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Stripping Japan of all her possessions in the Pacific and Asia won by aggression.
The immediate question was whether the continuance of Hirohito’s “sovereignty” was compatible with the terms of complete surrender and with Allied control of Japan until such a time as the Allies deem Japan ready to take her place in a democratic society of free nations.
The Jap announcement was made in two wireless transmissions from Tokyo, one beamed to the United States and one to Europe. That to the United States came first and was followed shortly by a transmission to Europe in almost identical wording.
Both the transmissions broke down before they were completed but both gave the substance of the Jap offer.
For some hours following the original broadcasts, sent in Morse telegraphic code, no further mention of the surrender offer was made by the Jap radio. It was not mentioned in transmissions designed for East Asia, the FCC reported, nor was it mentioned in the Jap home radio broadcasts.
The question of Hirohito was expected to be a thorny one and it seemed highly probable that, even if accepted by the Allies as a basis for discussions, it would require specific clarification.
Emperor regarded as a god
The position of the Emperor in Japan has long been one of the most debated points among those directing Allied psychological warfare against the enemy.
The Emperor is regarded in Japan as a god, above all mortal strife. Because of this, some students of Japan long have speculated that when the time came for Japan to surrender the offer must be made by him, disassociating himself from the mortal acts of the Jap government and military clique.
It appeared difficult at first glance, however, to see how a position of “sovereignty” could be maintained by the Emperor in a nation which would be under the rigid control of the victorious Allies. One suggestion was that such a demand might be accorded by recognizing his “sovereignty” only on a spiritual plane, leaving earthly affairs in the control of Allied arms.
Here, however, the Allied terms for the complete remaking of Japan into a democratic state run afoul of the principles of the Shinto religion embraced by most Japs and of which Hirohito is the living symbol.
The actual mechanics of any surrender, it was believed, would require considerable time to work out.
The terms, in the first instance, must be acceptable to four great powers, the United States, Britain, Russia and China.
Japan’s fighting forces are dispersed most widely. The Japs are fighting the British and Indian troops in Burma; Chinese and American forces in China proper; Australian troops in the islands of the South Pacific; Americans in the Philippines; Russians in Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin.
In addition, the Japs are still firmly installed in Malaya and Singapore, French Indochina, Java, dozens of Pacific Islands and much of China.
Arrangements for the simultaneous surrender of these widely dispersed forces, it was believed, would be the most complicated surrender negotiation in history.
It was certain the Allies would insist that the Japs provide guarantees that the surrender orders be carried out by all the imperial forces at the same time.
Whether the Emperor, who was cited by Tokyo radio as initiating the surrender offer, could maintain effective control over such Jap forces as the quasi-independent Kwantung Army against which Russia is arrayed was a question.
Another question was what governmental authority in Japan was behind the offer. The Allies have laid down the elimination of the present government as a requisite for surrender.
This, it was suggested, might be settled by the mass hara-kiri of the government and the military leaders responsible for the war.
Having led their country into disaster and jeopardized the position of their god-Emperor, it is virtually incumbent under the Jap code for the leaders to take their own lives.
Such a development would vastly ease the task of the Allies in taking over Japan and would eliminate in many instances the necessity of conducting trials of Jap war criminals.
Ever since Russia’s declaration of war at one minute after midnight Thursday (Japanese time), Tokyo had been broadcasting intermittently that an “important announcement” was expected.
At 7:27 a.m. ET, shortly after it had said Japan had lodged a formal protest through Switzerland requesting that the Americans discontinue use of the “inhuman” atomic bomb, Tokyo began broadcasting its surrender statement.
The broadcast began:
The Japanese government today addressed the following communication to the Swiss and Swedish governments respectively for transmission to the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union:
By the gracious command of His Majesty the Emperor, whoever seeks to enhance the cause of world peace and desires earnestly to bring about an early termination of hostilities with a view to saving mankind from the calamities to be imposed upon them by further continuation of the war, the Japanese government asked several weeks ago the Soviet government which, enjoying neutral relations then, to render good offices in restoring peace vis-a-vis the enemy powers.
Unfortunately, these efforts in the interest of peace having failed, the Japanese Government, in conformity with the august wish of His Majesty to restore the general peace and desiring an end to the untold suffering caused by the war as quickly as possible, decided upon the following:
The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26, 1945, by the heads of the governments of the United States, Great Britain and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet government 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 hope sincerely that this…
At that point the Morse code telegraphic transmission was interrupted. Domei waited a moment and then the signal “stand by” was sent.
The Potsdam declaration had warned Japan that destruction worse than that heaped upon Germany would come swiftly if she refused to capitulate immediately. Twelve days later, the atomic bomb, packing the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT, was unleashed against the city of Hiroshima. Yesterday a second bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki.
The decision to unleash the atomic bomb – the most fearful weapon of history – was decided upon after the Japs first rejected the Potsdam declaration.
**Only last night President Truman had warned the Japs that the Hiroshima attack was “only a warning of things to come.” He added that unless the enemy surrendered Japan would be devastated.
A Domei broadcast aimed at Europe and heard by the FCC repeated most of the text heard by United Press listeners and then began sending the following:
Acceptance of the Potsdam proclamation as communicated to these governments [the Allies] through the Swiss and Swedish governments was expressed by authoritative quarters here today. These quarters recalled a broadcast addressed to Japan on July 27 by Capt. [E. M.] Zacharias [an official Office of War Information spokesman], who professed to be the spokesman for the Washington government, in which he said that Japan’s acceptance of Allied peace terms will make it possible to apply the Atlantic Charter to Japan and therefore the Japanese nation will be free to adopt a form of government of their own choosing.
The same quarters stressed that the decision by the Jap government to accept the peace terms, as set forth in the Potsdam proclamation under extremely difficult circumstances, has been due to the august wish of His Majesty, the Emperor, who was anxious to forward the cause of world peace as well as the welfare of His Majesty’s subjects.
These quarters further stressed that whether in war or in peace it is the immutable conviction of the entire Japanese nation firmly to uphold Japan’s national…
The FCC said that transmission then broke off.