The Pittsburgh Press (August 14, 1945)
NO WORD FROM JAPS
Tokyo stalls as world waits official reply on surrender
Peace note unreceived, Swiss say, but Tokyo insists it’s on way
BULLETINS
BERN, Switzerland (UP) – The Japanese minister arrived at the Swiss Federal Building at 8:05 p.m. (2:05 p.m. ET) today.
SAN FRANCISCO, California (UP) – The Japanese will make special efforts to provide electric current on all circuits at noon tomorrow (11 p.m. ET tonight) so everyone can hear the important announcement which is forthcoming, the FCC monitors reported today.
A Tokyo broadcast said that at noon electric current will be fed to localities where it is not ordinarily available during daylight hours.
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Byrnes returned to the White House at 3:07 p.m. for his third visit of the day.
LONDON, England – The Jap defenses in Western Manchuria collapsed today before a Russian onslaught that carried 93 miles in a single day and swept up thousands of prisoners.
WASHINGTON (UP) – A world waiting with agonized suspense for the Japanese War to end was told today that it would have to keep on waiting for an official announcement.
A long note from Japan to Switzerland turned out not to be the long-anticipated official message announcing the enemy’s unconditional surrender.
The Tokyo radio, however, broadcast that the Japs had decided to accept the Allied terms.
And later it said that the Jap reply to Allied surrender terms “is now on its way to the Japanese minister at Bern,” Switzerland, for transmission to Washington.
This latter broadcast was monitored at 12:01 p.m. ET, about an hour after the Swiss legation here learned that the note already in Bern was not the surrender reply.
The earlier Jap broadcasts that the Tokyo government had decided to accept the Potsdam ultimatum kicked off wild victory celebrations in many parts of the world.
Cascades of bombs continue
They had not, however, stopped cascades of bombs on the enemy homeland from U.S. airplanes and smashing ground drives by Red Army forces in Manchuria.
The long note whose arrival in Bern was reported in the night fooled even the White House. It announced, and everybody believed, that it was the Jap reply to Allied surrender terms.
There was no indication when the surrender note mentioned in the 12:01 p.m. Tokyo broadcast finally would arrive here. The Swiss Foreign office said in Bern that it had not been received there up to 12:15 p.m.
Despite the confusion, there was no falling off of confidence here that the Japs, however reluctantly, were ready to surrender.
The Jap radio alerted Jap listeners for a broadcast of “unprecedented importance” at 11 p.m. ET. That may be the first official enemy announcement that the Emperor has accepted unconditional surrender.
Hours earlier, at 1:49 a.m. ET, the Jap Domei News Agency had interrupted a discussion of chilblain cures to broadcast:
“Flash – Tokyo – 14/8 – Learned Imperial message accepting Potsdam declaration forthcoming soon.”
Only Japs know how ‘soon’
Only the Japs knew what they meant by “soon.”
White House Press Secretary Charles G. Ross announced at 9:52 a.m. that the Jap surrender note was expected here “some time today.” About 2½ hours later he had to make another announcement.
It was that the note transmitted from Tokyo to Bern did not “contain the answer awaited by the whole world.”
The Swiss did not say what the note did contain. There was a possibility that it might be a long-winded Jap protest against U.S. use of the atomic bomb.
Mr. Ross in his first press conference of the day told more than 100 newsmen that the Jap reply to the surrender ultimatum had been received by the Swiss in Bern.
He added that “it looks as if our long vigil is coming to an end soon – that is, some time today.”
He said the Allied Big Four were in consultation on simultaneous release of the Jap note after its receipt here.
But the Swiss Foreign Office in Bern and the Swiss legation here denied that the Jap reply had been presented for transmission by Switzerland.
In his second press conference, Mr. Ross disclosed that the Swiss legation here had received at 10:59 a.m. from its government the following hope-dashing message:
“Very urgent – 760 – Japanese legation reports that coded cables it received this morning do not (repeat not) contain the answer awaited by the whole world.”
The Swiss legation shortly after noon handed this message to the State Department, and Mr. Ross made it public.
This development meant that Jap broadcasts – and the logic of military events – were the only basis for believing that Japan at last is ready to bow to the inevitable and surrender.
One of the enemy broadcasts, in words sounding strange to western ears, reported that “on August 14 the Imperial decision was granted.” In the light of the earlier broadcast, it was assumed this meant the decision to surrender had been made.
The Jap radio went on to say that throngs of Japs gathered before the Emperor’s palace wept with bowed heads in shame because “our efforts were not enough.”
When the surrender message is received at Bern, it will have to be decoded for delivery to the Swiss.
First word of the probable content of the Jap reply was reported in the 1:49 a.m. Domei broadcast.
If the dispatch is accurate the war between the United States and Japan may end before Sunday – in its 193rd week.
Prime Minister Attlee presided over a brief meeting of the British cabinet at 10 Downing Street this morning.
Jap Air Force strikes back
London newspapers jubilantly hailed the Jap broadcast as proof that the war was about over.
The Star said Mr. Attlee’s office was expected to issue a statement within a few hours. If the Jap reply is acceptable, the newspaper said, V-J Day will be proclaimed for tomorrow.
The Jap Air Force struck back at the Allies with a suicide plane attack on Adm. William F. Halsey’s Third Fleet. Adm. Halsey was cruising off Tokyo. Tokyo reported that the suicide attack was continuing as late as 11:30 p.m. ET Monday – a little more than two hours before the surrender flash was broadcast.
A crowd of 200 persons was gathering in the park in front of the White House within an hour of circulation here of the Domei broadcast. President Truman was up and around the White House at 7:15 a.m.
Presidential Secretary Ross, arriving at 7:05 a.m., reported that Mr. Truman had been filled in on all of the night’s events. He has explained that the President will not proclaim V-J Day until Jap representatives have signed the surrender agreement.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur still was first choice in speculative sweepstakes for supreme Allied commander. But it was believed some officer or officers of lesser rank would meet the Japs and sign for the Allies. London rumored that the signing would take place tomorrow.
Secretary of State James F. Byrnes arrived at the White House at 8:21 a.m. He left at 8:40 by a side entrance without talking to reporters. He saw the President again for 10 minutes at 11:15 a.m.
The Soviet Union greeted news of Japan’s reported surrender with orders to Red Troops to smash on into Manchuria. United Press monitors in San Francisco heard this exhortation from Khabarovsk radio to the rampaging Reds: “Soviet men – forge ahead to victory. Triple your efforts. Relentlessly smash ahead. Break the treacherous enemy. Give him not a minute’s respite.”
San Francisco led off the U.S. celebration of what then seemed to be Japan’s immediate and unconditional surrender. It was 10:49 p.m. PWT (1:49 a.m. EWT) when the big news broke. San Francisco was up and about.
The great Pacific embarkation point thronged with soldiers and sailors who let go in the hell-for-leather spirit of the Old West. The citizens and their guests ripped up spare parts of the city – street signs, wreckage of war bond booths and such, for their bonfires. Police reported some looting of liquor stores.
The show was still going strong at 4 a.m. Market Street was blazing with bonfires in spots and the owl cars were stopped by their flames.
Boisterous celebrants were using cable car turntables for merry-go-rounds. One whooping crowd of soldiers, sailors and Marines appeared to be attempting to take one of the little cars away as a souvenir.
But it was the men on the Pacific Islands with tracer bullets to shoot and searchlights and such gadgets to play with who put on the biggest celebration. It seemed that the nearer to Japan the more boisterous the welcome to the prospect of peace.
In the midst of the hullabaloo, there came from the Vatican a dispatch soberly reporting the great satisfaction of Pope Pius XI on receiving news of the Domei broadcast. But Vatican informants said there would be no official manifestation by the Holy See until the surrender signature has been announced officially.
Similarly, President Truman will not proclaim V-J Day until after the signing ceremony. He will broadcast that day to the people of the United States and the world.
Clerks disconsolate
Washington was slow in getting the whoopee spirit. The downtown section begun to fill up with early morning workers at 7:30 a.m.; but the crowd across the park from the White House had diminished by then. Government clerks are reported somewhat disconsolate because Mr. Truman has not decreed for them a two-day holiday as Prime Minister Attlee in Great Brittain had ordered for his people when the surrender is signed.
Isolated but interested, the workers on the Clinton, Tennessee, atomic project broke in on a receiving machine in the Washington Bureau of the United Press.
“This is Clinton, the atomic bomb project,” the message said, “Can you give me the latest on Japanese surrender situation? What is the latest development?”
United Press, Washington, promptly filed its current lead story to Clinton and added to it the broadcast statement of a Jap commentator that atomic bombs were not so much.
Patience wearing thin
Allied patience was wearing thin when the Domei flash came through today. But there had been no encouragement at the White House for the theory that the Japs had been threatened with a secret time limit ultimatum or that Mr. Truman’s patience was exhausted.
But there was support for the belief that the Japs found certain actions necessary before the surrender ultimatum would be accepted and laid before the Jap people. The astonishing newspaper and radio campaign in Japan to acquaint the people with the overwhelming emergency of the situation seems in some ways to support that belief.
Newspapers in Tokyo have been warning the public against dissension as if they were fearful that civil war would break out.
Before it carried the Domei dispatch, Radio Tokyo broadcast the following:
Cabinet has been in continuous session until late Monday night. Understood Japanese government reply probably will be available anytime as soon as legal procedure completed.
This reference to legal procedure may refer to change in personnel of the cabinet or, even, to the elevation of Hirohito’s brother or eldest son to the throne. The message also appeared to be in part an attempt to explain the fact that the Jap government was caught cold yesterday in a lie either of duplicity or necessity.
Tokyo caught in lie
Evidently in response to reports of Allied impatience for a reply to Saturday’s note, the Jap radio yesterday broadcast that the note had not reached Japan until Monday.
That excuse for delay was demolished by an authoritative report from Switzerland which said that the message was dispatched from here at 10:30 a.m. ET Saturday had been received im Japan and receipt acknowledged at 4:34 a.m. ET Sunday. That would be 5:35 p.m., Sunday, Tokyo Time.
Today’s Tokyo flash came 90 hours and 19 minutes after Japan’s first broadcast offer to surrender. It arrived 63 hours and 49 minutes after dispatch of the Byrnes note.