• As early as April 29, 1945 the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that increasing "numbers of informed Japanese, both military and civilian, already realize the inevitability of absolute defeat."

  The Committee further advised that:

  The increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, and the collapse of Germany (with its implications regarding redeployment) should make this realization widespread within the year.

  The JIC pointed out, however, that a Russian decision to join with the U.S. and Britain would have enormous force--and would dramatically alter the equation:

  The entry of the U.S.S.R. into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat. [Emphasis added.] (See p. 113, Chapter 9)

• At a meeting of the Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War held on May 11, 12, and 14, a formal Council decision was taken stating:
  While Japan is fighting with the U.S. and U.K., once the Soviets enter the war Japan will face inevitable defeat; therefore, whatever happens in the war with the U.S. and U.K., Japan has to try as much as possible to prevent the Soviet Union from entering the war. (See p. 118, Chapter 9)

• On June 18 General Marshall advised President Truman directly that "the impact of Russian entry [into the war] on the already hopeless Japanese may well be the decisive action levering them into capitulation at that time or shortly thereafter if we land in Japan." [Note the word "if" in this assessment--and the date: Marshall's advice was given to Truman almost a month before news of the Emperor's personal intervention to attempt to end the war was received, and at a time when there were still almost four and a half months to go before even a preliminary Kyushu landing could occur.] (See p. 123, Chapter 9)

• On July 8 the U.S.-British Combined Intelligence Committee completed a formal "Estimate of the Enemy Situation." This high-level document included the following assessment:
  We believe that a considerable portion of the Japanese population now consider absolute military defeat probable. The increasing effects of sea blockade and the cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, which has already rendered millions homeless and has destroyed from 25% to 50% of the builtup areas of Japan's most important cities, should make this realization increasingly general.

  The committee also stressed the judgment that:

  An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat. (See p. 227, Chapter 18)

• At Potsdam in mid-July Britain's General Hastings Ismay, chief of staff to the minister of defence, summarized the conclusions of the latest U.S.-U.K. intelligence studies for Prime Minister Churchill in this way:
  . . . [W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor. (See p. 246, Chapter 18)

• On several occasions Truman made it abundantly clear that the main reason he went to Potsdam to meet Stalin was to make sure the Russians would, in fact, enter the war. As he later stated:
  If the test [of the atomic bomb] should fail, then it would be even more important to us to bring about a surrender before we had to make a physical conquest of Japan. (See p. 124, Chapter 9)

• After Stalin confirmed that the Red Army would indeed enter the war, the president's "lost" Potsdam journal (found in 1979) shows him writing:
  Most of the big points are settled. He'll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.

  The next day--in an exuberant letter to his wife (made public in 1983)--Truman wrote that with the Russian declaration of war

  . . . I've gotten what I came for--Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it. He wanted a Chinese settlement--and it is practically made--in a better form than I expected. . . . I'll say that we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won't be killed! (See p. 242, Chapter 19)

• A top secret internal 1946 War Department study discovered in recent years found that:
  The Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies.

  This official document judged that Russia's early August entry into the war

  . . . would almost certainly have furnished this pretext, and would have been sufficient to convince all responsible leaders that surrender was unavoidable.

  The study concluded that well before the bombings even an initial November 1945 landing on the island of Kyushu was only a "remote" possibility--and that the full invasion of Japan in the spring of 1946 would not have occurred. (See p. 85, Chapter 7)

• Hiroshima would not have been allowed to remain as it was, unblemished, waiting to be the site for a new, untested, experimental weapon had it been a high military priority. Indeed, when the Target Committee first met in late April, Hiroshima was not on the Twenty-first Bomber Command priority list.

  When the Committee convened to select cities for atomic attack in May, it included only those cities which not only were still largely intact but which were also "likely to be unattacked by next August"--and, further, "which the Air Forces would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise." (See p. 523, Chapter 42)

  Although there was a military base in Hiroshima, this had little to do with targeting instructions. There was no significant military base at Nagasaki.

• At the June 1 meeting of the Interim Committee:
  Mr. Byrnes recommended, and the Committee agreed, that the Secretary of War should be advised that, while recognizing that the final selection of the target was essentially a military decision, the present view of the Committee was that the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible; that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers' homes; and that it be used without prior warning. (See p. 171, Chapter 12)

• Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also not targeted because of their industrial importance, however. Contrary to the "Interim Committee" recommendation that the bomb be targeted at an important industrial facility surrounded by workers' houses, at Hiroshima most major industry was known to be outside the designated target area. (See pp. 523-528, Chapter 42)

  Few analysts have noticed that the Interim Committee recommendation was not actually followed. In fact, the way in which the bombing was planned--and carried out--specifically avoided significant war plants. The subject came up at the Target Committee meeting of May 28--and, as the minutes show:

  Dr. Stearns presented data on Kyoto, Hiroshima and Niigata and the following conclusions were reached:
  1. not to specify aiming points, this to be left to later determination at base when weather conditions are known.
  2. to neglect location of industrial areas as pin point target, since on these three targets such areas are small, spread on fringes of cities and quite dispersed.
  3. to endeavor to place first gadget in center of selected city; that is, not to allow for later 1 or 2 gadgets for complete destruction.
     (See pp. 524-525, Chapter 42)

• Subsequently the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey also confirmed that "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city--and escaped serious damage. . . ." (See p. 523, Chapter 42)

• The Target Committee also recommended on May 31, 1945, "that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible." The goal was essentially to show that the bomb could destroy a whole city. (See p. 524, Chapter 42) (For an extended discussion see pp. 523-528, Chapter 42)

• President Truman was urged more than a dozen times to clarify the surrender terms by virtually the entire top echelon of the U.S. and British governments. Truman was advised surrender was all but impossible without letting Japan know it could keep its Emperor. Acting Secretary of State Joseph C. Grew, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and others urged surrender was highly likely if assurances were given before the bomb was used.

  - Grew's repeated efforts--beginning in late May--have long been documented. (See Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6)

  - Secretary of War Stimson--in a memorandum of July 2--offered Truman his considered recommendation that if assurances were given:

  I think the Japanese nation has the mental intelligence and versatile capacity in such a crisis to recognize the folly of a fight to the finish and to accept the proffer of what will amount to an unconditional surrender; . . . (See p. 77, Chapter 6)

  - The Joint Staff Planners advised the Joint Chiefs:

  Unless a definition of unconditional surrender can be given which is acceptable to the Japanese, there is no alternative to annihilation and no prospect that the threat of absolute defeat will bring about capitulation. (See p. 42, Chapter 3)

  - Truman was personally approached and urged to clarify the surrender formula in one way or another prior to the issuance of the Potsdam Proclamation:

  1. by Acting Secretary of State Grew on May 28, 1945;
  2. by former President Herbert Hoover in a May 30, 1945, memorandum;
  3. by Grew again on June 13, 1945;
  4. by Counsel to the President Samuel I. Rosenman on June 17, 1945;
  5. by Grew once more on June 18, 1945;
  6. by Assistant Secretary of War McCloy on June 18, 1945;
  7. by Leahy again on June 18, 1945;
  8. by the State Department in a formal recommendation of June 30, 1945;
  9. by Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard on July 1, 1945;
  10. by Secretary of War Stimson (with the support of Secretary of the Navy Forrestal and Grew) on July 2, 1945;
  11. by Stimson again on July 16, 1945;
  12. by Churchill on July 18, 1945;
  13. by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on July 18, 1945;
  14. by Stimson on July 24, 1945.

  (See pp. 300-301 [and reference notes], Chapter 23)

  - As noted, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff also asked the British Chiefs of Staff to persuade Prime Minister Churchill to approach President Truman about the surrender formula.

• Several leading newspapers and magazines were pressing for--rather than resisting--a clarification of terms. The Washington Post, for instance, challenged the "unconditional surrender" formula head-on in a June 11, 1945 editorial entitled "Fatal Phrase."
  President Truman, of course, has already stated that there is no thought of destroying the Japanese people, but such assurances, even from so high a source, are negated by that fatal phrase.

  The Post stressed that the two words "remain a great stumbling block to any propaganda effort and the perpetual trump card of the Japanese die-hards for their game of national suicide."

  Let us amend them; let us give Japan conditions, harsh conditions certainly, and conditions that will render her diplomatically and militarily impotent for generations. But also let us somehow assure those Japanese who are ready to plead for peace that, even on our terms, life and peace will be better than war and annihilation. (See pp. 229-230, Chapter 18; see also p. 41, Chapter 3)

• On July 13 The Post ran two separate columns on the issue. "[T]here might be great saving of American lives," Mark Sullivan argued, "if we would make perfectly clear to the Japanese people just what we mean, and do not mean, by an unconditional surrender." Ernest K. Lindley addressed the Emperor question directly:
  . . . if adequate steps are taken to disarm Japan and to prevent its rearmament, the type of government which the Japanese have after the war will become a matter of secondary importance. (See p. 230, Chapter 18)

• Many leading Republicans strongly urged the President to alter the terms in order to get an early surrender (preferably before the Russians got into the war). Former President Herbert Hoover went to see the President about the issue in late May (See pp. 43-45, Chapter 3)--and on July 3 The New York Times reported that
  Senator White of Maine, the minority leader, declared that the Pacific war might end quickly if President Truman would state, specifically, in the upper chamber just what unconditional surrender means for the Japanese. (See p. 228, Chapter 18)

  White's move was supported immediately by Senator Capehart of Indiana--who called a press conference the same day to state:

  It isn't a matter of whether you hate the Japs or not. I certainly hate them. But what's to be gained by continuing a war when it can be settled now on the same terms as two years from now? (See p. 228, Chapter 18)

• Before the Potsdam Proclamation warning Japan to surrender was issued recommended assurances explicitly stated in the Proclamation were excised at the behest of Secretary of State Byrnes. (See pp. 302-311, Chapter 24)

  - President Truman's journal shows he knew the Proclamation could not be accepted by the Japanese. (See p. 303, Chapter 24)

  - The position of the Emperor was accepted five days after Hiroshima was bombed. (See pp. 416-420, Chapter 34)

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