The Vital Legacy of the Past: Japan Before 1945

At noon on 15 August 1945 those Japanese able to listen to the radio heard what is arguably the greatest understatement in history when the emperor of Japan declared that ‘the war situation has gone not necessarily to our advantage’. This broadcast announced the unconditional surrender of Japan. It was the end result of six years of intermittent conflict in northern China followed by eight years of all-out war, initially with China and then with the United States and Britain. From the middle of 1942 Japan endured three years of almost unbroken defeat, climaxing in the Soviet declaration of war, which rendered Japan’s military position untenable, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By 1945 many senior bureaucrats, influential politicians, elements in the army and especially in the navy, as well as the emperor himself, believed that surrender was the only viable option for Japan. This informal coalition, forged by Japan’s catastrophic military predicament, was able to outmanoeuvre those diehard fanatics who contemplated a suicidal nationwide, kamikaze resistance against the Allies.