August 15, 1945 - Defiance Announced from Tokyo Imperial Palace

Based on a suggestion from Phillip Jones, inspired by novels by Robert Conroy and Paul Hynes.

Following the declaration of war by the Soviet Union and two uses of the new atomic bomb superweapon by the United States, the government of Japan felt no other option than to agree to the sweeping demands of the Potsdam Declaration made July 26. The points from Potsdam were extensive, including occupation, reduced Japanese territory, a disarmed military, an economy under reparations, and unconditional surrender with “stern justice… meted out to all war criminals” and “those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.” Yet when Minister of Foreign Affairs Shigenori Togo showed the declaration to Emperor Hirohito, they both agreed it was the best they could expect, especially with its promises to defend Japanese nationality and personal freedom.

As word spread through the Japanese military of the plan to surrender, officers became fearful. Although the declaration promised no enslavement of the Japanese, many of the points could be taken to extremes for an effective foreign control of Japan in every aspect of the nation’s politics, culture, and even raw materials. While the upper echelon of Japanese government conferred with the emperor in a bomb shelter, Major Kenji Hatanaka sought out those who balked at the idea of such surrender. Although the general consensus was that the emperor’s word would be the final decision on the matter, War Minister General Korechika Anami was at last convinced that the fate of Japan was being sealed by despondent whispers in the emperor’s ear while he and other senior officers were kept away in a room nearby.

Late on August 14, the Second Regiment of the First Imperial Guards arrived to join the first at the palace. This was interpreted as reinforcements against a coup, but Hatanaka had already convinced the guard officers of his plan. Hatanaka approached General Shizuichi Tanaka, commander of the Eastern District Army, with orders from Anami to stand down any defense in face of the coup. The palace was sealed, and all of those who did not wish to go forward with the coup were ordered home. Hirohito was kept within the bomb shelter while all non-military ministers were taken to rooms that would become their prisons. The emperor’s recorded announcement of surrender was destroyed and replaced with Hatanaka’s announcement of a new government that would fight invaders to the very end.

News of the coup in Tokyo rocked the Allied world along with the remnants of the Empire of Japan. The United States dropped “Third Shot,” another “Fat Man”-type atomic bomb, on Tokyo on August 21, where it devastated the city even though most of the officials had moved to bunkers and the populace had largely already been bombed out. More A-bombs fell that autumn on Yokohama, Kokura, and Sapporo. Violence broke out in several places on the Home Islands with those who defied the coup, including a march on Tokyo to liberate the emperor. Meanwhile, several commanders abroad refused to acknowledge the coup also, either surrendering to Allies themselves or declaring a sort of neutrality with promised ceasefires against Allied troops until clearer orders came from Tokyo.

Soviet forces moved immediately that August into Manchuria and stormed Korea as quickly as possible before winter slowed them. The raw numbers of soldiers were fairly matched between the Japanese and Soviet armies, but the Japanese aircraft were outnumbered by more than 3 to 1 and tanks outnumbered nearly 20 to 1. The Japanese military fought a rolling retreat, many returning from the Korean peninsula with only a few heavily fortified ports left behind. After the loss of Manchuria, the Japanese continued southward through China while fighting Chinese freedom fighters (both nationalist and PRC) at the same time. All through the retreat, Japanese troops used scorched earth tactics with destroyed infrastructure as well as improvised booby-traps, echoing the Soviets’ own defense against the advancing Germans just a few years before on the other side of Russia. The Soviet invasion of Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and northern Hokkaido went much the same with strategic objectives met at great tactical cost.

The American and British Commonwealth Allies rolled out Operation Downfall’s first act, Operation Olympic, with a landing on the southern end of Kyoshu Island on X-Day, November 1, 1945. The coup government had affirmed its control of Honshu through the fall, but Kyoshu was still greatly divided. The Allies’ plan was to secure airbases for the next stage of invasion northward. As the coup’s control weakened and locals lost faith in the government’s “Glorious Death of One Hundred Million” under Operation Ketsugo, numerous Japanese officers and cities offered to surrender and even join the fight to defeat illegal captors of the emperor. Kyushu became the battleground of civil war.

Following the island-hopping strategy from earlier in the war to take key strategic points for forward moments while leaving others alone, extensive Japanese holdings in Southeast Asia and Indonesia remained untouched. Communications became increasingly disrupted, however, prompting regional Japanese commanders to establish themselves as local warlords. Several launched raids to strike at bases in Australia, the Philippines, and even India in hopes of distracting the British and Americans from their advancement northward.

Regardless, in March 1946, Y-Day began the Allied invasion of Honshu with landings at the Kanto Plain south of Tokyo. It was double the size of landings at Normandy with more than 25 divisions in the first round coming ashore. Allies’ fear of repeating the Battle of Okinawa across the whole of the island were met. The coup government concentrated its forces against the invasion, which fought a grueling battle for every inch of the war-devastated land. Veterans from the First World War compared it to No Man’s Land. Tokyo fell, and the coup government fled toward the Hida Mountains still holding the emperor.

Through months of battle, many Japanese soldiers held out in hopes of a devastating typhoon that would cut of Allied supply lines and drown the troops much as had been seen with Mongol invasions centuries before. Instead, that July and August typhoons Janie and Lilly went on a more southerly route and did little to impact the middle-island fight. By fall, when the emperor was freed by a Japanese anti-coup covert mission, there were only a few holdouts in strongholds scattered across the western Pacific. The emperor declared the war over, although it had long ended in many areas scarred by explosives, radiation, and crop-killing chemicals.

The rebuilding of Japan continued over long decades. Many Japanese emigrated from the most war-torn areas, shifting the population map away from what had once been the most densely urbanized. Millions left the islands completely, either accepting offers from Allied countries for resettlement or to neutral nations like Brazil, where some fifteen million people of Japanese background live today. Cold War fears prompted American investment in Honshu and Kyushu, hoping to stem the spread of communism from China, Korea, and North Japan, which had become “the East Germany of Asia.” Escape by boat from communist countries to Japan and the Philippines became notorious between the two sides of the Cold War, prompting an “Iron Sea” of intensive communist patrols to mirror the Iron Curtain across Europe. Oppressive Soviet rule would continue until Moscow’s collapse in the late 1970s after cultural turmoil across Central Asia and dragged-out quasi-wars in Southeast Asia.

 

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In reality, the coup known as the Kyujo Incident failed. Anami was said to have asked others about the possibility of a coup’s success, but everyone agreed to abide whatever order the emperor gave. The officers even signed an agreement as proposed by General Torashiro Kawabe while they waited for the announcement in the bomb shelter. Anami, Hatanaka, and others committed suicide within hours of the attempt. The surrender notice went out as planned on August 15, and Japan surrendered formally aboard the USS Missouri on September 2.