We’ve arrived, finally, at the Pacific War — this week, we’ll be charting the course Japan took to war, briefly summarizing the course of said war, and then discussing how the war ended. This topic can be rather dark — after all, we’re talking about a war that killed millions — but it’s an important one for understanding the course Japan is on today, and the background in this episode will be important in future shows on the fall of the Japanese Empire.
Drea, Edward. Japan’s Imperial Army: It’s Rise and Fall, 1853-1945.
Frank, Richard. Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy.
Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan.
Pyle, Kenneth. Japan Rising.
Pyle, Kenneth. The Making of Modern Japan. (Historians are not the most original lot).
The complete text of the Potsdam Declaration is available here.
The complete list of messages related to surrender (from the original Japanese note indicating willingness to surrender to President Truman’s announcement of said surrender) is available here.
Media (Courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation)
A captured Japanese soldier surrounded by Soviet Troops in the wake of the Battle of Nomonhan (Khalkhin Gol) in 1939. The defeat of the Japanese Army by the Soviets helped drive the momentum towards an attack on the western Allies rather than the Soviets.Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Hull’s final memorandum to Japan in November, 1941 was worded in an ambiguous way which convinced Japanese planners that the US was intent on forcing more concessions than Japan was prepared to give. This was the final impetus towards war.Togo Shigenori (born Park Moo-duk), the Korean-Japanese Foreign Minister who had been one of the last objectors to war with the US. Eventually he would return to the post of Foreign Minister in 1945, and become a member of the pro-peace faction of the Big Six.View from an under-carriage camera mounted on a Japanese attack plane of the raid on Pearl Harbor.The USS Arizona on fire in Pearl Harbor.British General Sir Arthur Percival, surrounded by Japanese troops and under a flag of truce, going to negotiate the surrender of Singapore to Japan. The Battle of Singapore was the largest defeat of British land forces in history.Japanese casualties (in the foreground) and American troops (in the background) during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942. Guadalcanal would mark the first time the Japanese were forced to fall back in the face of the Allied advance. It would not be the last.The American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise fighting off Japanese planes in 1942. The Enterprise was one of the carriers which had been a target of the Pearl Harbor attack, but had been out on a training mission with two other carriers at the time of the attack.American troops advancing behind a Sherman battle tank during the Battle of Saipan in Summer, 1944. The loss of Saipan made it clear that Japan had lost the war, but fighting would continue for over one year afterwards.Downtown Tokyo the day after the firebombing (the river is the Sumida-gawa in downtown Tokyo).Civilian casualties in downtown Tokyo.The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, approx. 7 km away from the center of the blast.
The July 25th order from Thomas Handy to Carl Spaatz, authorizing the use of atomic weapons. If you’re having a hard time with the image, the text is available here.Soviet Marines occupying Port Arthur in southern Manchuria. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria crushed the remaining Japanese defenders of the territory.Shigemitsu Mamoru, as representative of the Japanese Empire, signing the surrender documents aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.American General Douglass MacArthur (who would command the American Occupation of Japan) giving a speech during the surrender ceremony. You may notice that the flag in the background has the incorrect number of stars for 1945 — that’s because it’s the one that flew on Commodore Perry’s flagship in 1854.
1 thought on “Episode 16 – And Then the War Came”
You mention at 15:03 in this episode that Germany declared war on the US on Dec 8th.
The US declared war on Japan on Dec 8th, but Roosevelt was unable to pull off declaring war on Germany however much he wanted to. Fortunately, Hitler took it out of American hands by declaring war on the US on Dec 11th (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/11/newsid_3532000/3532401.stm), not Dec 8th. Thank providence for that since if Hitler had played it safe and very reasonably chosen not to honor the Tripartite Pact given Japan initiated their war by attacking first, Roosevelt may not ever have been able to wrangle a declaration against Lindberg’s spiritual homeland and Britain and the Soviets would have been on their own in Europe…with the quite possible eventual result of an Iron Curtain that would have started at the English Channel and a very different world for us.
I know you know all this, well except maybe the date of Germany’s declaration, but I mention it all because my Generation X and those who come after me really have no clue how intensely war averse the US was at the time. Just because we had a war with Japan thrust on us did not automatically mean we would have warred with Germany and Italy, as much as it seems “totally obvious” now. That was Churchill’s great fear. It’s also something you allude to in these episodes but may not emphasize as much as I generally do – that as long as Japan left the Philippines alone, in my view at least the US very likely would not have fought for Britain’s and defeated Holland’s colonial holdings.
No matter how much Roosevelt would have wanted to.
You mention at 15:03 in this episode that Germany declared war on the US on Dec 8th.
The US declared war on Japan on Dec 8th, but Roosevelt was unable to pull off declaring war on Germany however much he wanted to. Fortunately, Hitler took it out of American hands by declaring war on the US on Dec 11th (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/11/newsid_3532000/3532401.stm), not Dec 8th. Thank providence for that since if Hitler had played it safe and very reasonably chosen not to honor the Tripartite Pact given Japan initiated their war by attacking first, Roosevelt may not ever have been able to wrangle a declaration against Lindberg’s spiritual homeland and Britain and the Soviets would have been on their own in Europe…with the quite possible eventual result of an Iron Curtain that would have started at the English Channel and a very different world for us.
I know you know all this, well except maybe the date of Germany’s declaration, but I mention it all because my Generation X and those who come after me really have no clue how intensely war averse the US was at the time. Just because we had a war with Japan thrust on us did not automatically mean we would have warred with Germany and Italy, as much as it seems “totally obvious” now. That was Churchill’s great fear. It’s also something you allude to in these episodes but may not emphasize as much as I generally do – that as long as Japan left the Philippines alone, in my view at least the US very likely would not have fought for Britain’s and defeated Holland’s colonial holdings.
No matter how much Roosevelt would have wanted to.