August 1945: The Ten Days of Destiny

August 14th—The Eve of the End of the War

Part 1: Morning

The Calendar

August 14th.

Risshu (the beginning of autumn) has passed.

According to the calendar, it is already autumn.

However, Tokyo was still in the midst of summer.

The average temperature in Tokyo on this day was 25.4 degrees Celsius, with a high of 28.4 and a low of 22.9. Precipitation was 8.5 millimeters.

Japan Meteorological Agency Data

Even if the character for autumn appears on the calendar, summer does not depart so easily.

And in the skies over Tokyo, the war was still present.

Air Raid Warning

Hyakken Uchida's "Tokyo Shojin" (Tokyo Burned) captures Tokyo on this morning.

The alarm sounds.

It sounds again.

People brace themselves for the B-29 raid and run to air-raid shelters.

When the warning is lifted, they return.

If they fall asleep, they are awakened by the alarm once more.

Hyakken was one such person in that Tokyo.

Despite being in the midst of a major historical event, the daily life of that day was deeply human: air-raid warnings, air-raid shelters, sleepiness, eating, and wondering whether one could go out.

Hyakken does not yet know.

That this day will be the day that decides Japan's fate.

For the people of Tokyo, today was just another day of air raids.

However, that same morning—

In the Imperial Palace, the final decision for the nation of Japan was about to be made.

Imperial Conference

August 14th.

The core of the government and the military gathered before His Majesty.

This day's Imperial Conference was held as the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, serving as the venue where the final decision regarding the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was made. The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records also classifies the August 14th Imperial Conference as the 17th Imperial Conference, noting that the 'Sacred Decision' was handed down at this meeting. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records

First, let us look at the attendees.

People gathered before the Emperor

Name, Title, Age

His Majesty, Emperor, 43 years old

Kantaro Suzuki, Prime Minister, 77 years old

Kiichiro Hiranuma, President of the Privy Council, 77 years old

Mitsumasa Yonai, Minister of the Navy, 65 years old

Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, 63 years old

Shigenori Togo, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Greater East Asia, 62 years old

Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the Naval General Staff, 60 years old

Korechika Anami, Minister of War, 58 years old

Hisatsune Sakomizu, Chief Cabinet Secretary, 43 years old

Of course, these nine people were not the only ones in attendance.

All cabinet ministers, the President of the Privy Council, and the heads of the Army and Navy high commands were gathered.

However, when you line up the key figures like this, it is truly fascinating.

Except for Sakomizu, almost everyone is around sixty.

Even Anami is only 58.

There are people in their 60s, and Suzuki and Hiranuma are 77.

And at the center of these people is the 43-year-old Emperor.

The Emperor among the elders

Those gathered before the Emperor all carry the weight of their own lives.

Suzuki is a pillar of the Navy.

Hiranuma has walked the worlds of politics and the judiciary.

Yonai is the Minister of the Navy.

Umezu is the Chief of the Army General Staff.

Toyoda is the Chief of the Naval General Staff.

Togo is the person responsible for diplomacy.

Anami is the Minister of War.

Sakomizu, as Chief Cabinet Secretary, is handling the practical affairs of ending the war.

All of them are elders with a wealth of experience.

And they are all standing before the Emperor.

However, the order of age is reversed here.

His Majesty, the youngest, bears the heaviest responsibility.

Korechika Anami

Among them, Anami is relatively young.

Fifty-eight years old.

And Anami possessed something the others did not.

He knew the Imperial Court.

In the early years of the Showa era, Anami served by His Majesty's side as an aide-de-camp.

At that time, Kantaro Suzuki was the Grand Chamberlain.

In other words, the two did not simply meet later as 'Prime Minister and Minister of War'.

They were two men who shared days in the Imperial Court with His Majesty as the center.

And His Majesty was close to Anami,

calling him,

'Anami'.

Surrounded by many elders who were like uncles, Anami was a young military officer.

For His Majesty, he may have been like an older brother with whom there was an age gap.

That is not something to be asserted definitively.

However, when considering that Anami later accepted His Majesty's will and decided his own fate, this period in the Imperial Court cannot be ignored.

Hisatsune Sakomizu

And one more person.

Hisatsune Sakomizu.

He was 43 years old at the time.

As Chief Cabinet Secretary, he was in charge of the practical work of ending the war.

Moreover, Sakomizu was not merely an administrator.

He was a participant who attended the Imperial Conference and meticulously recorded the words exchanged there.

The records Sakomizu left for posterity have become an important clue for us to understand this final Imperial Conference.

And Sakomizu had memories from ten years prior.

The February 26 Incident.

At that time, the person Sakomizu tried to protect was Prime Minister Keisuke Okada.

Ten years later, he was working in the same Prime Minister's official residence to end the war.

Protecting Okada during the February 26 Incident, and protecting the people during the end of the war.

Those two lives overlap on this one day.

The Imperial Decision

The discussions of the Imperial Conference will not be detailed here.

What is important is that there was still a large gap in perception between the Army, the Navy, and the government.

In the Army,

"We can still fight"

was a sentiment that remained.

The decisive battle on the mainland.

Total national mobilization.

That is not an abstract term.

Mobilizing the entire nation,

making them fight even with bows and arrows or bamboo spears.

That was the level of resolve.

On the other hand, in the Navy,

the sense of reality that

"we can no longer fight" was strong.

Within the same national military,

there was a vast gap in awareness between

"we can still fight"

and

"we can no longer fight."

After hearing both sides, His Majesty expressed his own will.

To end the war.

The supreme authority.

Many of those standing before the throne were older than His Majesty.

However, age has no bearing on the weight of responsibility.

Rather, it was His Majesty who bore the heaviest responsibility here.

The pride of being the supreme authority.

The self-reliance to make the decision himself.

The sense of responsibility to bear the consequences of that decision alone.

With these three things in his heart, His Majesty made his sacred decision.

The youngest person

bore the heaviest of decisions.

And, onto a single sheet of paper

However, just because the sacred decision was made did not mean the war would end immediately.

His Majesty's will had to be shaped into the will of the nation.

For that, an imperial rescript was necessary.

And for the rescript, words were necessary.

A single word.

A single expression.

That would determine the course of the nation.

In the initial draft,

"The war situation is not in our favor"

was an expression used.

However, this too was revised.

Ultimately,

"The war situation is not necessarily improving"

became the phrasing.

To us today, this literary style itself is almost like a foreign language.

It was by no means an easy text for the citizens of that time to understand.

It did not say that things were "getting worse."

It was phrased as,

"It is not that things are getting better."

Each and every word would become an issue during the long day that followed.

The end of the morning

In Tokyo, Hyakken was being tossed about by air raid warnings.

At the Imperial Palace, His Majesty had made his sacred decision.

At the Prime Minister's official residence, the work of turning that will into a single imperial rescript was about to begin.

The war was not yet over.

The rescript was not yet complete.

There were not yet any countersignatures from the cabinet ministers.

There was not yet a recording of the Imperial voice.

And, Anami's final day had not yet ended.

The sacred decision had been made.

However,

the end of the war was not yet complete.

From this point on, it would be a battle over how to turn His Majesty's will into a single piece of paper and establish it as the will of the nation.

And then—

the afternoon of August 14th begins.

Part Two: Day - A Single Imperial Rescript

After the Imperial Decision

The Imperial Conference had ended.

His Majesty's will had become clear.

However, just because the Imperial decision had been made did not mean the war was over.

His Majesty's will had to be shaped into the will of the nation.

For that, a single document was necessary.

The Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War.

It had to be put into words that would convey to the people that the war was ending.

What begins here is not a battle of guns and cannons.

It is a battle of words.

Every character, every word.

The draft of the Rescript was revised time and time again.

One character.

One word.

One expression.

The meaning that these held for both the military and the people was immense.

The initial draft contained the phrase,

The war situation is not necessarily in our favor,

or so it was expressed.

For us today, even this is difficult.

In modern terms,

"The war situation is worsening day by day"

is what it means.

However, this expression was revised.

"The war situation is not necessarily improving"

it became.

In modern language,

"The war situation is not necessarily getting better"

is about what it means.

It does not say "it is getting worse."

It says,

"It is not that it is getting better."

In this way, depending on the listener,

"It is neither good nor bad"

could also be interpreted.

However, that was the world of language at the time.

Moreover, this imperial rescript was by no means an easy text, not only for us today but also for the citizens of that time.

The literary style was already drifting away from the daily language of the people.

That is precisely why every single word carried such weight.

The Army and the Navy

Behind those words lies a vast gap in perception between the Army and the Navy.

Within the Army,

the belief that

“we can still fight” remained.

A decisive battle on the mainland.

The final stand.

Total national mobilization.

These were not abstract terms.

If the mainland were to become a battlefield,

they would mobilize the entire nation, arming them with bows and arrows or bamboo spears to make them fight.

Some were prepared to go that far.

On the other hand, the Navy had

a sense of reality that

“we can no longer fight.”

The fleet had been decimated.

There was no fuel.

Aircraft were also in short supply.

Control of the seas and the skies had been lost.

Within the same Japanese military,

"We can still fight"

and

"We can no longer fight"

—there was a gap in consciousness between these two positions.

The conflict surrounding the end of the war was not merely a struggle between a "peace faction" and a "hardline faction."

How much further could the nation of Japan continue to fight?

Their very perception of that reality was different.

Korechika Anami

Among them was the Minister of War, Korechika Anami.

Anami accepted the Emperor's decision.

However, that did not mean he abandoned his responsibilities as Minister of War up to that point.

There were soldiers who had fought, risking their lives.

There were also those who still believed they could fight.

Carrying the weight of those people, Anami faced the reality of the war's end.

Therefore, the words of the Imperial Rescript were not just mere text.

As Minister of War, it was a matter for the man who had carried the Army on his shoulders until the very end.

"Endure the unendurable"

And so, words that would remain for posterity were placed in the Rescript.

"We resolve to endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable, and thereby open the way to a grand peace for all the generations to come."

In modern language, it means:

To endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable, in order to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come.

That is what it means.

This is not merely about surrendering to the victors.

It is about enduring, so as not to involve the people in any further war.

That is the intention behind it.

And then,

The true heart of you, Our subjects, We also well know.

—His Majesty knows the feelings of the people well.

Even so,

Nevertheless.

It continues.

It means, "However, even so."

That is it.

This "however" decided the fate of Japan.

To be able to safeguard the national polity.

There is one more important phrase.

We are able to safeguard the national polity.

In modern language,

It means, "I have judged that I can safeguard the national polity here."

That is what it means.

Regarding the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, the issue the Japanese side was most acutely aware of was the 'kokutai' (national polity). And by 'kokutai,' I don't mean the 'National Sports Festival.' (lol)

And that term remained in the final Imperial Rescript.

To end the war.

However, to protect the nation itself.

It is a phrase that attempts to realize both of those things simultaneously.

'Devote all your strength to the construction of the future'

Even more important is

'Devote all your strength to the construction of the future'

that single phrase.

All your strength.

Until then, in Japan, it had been used for fighting.

However, here, that direction changes.

From strength for fighting, to strength for construction.

It does not mean mobilizing the entire nation to carry bows, arrows, and bamboo spears.

From now on, that strength will be

'directed toward the construction of the future'

directed toward.

An era turns around right here.

The barrier of literary style

But, would the public be able to easily understand such content?

For us today, the literary style itself is almost like a foreign language.

"You, our subjects."

"Trust and rely."

"Exclude and push aside."

"Strengthen your resolve."

Each and every word is difficult.

It was the same for the citizens of that time.

That is precisely why the broadcast of the Emperor's voice the following day became so important.

The people would not be reading the Imperial Rescript.

They would be hearing His Majesty's voice.

And for the first time,

"The war is ending"

they would come to know.

The urgent fair copy

There is no time.

While the wording of the Rescript was being examined, the fair copy was also being prepared.

Normally, one would finalize the text completely before making a fair copy.

However, this day was different.

The cabinet meeting and the fair copying proceeded in parallel.

Every moment was a race against time.

Decide to end the war.

Turn that into an imperial rescript.

Then, obtain the Emperor's signature and seal, and have the Ministers of State countersign it.

We must go that far.

The Imperial decision has been made.

However, the end of the war as a nation is not yet complete.

Dusk

Before long, dusk falls on Tokyo.

Hyakken writes.

"The evening clears. A new moon hangs over the pines on the embankment, and a cool breeze blows, feeling like a summer evening."

An air raid warning had sounded in the morning.

As if that were a lie, silence has returned to Tokyo in the evening.

A new moon hangs over the pines on the embankment.

A cool breeze, typical of a summer evening, blows across.

However, in the center of that quiet Tokyo, work is still continuing.

A single imperial rescript.

The fate of Japan rests on that one sheet of paper.

The end of the day

The Imperial decision has been made.

The rescript, too, has almost taken its final form.

However, it is not over yet.

From here on,

The Imperial signature and seal.

And then,

The countersignature of the Ministers of State.

Furthermore, the recording of the Imperial voice.

And before that can be delivered to the people, many more crises await.

A new moon hangs in the Tokyo sky.

A cool breeze blows.

In that quiet twilight, the final piece is about to be completed.

Among them is the name of Korechika Anami.

And then night falls.