Japan surrender offer rebuffed.

[Bonobo]

This time I believe I have sourced properly. If you have an argument to make, it should not be in implying that I am a Holocaust denier or by attacking in that way. This was in the Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1945.


http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/475703002.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Aug+19,+1945&author=WALTER+TROHAN&pub=Chicago+Daily+Tribune+(1923-1963)&edition=&startpage=1&desc=BARE+PEACE+BID+U.+S.+REBUFFED+7+MONTHS+AGO

BARE PEACE BID U. S. REBUFFED 7 MONTHS AGO
Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963) - Chicago, Ill.
Author: WALTER TROHAN
Date: Aug 19, 1945
Start Page: 1
Pages: 1
Text Word Count: 630
Abstract (Document Summary)
Release of censorship restrictions in the United States makes it possible to announce that Japan's first peace bid was relayed to the White House seven months ago.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

---------------------------
Earlier, I posted a link about this from a Holocaust-denial website. Now I found the original article. It is archived and I cannot read it on the Trib website, but I assume the contents are the same as at the link I provided since the verbiage is identical. That the article was written and posted in the Trib is beyond a shadow of a doubt. The article is at at a Holcaust denier's website but that in and of itself does not make the content on that site suspect.

The author was a writer for the Chicago Tribune. I post the text of the article here.

Chicago Tribune, August 19,1945

JAPS ASKED PEACE IN JAN. ENVOYS ON WAY -- TOKYO

Roosevelt Ignored M'Arthur Report On Nip Proposals

By Walter Trohan

Release of all censorship restrictions in the United States makes it possible to report that the first Japanese peace bid was relayed to the White House seven months ago.

Two days before the late President Roosevelt left the last week in January for the Yalta conference with Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin he received a Japanese offer identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, Harry S. Truman.

MacArthur Relayed Message to F.D.

The Jap offer, based on five separate overtures, was relayed to the White House by Gen. MacArthur in a 40-page communication. The American commander, who had just returned triumphantly to Bataan, urged negotiations on the basis of the Jap overtures.

The offer, as relayed by MacArthur, contemplated abject surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. The suggestion was advanced from the Japanese quarters making the offer that the Emperor become a puppet in the hands of American forces.

Two of the five Jap overtures were made through American channels and three through British channels. All came from responsible Japanese, acting for Emperor Hirohito.

General's Communication Dismissed

President Roosevelt dismissed the general's communication, which was studded with solemn references to the deity, after a casual reading with the remark, "MacArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician."

The MacArthur report was not even taken to Yalta. However, it was carefully preserved in the files of the high command and subsequently became the basis of the Truman-Attlee Potsdam declaration calling for surrender of Japan.

This Jap peace bid was known to the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald shortly after the MacArthur comunication reached here. It was not published under the paper’s established policy of complete co-operation with the voluntary censorship code.

Must Explain Delay

Now that peace has been concluded on the basis of the terms MacArthur reported, high administration officials prepared to meet expected congressional demands for explanation of the delay. It was considered certain that from various quarters of Congress charges would be hurled that the delay cost thousands of American lives and casualties, particularly in such costly offensives as Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

It was explained in high official circles that the bid relayed by MacArthur did not constitute an official offer in the same sense as the final offer which was presented through Japanese diplomatic channels at Bern and Stockholm last week for relay to the four major Allied powers.

No negotiations were begun on the basis of the bid, it was said, because it was feared that if any were undertaken the Jap war lords, who were presumed to be ignorant of the feelers, would visit swift punishment on those making the offer.

It was held possible that the war lords might even assassinate the Emperor and announce the son of heaven had fled the earth in a fury of indignation over the peace bid.

Defeat Seen Inevitable

Officials said it was felt by Mr. Roosevelt that the Japs were not ripe for peace, except for a small group, who were powerless to cope with the war lords, and that peace could not come until the Japs had suffered more.

The Jap overtures were made on acknowledgment that defeat was inevitable and Japan had to choose the best way out of an unhappy dilemma -- domination of Asia by Russia or by the United States. The unofficial Jap peace brokers said the latter would be preferable by far.

Jap proposals to Gen. MacArthur contemplated:

1. Full surrender of all Jap forces on sea, in the air, at home, on island possessions and in occupied countries.

2. Surrender of all arms and munitions.

3. Occupation of the Jap homeland and island possessions by Allied troops under American direction.

Would Give Up Territory

4. Jap relinquishment from Manchuria, Korea and Formosa as well as all territory seized during the war.

5. Regulation of Jap industry to halt present and future production of implements of war.

6. Turning over of any Japanese the United States might designate as war criminals.

7. Immediate release of all prisoners of war and internees in Japan proper and areas under Japanese control.

After the fall of Germany, the policy of unconditional surrender drew critical fire. In the Senate Senator White (R.) of Maine Capehart (R.) of Indiana took the lead in demanding that precise terms be given Japan and in asking whether peace feelers had not been received from the Nipponese.

Terms Drafted in July

In July the Tribune reported that a set of terms were being drafted for President Truman to take to Potsdam. Capehart hailed the reported terms on the floor of the Senate as a great contribribution to universal peace.

These terms, which were embodied in the Potsdam declaration did not mention the disposition of the Emperor. Otherwise they were almost identical with the proposals contained in the MacArthur memorandum.

Just before the Japanese surrender the Russian foreign commissar disclosed that the Japs had made peace overtures through Moscow asking that the Soviets mediate the war. These overtures were made in the middle of June through the Russian foreign office and also through a personal letter from Hirohito to Stalin Both overtures were reported to the United States and Britain.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. Psst. Link and name of offending site is still there, at the bottom. You may want to edit it out. nt

[Bonobo]

2. Done. That site has NOTHING to do with the original article. nt

[Gaedel]

3. Chicago Tribune

Before and during WWII, the Chicago Tribune was a very, very anti-Roosevelt paper. Anything they could do to slag FDR, they did. Take the article with the same "grain of salt" you would with a Washington Times article today.

[Bonobo]

4. That's good to know. But it doesn't EXACTLY address the articles claims.

More like another slam at a source rather than at the content although I do appreciate your POV.

[CJvR]

5. Once again...

...it is not that hard to surrender.
The Japanese could have done it at any time.

[Bonobo]

6. Why is it "not that hard"?

We're not talking about one guy staggering out waving a white flag and even in that case, it is up to the winning side not to shoot.

So your comment makes no sense to me.

[CJvR]

8. Waving the white flag...

I doubt the Japanese had pissed off all the neutrals enough that they couldn't carry the message "We surrender!" It is not particulary hard to get that across. And if you couldn't find a neutral go between then you would simply order your armies to cease fire, even in self defence, and surrender where ever they are in contact with the enemy. Surrendering unconditionally is actually the simplest form of surrender there is, no need to negotiate terms.

[Bonobo]

10. The article claims the message was delivered to American, British and Russian envoys.

But the article says that Roosevelt turned it down, feeling that the Japanese weren't really ready to quit.

He added that "MacArthur was a great general but a lousy politician." and hardly read MacArthur's brief.

[CJvR]

13. I think he was right.

Given Mac's later activities in Korea that seems to be an accurate assessment.

But since the Japanes feelers don't seem to have originated from the high command, the real power in Japan at this time, and contained some conditions it seems the Japanese that mattered were not entirely sure they were beat. It took the hideous fire bombing campaign, Okinawa, Manchuria and finally nukes to get the Japanese in power to get to the point of "OK, lets ask the Emperor what to do now" and EVEN THEN - there was an attempt to pull a coup and keep fighting. I don't think even with imperial backing anyone could have made the earlier efforts stick even if the US didn't insist on unconditional surrender, and lets not forget that the first such condition would have been the divinity of the Emperor and thus the entire ideological foundation for the Japanese regime.

[old mark]

7. Actually, the Japanese Imperial Government REFUSED to surrender

even after the atomic blast in Hiroshima...the Emperor decided call for a surrender after the second atomic bombing in Nagasaki several days later. There were large elements of the Japanese military who were against the surrender even then, and there was a real attempt at a military coup to circumvent the Emperor's decision to surrender...they were planning to fight the invasion of the home islands to the last living Japanese person. They had already been training young grade school children to attack using sharpened sticks. Estimates at the time speculated that the war could have lasted well into the 1950's if that strategy had been persued...resulting in nearly a million allied casualties possibly near the entire population of Japan. Even after the official surrender many Japanese military units kept fighting. The last KNOWN Japanese soldiers actually surrendered in the 1970's after losing all but 2 or 3 of their unit. Remember, too that Japanese civilians on some islands we invaded killed themselves and their children rather than surrender to the American savages, and that Japanese military survivors on some of the later islands numbered in single digits - they really did fight to the death of the last man.
I have little doubt the invasion of Japan would have been terrible for both sides, involving more casualties than the rest of the Pacific war combined.


mark

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. The significance of this seems to turn on who the "responsible Japanese" were

Two of the five Jap overtures were made through American channels and three through British channels. All came from responsible Japanese, acting for Emperor Hirohito.
...
It was explained in high official circles that the bid relayed by MacArthur did not constitute an official offer in the same sense as the final offer which was presented through Japanese diplomatic channels at Bern and Stockholm last week for relay to the four major Allied powers.

No negotiations were begun on the basis of the bid, it was said, because it was feared that if any were undertaken the Jap war lords, who were presumed to be ignorant of the feelers, would visit swift punishment on those making the offer.

It was held possible that the war lords might even assassinate the Emperor and announce the son of heaven had fled the earth in a fury of indignation over the peace bid.

Officials said it was felt by Mr. Roosevelt that the Japs were not ripe for peace, except for a small group, who were powerless to cope with the war lords, and that peace could not come until the Japs had suffered more.

So the question is whether the people really had the full authority to act on behalf of Hirohito, and whether he would have supported the surrender in public, which would have been needed to overcome the resistance to it of the Japanese military command.

[Bonobo]

11. Yes, I would think that is quite correct.

But it also doesn't sound like FDR was all that eager to really delve too deeply in the question.

[CJvR]

12. I doubt it would be relevant.

The Emperor's real power in Japan was fairly limited at the time, you would need to pull of a coup against the military ( which had all the guns ). IIRC it wasn't until the regime deadlocked between the war and peace factions following Nagasaki that it was decided to ask the Emperor's opinion on surrender, and as others have noted even then there was a coup attempt.

[Bonobo]

14. On the other hand.

Although his powers may have been largely symbolic (Some historians dispute this highly though and claim he was in FULL command), he was still the only one in a position to really call the fighting to an end given his status.

[CJvR]

15. That is always the problem...

Just how much power does a supposed absolute ruler have?

While the Emperor might have absolute autority as long as he doesn't issue any actual orders that hardly matters. When the Emperor actually tries to use the power he theoreticly should have that is when those with the actual power start talking about being loyal to the Imperial line and it's divine origin rather than the person currently seated on the throne...

[KharmaTrain]

16. The Japanese Government Was Divided

There were peace feelers who tried to negotiate through the Soviets up until they invaded Japan in August '45. This is nothing new...yes there were those in the Japanese government who were trying to broker a peace in the final months of the war as they knew Japan couldn't win and once Germany went down they stood alone not only against the US but the USSR as well. However, the militarists...the Japanese neo-cons remained in control up until the day the second A-bomb fell on Nagasaki.

The problem with this denier strawman is that those envoys didn't speak for the emperor and thus the war went on. There are always peace feelers in war...especially when an outcome becomes clear. The US called for unconditional surrender...those were the terms and until the Japanese accepted it, the war would have gone on.

[lostnfound]

17. Is the burden of proof as great for making a statement like

"the Japanese neo-cons remained in control up until the day the second A-bomb fell on Nagasaki"?

What the heck is a "denier strawman" anyway? I thought "deniers" were delusional people who believed that there was no Holocaust or that the Germans weren't killing millions of Jewish people in concentration camps. The question that the OP is skirting is whether or not it was necessary to drop atomic bombs in order to secure surrender from Japan, which is purely a question of humanitarian concern. It is odd to me that people refuse to consider the possibility that one's own government might be guilty of such inhumanity. Or that anyone claims certain knowledge over the motivations or course of decisions from 65 years ago.

At a young age, I was educated about the despicable evil that occurred in Nazi Germany, and I was also educated about the horror that was inflicted on the civilians of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I consider the exposure to this history -- both the horror of the Holocaust, as well as the dropping of the atom bomb on civilian populations -- to have been among the most critical parts of my education, for deepening my feelings toward wider humanity and for awakening in me the constant question of individual responsibility to confront the evil that we find in the world.