WAR RESPONSIBILITY--delving into the past (6) / Anami, Umezu press ahead with war

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The administration of Kuniaki Koiso, who succeeded Hideki Tojo as prime minister, started as a kind of "coalition cabinet" led by Koiso and Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai.

However, their lack of leadership and ability had been often exposed, so it was almost impossible to expect them to show the strong leadership needed to terminate the war.

Espousing the slogan "All 100 million to be armed to fight," the cabinet sent many soldiers to their deaths. It resigned en masse in April 1945, paving the way Okinawa Prefecture to become a battlefield.

During that time, Naval General Staff Chief Koshiro Oikawa approved kamikaze suicide attack and a suicidal mission of the battleship Yamato to Okinawa, while Sadatoshi Tomioka, chief of the Naval General Staff's Operations Section, also insisted that the military should send as many soldiers as possible to the Okinawa front.

Japan suffered appalling casualties in the Battle of Okinawa. With the Soviet Union joining the war and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nation was being devastated by the Allied Powers.

Despite this, some military leaders insisted that they wanted to find a way out of a hopeless situation through the final battle on the mainland.

At an Imperial Council meeting (Gozenkaigi, a conference in the presence of the Emperor) that started late at night on Aug. 9, Yonai agreed to Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo's proposal to accept the Potsdam Declaration on the one condition that the national polity be maintained. However, War Minister Korechika Anami opposed this.

"I believe it is appropriate to push toward a final battle on the mainland with determination to find a way out of an impossible situation," he was quoted as saying in "Shusen Oboegaki" (Minutes around the War's End, 1948), by navy Rear Adm. Sokichi Takagi.

Army General Staff Chief Yoshijiro Umezu and his counterpart in the Navy, Soemu Toyoda, also voiced their resolve for a final battle on the mainland. They said they could not determine if defeat was inevitable, though they could not be absolutely assured of victory.

Naval General Staff Vice Chief Takijiro Onishi, who was one of the most hard-line officers in the navy, called Anami out from a meeting he was attending. Onishi told him Yonai was unreliable because he wanted to end the fighting. Onishi asked Anami to make efforts to keep the nation engaged in the war.

The Imperial Headquarters (Daihonei) was planning to deploy 3.15 million soldiers and 1.5 million sailors to handle a possible invasion of the mainland by the U.S. forces. Daihonei thought it best to mobilize the whole people to repel the U.S. forces for as long as they could, inflict heavy casualties on the landing forces and seek more favorable conditions in negotiations for peace.

Masao Yoshizumi became chief of the War Ministry's Military Affairs Bureau in a personnel reshuffle in preparation for the mainland battle. "Is there any chance we could win the war?" Yoshizumi asked the Army General Staff's Operations Section chief Shuichi Miyazaki.

"There's none," Miyazaki replied.

As the officer responsible for war operations clearly stated there was no prospect for victory in the war, the general public was forced to train to fight U.S. soldiers with bamboo spears.

On Aug. 10, when Japan decided to accept the Potsdam Declaration, Army General Staff Vice Chief Torashiro Kawabe, who had been insisting on fighting the battle on the mainland, wrote in his diary: "I only feel, 'I don't want to surrender. I don't want to admit I was defeated, even if I was killed.'"

The following day, he wrote that such traits as "self-confidence, self-admiration, narcissism, self-satisfaction" among military officers had "invited today's tragedy."

Anami and Kawabe devoted themselves to mollifying military officers after Japan's decision to surrender. Anami killed himself on Aug. 15.

Those mainly responsible

-- Kuniaki Koiso, prime minister

-- Koshiro Oikawa, Naval General Staff chief

-- Yoshijiro Umezu, Army General Staff chief

-- Soemu Toyoda, Naval General Staff chief

-- Korechika Anami, war minister