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Japan's Surrender Decision and the Monarchy: Staying the Course in an Unwinnable War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Herbert P. Bix
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A producer for the Korean Broadcasting System, which is doing a special program commemorating August 15, 1945, recently asked me why Japan's ruling elites rejected the Potsdam Declaration. “What issue most impeded their decision to surrender?” he inquired. “Shouldn't they have cared more for the safety of their own people after the war had long been irrevocably lost? Wasn't the U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the real reason they finally surrendered?”

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 7 , July 2005 , e14
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2005