SNA (Tokyo) — The elderly Kantaro Suzuki served as prime minister for the spring and summer of 1945, hoping to guide the nation through the final disastrous stages of the Pacific War. But with the US dropping of atomic bombs and the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet Union, Japan’s leverage evaporated. Emperor Hirohito personally made the final decision to accept unconditional surrender.

Transcript

On April 7, 1945, Kantaro Suzuki became prime minister of Japan.

He was a retired Navy admiral and was serving as President of the Privy Council for Emperor Hirohito. At age 77, he was the oldest person ever to become prime minister. He never sought the premiership, and didn’t actually believe he was a suitable candidate.

When Suzuki assumed office, Japan’s position in the Pacific War was already hopeless, though not all Japanese leaders were yet ready to accept that verdict.

In Europe, Japan’s Nazi allies were in the final stages of defeat, with Adolf Hitler’s suicide and the occupation of Berlin occurring just three weeks after Suzuki formed his Cabinet.

Japan itself was in the process of losing Okinawa, and the military and merchant fleet was either trapped in port or at the bottom of the oceans.

But for the military faction and some others, they still imagined two rays of hope. First, they persisted in their misguided belief that the United States, under new President Harry Truman, might be open to a negotiated peace when faced by the prospect of massive casualties in an invasion of the home islands; and they also believed that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin might be willing to serve as a helpful intermediary with Washington in exchange for territorial concessions in the North Pacific.

While Suzuki was essentially with the peace party from the beginning of his tenure, in the early months he adopted the posture of a more warlike figure.

There were several reasons. First, showing a willingness to fight helped him establish his credibility with military leaders; and indeed there were also plenty of military hotheads poised to assassinate leaders who endorsed surrender. Also, Suzuki seems to have calculated that showing a willingness to continue to fight was necessary if there was to be any chance of persuading Washington to enter negotiations.

Nevertheless, the Suzuki Cabinet agreed internally in July that its basic policy was to seek peace. Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo had consistently led arguments in this direction. The administration remained divided, however, on what conditions it would insist upon before laying down arms.

Washington delivered its final ultimatum on July 26 through the Potsdam Declaration, which demanded that Japan accept an unconditional surrender or else face what it described as “prompt and utter destruction.”

In an emergency conference, the Suzuki Cabinet agreed to appeal directly to Stalin to see if somewhat softer peace terms were still possible. Meanwhile, in public, Suzuki claimed that the Potsdam Declaration did not offer anything new, and therefore Japan would not comment on it. This was interpreted by Washington as a firm rejection of the ultimatum.

Between August 6 and 9, Japan suffered a series of the most staggering blows in its national history: on the 6th Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb; on the 8th the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria, shattering illusions that Stalin was a useful mediator with Washington; and on the 9th a second Japanese city, Nagasaki, was consumed in atomic flames.

Japanese leaders were stunned. The 77-year-old prime minister went for days without sleep as he attempted to grapple with the existential crisis.

Even then, some senior military leaders called for resistance to the bitter end, while the peace party thought that the only condition for surrender should be to maintain Emperor Hirohito in authority.

Suzuki felt that there was only one man who could break the deadlock, and that was the Emperor himself. In a series of debates and meetings, the Emperor personally decided for peace—an unconditional surrender to the Allies.

On the night of August 14-15, Suzuki narrowly escaped assassination as junior Army officers attempted a coup to head off the public announcement of the surrender.

He survived, but it was nevertheless the end. Surrender was declared, and dozens of military officers committed suicide, including Army Minister Korechika Anami.

Kantaro Suzuki resigned as prime minister, effective August 17, 1945. He had served for 133 days.

After surrender, Suzuki at first tried to retire from politics, but he was called back for six months to serve again as President of the Privy Council. When the US Occupation forces purged him from holding political offices in June 1946, he retired again. He died of cancer in April 1948.

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