Translator even when my life ends, the dangers of radiation and fears of radiation will live on because i have passed on my genes to my sons and my grandsons and granddaughters. And because there are Still Nuclear reactors in japan and around the world, there is the possibility that new hibakushi will be born in this world. So in order to prevent any more disasters from happening in the future, i would like to do my best to pass on my story to many people around the world so that we can truly work for a nuclearfree and nuclear powerfree world. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you very much. [ applause ] during this last week of Congress Summer recess, the cspan cities tour continues at 6 00 p. M. Eastern. We head to wheeling, West Virginia, to travel the national road. The first major highway built by the national government. We look at civil war battle flags and recount senator Joe Mccarthys red dating enemies from within speech which he delivered in wheeling in 1950. Our visit to wheel, West Virginia, begins at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. A signature feature of book tv is our allday coverage of book fairs and festivals from across the country with top nonfiction authors. Heres our schedule. Beginning this weekend, were live from the 15th annual National Book festival from our nations capital. Near the end of september, were in new york for the brooklyn book festival cell braebrating tenth year. The southern festival of books in nashville. The weekend after that, live from austin for the texas book festival. Near the end of the month, two book festival oz the same weekend from our nations heartland. The wisconsin book festival in madison and the boston book festival. At the start of november, well be in portland, oregon, for wordstock followed by the National Book awards from new york city. And at the end of november, live for the 18th year in a row from florida for the Miami Book Fair international. Thats a few of the fairs and festivals this fall on cspan 2s book tv. Coming up next, james perry examines diplomatic relations in world war ii and the impact on military strategies in the pacific. This program is part of a symposium that marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the pacific war. Its about an hour. Our next speaker is john kuehn who has combat experience over bosnia and iraq. Hes teaching at an Army Institution as far from the ocean as you can be, ft. Leavenworth. Hes a military historian and is going to speak on the succession of miracles that occurred in august 45. Thank you, james. Well, somebodys got do it. Somebodys got to go to the middle of the country and do it. And i love doing it. Thank you for having me out. Thank you to our hosts. Im going to start out somewhat esterically at noon local time august 15th. The radios crackled. Weve already heard some references to this. They crackled in japan. And the alien voice of hirohito, also known as the shoa emperor. You get that after your rain. Shoa means bright harmony or bright piece. The voice of the shoa emperor came over the radio. Its a voice most japanese had never heard. The famous photographs of the events show many japanese. Ive got one of them down here. Its on the cover of john dowers book embracing defeat. He asked them to endure the unendurable. Notice he doesnt say surrender. Endure the unendurable. And surrender implicitly their sacred soil to the triumphant geijing, the barbarics. Some of the japanese couldnt understand. We heard from our guest the formal Court Japanese dialect. They couldnt understand it. It was such highly formalized. It would be like someone from canton going up to beijing in the 13th century. You just wouldnt understand the chinese that was being spoken in both places. A lot of them really didnt understand. But they understood enough to know one thing. They had lost. Only a week earlier the first atomic bombs had been dropped on the cities of hiroshima and n nagasaki by the United States army air force. So thats what happened. Im going to kind of go through after this happened after u. S. Submarines and an aircraft essentially destroyed red blood ce cells, the merchant fleet. The transoegssic empire relied on that. This happened after the United States navy and its allies, principally the United States navy, had practically annihilated the Imperial Japanese navy and cut the main sea lines of communication to the south, to the southern Resource Area of the indieies, the dutch. Theres a reason it stops at brunei. Thats where the oil is. After allied air power gained the ability to dominate the skies temporarily. Temporary command of the sea. Temporary command of the air from the sea. They wipe out what little Naval Aviation the japanese have left off formosa, the philippines and punishing battles. After ally forces had defeated and liberated many of the postdecember 1941 conquests. After allied forces had landed on sacred japanese soil to include the Mariana Saipan as japanese sacred soil, iwo jima. After b29s and other forms of allied air power had made the rubble bounce and burn, after they had dropped two atomic bombs, vaporizing that same rubble, after the ussr had declared war on japan. As the soviet mechanized armies were overrunning manchuria against the once vaunted once vaunted, not anymore vaunted army. After a military coup failed to destroy the recording that the emperor had made. But these with the possible exception of the failed coup are not what id term miracles. Im going to focus this talk about whats a miracle . Weve heard that word used before. A miracle is luck. A miracle is serendipity. Murphys law. 180 degrees out. So well talk about that. They werent those. They were those werent the miracles i want to talk about. The miracles are sort of the effects between people inside the japanese polity who were making the decisions and pretty much worried as rich frank told us earlier that their lifetime of being able to make important serious, effective decisions that might affect the course of things that they might not have much longer to do that. So as you can see, ive fallen prey to the classic historians dilemma. How far back should i go. All these actors take us pretty far back. But from june 1944 on, it had been one disaster after another. And there were a lot of disasters prior to that. But by 1944, the disaster you had an entire army fall apart in burma and then starve to death during the retreat. Theres a lot going on in the japanese empire. Theres a lot going on. Just a reminder, kind of why we have this end game. There is an act of war committed against the United States. And not just here. I think if this had never happened, if the japanese, if yamamoto had not convinced the imperial general staff and army navy sort of committee that approved these things to attack pearl harbor, that would be a picture of cavite smoking and flaming. So im not completely convinced that without pearl harbor we dont have world war ii. I had to go pull this off the internet. This is thats a battleship in a floating dry dock in 1944. Thats the West Virginia. Okay. I think its off of spirit du santu. I dont think theyd moved it to the philippines yet. We had ten advanced based docks like this one. The one who broke the codes at midway commanded one. It was a positive indication hed be able to command something that cost the u. S. Taxpayers something that cost so much to build. Before the end of world war ii, we had over 100 floating dry docks in the pacific. Not all of them were this big. You dont just improvise those overnight after 1941. So the interwar peace that norman talked about is incredibly important to explain how we get to the end game. Well, i want to talk about a couple of things. First, lets think about some shaping components here. Again, i show this to my students at ft. Leavenworth, and i have to explain the japanese polity and again, i have to do some mirror imaging, which you shouldnt do, but i have to because you have to have a frame of reference. But japan is not it doesnt operate to say everybody thinks they operate the same. A secretary of navy. Secretary for war. They have this. The systems are so different between the two. And i agree. I tend to agree with those who say we didnt have a good understanding of how things work inside the upper levels of the japanese polity. We didnt have a really good understanding of how much the army and the navy hated each other in japan. Fighting over the budget. We didnt and again, they thought it was for patriotic reasons. Each of them considered themselves alone all that was necessary to protect something called the cocuti. We did not understand the navy hated the navy. Inside the navy there were factions. Inside the army were factions that hated each other and theyd assassinate each other. That political assassination was a socially acceptable mode of political communication in japan. And we forget that. We forget that after the london conference, a bunch of japanese guys who were thought to have sold the farm were assassinated. And so we kooind of forget thes things. There was a coup. Almost replaced it with a military government. But so i agree with norman that we just dont understand this. I do want to talk to some of this. Okay. So we need thats part of the shaping. Aagain this miracle piece, those are really disasters that came before. They are not a lot of serendipity. Quite a bit of innovation and power. And with the exception of the failed coup, we need to review all these events as sort of just a string. One darn disaster after another. And the way they happen was very fortuitous. But it was not planned. It was contingency. The contingent element in history is too often dismissed. Some of the other speakers said, we know how it turned out. They didnt, okay . So we go, wow. That really lined up nicely. Atomic bomb, soviet invasion. Atomic bomb, end of war. A really smart guy that put that one together. Wow. Thats not how it happened. It was not synchronized as we might say. So a miracle is an event we have trouble explaining logically. We shrug them off. Miracles arent talking about the process of how the japanese polity came to some decisions. And who controlled grand strategy of policy . All right. And grand strategy in policy, you know, its not like, okay, rich wright controls grand strategy and thats the way its going to be for the next ten years. Its always in flux. And particularly in a consensus driven polity like the japanese had, the centers of power, the decision flowed around the emperor. So its not anything you can just say, oh, i understand how they do business in 1942. Thats good for the rest of the war. No, its not. It changes. In fact, in a week from august 6th all the way up to the surrender it changed almost every day, okay, how the decisionmaking goes on, and how we get to this miracle of the japanese surrender. Theres two big things to talk about. The first is cocuti. Im going to read one of my favorite scholars of japan on it. Its still the best thing ive ever read on it. Its the most emotive force. It becomes the japanese war aim. Its the notion of Imperial Japan as a unique nation by virt virtue. It remains difficult to define concisely because the concept meant Different Things to different groups in japan. Two examples for hirohito, it meant responsibility to his imperial ancestors to preserve the unbroken imperial isle. Or his Imperial Army it meant the preservation of the imperial system. It became the repository for the values and virtues of the Imperial Army. Those two things are different. Hirohito, if he dies, thats it. Cocutie is done. If the imperial relics are vaporized, you cant go out and get a new one. For the army, its the system that puts that emperor up there in this iconic. They have different views of what it is. And sort of this idea inside the japanese Imperial Army and Imperial Navy as well. Its not just the emperor. Its not just the imperial relics and family. Its the imperial spirit. If somehow that spirit gets polluted with unrighteous acts, that that is you may as well fight to the death. Its a critical component because its going to drive the bus on decision making. The other thing and rich frank mentioned it. I think james perry mentioned it. Im not sure who else. This idea of decisive victory. The japanese spend the whole war searching for the decisive victory. Just one. Theyre just going to fight one. Thats all they need is that one decisive victory. The nature of the decisive victory and what it chose to accomplish changes as the war goes on. And by the summer of 1944, not 1945. By the summer of 1944, the idea is that what we need to avoid is we need to avoid an occupation of japan. We need to maintain the cocuti in its broadest sense which may mean retaining stuff we had in china, prior to 1937 or prior to 1941. People start to compromise. For me a decisive recipe would mean no the four things riched talked berler. The emperors vision becomes compromised and he doesnt think. He loses faith in the decisive victory. He never loses faith in cocutie. Theres two groups and weve already talked about him. Thats why ive got this up here. This is one of the few line diagrams i have. We talk about the big sticks. Something in the Supreme Military Council for the direction of the war. When the emperor joins this council it becomes an Imperial Council. Dont get confused between a sitting council and a meeting. The imperial conferences are meetings that include Supreme Council for the duration of the war with the emperor and his most trusted with him. Keep that in mind. Who are these guys . Well talk about them. The Senior Officers of the Japanese Army. Weve gotten into some of that. Thats an area ripe for more research is the Japanese Army officers who are in charge. Theres been some great books done on this. Its a great place to start but theres much more Research Needed to kind of understand whats going on with all of these guys. Theres a treasure trove out there. They are scattered from rangoon to they are spread out all over the place something. Something not discussed weve already heard human beings are not fundamentally rational. Freud tolds that. What you need to understand is the guys running japan after hirohito resigns are the moderates. After tojo resigns are the moderates. Tojo is a moderate from the control faction of the Japanese Army. The radicals are defeated in 1936 and the moderates take over. Theyre still militarists and have this expansive aggressive Japanese Foreign policy. They can be very brutal on the ground. But theyre the moderates. In some sense were lucky the imperil wave faction is defeated. Theyre far less rational than the control factor which is composed of tojo. We always talk to the students at ft. Leavenworth, youve got to relate politics to military results. And at the battle of the Philippine Sea and also some stuff going on in china theres these disasters. June 1944. Japans government changed. They think japans government changes on august 15th, 1945. No, it changes in june of 1944. Tojo resigns in disgrace after the failure of the campaign, the ego campaign against retaking the marianas islands. Japanese sacred soil and other things going wrong. Hes replaced by somebody from the korean government, koiesa. Theres still some of what we call the treaty factions or bellicose folks inside the Japanese Navy in certain places. But for the most part theyve been so discredited by all of these horrible defeats that have been inflicted on them. The people running japan are from what we call the treaty faction, the moderates. Suzuki who becomes Prime Minister as an admiral. Admiral yone. Hes also a moderate. So theres a lot more moderates in the japanese government in 1945 than you might imagine, all right . Which makes this more problematic. Let us take a look at the Supreme Council during the week of fire. The reconstitution of this council. They created it earlier in the war to give advice to the emperor. It was going to include the army minister, naval minister. Uniformed officers. The japanese equivalents. Loosely efquivalents to our secretary of the navy. Imperial generals staff and the Prime Minister who has just resigned, okay . And theres a new one. And the foreign minister who has already been mentioned, togo shiganori. Those are the six rich was talking about. Admiral toyoda is the chief of the naval general staff not chief of general yeah, chief of the naval general staff. It might be regarded as a minor miracle thats put back together. Heres the people. Hirohito. Prime minister suzuki. There he is in the middle. Suzuki is a fascinating guy. Hes a very fire brand, wants japan to expand, build an empire. Hes very supportive of expannionism in china. But he supports the treaty faction and he is almost assassinated by young officers. He becomes the Prime Minister of japan. Almost assassinated by fanatical Army Officers and he survives that assassination attempt. And he is the premier. Hes the Prime Minister. Admiral suzuki. Retired admiral. Togo shiganori, the naval minister and chief of the imperial general staff, admiral yone and admiral toyoda. Well talk about general anani. Kind of a young dynamic guy compared to some of the other generals. And then the chief of the imperial general staff is general yumetsu. So theres key members of the cabinet who arent members of this decisionmaking body. Why is that . The answer to that question is, its mostly military officers, if you hadnt figured it out. Suzuki. Shiganori. But they dont trust the pol