Reply to Hasegawa

I thank Tsuyoshi Hasegawa for taking time to answer my criticism. In the limited space below, I would like to reiterate my stance against his argument that the majority of Japanese leaders clung to the unrealistic hope of keeping the Soviet Union neutral—the leitmotif of the sources printed in Shūsen shiroku. A body of little-known documents I consulted for my own research reveals the contrary.

On December 8, 1941, General Hata Shunroku stated that top Japanese military leaders commonly understood that the Soviet Union would eventually enter the war against Japan. At the Supreme War Council meeting on August 19, 1944, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru explained in the emperor's presence the difficulty of keeping the Soviets on Japan's side. In mid-November 1944, Hata Hikosaburō, vice chief of staff of the Imperial Headquarters, confirmed to Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki his conviction that the Soviets would sooner or later nullify the Neutrality Pact. At the Supreme War Council meeting on June 8, 1945, Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori explained to the emperor that winning favorable neutrality with the Soviet Union was impossible and that any policy based on an assumption of Moscow's friendship was unrealistic.

In spite of all these "realist" assessments, as soon as the Soviets entered the war, an effort seemed to begin to spawn a "myth" about the naiveté of Japanese leaders. For example, on August 9, 1945, Tōgō said at the Supreme War Council that Soviet entry into the war was a "completely unexpected matter." On the following day, however, when he met with I. A. Malik, he never expressed hostility but reiterated his hope for Soviet-Japanese friendship. This is contrary to the conventional image of Japanese leaders being devastated by the shock of Soviet betrayal.

How can we possibly explain the discrepancy between what the leaders knew and what they later claimed they did not know? How can we determine which sources tell the truth? In fact, these same questions can be raised about U.S. and Soviet behavior as well. I appreciate Hasegawa's offer to begin constructive scholarly discourse on this issue so we can obtain more diverse perspectives of Japan's surrender and possibly demythicize the war's end.