Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945 - Softcover

Toland, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848845251 ISBN 13: 9781848845251

Publisher: Pen & Sword Military, 2011

Synopsis

This magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning history, told primarily from the Japanese viewpoint, traces the dramatic fortunes of the Empire of the Sun from the invasion of Manchuria to the dropping of the atomic bombs, demolishing many myths surrounding this catastrophic conflict.Why did the dawn attack on Pearl Harbor occur? Was was inevitable? Was the Emperor a puppet or a warmonger? And, finally, what inspired the barbaric actions of those who fought, and who speak here of the unspeakable - murder, cannibalism and desertion? 'Unbelievably rich ...Readable and exciting' Newsweek'The most readable, yet informative account of the Pacific War' Chicago Sunday Times

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Rising Sun

The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936–1945

By John Toland

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

Copyright © 2011 John Toland
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84884-525-1

Contents

Foreword, 
Part One-The Roots of War, 
1 Gekokujo, 
2 To the Marco Polo Bridge, 
3 "Then the War Will Be a Desperate One", 
Part Two-The Lowering Clouds, 
4 "Go Back to Blank Paper", 
5 The Fatal Note, 
6 Operation Z, 
7 "This War May Come Quicker Than Anyone Dreams", 
Part Three-Banzai!, 
8 "I Shall Never Look Back", 
9 "The Formidable Years That Lie Before Us", 
10 "For a Wasted Hope and Sure Defeat", 
11 "To Show Them Mercy Is to Prolong the War", 
12 "But Not in Shame, 
13 The Tide Turns, 
Part Four-Isle of Death, 
14 Operation Shoestring, 
15 Green Hell, 
16 "I Deserve Ten Thousand Deaths", 
17 The End, 
Part Five-The Gathering Forces, 
18 Of Mice and Men, 
19 To the Marianas, 
20 "Seven Lives to Repay Our Country!", 
Part Six — The Decisive Battle, 
21 "Let No Heart Be Faint", 
22 The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 
23 The Battle of Breakneck Ridge, 
24 Debacle, 
Part Seven — Beyond the Bitter End, 
25 "Our Golden Opportunity", 
26 "Like Hell with the Fire Out", 
27 The Flowers of Edo, 
28 The Last Sortie, 
29 The Iron Typhoon, 
30 The Stragglers, 
Part Eight — "One Hundred Million Die Together", 
31 In Quest of Peace, 
32 "That Was Not Any Decision That You Had To Worry About", 
33 Hiroshima, 
34 ... and Nagasaki, 
35 "To Bear the Unbearable", 
36 The Palace Revolt, 
37 The Voice of the Crane, 
Epilogue, 
Acknowledgements, 
Sources, 
Notes, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Gekokujo

1.

The sky over Tokyo on the afternoon of February 25, 1936, was dark and foreboding. A thick blanket of snow already covered the city and there was threat of more to come. Three nights earlier more than a foot had fallen, breaking a record of fifty-four years, and causing such a traffic snarl that some theaters had to be turned into temporary hotels for audiences unable to get home.

Even under its white cloak of snow, Tokyo looked almost as Western as Oriental. Japan had left much of its feudal past behind to become by far the most progressive, westernized nation of Asia. A few hundred yards from the Imperial Palace with its traditional tile roof was a modern four-story concrete building, the Imperial Household Ministry, where all court business was conducted and the Emperor's offices were located. Just outside the ancient stone walls and moat surrounding the spacious Palace grounds was the same mélange of East and West: a long line of modern structures, including the Imperial Theater and the Dai Ichi Building, as Occidental as the skyline of Chicago, while a few blocks away, in narrow cobblestone streets, were row upon row of geisha houses, sushi stands and kimono stores, and assorted little ramshackle shops, gay even on that cloudy day with their flapping doorway curtains and colorful lanterns.

Next to the Palace on a small hill was the not quite completed Diet Building, constructed mainly of stone from Okinawa and looking quasi-Egyptian. Behind this commanding edifice was a cluster of spacious houses, the official residence of government leaders. The largest was that of the Prime Minister. It was two buildings in one, the business part Western in the early Frank Lloyd Wright style, the living quarters Japanese with paper-thin walls, tatami floors and sliding doors.

But beneath the peaceful exterior of Tokyo seethed an unrest which would soon spill violently into the snow-covered streets. At one end of the Palace grounds were the barracks of the 1st (Gem) Division. Here authorities were already prepared for trouble after a tip about a military insurrection from a major in the War Ministry: he had learned from a young officer that a group of radicals planned to assassinate several advisers to the Emperor that day. Suspects had been put under surveillance, and important public figures were given emergency bodyguards. The doors of the Prime Minister's official residence were reinforced with steel, iron bars installed in the windows, and a warning system connected directly to police headquarters. But the kempeitai (military police organization) and the regular police felt they could easily handle the situation. After all, what real damage could a handful of rebels do, however strongly motivated? And by now they were wondering how reliable the information was that the uprising was at hand. The day was almost over.

It seems strange that they were so complacent, since the spirit of rebellion was high among elite troops charged with defense of the Palace grounds. Their defiance was so apparent that they were on orders to be shipped out to Manchuria in a few days, and their contempt for authority so open that one unit, ostensibly on maneuvers, had urinated in cadence at metropolitan police headquarters. Fourteen hundred of these unruly officers and men were preparing to revolt. Just before dawn the next morning, attack groups would strike simultaneously at six Tokyo targets: the homes of several government leaders, as well as metropolitan police headquarters.

While intricate preparations for these attacks were proceeding, pleasure seekers roamed the darkening streets in search of entertainment. Already the Ginza, Tokyo's Broadway-Fifth Avenue, was teeming. To young Japanese it had long been a romantic symbol of the outside world, a fairyland of neon lights, boutiques, coffee shops, American and European movies, Western-style dance halls and restaurants. A few blocks away, in the Akasaka section, where the kimono was common for both men and women, the old Japan also anticipated a night of pleasure. Geishas looking like something out of antiquity in their theatrical makeup and resplendent costumes were pulled in rickshaws through the winding, willow-lined streets. Here the lights were more muted, and the traditional red lanterns carried by the police gave off a soft, nostalgic glow. It was a charming woodcut come alive.

These insurrectionists were not motivated by personal ambition. Like half a dozen groups before them–all of which had failed–they were about to try once again to redress the social injustices in Japan through force and assassination. Tradition had legitimized such criminal action, and the Japanese had given it a special name, gekokujo (insubordination), a term first used in the fifteenth century when rebellion was rampant on every level, with provincial lords refusing to obey the shogun, who in turn ignored the orders of the emperor.

The crumbling of autocracy in Europe after World War I, followed by the tide of democracy, socialism and Communism, had had dramatic impact on the young people of Japan, and they too set up a cry for change. Political parties emerged and a universal manhood suffrage bill was enacted in 1924. But it all happened too fast. Too many Japanese looked upon politics as a game or a source of easy money and there was a series of exposés–the Matsushima Red-Light District Scandal, the Railway Scandal, the Korean Scandal. Charges of bribery and corruption resulted in mob brawls on the floor of the Diet.

The population explosion which accompanied Japan's westernization added to the confusion. Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku (her four main islands, comprising an area scarcely the size of California) already burst with eighty million people. The national economy could not absorb a population increase of almost one million a year; farmers who were close to starvation following the plunge of produce prices began to organize in protest for the first time in Japanese history; hundreds of thousands of city workers were thrown out of work. Out of all this came a wave of left-wing parties and unions.

These movements were counteracted by nationalist organizations, whose most popular leader was Ikki Kita, a nationalist as well as a fiery revolutionary who managed to combine a program of socialism with imperialism. His tract on reform, "A General Outline of Measures for the Reconstruction of Japan," was devoured by radicals and worshipers of the Emperor alike. His words appealed to all who yearned for reform. "The Japanese are following the destructive examples of the Western nations," he wrote. "The possessors of financial, political and military power are striving to maintain their unjust interests under cover of the imperial power....

"Seven hundred million brethren in India and China cannot gain their independence without our protection and leadership.

"The history of East and West is a record of the unification of feudal states after an era of civil wars. The only possible international peace, which will come after the present age of international wars, must be a feudal peace. This will be achieved through the emergence of the strongest country, which will dominate all other nations of the world."

He called for the "removal of the barriers between nation and Emperor" –that is, the Diet and the Cabinet. Voting should be restricted to heads of families and no one would be allowed to accumulate more than 1,000,000 yen (about $500,000 at the time). Important industries should be nationalized, a dictatorship established, and women restricted to activities in the home "cultivating the ancient Japanese arts of flower arrangement and the tea ceremony."

It was no wonder that millions of impressionable, idealistic young men, already disgusted by corruption in government and business and poverty at home, were enthralled. They could battle all these wicked forces as well as Communism, free the Orient of Occidental domination and make Japan the leading country in the world.

In the West these young men could have found an outlet for action as unionists or political agitators, but in Japan many, particularly those from small landowning and shopkeeping families, found they could serve best as Army and Navy officers. Once in the service, they gained an even more profound understanding of poverty from their men, who would be weeping over letters from home–with their sons away, the families were on the verge of starvation. The young officers blamed their own superiors, politicians, court officials. They joined secret organizations of which some, like Tenkento, called for direct action and assassination, while others, like Sakurakai (the Cherry Society), demanded territorial expansion as well as internal reforms.

By 1928 this ferment came to a head, but it took two extraordinary men operating within the military framework to put it into action. One was a lieutenant colonel, Kanji Ishihara, and the other a colonel, Seishiro Itagaki. The first was brilliant, inspired, flamboyant, a fountain of ideas; the second was cool, thoughtful, a master organizer. They made a perfect team. What Ishihara envisioned, Itagaki could bring to pass. Both were staff officers in the Kwantung Army, which had originally, in 1905, been sent to Manchuria to guard Japanese interests in a wild territory larger than California, Oregon and Washington combined.

The two officers felt that Manchuria was the only answer to poverty in Japan. It could be transformed from a wilderness into a civilized, prosperous area, alleviating unemployment at home and providing an outlet for the overpopulated homeland, where more than two thirds of all farms were smaller than two and a quarter acres. Manchuria could also supply Japan with what she so desperately needed to remain an industrial state–a guaranteed source of raw materials and a market for finished goods. But all this could not come about, Ishihara and Itagaki reasoned, until the Japanese gained complete control of Manchuria, which was loosely governed by a Chinese war lord, Marshal Chang Tsolin. At the time, Japan had only the right to station troops along railroads and to engage in mining, farming and business activities.

There had been a struggle over the vast territory north of China for several hundred years, with the Chinese occupying Manchuria and Korea, and the Russians taking over Maritime Province, the coastal region of Siberia from Bering Strait to Vladivostok. For centuries Japan had cut herself off from the outside world and did not join this scramble for territory until 1853. In that year an American commodore, Matthew C. Perry, sailed into Edo (Tokyo) Bay and, at cannon point, opened up a medieval Japan to modern life. The Japanese took to it with a will. They assiduously copied the latest techniques of mass production and even added original procedures–girls in textile factories, for example, worked on roller skates to handle more spindles. They built a strong army and navy and began imitating the European game of forceful diplomacy, by sending out punitive expeditions. Within a few decades Japan controlled most of Korea and in 1894 fought a war with China for this country. Japan won easily, and also gained possession of Formosa, the southern tip of Manchuria and the Liaotung Peninsula with the important seaports of Port Arthur and Dairen.

Alarmed that an interloper was taking a piece of their "Chinese Melon," Russia, Germany and France joined forces and compelled Japan to give up the peninsula she had just won in battle. Russia then appropriated Liaotung for herself but could keep it less than ten years. In 1904 the Japanese, their national pride stung, struck back at the Czar, whose empire covered one sixth of the earth's land surface, and astonished the world by winning overwhelming victories. Once more Japan had Port Arthur and Dairen.

She also had all the railways built by Russia in southern Manchuria. Japan could have seized the rest of the country but wanted to be recognized by the Europeans as a respected member of the imperialist community. Accordingly, she poured a billion dollars into the bandit-infested, sparsely populated territory, and maintained such law and order along the railroads that hundreds of thousands of Japanese, Chinese and Korean traders and settlers flooded into the area.

It was this mass influx that had inspired Ishihara and Itagaki to envision a Manchuria free of its Chinese war-lord ruler. Ishihara dreamed of making it an autonomous state, a haven for all of its ethnic groups–Japanese, Chinese, Manchurians, Koreans and White Russians. Here genuine democracy and eventual socialism would be practiced and a buffer set up against Soviet Russia.

All this was to be effected by the Kwantung Army, with the blessing of Tokyo. But the Emperor and the War Ministry refused to sanction a plan that appeared to be masked aggression. Undeterred, Ishihara, Itagaki and their followers decided to act on their own–to commit gekokujo. The first step was to eliminate Marshal Chang, the aging Chinese war lord. On June 4, 1928, a Kwantung Army staff officer commanding men from an Engineer regiment dynamited Chang's special train and he was fatally injured. From then on, and despite numerous warnings from Tokyo, Ishihara and Itagaki used the Kwantung Army as if it were their private legion. At last, in the summer of 1931, they were ready for the final step and secretly massed troops to take Manchuria from the Chinese by force. Hearing rumors of this, the Foreign Minister persuaded the War Minister to send an officer from Tokyo to bring the Kwantung Army under control. The man selected, a major general, arrived in Mukden on the evening of September 18. A few miles away a charge of dynamite was being planted on the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway near the barracks of the 7th Chinese Brigade. The explosion would be the excuse "to bring order" by sending in troops and seizing Mukden.

The general was easily diverted by Colonel Itagaki to the Kikubumi, a Japanese inn, for an evening with the geishas. About ten o'clock there was a detonation, but the damage to the tracks was so slight that a southbound train passed by safely a few minutes later. A Japanese consular officer wanted to adjust the matter with the Chinese, but a Kwantung Army staff major drew his sword and threatened to run him through. At ten-thirty Japanese troops fired on the Chinese barracks while other detachments converged on the walls of Mukden. At the Kikubumi, the general was too drunk to notice the fusillade. If he had, it would have made no difference. He had known about the plot from the beginning–and approved of it.

By morning Mukden was in Japanese hands, to the dismay of not only the world but Tokyo itself. At the request of the Cabinet, the Army General Staff ordered the Kwantung Army to limit the expanse of hostilities. This group of individualists simply ignored the command and continued to sweep over the rest of Manchuria. It was gekokujo on a grand scale.

In Tokyo, members of the Cherry Society were already secretly conspiring to support the rebel action in Manchuria with a coup d'état of their own. Their primary purpose was to impose radical internal reforms. These reforms, together with the conquest of Manchuria, would lead to the new Japan. The plot (the Brocade Flag Revolution) involved 120 officers and their troops, augmented by followers of the firebrand Ikki Kita. The rebels planned to assassinate government and court officials, then assemble in front of the Palace, and by way of apologizing to the Emperor, commit hara-kiri.

But so many groups with so many differing opinions were involved in the coup that someone turned informer, in pique or for pay, and the plotters were arrested on October 17, 1931. The leader of the conspiracy was sentenced to twenty days' confinement and his assistant got half that. Their accomplices were merely reprimanded. It was the old story: amnesty for any actual or planned violence if it was done for the glory of the nation.

That evening the War Minister radioed the Kwantung Army a limp reproach:

1. THE KWANTUNG ARMY IS TO REFRAIN FROM ANY NEW PROJECT SUCH AS BECOMING INDEPENDENT FROM THE IMPERIAL ARMY AND SEIZING CONTROL OF MANCHURIA AND MONGOLIA.

2. THE GENERAL SITUATION IS DEVELOPING ACCORDING TO THE INTENTIONS OF THE ARMY, SO YOU MAY BE COMPLETELY REASSURED.

As if this wasn't enough, the War Vice Minister added these conciliatory words:

WE HAVE BEEN UNITED IN MAKING DESPERATE EFFORTS TO SOLVE THE EXISTING DIFFICULTY ... TRUST OUR ZEAL, ACT WITH GREAT PRUDENCE. ... GUARD AGAINST IMPETUOUS ACTS, SUCH AS DECLARING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE KWANTUNG ARMY, AND WAIT FOR A FAVORABLE TURN OF EVENTS ON OUR SIDE.

Rather than being appeased, the Kwantung commander indignantly denied that his army was seeking independence, and though admitting it had "tended to act overpositively and arbitrarily," claimed it had done so "for the country."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Rising Sun by John Toland. Copyright © 2011 John Toland. Excerpted by permission of Pen and Sword Books Ltd.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848845251
• ISBN 13: 9781848845251
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 954