Sometime over the course of Thursday, 9 August 1945, the Emperor of Japan made the single most significant decision of his career. Hirohito, the Shōwa Emperor, was then forty-four years old and had occupied the Chrysanthemum Throne for just short of two decades. Two tumultuous decades, during which the policies of his governments had swung wildly. It is difficult to know what he thought of his governments’ jarring shifts or of the momentous events that had come to overshadow his reign and threaten his dynasty’s 2000-year hold on the throne. It is difficult to judge what he personally thought about anything. He was by nature a quiet, shy, reserved man, characteristics which were enhanced by the training for his high and distant office. He was as much a religious leader as a temporal one, Japan’s connection with its divine past. But now, due to American air raids, the descendant of the sun-goddess Amaterasu was living underground like a burrowing animal. Outside the walls of the Imperial Palace, Tokyo lay in ruin, burned out by fire bombs.

Most likely, Hirohito made his decision at a meeting in the middle of the afternoon with Marquis Kido Kōichi, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. Kido had been the Emperor’s confidant through all those troubled years, but could he be described as the Emperor’s friend? He was certainly one of the few people close to the Emperor, meeting with him regularly and looking out for his welfare. As later events would show, he was willing to go to extreme lengths to protect his sovereign. But it is difficult to determine whether or not Hirohito had any friends outside the Imperial family. His interactions with others were tightly controlled, he rarely had what might be called a normal conversation with another human being, and he could confide his private thoughts to no-one. None except the Empress were permitted to touch him; even his doctors wore gloves. His tailors were required to guess his measurements, and as a result his clothes never fitted particularly well.

Perhaps this isolation is why he kept a diary since childhood. The Imperial Palace in Tokyo still holds it, although without a significant change in policy its contents will never be made public. He may have second-guessed himself in its pages, but he demonstrated no self-doubt in public, and indeed, little self-awareness in his words to others. Had he needed charisma or personal popularity to retain his throne, he would surely have lost it. But the institution supported him, just as he supported it.

The Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal traditionally controlled access to the Emperor, and in his five years in the office Kido had made himself one of the most powerful men in Japan. Historians have come to view him as something of a Machiavellian figure, working behind the scenes to protect the throne. Hirohito was not a fool, but he was not as clever or as cunning as Kido. Kido’s schemes, however, had failed to prevent militarists from taking over the government and throwing Japan into an unwinnable war. When Kido’s friend and ally Prince Konoe Fumimaro resigned as prime minister in October 1941, Kido had backed the appointment of extremist Tōjō Hideki on the principle of ‘fight poison with poison’, an old Japanese proverb.1 But it is difficult to see what he was trying to achieve, and six weeks after Tōjō took office, Japan was at war with the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The situation for Japan had been uniformly bad for over a year, but never before had Kido come to the Emperor in circumstances quite as serious as these. On the morning of Monday, 6 August 1945, a clear and warm summer’s day across much of the country, communications had suddenly been lost between Tokyo and military and civilian authorities in the southern city of Hiroshima. Confused reports of a massive explosion began to trickle in, but they made no sense – while Hiroshima had a significant army presence, there was no great stockpile of explosives, and the seven American B-29 bombers seen passing over the city could not possibly have carried enough firepower. A pilot was sent to investigate, and confirmed on his return that the city had apparently been engulfed in a fireball, leaving tens of thousands dead. It looked like the Americans had developed a super-weapon capable of destroying cities with ease.

The next day, in a radio broadcast shortly after midday, US President Harry S. Truman confirmed that Hiroshima had been destroyed by an American bomb. An atomic bomb, harnessing the basic forces of the universe and unleashing their destructive power. Alarmingly, the speech contained a grim threat directed at Tokyo:

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.2

The ultimatum of 26 July was the Potsdam Declaration, a demand for Japan’s unconditional surrender issued jointly by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and China. Japan would need to disarm its military, abandon its overseas empire, and allow the Allies to try its leaders and soldiers for war crimes. It would also need to submit to military occupation until the terms had been met and its government had been reformed along democratic lines.

‘We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners,’ the Allies had said in the declaration, before finishing with ‘the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction’.3 The Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, a body of six men which effectively ran Japan, had not accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration when it was issued. It was now clear what prompt and utter destruction would look like.

Through the dark months of 1945, as Japan’s cities were destroyed by fire-bombing and Iwo Jima and Okinawa fell, the Japanese government’s hopes rested on using the Soviet Union as an intermediary to negotiate peace with the Allies. This hope had now been crushed. On the night of Wednesday, 8 August, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had informed Japanese ambassador Satō Naotake that the Soviet Union would consider itself at war with Japan from midnight, Far Eastern time. Soon after, units of the Kwantung Army guarding the border between the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria) and the Soviet Union reported they had come under attack by the Red Army. These attacks quickly developed into a full-scale invasion, with 1.5 million Soviet troops pouring into Manchukuo from every direction.

The Japanese government scrambled to find out how many atomic bombs the Americans had, and when and where they intended to use them. Lieutenant Marcus McDilda, a P-51 Mustang pilot captured two days after the Hiroshima bombing, told his interrogators under torture that America had a hundred atomic bombs and would use one on Tokyo in the next few days. McDilda actually knew nothing about the bombs and was bluffing, but his warning was taken seriously by the members of the Supreme Council.

The Supreme Council had met on Thursday morning, 9 August, but after two hours of discussion remained undecided on how to respond to the Potsdam Declaration. During the meeting, shortly after 11 am, they received the news that another atomic bomb had destroyed Nagasaki. After two hours, the Supreme Council had still not made a decision. Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō had called a meeting of the full cabinet, and it was now in session. While the cabinet was shut away in another part of the complex, Kido, who was a member of neither the Supreme Council nor the cabinet, went to see the Emperor.

Hirohito was meticulous, and under pressure his attention to detail became obsessive. It seems his mind was not then on atomic bombs or the relentless advance of the Red Army into Manchuria, but on where the Americans would land when they launched their inevitable invasion of the Japanese mainland. The army had assured him that fortifications at Kujūkuri Beach to the east of Tokyo Bay would be complete by August, but they were nowhere near done. And if the Americans landed at Ise Bay to the south of Tokyo, there was a risk they could capture the Shinto shrines holding the imperial regalia. These were a sword, a mirror and a jewel, meant to be of divine origin, which were the symbols of the legitimacy of the Imperial house. No-one except for the Emperor and the very highest Shinto priests were even permitted to see them.

Hirohito suggested to Kido that the regalia was under threat, and their loss would be a serious blow to the Chrysanthemum Throne. ‘If the enemy landed near Ise Bay, both Ise and Atsuta Shrines would immediately come under their control,’ Hirohito said in Shōwa Tennō Dokuhakuroku, a monologue dictated in 1946 and made public in 1990 after his death. ‘There would be no time to transfer the sacred treasures of the imperial family and no time to protect them. Under these circumstances, protection of the kokutai would be difficult.’4 Kido agreed with him.

Kokutai is a difficult-to-translate word describing Japan’s national polity or national identity, and above all, rule by an emperor from an unbroken line stretching back into mythological times. Kido was also concerned about the kokutai, but he saw a bigger picture than the imperial regalia. As unthinkable as it was, the public might be turning against the Emperor.

After the devastating fire-bombing raid of 9–10 March, the Emperor was driven out in a car to see what remained of Tokyo. The city, painstakingly rebuilt from its near complete ruin in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, had been consumed by fire. Three hundred and thirty-four American bombers had dropped 1,665 tons (1,510 tonnes) of incendiary bombs, creating a firestorm so powerful it boiled water in the canals, melted glass, and destroyed some of the bombers flying overhead. Somewhere between 80,000 and 125,000 people had burned to death, and a million were left homeless. The survivors were living in makeshift shelters made from anything they could find, while hundreds of thousands had fled into the countryside, surviving by eating weeds and insects. Rice, the staple of the Japanese diet, had become scarce. People turned to barley and potatoes, but by mid-1945 these were running out as well. Millions were now threatened with starvation. Absenteeism at some factories had reached 40 per cent, simply because the workers were too malnourished to come to work.5

A witness in a car following the Emperor’s described exhausted survivors ‘digging through the rubble with empty expressions on their faces that became reproachful as the imperial motorcade went by’.6 For Japanese people to look reproachfully at the Emperor was troubling. The royal houses of Russia, Germany and Austria had not survived the First World War. Kido saw no reason to assume Japan’s must survive the Second.

What, then, did Kido say to the Emperor in response to his concerns about the preservation of the regalia and the kokutai? Neither Kido’s diary nor Hirohito’s monologue record this exactly. Given what happened over the following hours, though, it seems likely Kido finally persuaded the Emperor that Japan must accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and surrender to the Allies.

Legally, it was not immediately clear what this meant. The position of the Emperor in the Japanese government was ambiguous, and this ambiguity remains one of the reasons for the ongoing debate about Hirohito’s personal responsibility for the war and Japanese war crimes. As part of their modernisation project, Japan’s leaders had given it the Meiji Constitution in 1889.7 Based on the constitutions of the United Kingdom and the German states, it combined Western political institutions with the kokutai. The joining of the two was far from seamless: some of the provisions of the Meiji Constitution seemed to assume that the Emperor was an absolute monarch, and some that he was a constitutional monarch. For example, Article 3 described the Emperor as ‘sacred and inviolable’, Article 11 gave him supreme command of the army and navy, and Article 13 gave him the power to declare war, make peace, and conclude treaties. However, Article 5 stated the Emperor could only exercise his powers in accordance with the constitution. In practice, this left a great deal to the people occupying the high offices of state, including the Emperor.

A strong-willed emperor could, perhaps, have controlled the government, but Hirohito was not a particularly independent or decisive man. Many times he was content to be made the tool of other men, if he saw it as being in his own interests and the interests of the survival of the Japanese monarchy. Throughout his career he did not show a great deal of courage or initiative, and except on a few occasions he blew with the prevailing wind. But at the same time, he was an active participant in the government of Japan. As his biographer Herbert Bix wrote: ‘For more than twenty years Hirohito exercised, within a complex system of mutual restraints, real power and authority independent of government and the bureaucracy. Well informed of the war and diplomatic situations, knowledgeable about political and military affairs, he participated in the making of national policy and issued the orders of the imperial headquarters to field commanders and admirals.’8

Formally, the interaction between the government and the Emperor was carried out in a Gozen Kaigi, an imperial conference. Typically, the government would put an agreed policy before the Emperor for his approval. But when the meeting of the full cabinet broke up at 8 pm on 9 August with no decision made, Prime Minister Suzuki decided to call an imperial conference that night and put two proposals before the Emperor for his decision. It was unusual, but then, the circumstances were unprecedented.

The conference began late at night, in the final minutes of Thursday, 9 August. Present were the six members of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, the president of the Privy Council, and five aides. The Supreme Council consisted of the prime minister, the foreign minister, and the ministers and the chiefs of staff for both the army and navy. Informally, they were called the Big Six. Four of the six were army and navy officers appointed by those services, showing the effective control the military had over the country. But unlike Nazi Germany, Japan did not have continuity of leadership throughout the war (the Emperor being a notable exception). These were not the men responsible for the ill-advised decision to attack the British Empire and the United States in December 1941, and most had only been appointed when their predecessors were dismissed or resigned following defeat after defeat during 1944 and early 1945.

The Emperor entered the room; everyone rose and bowed. When they resumed their seats, Prime Minister Suzuki was the first to speak. Suzuki, a 77-year-old retired admiral, had been brought out of retirement to take over as prime minister in April 1945, once it became clear that Japan was going to lose the Battle of Okinawa. He had served as grand chamberlain from 1929 to 1936, where he became a target of the militarists for his moderate views and opposition to war against Britain and the United States. In the February 26 Incident of 1936, an attempt by radical officers of the Kōdōha (Imperial Way Faction) to take control of the government, he was listed as a target. The rebels burst into his house and shot him twice. As their captain drew his sword to deliver the killing blow, Suzuki’s wife begged him to let her do it herself. Believing Suzuki was mortally wounded, the captain bowed and replied, ‘I am particularly sorry about this, but our views differ from His Excellency, so it had to come to this.’9 This was an accurate summary of the attitude the militarists had towards those who disagreed with them.

The rebels left and Suzuki survived, although one of the bullets stayed in his body for the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, he played little further role in politics until his recall to office. And even as prime minister, he maintained a placid facade and rarely expressed an opinion, preferring Taoist philosophy to political debate. The Emperor trusted him implicitly.

Suzuki explained that the Big Six were deadlocked three–three on whether they should accept the Potsdam Declaration subject to one condition or four conditions. Three of the Big Six – Suzuki, Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori, and Navy Minister Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa – favoured accepting the declaration subject to one condition, the preservation of the kokutai. This proposal lay on the table before everyone. In practice, this meant surrendering on the understanding that the Emperor would stay on the throne, and new institutions of government would be built around him to ensure continuity and to guarantee the country’s survival as a distinctly Japanese nation. Like Suzuki, Tōgō and Yonai had opposed going to war with the United States and Britain, and had been sidelined by the militarists until the war turned decisively against Japan.

Army Minister10 General Anami Korechika, Chief of the Army General Staff General Umezu Yoshijirō, and Chief of the Navy General Staff Admiral Toyoda Soemu were willing to accept the declaration but only on three more conditions: Japan must control its own disarmament; there must be no occupation of the Japanese homeland by foreign troops and the Japanese government must have control of any war crimes trials. The last had historical precedent. The Treaty of Versailles, imposed on defeated Germany by the Allies of the First World War in 1919, contained clauses for the trials of German war criminals. But they never happened. The plan to try Germany’s deposed Kaiser fell apart when the Netherlands refused to extradite him, and to prevent further political instability in Germany the Allies allowed the German government to conduct its own trials, which ended in a farce. Anami and Umezu were militarists, closely associated with former prime minister Tōjō Hideki. Toyoda had opposed the war, but now believed it must be fought to the death if favourable conditions for Japan could not be obtained.

Suzuki, Tōgō, Yonai, Anami and Umezu all spoke in turn, explaining their position to the Emperor. He listened to each of them, then turned to Baron Hiranuma Kiichirō, President of the Privy Council and chair of the meeting. Hiranuma was a hardliner, a reactionary lawyer with a deep fear of public disorder. As justice minister in the 1920s he had drafted a law that made it illegal to start or join an organisation dedicated to overthrowing the kokutai, and used it to imprison the leaders of the Japanese Communist Party. They were still in gaol. But he was also a realist. When he spoke at the conference, he raised the shortage of food and the domestic unrest. He gave a long and legalistic speech, going into the exact wording of the proposal, finally coming to the conclusion that Japan must end the war but probing the Allies for additional terms could not hurt. The subtle Hiranuma had committed himself to nothing, but the Emperor concluded that he was with Suzuki.

Nonetheless, his willingness to accept the proposal lying on the table had limits. ‘Even if the entire nation is sacrificed to the war, we must preserve both the kokutai and the security of the Imperial house,’ Hiranuma said.11 He agreed with Suzuki that the final decision must rest with the Emperor. ‘In accordance with the legacy of your Imperial forefathers, Your Imperial Majesty is also responsible for preventing unrest in the nation,’ the Baron added. ‘I should like to ask Your Imperial Majesty to make your decision with this point in mind.’12

After Toyoda spoke, supporting Anami and Umezu, Suzuki rose and faced the Emperor. ‘Your Imperial Majesty’s decision is requested as to which proposal should be adopted – the one stated by the Foreign Minister [with the one condition] or the one containing the four conditions.’13

The Emperor did not hesitate; his mind was clearly made up. He rose swiftly from his seat, and the councillors all rose around him. With visible emotion, he began to speak before the imperial conference. It was then the early hours of Friday 10 August. Nobody recorded exactly what he said, but the official transcript of his speech runs as follows: ‘I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer . . .’14

He spoke about the failure of the army to ready fortifications at Kujūkuri Beach, a controversial statement as it implied criticism of the military. From this he concluded that any plan to defend Japan may not work. ‘There are those who say the key to national survival lies in a decisive battle in the homeland,’ he said, referring to the militarists and their desire for a cataclysmic battle in Japan where the people would die ‘like shattered jewels’ and the Allies would be defeated by sheer numbers. ‘The experiences of the past, however, show that there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance.’

He then spoke of the disarmament and war crimes conditions: ‘It goes without saying that it is unbearable for me to see the brave and loyal fighting men of Japan disarmed. It is equally unbearable that others who have rendered me devoted service should now be punished as instigators of the war. Nevertheless, the time has come to bear the unbearable . . . I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the Foreign Minister.’

Baron Hiranuma alone answered him. ‘Your Majesty, you also bear responsibility for this defeat. What apology are you going to make to the heroic spirits of the imperial founder of your house and your other imperial ancestors?’15

It is not recorded whether Hirohito answered this unusually direct question. He left the conference room, having made his decision.

‘His Majesty’s decision should be made the decision of the Conference,’ said Suzuki, breaking the silence. They argued about it for a few hours more, but sometime between 3 and 4 am, the Big Six formally adopted it. In the last hour before dawn, Foreign Ministry officials were put to work preparing the documents to go to the Allies via the governments of neutral Switzerland and Sweden. A communication was drafted, sent by cable to Bern and Stockholm, and then broadcast over Radio Tokyo at midnight on 10–11 August. It worded the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration subject to the preservation of the kokutai like this:

In obedience to the gracious command of his Majesty the Emperor who, ever anxious to enhance the cause of world peace, desires earnestly to bring about a speedy termination of hostilities with a view to saving mankind from the calamities to be imposed upon them by further continuation of the war . . . The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed by the Soviet Government with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler.16

There was nothing for it then but to wait for a response, and hope the military would not overthrow the government when it learned of the Emperor’s decision.

The communication was received in London, Washington, D.C., Moscow, and the Nationalist Chinese capital of Chungking over the course of 10 August. At 7.33 am Washington time, the first report reached President Truman at the White House. He immediately called a conference for 9 am with Secretary of State James Byrnes, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, and Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy. The question on Truman’s mind, and on the minds of the other Allied leaders, was this: what did the Japanese government mean by accepting the Potsdam Declaration with the understanding that it did not ‘comprise any demand which prejudiced the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler’?

At the meeting, Leahy and Stimson were both in favour of accepting the offer, keeping the Emperor in place, and using him to control defeated Japan and speed the demobilisation of its forces. Byrnes, however, was opposed to anything less than unequivocal surrender. In his view, it was not Japan’s place to impose terms on the Allies. Forrestal proposed a compromise – accept the offer in such a way that the Potsdam Declaration was still accomplished. Truman gave some thought to this, then asked Byrnes to draft a reply.17 The Secretary of State returned to the White House at midday with his draft, had lunch with the President, then went into a meeting of the cabinet at 2 pm. The cabinet approved the draft and sent it to London, Moscow and Chungking for comment.

The draft stated that the position of the Allies was, from the moment of surrender, that the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government would be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers. The Emperor and Japanese high command would be required to sign the document of surrender and issue orders to all armed forces to surrender. In accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, Japan’s government would be made democratic and Japan would be occupied by the Allies until the terms were achieved.

In London, the newly elected Labour government of Clement Attlee had already considered the Japanese declaration. The cabinet was ‘inclined to accept the continuation of the emperor’ but acknowledged a ‘more precise definition of the reservation was necessary in light of the Potsdam Declaration’.18 On receiving Byrnes’ draft on the night of 10 August, the British agreed with it in principle, but recommended the Emperor be required to simply authorise the signing of the Instrument of Surrender rather than signing it himself. Additionally, they recommended that the Emperor personally order all Japanese forces throughout the Asia-Pacific to lay down their arms and accept the orders of the Allies. ‘This, we believe, also will secure the immediate surrender of the Japanese in all outlying areas and thereby save American, British and Allied lives.’

Like Leahy and Stimson, the Attlee cabinet believed they should keep the Emperor and use him to their advantage. Winston Churchill, then Leader of the Opposition, approved of Attlee’s approach. Lord Addison, Secretary of State for the Dominions, then sent the proposed reply to Ottawa, Canberra, Wellington and Pretoria asking for the views of the Dominion governments.19

The Australian government was at that point in a state of deep discontent. Of the four Dominions, it had contributed the most to the Pacific War, yet it felt marginalised and excluded by London and Washington. For a start, Australia had been powerless to challenge Churchill and Roosevelt’s Europe-first strategy. Australian forces had originally been the largest part of General MacArthur’s command in the South-West Pacific Area, and had been responsible for a number of early victories over the Japanese in Papua New Guinea. But as the war continued and the American presence in the Pacific increased, Australian forces grew much less important. By 1945 the Australian Army was mostly fighting sideline campaigns in bypassed areas such as Papua New Guinea and Borneo. Furthermore, the Australian government first heard of the Potsdam Declaration in the press, and unlike the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada, received no advance knowledge of the atomic bomb.

Prime Minister John Curtin was gravely ill from October 1944 until his death on 5 July 1945, and in that time his eventual successor Ben Chifley, Army Minister Frank Forde, and Foreign Minister and Attorney-General Herbert Vere Evatt were responsible for Australia’s conduct of the war. Chifley and Evatt pushed for Australia to play a greater role in order to win influence in the peace settlement, just as Australian victories on the Western Front in 1918 had secured Australia a place at Versailles. But that was not to happen this time. Knowing MacArthur must have been planning an invasion of Japan, Chifley wrote to him to offer Australian assistance. He was rebuffed. MacArthur wrote back on 20 May advising, ‘There are no specific plans so far as I know for employment of Australian troops after the Borneo campaign,’ and any further Australian involvement in the Pacific War would need to be decided between Australia and Britain.20

For Evatt, having to learn of the Potsdam Declaration from the newspapers was the final straw. Speaking on 28 July, he criticised the declaration for failing to demand the removal of Japan’s government and Emperor. He said it was: ‘published without prior reference to, still less the concurrence of, the Australian Government . . . All that need be said about the actual terms of peace foreshadowed in the ultimatum is that they appear to treat Japan more leniently than Germany, in spite of the fact that the slightest sign of any tenderness towards Japanese imperialism is entirely misplaced, having regard to the outrageous cruelties and barbarities systematically practiced by the imperialist regime.’21

When the Churchill Conservative government was suddenly and decisively defeated in the July 1945 general election, Evatt had hopes that the new Attlee government would pay more attention to Dominion rights. He sent a series of cables to London, observing that the government of David Lloyd George had given the Dominions far more say in the peace talks at the end of the First World War than the current British government was doing, and insisting Australia be included in the Council of Foreign Ministers then being formed.22 ‘The inclusion of China in the Council in respect of European affairs and the non-inclusion of the Dominions seems to me to be absolutely unjust and almost irrational,’ Evatt wrote to Lord Addison.

Atlee and Addison were understanding but maintained that consulting with the Dominions on every major detail was impractical.

Evatt also wrote to the other Dominion governments to gather support. New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser was also sympathetic, but Jan Smuts of South Africa took a more prosaic view: ‘Under the circumstances I am afraid we shall have to be satisfied with putting our individual Government’s views clearly and strongly before the United Kingdom Government for their guidance in negotiations with their other colleagues,’ he wrote. ‘If we press for Dominion representation, Russia will at once press for the Ukraine, Poland and the rest to participate also, and soon there will be a major San Francisco Conference.’23

It was only with difficulty that the US and UK had been able to prevent Soviet leader Josef Stalin from flooding the proposed council with his newly established puppet governments in Eastern Europe. Permitting the Dominions to join would make it much harder to make the case against their inclusion.

Something of Evatt’s character and political views, both of which were complex, can be read from his telegrams. Biographer John Murphy described him as ‘an enigma, full of puzzling contradictions’.24 Evatt was without a doubt an exceptional lawyer and a skilled historian, with a real commitment to international justice and the enforcement of international law in respect of perpetrators of atrocities. But he was also an irascible eccentric with questionable people skills, and spent his career haunted by fears that others were secretly working against him. In later life, this paranoia developed into delusion. He was afraid of flying – always an impediment for a foreign minister – wore newspapers under his clothes in cold weather, and couldn’t understand why his colleagues resented being phoned at 3 am.

When Labor returned to government in 1941, Evatt was the inevitable choice for both Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs, but he remained forever an outsider in the Labor Party. In both law and politics he built his reputation as a liberal and a civil libertarian, and he remained far more interested in fighting for justice against tyranny than in industrial relations, nationalisation of industry, and the other mainstream concerns of 1940s Labor.

Born in 1894, Evatt was found unsuitable for service in the First World War because of his poor eyesight. Two of his brothers were able to enlist and were killed. His academic career at the University of Sydney was brilliant – bachelor of arts with first-class honours and the university medal in 1915, master of arts in 1917 bachelor of laws with first-class honours and the university medal in 1918, and doctorate of laws in 1924. The final degree gave him his nickname, Doc Evatt. He found the time to play cricket and rugby league, and remained an enthusiast for both sports throughout his life. He worked as a barrister, and was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly under the Labor banner in 1925. He became a fierce critic of Labor leader Jack Lang, and was refused Labor endorsement in the 1927 election. He won re-election anyway as an independent Labor candidate. In 1930 the federal Labor government of Jim Scullin appointed Evatt to the High Court. There his ‘secretive and disputatious working habits and his frequent dissenting judgements’ attracted criticism, but he was praised by civil libertarians for his judgements in favour of communist journalist Hal Devanny (facing conviction under a First World War-era law banning unlawful associations) and Czech communist Egon Kisch (facing deportation from Australia).25 With the outbreak of the Second World War Evatt concluded that parliament, rather than the court, was the place for him to achieve the most good, and he ran for and won the federal seat of Barton in 1940.

The Australian government’s reply to Addison’s message reflected Evatt’s concerns.26 It insisted on the Emperor personally signing the Instrument of Surrender, as in the original American draft, but acknowledged the British proposal to have the Emperor personally issue detailed orders to surrender was an obvious improvement. The main concern, however, was with the status of the Emperor.

‘Neither the United States draft nor your own comment on it meets point of prime importance implicit in the Japanese message, namely whether the prerogative of the Emperor includes immunity from charge and possibility of conviction arising out of Emperor’s responsibility for commencement of war of aggression and for atrocious methods used in the conduct of the war by Japan,’ the Australian government wrote. ‘Reply to Japanese message must therefore make it clear that every person to whom war crimes can be justly imputed shall be liable to punishment and that under the Potsdam principles no exception to this general rule is admissible.’

Finally, the Australian government, fearing London was not giving credit to its views, said it would from now on consult directly with the United States, the Soviet Union and China.

In response to this belligerent telegram, Atlee wrote personally to Ben Chifley, perhaps desiring to bypass the excitable Evatt: ‘You may be sure that at all times we desire to act in closest co-operation with you and to afford the utmost opportunity for consultation but events move fast and we are deeply concerned lest delay should lead to the unnecessary sacrifice of the lives of Australian, other British and Allied fighting men. Hours are of importance. We have therefore at times to take rapid action particularly in matters where as in this case the initiative lies with the United States of America.’27

He also responded to Australia’s concerns about the guarantees given to the Emperor: ‘to have delayed the reply in order to obtain special reference to the culpability of the Emperor would in my view have been unjustifiable especially if it jeopardised obtaining an all-round surrender’.

This does not seem to have satisfied Evatt, and the Australian government continued to send cablegrams to London over 11 and 12 August, complaining that its views were not being taken into account, insisting on nothing less than Japan’s unconditional surrender, and calling for the Emperor’s removal from the throne and his prosecution as a war criminal. Evatt referred to the huge collection of evidence of Japanese war crimes which the Australian government had been diligently collecting since 1942.

Finally, on 20 August, Addison wrote: ‘We are sorry to read in your telegram that you feel that Australia’s effort has not been sufficiently recognised in the armistice arrangements. We have for our part as you know done our best to secure the greatest possible recognition of Australia’s special position and her maximum participation in these arrangements. But the matter is not entirely or even primarily one for us alone and it is impossible for us to go beyond what we can persuade our American and other major Allies to accept.’28

Meanwhile, Truman was having as much trouble with Stalin as Attlee was with Evatt. The Soviet Union assumed it would play a role in occupying Japan as it did in Germany, possibly with a joint commander. As Stalin was then cheerfully establishing totalitarian communist states in the territories controlled by the Red Army, Truman was not minded to allow this. ‘I did not want divided control or separate zones,’ he wrote in his memoir. ‘I did not want to give the Russians any opportunity to behave as they had in Germany and Austria. I wanted the country administered in such a manner that it could be restored to its place in the society of nations.’29 Even at this early stage, the divisions leading to the Cold War were readily apparent among the Allies.

Eventually the Soviet government agreed (although the Red Army showed no signs of slowing its advance into Manchuria and Korea), and Truman received replies from London and Chungking. Having made the amendments suggested by the British, the American government sent a communication to neutral Switzerland and Sweden for forwarding to Tokyo:

With regard to the Japanese Government’s message accepting the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation, but containing the Statement – ‘with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler’ – our position is as follows:

From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the Surrender Terms.

The Emperor will be required to authorise and ensure the signature by the Government of Japan and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters of the Surrender Terms necessary to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration, and shall issue his commands to all the Japanese Military, Naval and Air authorities and to all the forces under their control, wherever located, to cease active operations, surrender their arms, and to issue such other orders as the Supreme Commander may require to give effect to the Surrender Terms.30

The Allies then waited for a response. But none was immediately forthcoming.