by Faubion Bowers
[As aide-de-camp to General MacArthur, Faubion Bowers first met Emperor Hirohito in 1945. He has written numerous books and television programs about Japan]
Japan 1945: Only the Imperial voice could authenticate surrender, and some Japanese warriors were ready to die to prevent that voice from being heard.
IT WAS A HOT and steamy week of Japanese summer, that mid-August 1945. The days were clear of clouds, and the nights suitable for harvest-moon-viewing, a pleasure suspended by nightly fire-bombings. Not a tree remained in downtown Tokyo-only a few grotesquely charred and barren hulks, like naked scarecrows pointing blackened arms at the devastation in mute lament.
The vast acreage of the Imperial Palace, off limits to American bombers by order of Washington, still shone with greenery. The contrast of this bright verdure with the charred wasteland that was the rest of Tokyo astonished each caller who entered the palace gates.
This was Dr. Shimomura's strong impression as he arrived at 1:00 in the afternoon of August 9, a Thursday, for an audience with His Imperial Majesty. Shimomura, formerly an editor of the Asohi newspaper, was director of the Cabinet's Information Bureau with ministerial rank. His meeting with Emperor Hirohito lasted two hours instead of the customarily allotted thirty minutes.
It was on that day that the U.S dropped its second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki-three days after the first fell on Hiroshima-and that the Soviets broke their Vow of Friendship with Japan and invaded Manchuria. The Japanese anticipated a third A-bomb ( Tokyo, perhaps?), but we didn't have one and wouldn't for another six months. Al though Japan had been making secret overtures for peace since early June 1945, the Cabinet suffered a paralysis of division. While half the government "planned peace," the other half "shouted war." Everybody knew Japan had lost the war, but fifty-seven-year-old General of the Army Anami, the war minister, led a significant faction. These ultranationalists fed the populace with frantic slogans: "100 Million Suicides with Honor"; "Sleep on the Ground, Eat Stones, Fight with Sharpened Sticks." Dr. Shimomura's mission was to ask Hirohito, the 124th emperor of Japan, to address the nation personally by making a recording for broadcast.
Although in two and a half millennia of history no emperor had ever spoken to his people at large, how else convey the reality of defeat to a country nurtured on the mystical belief, in invincibility? Only the Imperial voice could authenticate surrender. Besides, it was the one hope of quelling jingoist fanatics who preferred glorious death to dishonorable life.
Emperors in Japan have always been shrouded in mystery. They do not "die" but, it is said, "hide in the clouds." Nor do they talk to anyone of low rank. An emperor's voice is called gyokuon, "the jewel sound," and such a phrase as "word from the Throne" can only be said euphemistically as "the Voice of the Crane." (Traditionally, the call of this bird can be heard long after it has disappeared from sight in the sky.) Startling as Dr. Shimomura's suggestion was, it had already been approved as "expressive of the Imperial Wish." In Hirohito's twenty years as figurative ruler, His August Mind, like that of his ancestors, had never been confronted with a problem nor been asked to make a decision. The government officials approached him only after reaching unanimity; then he-without saying yea or nay-simply would sign and seal the Imperial Command. That was how it had been in 1941, when General Hideki Tojo was prime minister and war was declared.
At ten minutes to midnight on August 9, the forty-four-year-old Emperor walked from his residence to the cramped underground bomb shelter where the Supreme War Council of top-ranked ministers awaited him. He wore a long-tailed morning coat with striped trousers and carried a shiny black top hat. He listened to argument on the proposal for the first time, although the seventy seven-year-old prime minister, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, considered it "an affront to the Throne." General Anami asserted that "the battle of Japan cannot be known until it is fought." The Emperor interrupted, "I [he used the uniquely Imperial word chin, written by combining the ideograph "moon" with that for "heaven1 believe a continuation of the war offers nothing but continued destruction.... The State can be restored only if the roots remain alive." Five days later, August 14, at 10 in the morning, the Emperor spoke again to a still deliberating Cabinet. This time he wore full military uniform, that of a generalissimo. The gold screen behind him was embroidered with lions. After reproving Anami, he said, "I desire the Cabinet to prepare as soon as possible an Imperial Rescript announcing the termination of the war." The room filled with the sound of weeping. He added that he was pre pared to go before the microphone and record the message. His protective advisers, knowing his shyness and uncertainties, could never risk a "live" performance like that of, say, his friend Edward VIII when he abdicated.
General Anami returned to his huge War Ministry a short distance from the palace grounds in Ichigaya Heights. On his desk was a telegram from the commander in chief of the Expeditionary Forces in China: "We should fight for the realization of our war aims even if it means the death of all our troops." Anami summoned the entire Ministry personnel and grimly told them of the Imperial Order, as well as of the recording the Emperor was preparing to make. "We now have no alternative but to abide by the Emperor's decision," he said.
A handful of Young Tigers, as they would later be known, members of the War Ministry's nerve center, the Military Affairs Bureau, silently found the command unacceptable. They already had been plotting a fight to the finish in order to block the humiliation of surrender. Now they must-thwart any imperial performance on record that would immortalize a demand for the end of war by capturing the palace to prevent the recording session or, if the record were already made, to seize it. "How can we be disobedient to the Emperor," they reasoned among themselves, "if what we do is for the good of the country?" That afternoon Dr. Shimomura summoned the top executives of the Japan broadcasting corporation, NHK, and instructed them to report to the palace's Imperial Household Ministry by 3:00 with the requisite equipment and technicians. One of the men would later write of the moment, "I felt a thrill of awe and sacrilege. The Emperor's decision was sublime, but the carrying out of it was some how blasphemous. For him to go before the lowly, humble, and familiar microphone--." Four engineers quickly assembled the best available materials: two K-type No. 14 recording machines geared to run at 78 rpm, two sets of recording amplifiers, and a Matsuda A-type standing microphone, as well as six blank twelve-inch reprocessed discs. At 2:49 Domei News Agency flashed a bulletin to the outside world that the Allied terms of surrender would shortly be accepted by Imperial Message. At 3:00 the NHK team began installing the equipment on the second floor of the Imperial Household Ministry. The microphone was placed in the large Imperial Administrative Office, a room where the Emperor went over his papers each morning. The adjacent smaller audience chamber was transformed into a control room.
------- Distraught Japanese kneel in font of a neighborhood radio set
as they listen to the broadcast of their emperor's recording.
By 8:30 in the evening the last quibbles over the wording of the majestic Rescript had been settled.
Words as coarse as "surrender" or "defeat" had been avoided and one reference to "the Sacred Treasures" deleted on the grounds that "Japan's unique national polity is beyond the under standing of foreign nations." The finished document consisted of 815 characters. Court numerologists noted that the number coincided with the date of the broadcast, August 15.
------- A re-enactment (for the Japanese film The Emperor and the General)
of the troops, deceived by a forged order, seizing the palace grounds, thus
aiding the search for the hidden records.
At 10 an American bombing began, but an hour later the Emperor, in military dress, drove in blackout from the residence to the Ministry in his battered Mercedes Benz decorated with a gold chrysanthemum. "How loudly should I speak?" he asked Dr. Shimomura, and there was some confusion over whether His Majesty should be subjected to a common voice-level test. Chamberlain Toda, whose own high-pitched, somewhat pinched tones most closely resembled the Emperor's, volunteered to stand in briefly.
Then came the time to record, and Shimomura signaled the Emperor with a white glove. In four minutes and forty seconds, the two recording needles had etched their grooves. "Was it all right?" the Emperor asked.
It was not. He had muffed a few words. The engineers whispered in trepidation. The Emperor himself thought he had pitched the Crane's Voice too low. Actually, it was too high. He read again.
Very quickly it became clear that this take was worse. Nerves had made the Emperor's voice even higher, more tremulous. His eyes had filled with tears, and he skipped a word. "I am quite willing to make a third," the Emperor said. Technicians, chamberlains, and ministers all agreed, however, that the ordeal would be too much. The Emperor left. At midnight the engineers listened to the recording for the first time. The discs were remark ably scratchy, but it was decided to broadcast the first take just as it was at noon the next day.
Each of the two sets of two records was placed in a metal film can. The lids did not close properly.
They were wrapped for additional safekeeping in eighteen-inch khaki-colored bags used for storing individual air defense uniforms. Since rumors had reached the palace that the Young Tigers would at tempt to stop the broadcast, Chamberlain Tokugawa undertook to hide the records in a wall safe, behind a row of books, in one of the smaller offices belonging to ladies-in-waiting to the Empress.
The Tigers did indeed arrive. Headed by Major Hatanaka, a pale and rather effeminate extremist, and abetted by bellicose Tojo's equally bellicose son-in-law, Major Koga, the conspirators put their plan into operation. They went first to General Mori, the guardian-general of the Emperor's bodyguards, the Imperial Guards Division, and shot him when he refused to join them. With his seal they forged a strategic order authorizing that the palace be surrounded, palace police disarmed, and gates closed. By 2:00 a.m. the imperial grounds were in the insurgents' hands. The Tigers imprisoned Shimomura, the NHK officials, and all the lord chamberlains they could find, and they ran sacked the Imperial Household Ministry looking for the recordings. They then went to NHK and threatened to kill everyone if the discs were not produced. No one knew where they were. Hatanaka tried to make a broadcast himself, announcing that Japan was now under military rule, but the air alert was still on and microphones were inoperative.
General Tanaka, commander of the Eastern District Army responsible for the safety of Tokyo, arrived at the palace, branded the rebellious Tigers as "treasonists and traitors," and largely by the sheer force of his raging personality stunned the rebels into silence and obedience. The deceived guards removed the identifying white armbands and sheathed their bayonets.
Learning that the coup had failed, and galled at not finding the records, Major Hatanaka shot him self. His cohort, Lieutenant Colonel Shiizaki, slit his belly. Major Koga committed harakiri next to the corpse of General Mori, taking responsibility for Mori's murder. And General Tanaka shot him self, taking responsibility for the fact that there had been an insurrection within his area of command. General Anami, at his home facing the Imperial Palace, slit his stomach and stabbed the carotid artery on the right side of his neck, so as not to have to hear the broadcast. His last written words were, "I believe in Japan's sacred indestructibility." Chamberlain Okabe, disguised as a workman toting a lunch pail and with a cloth package slung over his shoulder, carried the first-take records to NHK. Another chamberlain hid the emergency take in the underground broadcast studio in the Dai Ichi Building, which later would be General MacArthur's headquarters. At 11:45 a.m., Wednesday, August 15, 1945, Studio 8 at NHK went on alert. At noon the announcer spoke: "A broadcast of highest importance is about to be made. All listeners please rise." Some did, but many knelt as if in prayer. At first people could not understand the stratospheric language. Then the sense of the words dawned. The awed nation of Japan burst into tears.
The Emperor listened at home next to an old RCA portable radio. Along with his people, he heard the Voice of the Crane for the first time.
Now, after four years of war, the green of the pal ace ground could gradually return to the whole country.
=============
The Record Itself
------ Here is the cause of all the trouble-and of the peace. The official
translation of the surrender Rescript is at right.
To Our good and loyal subjects:
After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in Our Empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.
We have ordered Our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that Our Empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration.
To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by Our Imperial Ancestors, and which We lay close to heart. Indeed, We declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere desire to en sure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from Our thought either to in fringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to em bark upon territorial aggrandizement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone-the gallant fighting of military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people--the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's ad vantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects; or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.
We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our Allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia. The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met with untimely death and all their bereaved families, pains Our heart night and day. The welfare of the wounded and the war-sufferers, and of those who have lost their homes and livelihood, are the objects of Our profound solicitude. The hardships and sufferings to which Our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all ye, Our subjects. How ever, it is according to the dictate of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.
Having been able to safeguard and maintain the structure of the Imperial State, We are always with ye, Our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity. Beware most strictly of any out bursts of emotion which may engender needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strife which may create confusion, lead ye astray and cause ye to lose the confidence of the world. Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith of the imperishableness of its di vine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the fu ture. Cultivate the ways of rectitude; foster nobility of spirit; and work with resolution so as ye may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.
- HIROHITO
-------------
(High Fidelity, Oct. 1977)
Also see:
HIGH FIDELITY's 100 Years of Recording -- Part IV: The Microgroove Era