Power v. Statesmanship

The stiffest, ablest defense yet made by the Japs was put up on Okinawa. By last week, many a citizen and many a Pacific soldier saw significance in that fact when it was coupled with another. The second fact: on Okinawa more Jap soldiers surrendered than had ever surrendered before.

On Guam, Saipan and other islands long conquered by the U.S., Jap soldiers holed up in the hills still surrender by twos and threes, only occasionally by squads. But on Okinawa, even before the battle had ended, there were some surrenders in platoon strength, a few in greater numbers. Japanese prisoner compounds were populated by the hundreds.

What did it mean?

Message to Tokyo. Not even optimists inferred from this new phenomenon that the enemy would quit when he saw his situation was hopeless. It was already hopeless and he did not quit. But many a soldier and sailor was ready to say that, at least to a few Japs, the U.S. had managed to communicate a vital message: surrender does not mean extinction, or even the loss of soldierly honor.

Now the next step was clear: to persuade the Japanese nation that inevitable defeat does not mean that the race will be wiped out, or that its future is everlastingly hopeless. If the ill-matched communication systems between Japanese and American minds could somehow be bridged, the war might be shortened.

It was still only a faint hope; no soldier soundly believed there was yet any sure way to beat Japan, short of a juggernaut invasion. But there was good reason to try other measures at the same time.

Last week, as rumors of peace feelers swirled through Washington, Maine’s Senator Wallace H. White Jr., never an appeaser, rose to demand that the U.S. redefine “unconditional surrender.” President Truman had already attempted it. In a V-E day statement, he proclaimed that unconditional surrender “does not mean the extermination or enslavement of the Japanese people.” He said the same thing again in a later report to Congress.

But patently he had not said enough. What was needed now, more than anything else, was a clear and positive statement of U.S. aims toward Japan, of U.S. policy after Japan succumbs to inevitable defeat.

Wanted: A Policy. Such a policy, apparently, has not yet been formulated. Or, if it has, it is still a deep secret. U.S. military policy is clear: blow upon blow until all resistance is crushed. But the application of shrewd statesmanship might save the final enforcement of that policy —and countless U.S. lives.

The Japanese must expect to live a highly restricted life for the next 50 years or longer, as they dig themselves out of the catastrophe their war has brought upon them. For them it will be hard, economically and socially, but they will have to pay that price. The power of the U.S. in the western Pacific is already too strong to permit their going to war again in the foreseeable future. But the Japanese have never been told, even in general terms, that such a restricted life need not mean U.S. domination of their every affair, need not mean everlasting international disgrace.

For some weeks Harry Truman would be busy at the Big Three meeting and a subsequent tour of Europe (see below). The Big Three might clear up some points of policy toward Japan. But primarily it was a U.S. problem. A statement of aims beyond “Kill Japs—unconditional surender” was awaited by Americans from Berlin to Okinawa.