IV. THE WAR OF AGGRESSION AND THE NEWSPAPER –The most iconic example of journalism’s attitude during the war were in the Imperial General Headquarters Announcements. As they spoke of “glorious battlefield successes”, journalists formed one line in agreement. Looking back, what points do you think are pertinent? Swallowing Whole the Imperial Line: Reporting During the […]
IV. THE WAR OF AGGRESSION AND THE NEWSPAPER
–The most iconic example of journalism’s attitude during the war were in the Imperial General Headquarters Announcements. As they spoke of “glorious battlefield successes”, journalists formed one line in agreement. Looking back, what points do you think are pertinent?
Swallowing Whole the Imperial Line: Reporting During the War
Thinking about it now, we wonder why the newspapers not only let these pronouncements slide, but swallowed them whole and spread them throughout the country as if they were news. I think this problem is the most symbolic of the conditions newspapers were in at the time. The first issue was that on top of the severe system of censorship, eyes, ears, and mouths were sealed so that almost nothing could be written about the battlefield aside from what was in these pronouncements. Particularly the large national papers aired absolutely no criticism of the invasion, and always followed the military or government’s line to the letter. This was most revealed in the credulous reporting of the Imperial Headquarters Announcements.
Concerning what was accomplished using the newspapers and how I was involved, one example was the Manchuria Incident. Four years before I entered the newspaper, on September 18 1931, the Kwantung Army, targeting the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang who was returning to Manchuria from Peking, bombed a train near Liutao Lake, killing its passengers. This became the basis for the Manchuria Incident, and today looking at the history, it’s clear that the bombs were in fact set by the Kwantung Army from various evidence. At the time I still hadn’t entered the newspaper, but when I did, I came to understand that this was an open secret that nearly everyone there knew. It was just something that they chose not to write. I read somewhere that at Osaka’s Mainichi Newspaper, people in the paper would say things like “Manchuria Incident: Sponsored by the Military and Promoted by Mainichi Newspaper”. When I entered Yomiuri, I heard similar things.
–What did this “Promoted by Mainichi Newspaper” mean exactly?
It meant they promoted the incident. It was the military that perpetrated the incident, but it was the newspapers that agitated around it. In other words, like how the newspaper promoted art exhibits and other events, the newspaper promoted the incident while the “sponsors” were the military.
–Mainichi really went that far in creating a campaign?
Not just Mainichi. Yomiuri was absolutely the same way. As the war expanded people stopped saying things like that, but at the time I joined they were still saying it. Using that incident as an opportunity, the Kwantung Army combined with the forces stationed in Korea and began invading all of northeast China. While knowing the truth and hiding it from the people, the newspapers wrote that the bombs were planted by the Chinese and thereby encouraged the government and military to expand the war.
The newspapers took the same approach toward the shots fired that started Marco Polo Bridge Incident or the murder of Lieutenant Ooyama behind the Shanghai Incident. Normally these type of schemes were conducted without the knowledge of the reporters who were merely a third party, but even when reporters were at the scene, the truth was consciously hidden and the incidents were written exactly how the military presented them, just like the famous Imperial Headquarters pronouncements. Therefore, even those individual journalists who went to the battlefield felt a paralyzation of their critical faculties.
–The conduct of journalists was also probably restricted to a considerable degree. Like in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the question of who shot first has an very important meaning in regards to the nature of the incident. According to the Japanese military’s presentation, they had to respond because the Chinese side shot first, but if journalists had said “wait, something is wrong here” and tried to put a question mark on it by conducting an investigation themselves, of course that wouldn’t be permitted.
Even if one felt differently as a individual, in those conditions doing something like that was impossible. There were actually some journalists who went to the scene of these incidents, said in secret that it wasn’t as the military was saying, and then were captured by the military police. A well -known example was an incident concerning Mainichi Newspaper’s Takeo Shinmyou. He covered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was in the Kasumi Press Club like myself, so he’s someone I knew very well. At the time there was a conflict between the navy and army, and because the invasion of Japan was drawing near, the army was directing the neighborhood associations to single-mindedly train in the use of bamboo spears, while the navy thought it was useless. Shinmyou, who was in the Shio Press Club covering the Navy Ministry, wrote about this in an article. He quoted them as saying “There isn’t time for bamboo spears.” In response he was put on watch by the army and quickly drafted to be dispatched to the battlefield. People said at the time that he was “hauled away by Tojo.” This was the main means they used to intimidate journalists. Thus the eyes and ears of journalists were sealed, and nothing they said would matter. This not only applied to journalists; the lips of all Japanese were sealed by the fascist system.
The Censorship System During the War
–Through what kind of mechanisms were the censorship of articles carried out?
Before the war intensified, the regulation of newspaper articles was carried out by the Home Ministry Police Affairs Bureau. They would give orders to the newspaper companies prohibiting certain things being said. This would become a file that normally one wouldn’t see even working there, but when I started working at the desk, I saw them and thought “ah, there really is such a thing”, and so I was made to make sure the newspaper didn’t deviate from these directives. If you did, you were punished. This would range from punishing the writer of the article in light cases to stopping printing altogether if the matter was serious.
In 1938, when the invasion of China went full tilt, everything that was related to military strategy became a target of censorship. I think censorship was generally split into two categories, one being specific bans and the other being general guidelines. The file then was as thick as a book.
The Cabinet Information Bureau was the main source of supervision. The bureau had several divisions dedicated to newspapers, magazines, literature, and cultural organizations, all of which they had a firm grasp on. Discussion, news, and forms of expression were all tightly regulated. The censorship of magazines was particularly severe. One could see from the Yokohama Incident in 1943 that the suppression of magazines like Chuuou Kouron and Kaizou was total. The month after the incident, every article in those magazines was censored. At that time the prohibitions on newspapers had progressed even further, and they came to be entirely structured around cooperation with the government and military. Just about every week the newspaper executives held intimate meetings with the military.
–So the executives were under complete control, articles could be directly stopped the day they were to be published, and the desk would check articles in accordance with the governments guidelines. Do you remember any times when yourself or the people around you were called out, or were close to being called out?
In those conditions my job was under complete control, so I didn’t have any experiences having my articles canceled or being hauled away. Everything related to military orders and tactics was censored by the Army/Navy Information Bureau at Imperial Headquarters, and when it came to diplomacy, anything that didn’t come from presentations or news conferences had to be censored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There was one experience I had with the Kasumi Press Club connected with that ministry I will touch on. It was just before war began with the US, when Ambassador Nomura had just returned from the last negotiations with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull. At that time I had an interview with Nomura regarding the inside story of the negotiations. It was after the negotiations had broken down, so I think it was around the end of December 1941 or the month after. For three months I visited Nomura’s residence in Shibuya’s Shoutou district. At first we didn’t talk about what I was writing for the newspaper, but slowly topics came up one by one. During that time there was an air of criticism at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs against Prime Minister Tojo and the army who were acting alone. This was something I caught by accident. When Nomura had gone to the US to negotiate, it wasn’t his objective for the negotiations to fail. Rather, in the middle of negotiations he had the ladder pulled from under him. When Saburou Kurusu went with him to the US as a special envoy, these were the last preparations for the surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor.
Rather than anticipating what historians would write, Nomura really seemed to be dissatisfied upon his return. This came up over and over in the two or three months I interviewed him. Afterwards I remember reading something Secretary Hull wrote, and in there he severely criticized Nomura’s betrayal as an act of incompetence. So even Hull could imagine what kind of role Nomura was being made to play.
Because of the times much of what he said was cut out, but the article ended up taking nearly a whole page of the evening edition. Before the article was published I took it to Nomura’s residence, told him that the article was about the talks we had, and asked him to publish. Sure, he said.
But I still had to get through the censors. As I said earlier, daily news conferences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t require inspection, but anything done independently about foreign policy did. So I took the article to an official the at the ministry’s Information Bureau. He quickly dismissed it as something that couldn’t possibly be published. Normally I would stop there, but I couldn’t this time. There was an official named Sadao Iguchi that was head of the bureau. He was a tough diplomat that later became head of the Central Liaison Office during the occupation, and after that ambassador to the US. I told the official I couldn’t withdraw the article based just on what he said, and that I wanted the opinion of Iguchi. The official thought I would get the same answer from Iguchi, but gave me his address anyway. It was a ryoutei in Tsukiji named Kanetanaka. When I finally found him at the restaurant and informed him of my business, he made a grimace but invited me to a side room anyway. Despite being a thick manuscript, he read the whole thing. I was expecting him to tell me to give up, but he signed off on it. Thus I was able to publish the article.
The Weight of the Newspaper’s Responsibility
–So despite the war, things like the conflict between the navy and army or the dissatisfaction at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would slip through, like your article.
Right, in the main they were on the same page, but there were various contradictions. I think my article was an example of barely slipping through those contradictions. But the newspaper had the responsibility of entering into the war of invasion and becoming one with the military in its aims. Two or three years after the Manchuria Incident, Japan become a target of criticism from an alliance of countries with Great Britain and the US at the center. In response, all of the newspapers got together and issued a joint declaration. This would often happen at various turning points, the issuing of these joint declarations. They were declarations of support for what the government was saying, word for word. Things like Manchuria was Japan’s life line and Japan was working for the peace and stability of East Asia. It was all for the purpose of world peace and was an act of justice, so these countries should be more tolerant and acknowledge the stability Japan was making in Manchuria. This was the content of the joint declarations made by the newspapers.
–After the war in 1960, when the security treaty with the US was being amended, the newspapers made another joint declaration. There was a whirlwind of huge demonstrations throughout the archipelago against the treaty, and from the beginning, the newspapers performed the role of dousing them in cold water. “The demonstrations are the mistaken conduct of those walking down the road of totalitarianism,” they declared. It was decided that it was critical moment, a crossroads in history so to speak, and so the newspapers extended a lifeline to the establishment. There’s a reason they were called “bourgeois papers.”
Rather than being forced by the authority of the government, characteristically the papers were the first to involve themselves and spur the Japanese people to war. However, when diet member Takao Saitou made his speeches criticizing the military, the military grew conceited and used the authority of the emperor as cover, saying things like “This is the Emperor’s sovereign right. Political parties and the cabinet must obey.” From this there was the danger being unable to appoint a War Minister and the cabinet thus disintegrating. At that time there were criticisms in the newspapers to an extent, arguing that the emperor’s authority was limited to military strategy and didn’t extend to all of politics. Thus there was some attempt to put the brakes on the military’s excesses, but between the invasion of China and the opening of war with the US, such criticisms were totally erased. Pages were filled with a singular tone of praise for the war, calling it a “holy war” “for the peace of East Asia.”
Another problem was the glorification of the emperor, which was absolute. When even the smallest forces were dispatched, they would write “it’s all for the emperor’s glory” and “let’s all unite around the heart of the nation in the emperor” (omikokoro ni kiitsu suru). I remember having these phrases pounded into my head over and over. If it wasn’t for the absolutist doctrine of the emperor’s authority, I don’t think they would have been able to wage such a reckless war. For all sorts of inhuman cruelties and crimes against justice, the emperor’s authority was used.
From my own experience, when I went to cover the opening of the Diet as a roving reporter, anyone who went near the emperor’s seat, even journalists, had to wear a morning coat. Being still unmarried, I remember borrowing my friends coat that was so tight I couldn’t do the buttons.
And on the other side, those in the Communist Party who claimed the people’s sovereignty were called “reds”, “criminals”, or “traitors” at every opportunity. This is certainly part of the the background of glorification of the emperor and advocacy for war, and something you still see in today’s commercial newspapers.
In other words, ultimately these problems were the source of the pronouncements that came from the Imperial General Headquarters. Mainichi, Yomiuri, Asahi, all of the national and large local newspapers were hard to distinguish in this regard. Which was worse or better wasn’t a question for me.
–The editor-in-chief of Asahi, Taketori Agata claimed that even if Asahi cooperated with the war, it played a peripheral role. But from your perspective, such comparisons don’t make sense.
Regarding the responsibility of newspapers, there was no question of which one was worse or better. Rather, they were all competing, each one pushing and being pushed by the others. There’s a book that was written by the author Jun Takami called Diary of a Lost War (Haisen Nikki). He became a member of a literary organization connected with the Information Bureau and served in the war, and in his book there is not just criticism of the military, but also plenty of criticism for the newspapers. One day he tried to compare the awfulness of the articles written in Asahi and Mainichi, but realized that he couldn’t distinguish between the two.
He also touched on the statements made by Imperial General Headquarters. He knows that they can’t be trusted, but on the other hand he writes, “There have been warnings of aerial bombardments. I’m waiting to hear what the General Headquarters will say.” That is to say, when one’s eyes, mouth, and ears have been plugged up, you have this kind of thought process.
In the entry for August 19 1945, he also wrote criticism of Asahi. He writes that even at the point Asahi was still lecturing people. He asks questions like, weren’t they the ones who encouraged the war? and why had they still not apologized to the Japanese people? So I understand that there’s nothing special about Asahi.
Whether it’s Asahi, Mainichi, or Yomiuri, there’s abundant evidence that when it came to the war there was no difference. I think lining up the newspapers then, they look like peas in a pod.
President Shouriki’s “Yomiuri Spirit”
The biggest problem at Yomiuri was the leadership of President Matsutarou Shouriki, Vice President Yuusai Takahashi, and managing director Mitsumasa Kobayashi, who had relationships with military organizations and other institutions that governed the country while editing the paper.
Shouriki in particular was Chief of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and a section chief of the Tokkou. If you read Tatsuo Mitarai’s Biography of Matsutarou Shouriki (Denki Shouriki Matsutarou), it’s written that Shouriki began working as a Station Chief in various places in Tokyo and, through the suppression of the 1917 protests at Waseda University and the rice riots the year after, gained notoriety. That is to say, the pacification of social movements was what set off his career.
–For Shouriki, it was one source of pride in his career, wasn’t it?
He wore the suppression of the movement for universal suffrage and the Communist Party as badges of honor. After this the Toranomon incident happened, in which Daisuke Nanba targeted Emperor Taishou in an assassination attempt. Shouriki took responsibility for the incident and received a disciplinary discharge. However, he knew in his nature he was a bureaucrat and could not give up on climbing the official ranks, and so he entered the newspaper business. Using the newspaper, he hoped to make members of the bureaucracy feel indebted to him and their problems remained something he was preoccupied with. Eventually he entered the General Affairs Section of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and from there became a adviser to the Cabinet. One can easily tell that he was very close to the executives of the army from the words of Tojo’s last Home Minister, and he was an adviser to the Koiso Cabinet as well.
It wasn’t only Shouriki. Yuusai Takahashi was a leader of the Patriotic Speech Council (genron houkokukai) one of the groups that worked under the direction of the Information Bureau to regulate speech. Executives of various companies all participated in this organization, including Asahi Newspaper’s Masuichi Midoro and representatives from Mainichi Newspaper. Shouriki and managing director Kobayashi, who was a fellow former Tokkou, also became executives.
This is the most important issue we pursued during the Yomiuri struggle: the role they played by carrying out the war and cooperating with the Tojo and Koiso Cabinets. They were a central component in continuously pulling the press into the war.
During the war, Shouriki bought up various papers across the country one-by-one. From Hokkaido’s Otaru Shinbun to Kyushu’s Nagasaki Nippou, ten-odd papers were brought under the Yomiuri umbrella. In Shouriki’s biography, there is something written to the effect that at the time, he had opposed regulation of speech, but this is total nonsense. Just being able to unite all of those newspapers required the support of the government and military.
–I’ve heard that among those journalists dispatched, Yomiuri had the most that died on the battlefield.
To propagandize for the war, journalists offered their lives. And for that were killed. A fellow reporter from the Society Section, Ichirou Takada, died in south or central China, and others died or were wounded in Burma and the Philippines. Close to the island of Celebes, south of the Philippines, a transport ship was sunk, and 14 Yomiuri employees, who were contracted by the Navy to make the newspaper Seramu Shinbun, died. One of them was a friend of mine named Taoka. This incident contributed to the high number of casualties at Yomiuri, but I think it’s also true that another factor was the competition with other newspapers, which drove the paper to gather news in impossible situations.
–There were many opportunities to go to dangerous places.
At the time there were even pictures in the paper of enemy soldiers being cut down with blood spraying out. If you don’t go to the dangerous places on the front lines, you can’t take pictures like that. It was one more means of increasing morale.
–The executives made it the objective of the newspaper to raise morale and acted as a megaphone to mobilize people for the military. At important points in that period’s history, the newspapers all formed one voice to drive people further down the path of confusion. Moreover they not only guided public opinon, but were a pillar of the imperial government’s fascism, playing the role of “good officials.” (nouri)
Yomiuri itself held various events such as building airfields or towers for parachute training to raise morale. I think this is something Yomiuri particularly excelled at.
President Shouriki often spoke of what he called “the Yomiuri Spirit.” Even if the paper’s vehicles and communications equipment, the paper’s so-called “armored division” was lacking in comparison to Asahi and Mainichi, we were asked to compensate with our Yomiuri Spirit. He would say “Yomiuri Spirit” over and over again while pressing us for ideas about how to cut costs. He wanted us to find ways to cut costs on everything, down to our pencils. Of Shouriki’s words, those are the ones I remember the most.
–At critical moments when the country is deciding which direction to take, it’s the duty of newspaper executives to seize the moment by putting the people’s interests first and correcting the government when it makes errors, even when it’s tired of hearing criticism. But this original mission was abandoned in favor of its opposite, becoming a megaphone for the government and proactively campaigning for reactionary measures, guiding people down a mistaken path. Today this hasn’t changed. How the newspapers treat the introduction of the single-seat constituency system or the problem of overseas troop deployments under the name of UN Peacekeeping Operations are typical examples.
They certainly havn’t changed. Recently “service to the international community” has been used as an excuse for sending the SDF overseas and Ichirou Ozawa’s statements pushing for the empowerment of the state often appear on television and in the newspapers. Seeing things like that I really have the feeling that history is repeating itself. When the Manchurian Incident happened, all of the newspapers got together and made joint declarations about how we were working “for the peace of East Asia” and how “Manchuria is Japan’s lifeline.” When I read newspapers that endlessly repeat Ozawa’s words about “service to the international community”, I think it’s very similar. I think it’s necessary for today’s journalists to look through lies like that and try not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Unlike during the war, today we have democratic space for public opinion and self-aware labor unions. We also have parties like the Communist Party that can make proper policy based on the points of view of the entire nation, as well as newspapers like Akahata. Because all these points are different from during the war, journalists should be able to stop these mistakes.
–Newspaper, news, and television leaders are still lined up as so-called “experts” in government commissions, trying to push whatever policy the government wants them to. And even now newspaper executives and power players for the ruling party get together at the ryotei and pour each other drinks.
What’s different from back then is that it’s not just executives and board directors, but also pundits and veteran journalists join in on those commissions. In the past, journalists would be ashamed to be in one of those commissions. Recently the government has become more skilled at guiding public opinion, and they use former journalists in commissions, advisory positions, and televised discussions quite well.
My Time at Chiran Air Base
–Changing the topic, around what time did you become the Bureau Chief in Kyushu?
It was 1945, at the end of April or May. I was in Kyushu for about 3 months. During the huge March 10 bombing of Tokyo, I was still there working at the desk. The bombing burned the neighborhood close to Ikebukuro where I lived, reaching the house next to mine, though we were able to put it out with water. That was on April 13. After that I went to Fukuoka. The US navy’s bombardment of Okinawa began in April and suddenly the Kyushu bureau was made. However, our going to the Kyushu branch doesn’t appear in Yomiuri’s records. If you look up my name you’ll see that after I was dispatched to cover the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, there are no records of what I was doing because they were lost in the confusion of the war. The main office in West Ginza burned down, and for awhile the Tsukiji Hongan Temple was used instead.
–So you opened a branch office in Fukuoka?
No, there was already a branch office there, but that was upgraded to a bureau. Because the battle for Okinawa was about to start, there was a plan to station a large force there from which to send army and naval forces and stage attacks, including “special attacks” [that is, suicide attacks– tr]. So it was decided to place a bureau there.
–Did you also cover the special attack bases in Chiran and Kanoya?
Chiran was managed by the army and Kanoya by the navy. There were also bases with air fields in Kumamoto and Saga where reporters were continually posted. Because I was in charge of the bureau, I would sometimes tour the bases. I went to Chiran around two times. It was an old town that had some places where samurai of the Satsuma domain used to live and a high ground where the air field was. What left a deep impression on me was how young the pilots for the special attacks were. They seemed like innocent boys and I wondered, could they really pilot a plane? How many times have they piloted a plane before? It felt like my heart had been pierced. There was a squadron of planes that from the sky watched over the base and after the special attack units lifted off, escorted them part of the way toward their destinations. They were called the Flying Swallow Squadron. Instead of Zero fighters, they were spy planes. The ones piloting them were military academy graduates and veteran pilots who occupied the best barracks. On the other hand, the special attack units were mostly supplied from the farming families in the area.
–My older brother had gone to volunteer as a young pilot, but after one or two years of training was assigned somewhere else. It was probably around that time.
I don’t know how it was before, but during the battle for Okinawa, there were many young pilots in the special attack units. They were probably around 17 or 18 years old. They would sit along the edge of the air field, looking at the ground deep in thought. They seemed like today’s middle school students or first year high school students, and when I saw them talk to girls from farming families in the area, I thought about how cruel it was. Their planes were filled just enough to get to Okinawa, and then they would lift off, watched over by the Flying Sparrow Squadron.
–Were they able to fly steadily?
No, it felt like they were toddling along. Also the Zero fighters they flew looked like old and worn-out trainer planes. Therefore there were problems with fuel and they couldn’t ascend quickly. From Chiran you could see a mountain called Mount Kaimon in the distance. When the planes left for Okinawa they would go in that direction, so it was a difficult sight to look at. When I was there, the mother of one of the special attack pilots had come to see him off. She seemed to be almost 40, and even though most women at the time were wearing western clothes and work pants, she was dressed in a kimono meant for someone younger. She had also brought a yellow parasol. It was so that when her child was in the air, he could see her waving goodbye. Even now I can see it clearly.
–They were the “the sky’s courageous eagles”, the target of admiration from us “children of the nation.”
I remember them standing with the rising sun flag around their necks and their planes decorated with cherry blossoms. It’s hard to describe, seeing these innocent boys being sent helplessly to their deaths. It was unthinkably cruel what was being done to them. Of course I myself was in the middle of all that, immersed in writing articles. Thus during the struggle, Shouji Yasuda (Editor-in-Chief after Toumin Suzuki was driven out), who had gone over to the company’s side, had various things to say to me about it.
–In one of Takeo Takagi’s books, he describes an episode during your time as the Kyushu Bureau Chief when you talked passionately of the special attack units, and compares it to how you became during the struggle.
That’s right. That I wrote those kinds of articles during the war is something I deeply regret. I pledged in my heart to never again repeat those indiscretions, which was how I came to participate in the struggle at Yomiuri.
Visiting Nagasaki Right After the Atomic Bombing
–During the battle for Okinawa, a so-called “storm of steel” came in the form of US naval bombardment, taking the lives of over 200,000 Japanese soldiers. How much information about the conditions made it to the bureau in Kyushu.
We only heard heard broad things like the Americans have begun bombarding, Japan has begun its counter-attack where the Americans are landing, or the situation is becoming difficult. We didn’t hear the small details. None of this made it in articles, but we did hear it through telephone communications.
–When the Japanese forces in Okinawa ceased organized resistance on June 24 1945, did that information get through.
We were able to grasp that. We had received information that the situation was beyond help, and I think this was confirmed when I went to Chiran a second time.
–There was also when the battleship Yamato was made to go to Okinawa with only enough fuel for a one-way trip, and then was sunk in the seas approaching Tokunoshima near Akusekijima, killing many sailors. Were you able to hear anything about that?
I heard nothing about that, and only learned about it afterwards.
–In June Okinawa was occupied, in July Fukuoka and Kokura were bombed heavily, and then in August the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Can you tell us about that time?
Of course, these are things I knew directly. I had even tried to send reporters to Hiroshima. What came first was news from the military. The bomb was dropped on August 6 8:15 am, but General Headquarters didn’t make a statement until the following day. Before that we learned from the military’s information that “a new kind of bomb” had been dropped.
–But on August 9 another “new bomb” was dropped Nagasaki. How was this reported by General Headquarters?
I think they said something like “It seems that the enemy has dropped a new type of bomb from which we have received serious damage.” I had received word from Tokyo that the same bomb dropped on Hiroshima had been dropped on Nagasaki and was ordered to immediately go. This was because while Hiroshima was under the direction of the Osaka branch office, the bureau in Kyushu was in charge of Nagasaki, and unfortunately, a Yomiuri executive had been sent to become the president of the newly bought Nagasaki Nippou, along with several of my fellow reporters from the Society Section. Contact with Nagasaki had been lost, so I was to immediately go there from Fukuoka and inform the company on what was happening.
I entered Nagasaki on August 10. I think it was midday. I had taken a train from Hakata headed for Nagasaki, but when I reached Isahaya just outside the city, I learned that the line again had been damaged by the bomb and I couldn’t go further. Those going to Nagasaki spent the night there, and the next day somehow the train was able to move again, so I took it as far as I could. Since the bombing was on the 9th, it was two days after. In Nagasaki you can always see the mountains in the background, except now they were thoroughly covered in a reddish brown from the burning. Without guidance I headed inside the town where I heard the center of the explosion was. I had went as close as I could in the Urakami district, by the cathedral. I looked out at the the Mitsubishi shipyard facing the harbor, and saw the remains of a crane destroyed by the bomb jutting out of the ground in a crescent shape. In the surrounding area were supposed to be large Mitsubishi factories, but the chimneys were smashed and the roofs had flown off, leaving only a skeleton-like frame.
–The atomic bombing had targeted areas with Mitsubishi factories.
That’s right. I was told that the factories were the target, but the bomb missed and went in the direction of the cathedral. Those factories, along with the factories in Hiroshima’s Kure, were large even for Japan. At the time nobody knew about atomic bombs or the dangers of radiation. When I was there, I saw almost no one and I was completely alone. One would think that one would see the bodies of those who passed away or people who had come to retrieve them, but I didn’t see them. Those who were victims of radiation had probably all gathered somewhere else, but anyway, I didn’t see anybody. There were no signs of life, like a ghost town. Thinking about it now gives me chills. I imagine Hiroshima was the same way, a scene of total obliteration with no one in sight. When I stood before the cathedral, only part of the front wall was standing while the rest had been blown away. In the rubble I found a marble vase the size of a beer bottle and put in my bag. Then I headed towards the direction of my destination, the office of Nagasaki Nippou.
Afterwards I learned that from the center of the explosion at Urakami a third of the city was wiped out in the initial blast, and then with the shock wave came heat rays that consumed the rest of the city in fire. The Nagasaki Nippou Factory was destroyed in the initial blast, while the paper’s offices burned down together with the Prefectural Office and other buildings. When I entered the city, I could see the outskirts of the city still smoldering with smoke. Walking on a flagstone path up a hill, I finally found the evacuation site for Nagasaki Nippou and made contact with President Watanuki. All I remember from that point was eating a riceball made from the emergency provisions. I don’t really remember what Watanuki and I talked about, and besides the fact that something terrible had happened, I couldn’t really understand the situation.
There is a sequel to this story. Three weeks passed, and at around the end of August or early September, I returned to Tokyo and thoughtlessly, I had kept the marble vase I gathered at the cathedral in my bag. Of course by then I came to know the true nature of the atomic bomb and the danger of radiation, and so in a panic I threw the vase under a chinkapin tree in my garden. Two or three days later it rained, and the once beautiful vase slowly crumbled into a heap of ash. It looked just like the dust in the cathedral’s rubble.
August 15th and the Potsdam Declaration
–What were things like when the emperor gave his radio address on August 15?
A short while beforehand I knew that Japan had been driven to surrender. I had heard this from the head office, as well as fragments from reporters attached to military bases, particularly the air base in Kumamoto, who were in contact with intelligence officers privy to the movements in General Headquarters and the government. The Imperial Council was convened to discuss a call to surrender from the Allies, and from the Kumamoto air base there was word that a Hiryuu Bomber was being prepared for a “senior statesman”, probably Fumimaro Konoe, to travel to the Soviet Union for peace negotiations. Okinawa was already occupied, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been devastated by the atomic bomb. I remember on the day of the radio address, my senpai from the Society Section who was involved in some trading in Hakata (black market trading was very common back then) by chance came to the bureau. I told him, “There’s going to be a radio address from the emperor. It’s an edict ending the war.” He responded, “Then what the hell am I doing here! I’m going shopping!” and ran off in a hurry. Everyone at the office had the feeling that the inevitable had finally come, and though there were some differences between people, everyone was relieved.
–So thoughts like “what do we do now?” hadn’t come to mind yet.
There is one memory that is still fresh in my mind. Takashi Kawaguchi was my colleague who was second-in-charge at the bureau with whom I would consult about everything. During both phases of the Yomiuri Struggle we fought together, and although he wasn’t fired during the struggle, he became a target of the red purge later on. He played a leading role in the opposition to the red purge, and with 30 others who were fired, engaged in a court battle that lasted several years. Eventually he collapsed from illness caused by the stress. That same Kawaguchi, when Japan’s surrender had finally been decided, said to me, “From here starts union movement.” Those words really stuck with me. When we finished arrangements to pull out of Kyushu, I received contact from Buntarou Watanabe, the Vice Editor of the Economics Section, saying “What are you sniffling for? Come quick.” There were only two or three of us left, and so Kawaguchi and I returned to the main office at the end of August.
–What was going through Watanabe’s mind when he said that?
The reason he wanted me to return quickly to the capital was that Shouriki and the board of directors were shaken by fact that the American forces were coming to occupy the country and didn’t know what would happen to the paper, and so were coming up with various plans. One opinion that came from the Vice Editors was that it was necessary for we Yomiuri employees to take some action in response. Thus he wanted us to come back quickly so we could add our consultation.
Watanabe fought together with us in the first struggle, but during the second became a flag-bearer for the machinations that split the union. His nickname was Watabun. We entered the company at the same time, and during his time at the Tokyo Foreign Languages School (now Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) he was also involved with left wing movements. We had many of the same friends, and during the war we often talked about the times over a drink. So we had a close relationship.
Between Kawaguchi talking about the beginning of the union movement and Watanabe saying we should take action, though this was put into different expressions, there was a common feeling among us. Within Yomiuri there were also those like Economics Editor Shouji Yasuda (Editor-in-Chief during the second struggle) who hid in his hometown in Shiga out of fear of being captured for war crimes, or Hidetoshi Shibata, in the press club for General Headquarters and an officer in the army, who ran to an island in the Seto Inland Sea for the same reason. But a lot of us in middle management like Kawaguchi and Watanabe, despite the shock of losing the war, truly felt optimistic about the road ahead. I think a lot of that had to do with the influence of the accepted Potsdam Declaration.
The Potsdam Declaration called for Japan’s surrender was presented by three countries, the US, Great Britain, and China (later the Soviet Union signed on) on July 26 1945. That’s in Berlin local time, so it didn’t reach the main office until the next day, on the 27th. However, the Information Bureau had banned newspapers from publishing the contents, and on the 28th, Prime Minister Kantarou Suzuki presented a statement that the declaration was only a re-baked version of the Cairo Declaration, the Japanese government had no response, and would continue working towards winning the war. And in the background, he was trying to negotiate with “preservation of the national polity” (kokutai goji) as a condition; that is, terms in which the government would accept the Potsdam Declaration if the Allies promised not to change the position and powers of the emperor.
Of course we didn’t understand the details of the situation at the time, and took the presentation to mean that the government had rejected the declaration. Shortly after, the atomic bombings happened , as well as the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan on the 8th and crossing the border into Manchuria on the 9th, coming into northeast China and northern Korea like an avalanche. The amount of Japanese that were sacrificed and how much the Chinese and Koreans suffered as a result is difficult to fathom.
From the intensification of the bombing of Japan’s cities starting with Tokyo, the defeat of Germany on the European front and the suicide of Hitler, the loss of Okinawa, and the food insecurity and other difficulties in living day-to-day, among the Japanese people there was a rapidly growing war-weariness and distrust of the government and military. In the middle of that came the Potsdam Declaration and the deepening confusion over whether Japan would continue fighting or surrender, and among journalists too, although the news only came in fragments, there was a feeling of pressure.
–What direction the country was going and what would happen to yourselves, there was a lot to think about.
Yes, there was. When I first heard the Potsdam Declaration, it felt like, to exaggerate a little, hearing a gospel from heaven. It called for permanently driving out militarist authority, punishing those responsible for the war as war criminals, respect for the people’s democratic tendencies, and rights to speech, religion, and thought as fundamental guarantees. Furthermore it included the disarmament of military, and although the Allies would occupy the the country until its war-making powers had disappeared, if the Japanese people could by their own will make a peaceful country they would withdraw. I’m only paraphrasing, but that’s what was written. I realized that this was just like what the Communist Party was advocating for all along: popular sovereignty; opposition to wars of invasion; land, bread, and peace; and the realization of democracy.
When I returned to Tokyo, I heard what the others in middle management had to say and found that they too felt a strong admiration for the declaration, around the time Supreme Allied Commander Macarthur arrived at the Atsugi Military Base.