Behind Japan's Surrender: Secret Struggle That Ended an Empire

xviii, 428 pp. "On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima. On August 8 Russia declared war on Japan. The next day a second atomic blast laid waste the city of Nagasaki. On August 14 the Japanese empire, which in 1942 had ruled over one sixth of the world, surrendered to the Allies. During those anguished days between the explosion of the first A-bomb and the surrender, a paradoxical drama of huge and tragic import was played out in Japan. It is this drama which is the subject of this remarkable book. Japan's emperor was Hirohito, direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, a gentle, quite man of extravagant modesty and humility who seemed like the last man on earth to lead a mighty empire into either conquest of disaster. Japan's premier during that final hour was Admiral Baron Kantaro Suzuki, born in the last year of Japan's feudal era, 1867, hero of the wars of 1894 and 1904. Around these two figures - hiding them from the world and also from Japan's 80.000.000 tattered, war-weary, half-starving people -- was the military elite, the highly trained, powerful, dedicated group of officers who were sworn to conquest and self-hypnotized into a belief that Japan could win, even if it meant the sacrifice of every man, woman, and child, every soldier, every inch of their once glorious land."