‘Road to Surrender’
“Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II,” by Evan Thomas, examines that question. Mr. Thomas’s ultimate conclusion is that, combined with Russia’s declaration of war on Japan, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to force Japan’s surrender. Anything less would have allowed the Imperial Army to continue the war.Mr. Thomas uses three men to focus the story: Henry Stimson, Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, and Shigenori Togo. Stimson was the U.S. secretary of war. Leading the U.S. war effort, he was the one man with the big picture of the atomic bomb project. Gen. Spaatz commanded the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, in ultimate charge of the air war against Japan. Shigenori Togo was Japan’s foreign minister, one of six members of Japan’s Supreme War Council.
Through these three, Mr. Thomas frames events. He follows the decisions made by the U.S. and Japanese leaders during the spring and summer of 1945. Stimson and Spaatz are shown as moderating forces in the U.S. deployment of atomic weapons. Togo was the only Supreme War Council member seeking peace through surrender.
Peace was not really the issue. By 1945, Japan wanted the war to end but, as Mr. Thomas shows, on its own terms. Its islands were to remain unoccupied, and its government and surviving military left intact. It wanted to be able to claim that it had “won” the war, even if it had really lost. These terms were unacceptable to the Allies. They wanted to neutralize Japan’s military threat the same way they neutralized Nazi Germany’s—through unconditional surrender.
Following the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan’s military wanted to continue the war. It took the intervention of Emperor Hirohito, Russia attacking Japan, and the Nagasaki bomb to force the Supreme War Council to finally yield. Mr. Thomas shows that, even then, it was a yielding that almost didn’t happen. An attempted coup occurred, the day of the surrender, to force the war’s continuance.
“Road to Surrender” should settle the question of the necessity of using the atomic bomb. A magisterial work, it is excellently researched. Still more impressive is the clarity and readability the book possesses.
