Japan's Coup d'etat

Victories in Midway, Guadalcanal, and New Guinea were the beginning of the end for Japan's supremacy in the Pacific. It would take another two and a half years of bitter, deadly combat, invading island after island held by the Japanese before the Japanese were finally defeated, but not without a great cost to both sides. 

Steeped in century's old military tradition, the Japanese fought to the death, many by their own hands in the tradition of the Samurai Bushido honor code known as Seppuku - to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies. 

The last battle of the war was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa. It was from this island that Americans planned on launching ships, planes, and troops for an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Knowing from the first-hand experience of how fanatical Japanese warriors had been during every island battle, American planners expected it to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably ten times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties; estimated to over 100,000 Allied troops. The total number of casualties for the entire operation was estimated to be 250,000 - 500,000 Allied troops and millions of Japanese troops and civilians.

In an attempt to avoid the bloody invasion, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the "unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces." Failure to comply would mean "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." Totally unaware the United States possessed two nuclear bombs and the threat was real, the response by Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki was his government was "paying no attention" to the Allied ultimatum. 

After days with no sign that the Japanese would accept the surrender offer, President Harry Truman ordered that an atomic bomb be dropped on Japan. On August 6, 1945, the B -29 bomber "Enola Gay" dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more. Tens of thousands more died in the following weeks and months from wounds and radiation poisoning.

Believing this to have been such a dramatic demonstration of American power, President Harry S. Truman called for Japan's surrender 16 hours later, warning them to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth." After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan's supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. 

On August 9, a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki. That same day, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the Supreme War Council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler." The council obeyed Hirohito's acceptance of peace, and on August 10th, the message was relayed to the United States.

Two days later, the United States answered that "the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.

But there was a group of high ranking officers and cabinet members who began a coup in hopes of stalling the surrender by plotting to seize the Imperial Palace and to prevent the broadcast of Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech to mark the end of World War II. They did this in hopes of securing better terms of surrender.

Late on the night of August 12, 1945, Major Kenji Hatanaka, a member of Military Affairs Section of the Japanese Ministry of War, along with Lieutenant Colonels Masataka Ida, Masahiko Takeshita, and Inaba Masao, and Colonel Okitsugu Arao, the Chief of the Military Affairs Section, spoke to War Minister, General Korechika Anami (the army minister and "most powerful figure in Japan besides the Emperor himself) and asked him to do whatever he could to prevent acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. General Anami, in the photo on the left, gave no indication as to whether or not he would help the young officers. Hatanaka and the other rebels decided to continue planning and to attempt a coup d'etat on their own. 

Hatanaka spent much of August 13 and the morning of August 14 gathering allies, seeking support from the higher-ups in the Ministry, and perfecting his plot. In the meantime, extremists were calling for a death-before-dishonor mass suicide.

Shortly after the surrender was decided, a group of senior army officers, including Anami, gathered in a nearby room. After a silence, General Torashiro Kawabe, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, proposed that all senior officers present sign an agreement to carry out the Emperor's order of surrender - "The Army will act in accordance with the Imperial Decision to the last." It was signed by all the high-ranking officers present, including Anami. "This written accord by the most senior officers in the Army acted as a formidable firebreak against any attempt to incite a coup d'etat in Tokyo." 

That same evening of August 14, Hatanaka's rebels set their plan into motion. 

The Second Regiment of the First Imperial Guards had entered the palace grounds, doubling the strength of the battalion already stationed there, presumably to provide extra protection against Hatanaka's rebellion. But Hatanaka, along with Lt. Col. Jiro Shiizaki, convinced Colonel Toyojiro Haga, the commander of the 2nd Regiment of the First Imperial Guards, of their cause, by telling him (falsely) that Generals Anami and Umezu, and the commanders of the Eastern District Army and Imperial Guards Divisions were all in on the plan. Hatanaka also went to the office of Shizuichi Tanaka, commander of the Eastern region of the Army, to try to persuade him to join the coup. Tanaka refused and ordered Hatanaka to go home. Hatanaka ignored the order.

Originally, Hatanaka hoped that simply occupying the palace and showing the beginnings of a rebellion would inspire the rest of the Army to rise up against the move to surrender. This notion guided him through much of the last days and hours and gave him the blind optimism to move ahead with the plan, despite having little support from his superiors.

Having set all the pieces into position, Hatanaka and his co-conspirators decided that the Guard would take over the palace at 2 AM. The hours until then were spent in continued attempts to convince their superiors in the Army to join the coup. At about the same time, General Anami committed Seppuku, leaving a message that, "I - with my death - humbly apologize to the Emperor for the great crime." Whether the crime involved losing the war, or the coup remains unclear.

At some time after 1 AM, August 15th, Hatanaka and his men surrounded the palace. Hatanaka, Shiizaki, and Captain Shigetaro Uehara went to the office of Lt. General Takeshi Mori, commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division, to ask him to join the coup. When Mori refused to side with Hatanaka, Hatanaka killed him, fearing Mori would order the Guards to stop the rebellion. Hatanaka then used General Mori's official stamp to authorize Imperial Guards Division Strategic Order No. 584, a false set of orders created by his co-conspirators, which would greatly increase the strength of the forces occupying the Imperial Palace and Imperial Household Ministry, and "protecting" the Emperor.

The palace police were disarmed, and all the entrances blocked. Over the course of the night, Hatanaka's rebels captured and detained eighteen people, including Ministry staff and workers sent to record the surrender speech. 

Hatanaka and his rebels spent the next several hours fruitlessly searching for Imperial House Minister Sotaro Ishiwatari and Koichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and the recordings of the surrender speech. The two men, along with the recording, were hiding in the "bank vault," a large chamber underneath the Imperial Palace. The search was made more difficult by a blackout in response to Allied bombings, and by the archaic organization and layout of the Imperial House Ministry. The rebels did find Chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa, Emperor Hirohito's closest personal aide. Although Hatanaka threatened to disembowel him with a samurai sword, Tokugawa lied and told them he did not know where the recordings or men were. During their search, the rebels cut nearly all of the telephone wires, severing communications between their prisoners on the palace grounds and the outside world.

At about the same time, another group of Hatanaka's rebels, led by Captain Takeo Sasaki went to Prime Minister Suzuki's office, intent on killing him. When they found it empty, they machine-gunned the office and set the building on fire, then left for his home. Warned on the attempt on his life, he escaped minutes before the would-be assassins arrived. After setting fire to Suzuki's home, they went to the estate of former Prime Minister Kiichiro Hiranuma to assassinate him. Hiranuma escaped through a side gate, and the rebels burned his house as well. 

Around 3 AM, Hatanaka was informed by Lieutenant Colonel Masataka Ida that the Eastern District Army was on its way to the palace to stop him and that he should give up. Finally, seeing his plan collapsing around him, Hatanaka pleaded with General Tatsuhiko Takashima, Chief of Staff of the Eastern District Army, to be given at least ten minutes on the air on NHK radio broadcasting station, to explain to the people of Japan what he was trying to accomplish and why. He was refused. Colonel Haga, commander of the 2nd Regiment of the First Imperial Guards, discovered that the Army did not support this rebellion, and he ordered Hatanaka to leave the palace grounds.

Just before 5 AM, as his rebels continued their search, Major Hatanaka went to the NHK studios, and, brandishing a pistol, tried desperately to get some airtime to explain his actions. A little over an hour later, after receiving a telephone call from the Eastern District Army, Hatanaka finally gave up. He gathered his officers and walked out of the NHK studio.

At dawn, Tanaka learned that the palace had been invaded. He went there and confronted the rebellious officers, berating them for acting contrary to the spirit of the Japanese Army, demanding that the dishonor brought by their treason could only be absolved through Seppuku. A number of conspirators committed ritual suicide that morning, on the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

By 8 AM, the rebellion was entirely dismantled, having succeeded in holding the palace grounds for much of the night but failing to find the recordings. Hatanaka, on a motorcycle, and Shiizaki, on horseback, rode through the streets, tossing leaflets that explained their motives and their actions. Within an hour before the Emperor's broadcast, sometime around 11:00, August 15, Hatanaka placed his pistol to his forehead and shot himself. Shiizaki stabbed himself with a dagger and then shot himself. In Hatanaka's pocket was found his death poem: "I have nothing to regret now that the dark clouds have disappeared from the reign of the Emperor."

References

The 1967 Japanese movie "Japan's Longest Day," a detailed dramatization of the 24-hour Coup d'etat (an excellent 157-minute film available on Netflix)

"Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict" by Edwin Hoyt
 
John Toland's "The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire," winner of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction

"What if the Japanese Command Had Refused to Surrender" by Mark Grimsley, Word War II magazine, dated August/September 2008