297. Operation Downfall: The Invasion That Never Was
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Hello and welcome to Battleground 45 with me, Saul David. Today, a popular request, I'm talking to historian Rob Lyman about Operation Downfall, the mission to conquer and pacify Japan within 18 months of the final defeat of Germany.

Rob, a regular on the podcast, is the author of a number of fine books on the war in the East, including Slim Master of War and more recently, A War of Empires. Rob, welcome back. It's great to be back, Saul. Thank you very much for having me. Now, today inevitably is very much a counterfactual discussion, or at least some of it will be because Operation Downfall was never needed. But the detail of the plans, I think, is quite instructive.

particularly when we consider the decision to use the atomic bombs to end the war in August 1945. So let's go back to the beginning, shall we, and consider an early version of the plan that was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Planning Team in Washington and presented to Churchill and Roosevelt at the Argonaut Conference on Malta in February 1945.

This was, of course, a two-part plan, Rob. Tell us a little bit about it and what the separate forces were hoping to achieve in these operations. Well, it actually began a little bit before then because actually at the Quebec conference in 1943, the whole issue was raised and a plan was presented that

to Churchill and Roosevelt that wasn't regarded to be sufficiently comprehensive. Because I think that what in 1943 had become absolutely apparent to everybody fighting the Japanese was that to defeat the Japanese in totality would require the occupation of the home island. Now, this is a really, really significant event.

challenge for the Allies. This context needs to be understood in the context of war generally. How do you defeat an enemy? Well, you bring their armies to their knees and the governments back home surrender. Now, that wasn't an equation recognized in 1943 that would apply to Japan. In order to defeat Japan, you didn't

just have to defeat their armies and the navies and their air forces in the field. You actually had to persuade the people at home that the entire basis of their national proposition, the proposition that had taken them to war in China in 1937, actually even earlier than that, 1931, was false, was redundant, was not going to succeed.

And so this really meant that the home islands would have to be invaded, which takes us to 1945 in the Argonaut Conference. And really, just to summarize it, the plan was to launch an attack on Japan, not to capture or conquer the entirety of Japan, but effectively to get to Tokyo. And Tokyo was going to be got to in two phases.

There were two very, very significant operations. The first operation was going to begin in November 1945. It's known as Operation Olympic. And the second operation, an attack from Olympic against Tokyo itself, Operation Coronet, was to begin the following March. So two stages. The idea was that once Tokyo fell, Hirohito had been captured or killed.

the government brought to its knees, the remainder of Tokyo, the remainder of Japan, rather, could do what it wanted. I think there was a recognition that the whole of Japan would need to be conquered.

This is a really fundamental part to all of the considerations about how Japan would be defeated. And it was an important backdrop, actually, to MacArthur, who was given responsibility for the operation, for Operation Downfall, in his subsequent subjugation culturally of Japan. He realized that every single Japanese soldier

and papa and child at school, you know, that the entirety of society would need to acquiesce in the rebellion or in the occupation rather.

And so this is why actually the downfall was quite a subtle and a sophisticated plan. In my view, it would have worked, but there were two sides to it. The first was the military plan to occupy Kaishu Island, the Kaishu element of southern Japan, leading from Okinawa to the second part of the plan, Operation Kikai.

coronet to actually take Tokyo and at the same time persuade the Japanese people that they were better off supporting the invaders than they were their own government.

Now, that's a really, really significant challenge. It had never happened before. I mean, there were hints of it in the Allied attack on Germany. All of Germany rose up to defend Germany. They weren't defending Nazism. They were defending their homeland. There's always that quite existential challenge that you've got as an attacker and a defender. You don't want to...

When you're planning something as profound as this, you don't want to create enemies you don't need to. And that was always the challenge. I mean, as you said, it was a plan that was never put into play. But had it been put into play, that would have been the daily routine.

consideration of MacArthur. Do I need to carry out this operation? Because will it persuade the Japanese to support me or Hirohito? There is that entire tension throughout Downfall, which makes it a really quite extraordinary plan. I mean, actually, and as a consequence, it's a plan that gamers like, because anything goes. And you don't have a historical record of

to provide the proof of what worked and what didn't work. It's interesting that MacArthur has made the Supreme Commander. Of course, he has a lot of political heft, doesn't he? There's a fear from Roosevelt, for example, that MacArthur might actually come into the 1944 presidential race against him. So people were a little bit wary of getting on the wrong side of MacArthur. And it's really his battle with Nimitz for supremacy in the

Pacific that ends with MacArthur gaining this supreme command position. Nimitz is pretty much fobbed off with the idea that he's going to control the amphibious phase, which had pretty much been the way that things were done in the Pacific up to that point. Tell us a little bit about this battle between the two, because it's quite instructive, isn't it, when we think about the Operation Downfall plan and whether it was necessary in the first place. Certainly the Navy and the Air Force were more sceptical than the Army.

Well, it is an absolutely fascinating period of history. And I actually love this. I think Nimitz was the wrong man to actually lead it. And I think MacArthur was the right. I think that decision was the correct one. Why? Because actually, in this case, the occupation, the land occupation of Japan, it was land and air forces that were going to win this battle, not the Navy, who were frankly going to be the transporters and the offshore gunboats.

That's something Nimitz wouldn't accept, of course, because, of course, he had the Marines under his control. But I think this is an important discussion to have around how you apply force and

Do you apply force on the basis of how you wish the endgame to be achieved? Or do you apply force on the basis of applying force in its own right? And I think Nimitz belonged to the latter category. Nimitz was a great strategist. But actually, this wasn't about fighting the battle. This wasn't about the Navy. This was actually about

landing, winning the land battle in two parts of Japan. And as a consequence of that particular campaign, winning over the Japanese, which was going to be the hardest task. Now, what people may not be aware of is that the American Pacific campaign was fought under two commanders, was fought under two parts, of course, Nimitz in the north, the carrier base force and MacArthur's island hopping campaign in the south. That's a fundamental part

constituent of the conversation here. There was this challenge between these two big egos. It wasn't just egos, and I don't think it's fair really to, and I'm not suggesting you are, Saul, but it's not fair for any of us just to push it into those categories. Here was an argument between two competing egos. Both men had very, very considerable talents. And if you look at the Southern Pacific Island hopping campaign led by MacArthur, you might easily decry, as I do, his

enormous hubris, his enormously inflated sense of his self-importance. He was a brilliant commander. And that island hopping campaign was brilliant. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was brilliant. And the northern campaign of the carrier fleet under Nimitz was also brilliant. So you have two very different approaches here.

It's also very interesting because when you look at 1945 and early 1946 and the occupation of Japan, the decision to appoint MacArthur was demonstrated to be the right one.

Because he realized that this wasn't just about fighting a battle. It was about winning the peace. Now, for all of MacArthur's subsequent crazy decisions in Korea, which we won't come to on this conversation, he actually made the right calls in 1945 and 1946.

But it's a very difficult situation for Washington. They have to make a decision. They have to decide. They've decided that the right thing to do for Japan is to appoint a single commander, always the right thing to do, and then to get it done. But can I just talk about why it was felt necessary to invade Japan at all?

because I think this goes to the root of downfall. The determination was that Japan would not surrender unless its home islands and Tokyo in particular were occupied, because that was the only way of demonstrating to the Japanese people the failure of their militaristic adventures. There

There were lots of competing plans in 1943, 44 and 45. I mean, your listeners will know one of them by Claire Chennault, which was to basically bomb Japan into submission from air bases in China and elsewhere. Already sensible strategists by 1943 and 44 were understanding that simply bombing from afar wasn't sufficient and would not be sufficient otherwise.

to persuade the Japanese to surrender. It wasn't sufficient to persuade the Germans to give up either. I mean, the heavier they were bombed, the harder they fought. So there was this very interesting nexus between area bombing, killing of large numbers of the population, and the intensity of the prejudice that that creates. This is something that subsequent post-war strategists have grappled with, but wasn't really apparent in those years. So it was determined that

The land occupation of Japan was required, but the fundamental issue here was the slaughter that was taking place through the Pacific, a subject you've written about extensively, Saul. Large numbers of young Americans were losing their lives in this battle against, this war against the Japanese. Actually, by this stage of the war, it was regarded as war.

If not existential, though, you know, America wasn't going to fall as a consequence. It was, you know, a cultural war in extremis in which the evil which was exemplified by Japanese militarism had to be defeated or the rest of the world would fall into some rabid totalitarian or militaristic situation.

bondage. And that's what America was fighting for. But they wouldn't fight forever. I think this really goes to the heart of Roosevelt's dilemma here. He needed to be able to land in Japan and get the war done as quickly as possible. And if you go back to Quebec in 1943, the ambition was to ensure that the

The land occupation of Japan occurred within 12 months of the defeat of the Germans, and that was later extended to 18 months in order to be able to get the vast resources necessary for this really ambitious undertaking in a place where Operation Downfall could be initiated. But so underlying all of these considerations is this fear that Americans were running out of a willingness to sacrifice the young man.

We've got the crucial meeting, haven't we, on the 18th of June. We've spoken about Roosevelt's involvement. He, of course, dies on the 12th of April, is replaced by Truman, a relative political non-entity. Actually, he turns out to be a half-decent president, doesn't he, Rob? And Truman has to get up to speed very quickly.

quickly on a number of issues, one of which, of course, is atomic weapons. He knows nothing about them. But while they are completing the development of the atomic weapons and not knowing for sure, although they probably had a reasonably strong indication that they would indeed work when they were tested in July, they

They also have to, like all militaries do, have to take contingency or make contingency plans for the possibility, well, two possibilities. One, the atomic bomb won't work. And two, even if it does work, it's not going to persuade the Japanese to surrender. Therefore, we need to have in place this plan, which begins, as you already discussed, with an invasion of Kyushu towards the end of the year. I think the 1st of November was the date.

Yeah, 1st November. 1st of November. So they have a meeting on the 18th of June at which Truman asked a very interesting question, doesn't he? On a number of occasions showing that it's absolutely in his mind. What sort of casualties are we likely

to take if I authorize Operation Downfall. So tell us a little bit about that meeting and sort of the thinking that was going on there, because I hinted before that there were people, including Admiral King, the commander-in-chief of the US fleet, who weren't entirely convinced that a land invasion was necessary. Yeah, Admiral King, he was commander-in-chief, by the way, of the US Navy. He was so concerned about the losses to his fleet, actually from the Kamikaze campaign,

that Operation Downfall would suffer such cataclysmic casualties that it should not go ahead and that instead Japanese cities under the Curtis LeMay plan should be bombed to incineration. I think that was one of the words he used. And that a blockade should be applied against Japan. But the real challenge here is that if you did that, yes, you would be able to destroy the cities with impunity. We're talking about seven or eight very large cities,

of over 600,000, 700,000 people. But once you'd done that, there was no way of actually winning. You had to do something on land. And it was that final judgment that led Frank Knox, who was Secretary of the Navy, who concluded that the Americans would have to invade Japan regardless of casualties. But your point about casualties here is the key issue. Casualties

The estimates of casualties were really quite extraordinary. And throughout the planning of downfall, really from Quebec in 1943 all the way through to the point at which the war ended, the number of casualties that were expected was the primary area of conversation. And you can imagine that.

Clearly, Truman, who's only just taken over, he never expected to be the new president. He had been a

pretty quiet or quiescent deputy, but FDR's death put him into the White House and he had to make these decisions. What a terrible decision he had to make. But it was really as fundamental as this. We either stand back, attack Japan from a distance, and the war will last three or four more years, in which case I'm going to lose the American population. They

or I can get it over and done with as quickly as I possibly can, although that's going to cause casualties. On the one hand, I'm going to suffer casualties, but not as many as invading Japan, but I'm going to lose the will to fight. The people will not support a long, long war.

And Truman was forced into this position that he was going to have to accept casualties come what may. And the challenge then was to work out how to mitigate those casualties. A quick word here about two other things going on. You mentioned the Manhattan Project, the nuclear weapons. I mean, the extraordinary thing about this is that no one knew, even in the Manhattan Project itself, just quite how devastating these bombs would be.

And, you know, I think the consensus of opinion was that this was simply large quantities of TNT. And instead of having to send in several squadrons of B-29s, all we need to do is send in one.

And, you know, it would make the process of destruction, the Curtis LeMay destruction plan, the aerial bombing plan, much easier. So I would suggest that there was no sense. I mean, we have this now because we are living post the event, post hoc. Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, there actually was no real sense that this would be sufficient to draw the war to a close.

Now, we read that in because we are where we are. It's not actually, it wasn't actually a common reality. And if you look at all the documents for the time, look at the conversations between Nimitz and Knox, there was no sense that the atomic bombs would actually draw the war to an end. It might hasten the inevitable, but it wouldn't stop everything.

The second thing people need to remember is the role of the Russians or the Soviets. And I think this is a really interesting dynamic to the downfall plan because downfall is produced in an absence of consideration of the arrival of the Russians. Because Roosevelt invited Stalin when he met in Yalta in 1936.

I think it was, to consider joining the American effort against the Japanese at the earliest possible opportunity. Stalin agreed and said he would do it once Berlin had fallen.

And indeed, on the 7th or 8th of August 1945, General Zhukov did launch his invasion into Japanese-held Manchukuo. And by the end of the month in early September, there were 1.9 million Soviets in Manchuria and North Korea. So we have this really quite considerable challenge to the Americans of the arrival of the Russians, whether the Russians are good guys or the bad guys. And it's funny when you look at the downfall paperwork,

The Russians are not even part of any of these equations. And yet I can't help but think that one of the reasons for occupying Japan was to ensure that it was ultimately American and not Russian. Now,

That's a very hard argument to make because, as I've just said, the plans were drawn up well before FDR was known to have invited the Russians to join in the war. A situation actually of quite some considerable difficulty because none of this was documented. We have no documents, nothing written down. Stalin and Roosevelt had a private conversation. There were no secretaries present. And we're not really sure what FDR promised Roosevelt.

FDR, of course, was aware of, of course, he was of the early downfall conversations. And it may well have been that FDR, who, dare I say it, was incredibly naive about Joe Stalin, was quite happy to hand chunks of Japan to the Soviet Union in exchange for getting involved in downfall.

These are all things we don't really know the truth behind, but it's interesting to consider. Yeah. Okay. We'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment to hear more from Rob about Operation Downfall.

Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist. Together, we're the co-hosts of another Goldhanger show called The Rest is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies. We have just released a series on the decades-long battle between the CIA and Osama bin Laden. And this week, we are stepping into the devastation of the 9-11 terror attacks to understand how Osama bin Laden was able to

carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA. It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states

towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them. We will then go into the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, which culminated in a dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011, which killed the world's most wanted terrorist. So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.

Welcome back. It's fascinating, the Roosevelt thing. Actually, I think that there were some pretty solid discussions on the possibility of the Russians coming in well before Yalta, February 1945. The initial discussion was as far back as Tehran in late 1943. But the Russians kept fobbing off and the Soviets kept fobbing off the Americans. And what's so ironic about the events that we're discussing now, which is the last few months of the war, is that by that time, of course, things were beginning to change.

There was a sense that a lot of the deals that had been done by Roosevelt, who's now dead with the Soviets, weren't being honoured, particularly over Poland, and that we were very much heading towards the Cold War. You know, we had a little bit of a way to go. But the idea of the Russians actually taking part in the invasion of Japan was now enough

the most. So if they did want the Soviets to continue in the process of defeating the Japanese, it was frankly distracting troops in Manchuria, as you already mentioned, rather than actually invading. I mean, there's a wonderful moment, of course, when Stalin actually is on the cusp of sending his troops of

cross to one of the Japanese islands and actually has to rescind the order because he's been given a pretty strong warning by the Americans. So this does all turn very controversial towards the end. But getting back to downfall for a second, I mean, for listeners to properly understand the

consequences of what might have happened. Let's just go along that track for a second, shall we? You've already hinted, Rob, that you think ultimately it would have been successful. And I suppose that's inevitable given the firepower the Americans had and frankly, the lack of ability to produce armaments and to replenish their air force and all the crucial elements you need to prevent a modern armed forces like the allies, Western allies were at this stage. So

which inevitably is going to end in victory. But the question is, at what cost? So do you have any kind of sense in your own mind that how costly it might have been? I think it would have been very costly indeed. There are quite a series of studies undertaken and through 1944 and 45, the most famous one being the one in January 1945, I think January the 17th, perhaps. And a conversation was being held between various people from Roosevelt and Marshall and King

and to the House Military Affairs Committee Chairman of CHAC called Andrew May. And some of this was being leaked to the New York Times, and the individuals themselves had their own views. But if I just give people a sense that, you know, the invasion of Japan was considered to involve the loss of perhaps 900,000 casualties.

And this was a really, really significant, this is really from July 1945. So this doesn't include current operations in the Pacific. This was actually in addition to everyone who had been lost already. This is something like 260,000 dead and another 596,000, nearly 600,000 wounded. That's the cost of everything.

the two elements to downfall the two plans, 860,000, which is a really extraordinary number. And for want of argument, you can, as many have done, say it's going to cost a million additional men in terms of lives lost now.

Part of this also, we need to consider the Japanese defenses and the Japanese plans, because part of the American consideration for coming up with these casualties was clearly based on the experience of North and South Pacific, but also on the fact that actually people like the Japanese are likely to fight harder when you're on their territory, as Okinawa and Iwo Jima demonstrated.

And you're then not just fighting divisions of the enemy, you're actually fighting a people. And there was a view that the Japanese could raise anything up to another three and a half million Dad's Army type people to join the fight on the Japanese mainland. And the numbers actually reached in some cases five or six million estimates of that. We do know that in July 1945,

the effectively the homeland security force was created by Japanese government and a million people joined it, armed with nothing much more than pitchforks and spades and, you know, harrows and things that they would use in the fields, frankly, because Japan just didn't have the weapons available. A little bit like Britain in 1940. And the comparison between Britain 1940 and Japan 1945 is opposite. I think the

the Germans did manage to invade Britain, or England rather, in 1940, they would have suffered immense casualties. Because of course, all of a sudden, you're not just fighting the BEF, you're fighting a country that is determined to defend its shores, in the same way that Putin discovered when he invaded Ukraine, as you well know, that he basically created an enemy. And going back to my first point, that was the big challenge for MacArthur. How do you actually undertake a downfall?

whilst trying to secure a victory. So the surrender of the people as quickly as you possibly can. But these debates around casualties were the conversation in Washington. I don't think any other conversation matched this because it would have been cataclysmic for America. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the word, isn't it? These are enormous casualties. And the question has got to be, is it worth it? And as we've said,

King decided that it wasn't worth it. I mean, he was horrified. I mean, you only have to see a carrier struck by a kamikaze and see and smell, you know, 100 burning bodies on an aircraft carrier to actually be quite horrified by the thought of

of hundreds of thousands of similar casualties being undertaken in the invasion of Japan, which goes back to your point. This is about Truman having to make the tough calls as a politician. It's not actually a decision for the soldiers or sailors because, you know, by this stage in the war, there's an enormous amount of motion riding on this as well.

And so we move to the next crucial date in the story, and that's the 15th of July at the Potsdam Conference, which Truman is attending with Stalin and Churchill. And he receives the news that the nuclear test has been successful. And now there's a new possibility. And to understand his thinking at this point, it's absolutely vital, isn't it, Rob, to have Operation Downfall in your mind. This is what he has authorised. He knows everything.

It's going ahead if something isn't done in the next few months. And he's got it in his mind, as you've just suggested, the casualties are going to be catastrophic, not just for American servicemen, although they are obviously his priority, but also for the Japanese. He speaks later. In fact, he writes...

contemporaneously about the millions of Japanese losing their lives. And again, I think that's probably a fair estimate, isn't it? I think it is. And I think this is a really good point to sort of bring this discussion full circle, because the question here is, how do you best achieve victory? And I

All of a sudden, Truman has given the good news that the atomic weapons at least survived the test. Everyone was very nervous that they would go fart. And there was an opportunity here actually to bring the water a close so long as it could be proven to the Japanese that their casualties would be overwhelming.

Now, if you just leap into Hirohito's mind, the reality is that this is what happened. Hirohito, who actually, as we now know, or we've known for a long time, had a very intimate relationship with the decision-making of the war. He wasn't as offside as some people have tried to suggest, as indeed as some people.

As MacArthur suggested in the 1940s and 50s, he was intimately involved in the decisions made to go to war and so on, and to prosecute the war. But at this point, certainly in July and August 1945, certainly when the bombs had dropped,

Hirohito realizes that this militaristic bubble has burst. What do I mean by that? It means that the promises made to him by the army and the navy in particular to bring glory to Japan, to solidify, create and solidify an empire are completely empty. And

And to continue the war, whilst it might be humiliating and it might be against the Japanese national character and what the Japanese call to is their essence, the Japanese essence was integral to their sense of self-worth that needed to be overcome. And only one person could make that decision. Now, it's fascinating, isn't it? Truman was looking at King and MacArthur and saying, these guys can't make the decision. I've got to make the decision. Hirohito actually was doing exactly the same thing. He was looking at...

And he was saying, you guys can't make the decision. You want to continue fighting because as soldiers, you have no alternative but battle. I have to save the Japanese people. It's going to be as humiliating as hell, but it's something only I can do. And in the final days, actually, in which that decision was made, there was an attempted coup in Tokyo and Hirohito actually made that decision.

and bought the water a close. And it's all about casualties.

very, very interesting that Truman now for a moment recognized, given the horror of the area bombing of Japanese cities, and it was horror. I mean, the air crew were talking about it. It was quite extraordinary, quite extraordinary destruction. Even when you're dropping bombs from as high as 30,000 feet, whole swathes, 40% of Japan's seven largest cities were completely destroyed. 40% just sounds like a number. We're talking about very large numbers of people dying.

This would continue if the war continued. So the only alternative here is to apply a few short, sharp atomic shocks in order to force Hirohito's hand. And this is actually the final play of the war. And this is where it all rested. And it rested on this consideration of casualties. Yes, casualties for the Allies, for America in particular, but

By the way, the early plans for downfall didn't involve any of their allies at all. It was an all-American game. British call was only added as an afterthought or after considerable lobbying from London. And consideration by Truman in particular of the number of Japanese casualties who would die. So my point, which I haven't moved from over many years, and I keep on reinforcing it perhaps,

is that many, many Japanese lives and many, many indeed American lives were saved by the atomic bombs. They were ultimately very Clausewitzian. They were political tools that actually brought victory to the Allies, even though they did involve considerable destruction. Less destruction, I might add, than conventional bombs because...

Fewer people were killed by the atomic bombs than were by Curtis LeMay's conventional bombing campaign. This is how wars are brought to an end. It's a very interesting conversation, I think, at the moment in light of what's happening in Ukraine and Israel-Iran. At some stage, these conflicts have to end.

And consideration of casualties, both your own domestic casualties and those of the enemies, fundamental to considerations of how to wrap things up. And I think you can actually very simply do this.

in a conversation that involves Truman and his considerations and Hirohito and his considerations. They both came to the same thing. Continuing on was foolhardiness in the extreme. It's fascinating what you're saying, Rob. I mean, would you even go so far as to say that the dropping of the atomic bomb, certainly the first one, of course, because the timing of the second one is quite interesting. It seems that Hirohito is already moving towards peace in terms of his

his convening of his security council, even before he gets the news of the second one. But does the first one, the shock of the first one, the fact that some, whether they knew it was absolutely an atomic weapon, they knew this was a weapon of extraordinary power. Does that give him the excuse, the jolt, as it were, to allow him to take on

People he knew weren't, you know, entirely finished as far as their opposition to the ending of the war. And that, of course, is his military men. It's exactly right. I mean, it gave him a jolt. I mean, they knew immediately that it was an atomic bomb. I mean, the Japanese had been to had a research program. There are people on the ground on the day who knew that this was an atomic weapon.

And that was part of the shock. You know, there was a very, very profound sense that the Japanese had lost the race to find this wonder weapon that would rule the world. And that was a part of Hirohito, almost absolutely Hirohito's consideration. In Stuart Bin's new book on Japan's war,

against the West, which really places Hirohito right at the center of things, makes this absolutely clear that there was no guarantee that the Japanese would surrender. But actually, the process of bringing Hirohito to a point where he could take on as military man

and persuade them that the end was nigh is critical. Now, I think what people in the West generally don't understand when they look at, even those who have studied Japanese for a long time, is to realize how Japanese politics worked, how Japanese government worked.

because Japanese government didn't work on the Westminster system. Effectively, you had three or four separate power bases all competing amongst themselves for power. And by power, I mean executive power, so authority to do things and spend public money. And they were pulled together on a regular basis by what were known as imperial conferences. And they were kept in order.

by Hirohito basically sitting there as the mediator or the adjudicator between competing discussions about how Japan should be run and how best the empire should be gathered. Now, this process continued through the war. So it's not as though you had a national government making all the decisions. Well, you did, but you had enormous pressure from the lobby groups, Army, Navy, and so on, to do things their own way. This continued all the way up to the end

So the other thing that needs to be borne in mind is that the communication between Tokyo and Washington at this stage was very, very shaky indeed. And the Americans had very little view about what was going on on the other side of the hill. And indeed, it was very hard for the Japanese to get messages out to the Americans.

I think, you know, one of the lessons from this experience in 1945, particularly June, July, August 1945, was the creation of the hotline between Washington and Moscow at the start of the Cold War. A realization that you had to be able to understand what the other guy was thinking when it came down to this sort of challenge.

And in the last few weeks of the war, it was very hard for the Americans to work out what Hirohito was going to do. Hirohito himself, when he did talk to his people, talked to them in a language and in a way of speaking that few people could fully understand. Certainly not Americans. This was a perennial problem through the war.

And that's one of the reasons why the second bomb on Nagasaki was dropped. You know, it has often been said that the second bomb was unnecessary because Hirohito was thinking about surrendering. Surrendering also is the wrong word to use in this context. But that's unfair because we only know that subsequently. The decision makers at the time did not.

Great stuff, Rob. That's absolutely fascinating. We were requested a pod on Operation Downfall and we've delivered thanks to you. So great stuff. We look forward to talking to you again soon. Yeah, same here. Thank you very much indeed, Saul. Well, that's all we have time for. Do join us on Friday for the latest from Ukraine and also next Wednesday for another episode of Battleground 45. Goodbye.

I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. Together we're the co-hosts of another Goal Hanger show called The Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things.

They're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they? I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11. Yeah. But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is alive,

coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of Al Qaeda pretty significantly. I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on Al Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I

There's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of...

strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al-Qaeda is up to. And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and just stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11. If you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.