My Testimony Concerning the World War II Japanese Surrender Offer
By Michael Hoffman
During the observation of the 75th anniversary of the atomic incineration holocaust of Hiroshima, the corporate media have been circulating various allegations that the Japanese had not attempted to surrender prior to the bombing.
One of these disgraceful justifications for the American government’s Machiavellian extermination of Japanese civilians is titled, "Back to Hiroshima: Why Dropping the Bomb Saved Ten Million Lives."
The following is my testimony.
The problem with the claims that the Japanese were not going to surrender is that they contradict first person testimony.
Walter Trohan, White House correspondent and Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune
In the course of my career in journalism I was privileged to come to know Walter Trohan, a star reporter for the Colonel R.R. McCormack newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. He was its Washington bureau chief. Mr. Trohan covered the White House and had known and interviewed every president from FDR to Nixon.
In a conversation with Walter Trohan, he told me about information disclosed to him by FDR’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, who served in the same position under President Truman.
As early as 1943 Leahy informed Trohan that the White House was receiving peace feelers from the Japanese and a surrender offer, predicated on the exemption of the Emperor from any punishment or incarceration.
Leahy also told Walter that if he printed those facts before the war ended he would be imprisoned.
One week after the Japanese surrendered, the account of Japan’s surrender offer was published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.
In his memoirs, published in 1950, Admiral Leahy wrote that prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs:
"The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Few people were in a better position to know.
Few people were in a better position to know.
Attempting to justify the deliberate mass murder of men, women and children establishes one of the most frightening, depressing and barbaric precedents for future wars. What is more, the justification furnished — that Japan adamantly refused any surrender terms prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocausts — is a pathetic, flimsy lie.
[59]
HESS: Speaking of General MacArthur, what was your reaction to the firing, or to the dismissal of General MacArthur?
TROHAN: To tell you the truth, I was flabbergasted because I didn't think he (Truman) would do it. I didn't see how he could do it, because he had in the White House Admiral [William D.] Leahy, his aide and Mr. Roosevelt's top military
[60]
advisor, and Leahy was very high on MacArthur. He said MacArthur was our greatest general, not excepting Robert E. Lee. I didn't see how Truman could fire him.
MacArthur was a hell of a guy, because he pulled that Inchon landing, you remember, and got back in behind the enemy and he was running here, there, and every place doing a terrific job. He was doing a great job in Japan and I just couldn't believe that Mr. Truman would fire him. However, Mr. Truman got the idea, rightly or wrongly, that MacArthur was considering himself bigger than he was and he had to remove him. He felt that he must do it. And I will say for him it took courage when he did it. I don't agree with it even to this day.
HESS: You think it was an error?
TROHAN: I think he -- see, I think -- unlike most of my colleagues who think that Mr. Truman's going down as the greatest President of this time -- I do not. And I'll tell you why I do not. One, is the firing of MacArthur which I think is going to be held to be a mistake, they should have left him in there and they should have let him win that one and we wouldn't have this one (the war) in Vietnam. Also the other
[61]
one (there's no malice on this on my part), he dropped that pineapple on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and we've got...
HESS: What's your opinion on that?
TROHAN: We've got ourselves a guilt complex about that and always will have and we will not make a great man out of Mr. Truman because of that. I don't think he should have dropped that bomb.
End quote
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