Words Are Weapons

No U.S. military man now predicted an immediate surrender by Japan: Admiral William F. Halsey's ill-considered 1943 forecast--"Victory This Year"--was not forgotten. But an astonishing number of military men last week joined in a propaganda barrage designed to bring about an early surrender.

Deliberately, they wooed the enemy by talking tough. Potsdam provided the lure; the military men spelled out the harsh alternative. Boomed the big brass:

P: This is "the beginning of the final plunge into the heart of the Empire. . . . If the Nips do not know they are a doomed nation, then they are stupider than I think they are."--Admiral Halsey.

P: "The Japanese . . . are asking for invasion and they are going to get it."--Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford. CJ Redeployment and retraining of U.S. troops will be speeded to permit the delivery of "a single crushing blow. . . . There's no use doing it piecemeal."--General Jacob L. Devers.

P: "The biggest massing of air power the world has ever heard of" will soon throw 7,500 bombers and fighter bombers, and later 10,000 of them, against Japan.--General George C. Kenney.

P: "Japan eventually will be a nation without cities--a nomadic people."--Lieut. General James H. Doolittle.

The Sun & the Wind. With regular broadcasts in Japanese by the Navy's Captain Ellis M. Zacharias, the OWI hoped to persuade the enemy to surrender now and not delay until the situation was "complicated" by other possibilities--obviously a reference to Russian entry into the Pacific war.

This word war had to be waged carefully and cannily, lest the U.S. seem too eager and thus persuade the Japs that they could get better terms by holding out longer. The Japs did their best to convince the U.S. that only soft words would work. Before the Potsdam declaration came out (see INTERNATIONAL) a Tokyo broadcaster blandly counseled the U.S. to watch its words, quoted an old fable: the gentle sun could make a man take off his overcoat more quickly than the strong wind. At Potsdam the U.S. and her Pacific ally, Britain, settled for a strong, hot breeze.

That breeze wafted a remarkable communication to the Japs. In leaflets dropped on Japan, rough, tough Major General Curtis E. LeMay listed eleven cities to be bombed by his B-29s. Then he hit six of the targets. Said LeMay, explaining this propaganda blow: "We feel that if we can convince enough of them that they have nothing to look forward to but total destruction, we may shorten the war. . . . We are telling them where we are going to hit and they can't do anything about it."

Back Talk. The Japs talked back. Premier Suzuki, in his first rejection of the Potsdam terms, spoke of rising aircraft production and of a formidable system of underground airplane factories, connected by "a considerably long underground waterway."

Mindful of Germany's prodigious efforts to go underground, airmen could not entirely dismiss the possibility. But they had the last word: the bombs fell & fell, the invasion armies made ready. Whenever it pleased, the Navy could again train its guns on the Jap homeland. The war of words did not, for one moment, interrupt or slacken the fighting war.

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