Attention, Tokyo!

Unconditional surrender--the victory theme of the U.S. and her Allies since 1943--was replaced last week by a more daring formula for ending the war with Japan.

Loser's Choice. From Potsdam to Tokyo went a declaration (by the U.S., Britain and China) offering concrete, unalterable terms upon which Japan could end the war. The phrase "unconditional surrender" was still used. But it applied only to the armies in the field. The terms were for the nation. Their gist:

P: Defeated Japan could have industries, but not a war industry.

P: She could have a government, but not a government of militarists.

P: She could have a home--the four main islands, and such little ones as the Allies might let her keep--but not a Greater East Asia.

On some critical points the Potsdam declaration was deliberately incomplete:

P: The occupation of Japan need not follow the German pattern. But the declaration's promises to limit occupation to "points designated by the Allies" obviously could mean anything: Tokyo alone, or every city and hamlet in Japan. The significant provisions were that 1) there would be an occupation; 2) it would end as soon as Japan had effectively disarmed and had established a peaceful government.

P: All mention of the Emperor was omitted, possibly because the Allies are still debating what to do with him; possibly to suggest that his fate and that of the peculiar institution he represents will depend on how the throne's influence is exerted now.

With iron logic, the declaration also described the only alternative: invasion and "the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." All in all, the terms added up to a hard peace but not to a ruthless one. In population, living standards, sovereignty and trade, the Japan they envisioned would not be inferior to the Japan of two generations ago.

Decline of a Slogan. The declaration was the work of a Big Three meeting. But it was not a Big Three document. It was, above all, a U.S. document.

Chiang Kai-shek read it in Chungking and approved it. Winston Churchill worked on it and signed it in Potsdam while he was still Prime Minister; Clement Attlee, prudently included in the early Potsdam meetings, approved it before he had any authority to sign it. Joseph Stalin, nominally neutral in the Pacific war, did not sign the declaration, but he undoubtedly gave it a look and a nod.

The signature that really counted was that of President Harry S. Truman, successor to unconditional surrender's principal advocate. How had a U. S. President come to ditch the guiding war principle of another President? The story of unconditional surrender's rise and decline was one of the most meaningful stories of World War II.

For Want of Another. Franklin Roosevelt proposed, and Winston Churchill reluctantly accepted, unconditional surrender as the Allies' one & only offer to the enemy when the United Nations were much less united than they later became. That was at Casablanca in January 1943. Even then the British felt that some less rigid approach to Germany might have paid.

But unconditional surrender served one all-important purpose: it spiked every German effort to divide Russia and the Western Allies. Furthermore, it was a handy and possibly a necessary substitute for specific aims and terms, at a time when the Allies had no common aims beyond defeating the enemy.

Experience demonstrated that unconditional surrender had more meaning as a slogan than as a practical rule at the point of victory. Italy's surrender was based on specific conditions (still secret). Even Germany's surrender, when victors and losers got down to cases at Reims and Berlin, entailed some immediate terms.

The Japanese war was heading for a similar conclusion: the Potsdam declaration set forth terms that are conditions of surrender. By the time the declaration appeared, unconditional surrender was more a habit of thought -- or an excuse for avoiding thought -- than anything else.

The Schools. But finding a more subtle and promising device was easier said than done. On aims, and on basic, long-range strategy in the Pacific, two schools of diplomats and military men were fighting their own war in Washington. Until recently, the cleavage cut through both the State and Navy Departments.

Group No. 1, which included many naval and foreign service officers with experience in Japan, argued that much of Japan's strength came from conquered areas on the Asiatic mainland and the southern islands. This school argued that invasion of Japan proper might be both costly and inconclusive; it would be better just to pull Japan's teeth by liberating the conquered areas, leave Japan alone. (The fringe of this group put their fears of a war with Russia ahead of the actual war with Japan, wanted to preserve a counterbalance.)

Group No. 2 argued that Japan, even if she were stripped down to the home islands, would still be the only integrated, industrialized nation in the hemisphere between the Rockies and the Himalayas capable of waging large-scale modern war. This school therefore insisted on the indefinite occupation of Japan, with complete deindustrialization and reorganization of Japanese society. (The fringe of this group wanted to kill 70,000,000 Japs.)

Most of this debate raged in off-the-record secrecy, keeping the names of the disputants from both the Japs and the U.S. public. But a corollary of the argument was a public spectacle: the row over what to do with the Emperor. Undersecretary of State Joseph C. Grew, long the none-too-clairvoyant U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo, was indelibly identified in most people's minds as a keep-the-Emperor man (although he insisted that his view was not so simple).

Grew's longtime confidant and former Embassy counselor, Eugene H. Dooman, was also in the thick of things and had long since been marked down in Washington as a soft-peace man. Just how the Grew-Dooman school had fared in the

Potsdam declaration would not be known until the meaning of some of its vaguer phrases and omissions was cleared up.

Rivers of History. A few weeks ago, the mental and political logjam broke. It was as though the rivers of history had suddenly come to full flood and converged on a single point: an opportunity to win the war completely, yet end it soon, existed and ought to be exploited. There was nothing to lose; much might be gained. The pace of the war and a clearer understanding of its meaning largely quieted the battle in Washington.

Those who were dubious of invasion's costs and rewards realized that Japan was being as thoroughly softened as any modern power could be. Those who staked everything on the complete reduction of Japan realized that in any case the most significant development of the war had utterly changed the face of the Orient: the U.S. was already, and unquestionably would continue to be, a power in Asia and the far Pacific.

In great force, the U.S. was permanently installed on islands just off the Japanese coasts, and East Asia could never again be a one-power area. China's development, and Russia's emergence in Asia, double-riveted this certainty.

The press burst into a rash of reports that Japan had submitted definite peace proposals. The reports were denied. But, playing up the denials, the press often obscured the vital fact: Japanese officialdom was thinking of peace, discussing the possibilities, and seeing to it that this state of mind was made known to Washington, Moscow, London.

Schools in Tokyo. A flood of information--some good, some bad--poured into Allied capitals from Tokyo. According to the best of these accounts, carefully conveyed to Washington (and probably to watchful Moscow) through "a neutral channel":

P: The principal advocates of peace were the Admirals without a navy. Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, an old-school "kimono liberal" and new Navy Minister, was their logical spokesman.

P: The politicians in Premier Kantaro Suzuki's Cabinet, which is dominated by the military, could see ruin's approach as well as anyone, and they too wanted peace. But they either would not or could not bid for it on any terms conceivably acceptable to the U.S.

P: General Kuniaki Koiso's Army faction, still stronger than any other, was the principal (and potent) bar to actual peace overtures. With facts to back them up, the Army men reasoned that despite everything they still had at least 5,000,000 men wellarmed, undefeated, and prepared to fight to the very last.

The First Reaction. Nobody expected the Japanese to answer "Yes" as soon as they saw the Potsdam terms. Truman's statesmanlike move was intended to recapture the political initiative, not to win the war in an afternoon.

Highly significant was publication of the message in Japanese newspapers. Perhaps still more significant was the fact that the Jap Cabinet met for two hours at Premier Suzuki's home to discuss the Potsdam declaration. Said Premier Suzuki, belying his own words: "So far as the Imperial Government of Japan is concerned, it will take no notice of this proclamation."

The professional extremist, General Jiro Minami, head of the Political Association of Great Japan, also found the Potsdam terms "exactly contrary" to what he wanted. He scorned the offer, admitted Japan might be beaten.

But the seed had been planted. It could not be overlooked by such Big Business spokesmen as Munitions Minister Teijiro Toyoda, a Mitsui man. The Potsdam declaration invited him and his friends to take a practical look at what would be left of their properties if the homeland was invaded.

Job for a Zombie? At the least, the declaration was bound to widen war fissures in Japanese life and politics, encourage the groups who want a peace of survival.

Ken Murayama, a Japanese newsman recently captured in the Philippines, thought that Japan was ripe for surrender. He said that the man picked to arrange it was an almost forgotten political zombie, Admiral and former Premier Keisuke Okada.

In the 1936 young officers' revolt, sake-swilling Okada saved his life by attending his own funeral. His brother-in-law, murdered by mistake, was buried as Okada, and assassins stopped looking for the Premier. Okada politely thanked all who sent condolences, resigned as Premier, returned to his sake and his chrysanthemums.

Later, if not now, some Jap like Okada would have to emerge and show Japan the way to the end. That man might remind the Japanese of one of their proverbs: "To be beaten is to win."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.