Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan [Hardcover]

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2005

With startling revelations, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of World War II in the Pacific. By fully integrating the three key actors in the story--the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan--Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective.

From April 1945, when Stalin broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and Harry Truman assumed the presidency, to the final Soviet military actions against Japan, Hasegawa brings to light the real reasons Japan surrendered. From Washington to Moscow to Tokyo and back again, he shows us a high-stakes diplomatic game as Truman and Stalin sought to outmaneuver each other in forcing Japan's surrender; as Stalin dangled mediation offers to Japan while secretly preparing to fight in the Pacific; as Tokyo peace advocates desperately tried to stave off a war party determined to mount a last-ditch defense; and as the Americans struggled to balance their competing interests of ending the war with Japan and preventing the Soviets from expanding into the Pacific.

Authoritative and engrossing, Racing the Enemy puts the final days of World War II into a whole new light.

(20050515)

Editorial Reviews

Review

The long debate among historians about American motives and Japanese efforts at ending World War II is finally resolved in Racing the Enemy, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's brilliant and definitive study of American, Soviet and Japanese records of the last weeks of the war. (Richard Rhodes New York Times Book Review 20050805)

Without doubt the best-informed book in English on Japanese and Soviet manoeuvres in the summer of 1945...[Hasegawa] provides an international context sorely missing from most previous work. He has mined Japanese and Russian literature and documentation and, despite much that is based on surmise, provides fresh insight into the extraordinary inability of Japanese leaders to surrender, and into Stalin's machinations aimed at maximizing Soviet territorial gains in East Asia. (Warren I. Cohen Times Literary Supplement 20050807)

A landmark book that brilliantly examines a crucial moment in 20th-century history...[An] important, enlightening, and unsettling book. (Jonathan Rosenberg Christian Science Monitor 20060629)

The most comprehensive study yet undertaken of Japanese documentary sources. The highly praised study argues that the atomic bomb played only a secondary role in Japan's decision to surrender. By far the most important factor, Hasegawa finds, was the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing. (Gar Alperovitz Philadelphia Inquirer )

One of the first to make a detailed study of the political interplay among the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States in 1945. (Alex Kingsbury U.S. News and World Report )

As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, Racing the Enemy--and many other historians have long argued--it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final 'shock' that led to Japan's capitulation. (Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Los Angeles Times )

[Racing the Enemy] might be called the definitive analysis of the U.S. decision to use atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has mined both Japanese and Soviet sources to produce the first truly international study of the Hiroshima decision. (Errol MacGregor Clauss Winston-Salem Journal )

Managing to convey the thought processes, assumptions and biases of the Imperial elite is Hasegawa's greatest achievement...Hasegawa's story is a weird, compelling one, and his case for revising our view of the leadup to VJ Day is overwhelming. (John Dolan The Exile )

Hasegawa's study provides the most comprehensive examination yet published on the international factors that shaped the decision-making processes and policies adopted in Washington, Moscow, Potsdam and Tokyo, and which ultimately contributed to Japan's surrender in 1945. Racing the Enemy provides a fresh and multi-faceted perspective on a well studied topic primarily because the author draws on information from Russian, Japanese and American archives and sources. While this study both complements and challenges the well-informed findings of Asada Sadao, Robert Butow, Richard Frank and Leon Sigal, the international framework in which Hasegawa places the surrender of Japan makes this book a compelling read for students and scholars alike. (J. Charles Schencking Pacific Affairs )

Will we ever really know why Japan surrendered in World War II? In this judicious and meticulously researched study of the endgame of the conflict, [Hasegawa] internationalizes (by a thorough look at American, Japanese, and Soviet literature and archives) the diplomatic and political maneuvering that led to Japanese capitulation...No study has yet to bundle together the myriad works on the war's end in such a complete manner...This work should become standard reading for scholars of World War II and American diplomacy. (Thomas Zeiler American Historical Review )

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy is a splendid book--the first to examine the end of the Second World War in the Asia Pacific from a comprehensive, international perspective. Based on archival and published materials in Russian, English, and Japanese, it provides a gripping account of the complex diplomatic maneuvers and political battles that culminated in the tumultuous events of August 1945...Hasegawa has written the first truly international history of the end of the Pacific War. By bringing hitherto separate literatures together into a much-needed dialogue, he has recast the contours of the whole debate. Racing the Enemy will remain essential reading for students of foreign policy and international history for many years to come. (Anno Tadashi Monumenta Nipponica )

This book is a well-researched and provocative analysis of a fascinating yet neglected aspect of World War II: the American public's conventional assumption is that Japan surrendered to the Allies because of American atomic bombs...Hasegawa's conclusion raises tempting hypothetical questions for further research of this topic, and he provides intriguing answers to them. (Sean Savage Historian )

Review

Racing the Enemy is a tour de force -a lucid, balanced, multi-archival, myth-shattering analysis of the turbulent end of World War II. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa sheds fascinating new light on fiercely debated issues including the U.S.-Soviet end game in Asia, the American decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's frantic response to the double shock of nuclear devastation and the Soviet Union's abrupt declaration of war. (John W. Dower, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II 20050819)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press; 1st edition (May 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674016939
• ISBN-13: 978-0674016934
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #941,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good and Somewhat Controversial, August 21, 2005

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Hardcover)

This is a well written and documented attempt to produce a comprehensive account of Japan's decision to seek peace at the end of WWII. This includes the controversial topic of the importance of American use of nuclear weapons. Since at least one prior reviewer has used the "R" (revisionism) word, let me begin with with some brief historiographic background. Revisionism, unfortunately, is one of those words that has lost specific meaning and become a term of abuse. Any substantial work of historical scholarship presenting new information or a substantial new interpretation, like this one, is revisionist by definition and the mere fact that the author has a new point of view is not an excuse to fling abuse. In the debate over the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, revisionism has a concrete, specific connontation. It is used usually to refer to the work of historians like Gar Alperovits and others who argue that the use of nuclear weapons was unecesary, that the Truman administration knew this, and that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union. In this interpretation, the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was the opening salvo of the Cold War, not the conclusion of WWII. Hasegawa is definitely not in this camp and politely, but firmly, consigns the revisionist consigns the revisionist camp to the trash can. The Truman administration employed nuclear weapons with the primary purpose of bringing the war to an end as fast as possible.
The strengths of this book are Hasegawa's description and analysis of the role of the Soviet Union and his attention to the role played by figures, both in Tokyo and Washington, usually regarded as secondary figures. Hasegawa's interpretation is based in part of novel archival research. An important point of departure from what might be called the triumphalist American version that implicitly treats the American decisions as decisive and the Japanese role as essentially reactive. Hasegawa takes pains to emphasize the autonomy of Japanese decision makers. This is not novel. Richard Frank, in his excellent book Downfall, which covers much of the same ground, makes the same point and also emphasizes the autonomy of the Japanese leadership. Hasegawa goes farther than Frank with his extensive description of Soviet diplomacy and the impact of the Soviet decision to enter the war on the Japanese decision to capitulate. Hasegawa makes a strong case that both the Soviet entry and the American use of nuclear weapons were crucial factors in deliberations of the Japanese leadership to end the war. I found this aspect of the book convincing and I think the likely conclusion is that use of nuclear weapons with necessary but probably not sufficient to coerce the Japanese leadership to surrender. In the most controversial aspect of the book, Hasegawa argues that Soviet entry may well have been necessary and sufficient, and that use of nuclear weapons was not needed. This is a major point of difference with Frank, who sees use of nuclear weapons as decisive though he also discusses the importance of the Soviet entry. Hasegawa and Frank's disagreement centers on interpretation of a relatively small number of documents and it is impossible to be sure which is correct, though I find Frank's analysis more convincing. Hasegawa has interesting treatment of the Truman administration, which he presents has more uncertain and divided than usually thought. There is a lot of useful information in these sections of the book. Truman, who had been largely excluded from foreign policy during Roosevelt's life, is presented as periodically indecisive.
An important theme of Hasegawa's interpretation is that the American were willing and did use to bomb to avoid Soviet participation in the occupation of Japan. This is presented reasonably well, but I don't think that Hasegawa does as well as Frank in presenting the secondary reasons why the Truman administration wanted to end the war as quickly as possible. Certainly, they wanted to end the war without an invasion of the home islands. But, they also didn't want to take over a Japan in a state of chaos or given the Soviet behavior in Poland, share occupation with the Soviets. American policy objectives were just not to win the war but to sustain a lasting peace. Occupying a Japan with a functioning cooperative government and without a divided occupation were important goals. Nor, given the clearly duplicitious and aggressive behavior of the Soviets, was it irrational to use the bomb rather than wait to see what would happen after Soviet entry into the war. The Truman administration wanted to conclude the war with a minimum of casulties, to ease the occupation, to eliminate Japanese militarism and imperialism, to be able to democratize Japan, to make Japan a permanent US ally, and to ensure that Japan became an important member of the world economy. These objectives might have been accomplished with different decisions but its hard to argue with the remarkable results obtained by Truman and his advisors.

63 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate guide to the end of WWII in East Asia, June 4, 2005

By 

Kurt F. Lambert (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Hardcover)

A brilliant analysis that not only fills in the many blank spots that existed with regard to the end of the war in the PTO, but also for the first time offers a complete and concise narrative of the decision making process simultaniously going on at all three major players. Hasegawa convincingly argues that it were not the atomic bombs that made Japan surrender (they were even resigned to receiving more of the same - testament to the effectiveness of LeMay's conventional bombing campaign, which in Tokyo alone killed more people in one night than died at Hiroshima ), but the prospect of Soviet occupation and the specter of communism. Faced with that alternative, the emperor rather preferred to surrender to the Americans.
Truman tried to keep the Soviets out by dropping the bombs early but failed to appreciate that a modification of the unconditional surrender terms regarding the status of the emperor might have accelerated Japan'surrender more than the bombs would do.
A must read for anyone interested in the history of WWII and/or the atomic bomb.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study, March 28, 2006

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T. Kunikov (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Hardcover)

I was quite surprised to find a lot of interesting information in this book that I had no idea about. I am not very familiar with the pacific campaign in WWII nor about the political complications that existed between the three/four parties mentioned in this book, but in the end I'm very please I read this book and have a new outlook on the Soviet involvement with the end of the war in the pacific. While many like to believe that the two A-bombs were the main reason for Japan's surrender and acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation the reality of the matter is that the Soviet entry into the war played the largest role. Reactions in Japanese high officials diaries attest to the fact that while the A-bomb was a surprise the invasion of Japanese controlled territory by Soviet forces was a great surprise and the event that finally forced the Japanese to rethink their stance in the war. Even after both A-bombs were dropped there were still those in Japan that wanted to keep fighting but the fact that they could no longer negotiate through the Soviet Union made them reconsider and listen to those who wanted peace at whatever price. All in all a good investment for a new point of view on the war in the pacific and a very interesting and gripping story of how the war came to an end and what role(s) Roosevelt, Truman, Stalin, Hirohito, and many others played.