Potsdam Declaration

The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945, set out the official U.S.-British-Chinese terms for Japan's surrender at the end of World War II. It is not to be confused with the Potsdam Agreement, which is sometimes referred to in the same way.

The Potsdam Declaration was formulated by U.S. President Harry S. Truman as well as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference and co-signed by Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek by telegraph. It included the following main points:

• (1) Japan should be given a (last) chance to end the war.
• (2-3) Military operations would continue until Japan gave up resistance. The military power that had already devastated Germany would lead to the complete destruction of the Japanese homeland in an immeasurably greater way.
• (4-5) The time had come, he said, when Japan would have to decide whether to continue to follow the military leaders or to follow the path of reason. The Allies would not deviate from their surrender terms.
• (6) The influence and power of the carriers of the Japanese world conquest policy must be eliminated for all time. Only without militarism can peace, security and justice be achieved.
• (7) Until this new order was achieved and the Japanese war apparatus was eliminated, there would be a targeted occupation of Japan by the Allies.
• (8) The conditions of the Cairo Declaration would have to be fulfilled and the sovereignty of Japan would be limited to the four main Japanese islands and smaller ones yet to be designated.
• (9) Japanese forces would be able to return home after being completely disarmed.
• (10) The Japanese people would not be enslaved or destroyed as a nation, but war criminals would be severely punished. Democracy and human rights would have to be established.
• (11) Japan would remain an industrialized country, but without military potential. It would also participate in world trade again.
• (12) The occupation would end once these goals were achieved and a peaceful government supported by the people was established.
• (13) The Allies called on the Japanese government to surrender its forces unconditionally. The alternative was immediate and utter destruction. ("The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.")

The text of the Potsdam Declaration was broadcast over the radio and printed on leaflets dropped over Japan. On July 28, 1945, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki held a press conference and remarked on the Potsdam Declaration that it was only a reprint of the Cairo Declaration. The Japanese government found no substantial news in it. Suzuki used the word mokusatsu (黙殺) in connection with his government's attitude toward the declaration, meaning roughly "to keep silent" or "to leave to the left" (but not "to reject"), thus reflecting a stalling, divided, and indecisive Cabinet attitude on the question of possible surrender. On July 29, a communiqué from the official Japanese press agency translated Domei Tsushin mokusatsu as reject. To the Allied public, this reaction appeared to be unbending, and this impression was not corrected by Japan.

Already on July 21, 1945, President Truman had approved the use of American nuclear weapons. After the policy failed to produce results, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.

The Soviet Union fulfilled its commitment, made at the Yalta Conference, to the day to start war in the Far East 90 days after the end of the war in Europe and to attack both Japan and its allies. After terminating the neutrality pact with Japan on April 5, 1945, the Soviet Union transmitted the declaration of war to Japan on August 8. With Operation August Storm, the Red Army began to occupy Manchuria (respectively the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo) with over a million soldiers. The conquered territory was returned to the Republic of China by the Soviet Union in 1946 in accordance with the Allied war aims (Cairo Declaration).

On August 14, 1945, in view of the hopeless situation, the Tennō decided to issue the Imperial Decree on the End of the War (終戦の詔書, shūsen no shōsho), which recognized the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and was broadcast on the radio (Gyokuon-hōsō) on August 15, 1945. On September 2, the unconditional surrender of Japanese forces was signed with explicit reference to the Potsdam Declaration.