Bank officials tried to put an end to World War II
By MIKIO HARUNA
Kyodo News
A Swedish international financial official, who later became the third
managing director of the International Monetary Fund, engaged in secret
maneuvers to help end World War II from neutral Switzerland at the request of
his Japanese colleagues, declassified documents from Princeton University
show.
In July 1945, Per Jacobsson, a senior official at the Basel-based Bank for
International Settlements, secretly approached Allen Dulles, an official in
the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, to act as a mediator between Japan and
the United States.
Despite Dulles' reports on Japanese proposals to then U.S. Secretary of War
Henry Stimson, negotiation efforts failed partly because Kojiro Kitamura and
Kan Yoshimura, Jacobsson's BIS colleagues who requested the discussions, were
deemed noninfluential with the Japanese government.
Kitamura, then Japanese director of the BIS, and Yoshimura, head of the
bank's foreign exchange department, launched the covert plan while
maintaining contact with Shunichi Kase, then envoy to Switzerland.
Kitamura and Yoshimura held intense talks with Jacobsson from July 10 to 13,
according to the documents from the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at
Princeton University in New Jersey.
The talks resulted in the compilation of Kitamura's proposal that the
Imperial family be secured and the Constitution of the Empire of Japan,
promulgated in 1889, be preserved. Dubbed the Meiji Constitution, it referred
to the nation's emperor as "sacred and inviolable."
Jacobsson compiled a report of the discussions in a memorandum to Dulles.
Jacobsson reported that he insisted no negotiations would be possible without
Japan's unconditional surrender. He also proposed that Japan release half a
dozen imprisoned U.S. soldiers and prisoners of war over the age of 45 as a
move of "good faith."
In the memo, the Swedish official also said he told his Japanese colleagues
that although he thought the Allied Forces did not want to oust the Japanese
Imperial family, it would be difficult to obtain a statement confirming that
thought, which could only be issued by U.S. President Harry Truman and
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
According to Kitamura's proposal, he and Yoshimura were trying to sound out
Truman's personal opinion about the status of the Imperial family and the
Constitution should Japan agree to an unconditional surrender.
Following the talks, Jacobsson traveled to Wiesbaden, Germany, on July 14 to
15 and handed the documents to Dulles, who had been touted for his success in
striking a peace deal with German forces in northern Italy in March 1945.
Meanwhile, the OSS, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency, had
received information that proved to be disadvantageous to the secret
negotiations. According to a declassified OSS document, an agent said that
Kitamura was "putting out a trial balloon without much authority or backing."
"He has been away from his home too long to carry much weight there. Further,
I doubt whether a financial man would be given much of a hearing today in
that particular country," the agent wrote.
At the time, the Japanese government was giving top priority to its talks
with the Soviet Union, with which Japan signed a neutrality pact in 1941.
Japan wanted the Soviets to act as an intermediary in any peace deal between
Japan and the Allied Forces.
But Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had promised the Allies that the Soviet Union
would attack Japan within 90 days of the surrender of Germany.
Germany surrendered to the Allies in May 1945, and the Soviet Union declared
war on Japan on Aug. 8 that year.
Dulles traveled to Potsdam in eastern Germany on July 20 and relayed the
proposals from Kitamura and Yoshimura to Allied leaders gathered to discuss
how to end the war, according to the documents.
But in a statement of personal impressions dated July 15, Dulles questions
the credibility of the two Japanese financial officials in the eyes of their
government.
In the end, he did not receive a reply to the proposals from Stimson in
Potsdam. He later wrote he did not expect an answer as Stimson could not make
the decision alone.
Overall efforts to stop the war on the Pacific theater hit a snag after the
Potsdam Declaration was issued July 26, in which the Allied countries
demanded the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Dulles, who later headed the CIA, wrote in the foreword to a report on
Jacobsson's role in surrender negotiations with Japan that when he met with
Stimson on July 20, he did not know the U.S. had successfully tested an
atomic bomb July 16 and planned to drop one on Hiroshima on Aug. 6.
"One wonders whether, if the Japanese negotiators had come a little earlier
and had been more clearly authorized to speak for their government, that
explosion would have taken place," he wrote.
The Japan Times: Aug. 9, 2000
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