Word: suzuki
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...have been defeated. Cut off without hope of relief, often half-starved, with few officers left, some enemy enlisted men decide to live.* There was no sign yet that any large number of enemy troops would be ready to surrender until total national defeat was upon them. And Premier Suzuki was intensifying his efforts to pump the savage military code of Bushido into civilians at home, men and women alike...
Japan's aged (77) Premier Kantaro Suzuki shuffled through a round of desperate political activity. One day he sat through a five-hour emergency session of his Cabinet. The same day he talked long and earnestly with flinty General Jiro Minami, boss of the ultra-totalitarian Political Association of Great Japan. Then he doddered on across the moat of the partly burned Palace to bow low before Emperor Hirohito and make a respectful report. At the Meiji and Yasakuni shrines he prayed for the destruction of his country's enemies. Finally, with the Emperor looking on, he stood...
...drive for a negotiated peace, launched about two months ago, had stalled against U.S. insistence on unconditional surrender. Apparently the militarist rulers of Japan, though they might be willing to part with most of their conquests in Asia, would not accept a surrender that meant their end. Apparently Premier Suzuki's words spelled out their determination to gird the nation for a hara-kiri resistance...
Japan was appalled. By Tokyo's account, Premier Kantaro Suzuki "saw with his own eyes" how flames had hit the sanctified preserve, hastened to apologize to the Emperor for the "inexcusable outrage," then called an extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet and issued a "reverent statement relative to the burning of the Imperial Palace." Other broadcasts wailed that "the greater part of metropolitan Tokyo" was "literally scorched to the ground." To the Japanese people Suzuki sadly announced: "Our beautiful capital must be completely replanned from a bare start...
Crucial Question. Clearly, the Japanese mind does not want a change. Rumors of peace bids by Tokyo have been flooding Allied capitals. One, emanating last week from London, reported the Suzuki Government willing to disgorge all Japanese conquests except Korea; in return, there must be no Allied occupation of the main Japanese islands, and presumably no interference with the Shinto system...