No. 1258
Press Conference Statement by
Prime Minister Suzuki1
Premier Suzuki, at his press conference held at his Official Residence at 3 p.m. July 28, which lasted about an hour, answered questions on various government policies taken at this decisive stage of the war and expressed strong conviction of sure Japanese victory.
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(Question): “What is the Premier’s view regarding the Joint Proclamation by the three countries?”
(Answer): “I believe the Joint Proclamation by the three countries is nothing but a rehash of the Cairo Declaration. As for the Government, it does not find any important value in it, and there is no other recourse but to ignore it entirely2 and resolutely fight for the successful conclusion of this war.”
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Printed from “Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Monday, July 30, 1945” (Washington, Federal Communications Commission, Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, mimeographed, 1945), pp. BC 1–2. The extracts here printed are a translation of portions of a Domei transmission in romaji carried by Radio Tokyo’s Greater East Asia service at 3 a.m., Eastern War Time, July 29, as monitored by the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.
This statement is apparently the Japanese rejection of the Potsdam Proclamation to which Truman referred in his statement of August 6 (document No. 1315). Cf. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, p. 263; Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, p. 625. The passage cited in Stimson and Bundy suggests that Stimson had seen a somewhat different English version of Suzuki’s statement, containing the phrase “unworthy of public notice”.
↩ - The Japanese word used here was mokusatsu. For discussions as to whether Suzuki intended to reject the Proclamation by the use of this word, see William J. Coughlin, “The Great Mokusatsu Mistake: Was This the Deadliest Error of Our Time?” in Harper’s Magazine, March 1953, p. 31, and Robert J. C. Butow, Japan’s Decision To Surrender (Stanford, 1954), pp. 145–147.↩