Great War Ends! Japs Will Surrender to Gen. M'Arthur-- Part 3: Not So Easy

On August 10, 1945, the day after the Nagasaki bombing, Col. William Black was telling a reporter that he and his men were headed to what was expected to be an especially bloody campaign when a troopship's loudspeaker announced that Japan had surrendered.  Black told the reporter, "Scratch that line out about redeployment.  Make it read, 'We have been reprieved.'"

That surrender news proved a bit premature.  President Truman had warned the Japanese that if they didn't surrender right away, other Japanese cities would suffer a similar fate.

Japan and the U.S. had differing ideas as to what the surrender entailed.  And messages between the two governments had to pass through quite a series of hoops.  U.S. response to Japan's offer was transmitted by the Radio Corporation of America to neutral Switzerland where it was decoded, given to Swiss authorities, who handed it over to Japanese diplomats, who recoded it and radioed it to the foreign office in Tokyo.

The American public was kept in the dark about what was happening the whole time.

--GreGen