Early Jap Surrender “Smothered” by Soviet Says U.S. Army Officer

Grey River Argus, 30 June 1947, Page 2

Early Jap Surrender “Smothered” by Soviet Says U.S. Army Officer

NEW YORK, June 22.

Reporting on “incredible facts’’ in the “Foreign Service” magazine, Colonel Bonners Fellers, former military secretary of General MacArthur claimed that duringthe six months before the end of the Pacific war, Russia repeatedly received surrender bids from Japan, but killed them by “extortionate demands” because the Soviet wanted to achieve a dominant position in the post-war Orient.

Colonel Fellers says: “Russia repeatedly rejected the Japanese overtures for peace with the Allies —with Russia acting as intermediary—as long as six months before Japan’s surrender. Coldly and in her own self-interest, Russia was determined to obtain a dominant position in the Orient, both territorially and politically, and to implement, this determination, she planned to enter the war at the time most 'favourable to her.

“Through • official interrogation of Hirohito’s Cabinet and other highlyplaced Japanese and through the Emperor’s own personal story, I learned that Russia smothered the Japanese surrender moves throughout the winter and late spring of 1945 by extortionate demands, simply as a fee for acting as an intermediary between Japan and the United States. Russia in July again blocked an attempt at capitulation by failing to receive Prince Konoye as an official envoy from the Emperor with authority to surrender and negotiate a peace.” Colonel Fellers says: “Hirohito’s repeated attempts at peace show clearly that the atom bomb neither induced his decision to • surrender nor did it have any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war.”