Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 11, 1993 TAG: 9308110103
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The documents depict an enormous and previously unknown American intelligence effort in which the origins of the Cold War can be seen, like a photograph beginning to develop.
The 800 pages of intercepted communications from 1945 were released to a historian as a result of a lawsuit filed against the National Security Agency, the principal U.S. surveillance and communications-interception agency.
For example, American intelligence officers read the private communications of the French leader, Gen. Charles de Gaulle. They came to understand France's fury at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's refusal to support its wish to rule Indochina. After Roosevelt died, the United States gave its blessing to France's return to Indochina, in large part to win French solidarity against the Soviet Union.
The documents also show that the United States had information suggesting that top members of the Japanese army were willing to surrender more than three months before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 48 years ago.
"Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard," a German diplomat reported to Berlin after talking with a ranking Japanese naval officer on May 5, 1945, three days before Germany itself surrendered.
U.S. intelligence analysts underscored this information as they passed it up the chain of command, the records show.
The question of whether the atomic bombs were necessary to end World War II in the Pacific is the subject of unending debate among historians. Many U.S. officials believed that the alternative was an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
The historian who filed suit to obtain the documents is Gar Alperovitz, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington who has argued that political considerations overwhelmed military imperatives in the decision to use the atomic bomb.
by CNB