The primary task facing the Nation today is to win
the war in Japan-to win it completely and to win it as quickly as possible.
For every day by which it is shortened means a saving of American lives.
No one can recount the success of the forces of decency
in this war without thinking of the one man who was more responsible
for victory than any other single human being-Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Under his guidance, this great Nation grew to be the
most powerful military force in all history.
Under his leadership, the Allied strategy was developed
which broke down Hitler's fortress, crumbled Germany itself into ruins
and unconditional surrender, and has brought us within striking distance
of Tokyo.
But there can be no peace in the world until the military
power of Japan is destroyed-with the same completeness as was the power
of the European dictators.
To do that, we are now engaged in a process of deploying
millions of our armed forces against Japan in a mass movement of troops
and supplies and weapons over 14,000 miles-a military and naval feat
unequaled in all history.
I think it appropriate at this time to inform the Congress
and my countrymen of some of the problems, difficulties, and dangers
which confront us in finishing this war-and how we expect to meet them.
Those who have the heavy responsibility of directing
the Nation's military efforts do not underestimate the difficulties
of crushing an enemy defended by vast distances and animated by desperate
fanaticism.
And yet, we have adopted what is a new development
in military history. In the face of a conflict with a numerous and fanatical
enemy we have undertaken during the next twelve months to discharge
approximately 2,000,000 of the best soldiers the world has ever seen.
The program for the defeat of Germany was accomplished
with an accuracy seldom attained in war-yet we had but little margin
at the finish. On April 1, 1945 the last American division to arrive
in France entered the battle line.
The strategy of the war in Europe was to have all the
men that could be effectively deployed on land and sea to crush the
German military machine in the shortest possible time.
That is exactly what we plan to do to Japan.
Up to the time of the collapse of Germany the United
States Navy, under the superb leadership of Fleet Admiral King, was
carrying on two great campaigns thousands of miles apart from each other-one
in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific.
These campaigns were distinctly different. The Atlantic
campaign consisted essentially of anti-submarine and amphibious operations.
Even as the war nears the end, our Navy had to cope with a submarine
blitz which was intended to hit our coast in April.
The Pacific campaign has involved to a major degree
all the surface, air, amphibious, and submarine aspect of Naval warfare;
but anti-submarine operations have played only a subordinate role.
At one time in 1943 the United States Navy was employing
over 1,100 planes in its anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and,
in mid-1944, over 900 ocean-going escort vessels.
All of our escort vessels have been, or will be, sent
to the Pacific, except for a very few to be retained in the Atlantic
for training purpose or to meet any remotely possible emergency.
Our Navy, in addition to the miraculous job of convoying
our endless stream of men and materials to Europe, did its full share,
under over-all British naval command, in amphibious operations in that
theater. The use of its landing craft and carriers, and the fire support
of its battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, made possible the landings
in North Africa in 1942, in Sicily and Italy in 1943, and in Normandy
and southern France in 1944.
Even before the invasion of France, some of our Atlantic
naval force had already been sent to the Pacific. After our troops were
firmly established ashore, fighting ships were moved to the Pacific
as rapidly as they could be released from the requirements of the European
and Mediterranean theaters and from anti-submarine warfare: The Japanese
have already felt the presence of those ships-and will continue to feel
it more and more.
In the Pacific the naval campaign has gone through
four major phases.
The first was the defensive of 1941 and of the first
half of 1942, when we fought in the Philippines and the East Indies,
in the Coral Sea, at Midway, and in the Aleutians.
The second was the offensive-defensive in late 1942
at Guadalcanal.
The third was the limited offensive in 1943 when we
advanced slowly through the Solomons and retook the Aleutians.
The fourth was the full offensive of 1944 and 1945
when the forces of the southwest Pacific area under General of the Army
MacArthur and those of the central Pacific area under Fleet Admiral
Nimitz made their great seaborne sweeps to the Philippines and Okinawa.
During this time the Navy has fought four full-scale
sea battles: the Coral Sea, Midway, the Philippine Sea last summer off
Saipan, and the three-pronged battle for Leyte Gulf last October.
The Japanese surface Navy has now been reduced to a
fraction of its former self. We have driven their ships into hiding
and their naval aircraft back to their shore bases.
A large part of this success is due to our present
carrier-based air power, which has permitted us to carry forward, for
many hundreds of miles at a time, the air cover that is needed for a
successful amphibious attack. The carriers that made possible these
enormous strides were laid down in 1940 a year and a half before we
entered the war. Had they not been started then, our fast advances in
the Pacific could not have occurred until much later.
The Japanese merchant marine, in spite of a large program
of building, has now been reduced to less than a quarter of its pre-war
size. In fact we have sunk more Japanese merchant-tonnage than they
had at the time of Pearl Harbor.
For this and for the reduction of the Japanese Navy,
we can thank our submarines, our Army and Navy shore-based aircraft,
and our fast carrier task forces. Today, no enemy ship can proceed between
Japan and her southern conquests without running the most serious risk.
The outstanding feature of the Pacific war-the one
which sets it apart from all previous wars has been the number of the
amphibious operations.
We have constructed a great fleet of special vessels
for this purpose: attack transports, attack cargo ships, landing ships
and landing craft. These ships make it possible to put troops and equipment
ashore on open beaches in the minimum of time.
The Navy has a great share in every amphibious attack.
For instance, one attack which involved landing 45,000 troops required
the use of 125,000 naval personnel. In general it may be said it takes
two to three sailors to put one soldier or Marine ashore. It takes half
a million tons of naval shipping for each division in an amphibious
operation.
The Navy is now engaged in a series of grim tasks:
a battle of attrition with the Japanese Air Force in the waters around
Japan and Okinawa a tightening of the blockade of Japan; redeploying
its own forces from Europe; aiding the Army to redeploy; and preparing
for the climactic operations yet to come.
As we approach the enemy's homeland, the density of
his air power naturally becomes greater and greater. A year and a half
ago, the enemy had more than 5,000 operating airplanes to guard perhaps
eighteen million square miles of area. We could attack wherever we saw
that the defense was thinly spread. Since then, we have reduced his
total air power very much, but the area he is now forced to defend has
been shrunk so much more quickly by our rapid advance that the density
of his air power is four or five times as great as it was.
This means tough fighting in the air. It means the
loss of ships. It means damaged ships that must be replaced or brought
back thousands of miles for repair.
We at home can hardly imagine either the delirium of
Japanese suicide attacks on our troops, airfields, and ships, or the
heroism of our men in meeting them. As we approach the main islands
of the enemy the damage to our ships and the loss of our men are becoming
more severe. In the future we' shall have to expect more damage rather
than less.
In carrying out its future tasks the Navy will need
not only all of its present great fleets, it will need additional vessels.
These vessels are now being built-partly to replace anticipated losses
in future operations and partly to reinforce the fleet for the final
operations it will have to conduct in enemy home waters. The Navy is
deploying all but a handful of its men from Europe to the Pacific. But
unlike the Army, the Navy, after the collapse of Germany, did not have
a surplus of personnel. There can not be even a partial naval demobilization-until
the Japanese are defeated.
The Navy still needs civilian laborers, particularly
in the yards where ships are repaired. Working continuously under the
concentrated air effort of the enemy, the fleet suffers daily damage.
Many vessels have come back wounded in varying degree. To tell the number
would give information to the enemy, but the number is substantial.
The Navy must get these ships back into the fight with the least possible
delay.
We have in our Navy yards the machinery and mechanical
equipment to deal with the mounting load of battle damage. But civilian
workers are needed now in ever-increasing numbers. I know that the patriotic
workers of the Nation will rally to the aid of the Navy in this emergency
as they have rallied in past emergencies. For they know that every day
saved in getting a damaged ship back into service shortens the war and
saves American lives.
In the air, we have shown what America can do with
land-based planes and with carrier-based planes-in strategic bombing
and in tactical bombing.
We are now able in Germany to investigate and examine
the results of our strategic bombing. In spite of the most desperate
resistance of the Luftwaffe and in spite of murderous barrages from
anti-aircraft guns, the American and British air forces smashed at German
industry day after day and night after night until its support of the
German armies caved in.
Our strategic bombardment did a complete and masterly
job of destroying the sources of strength of the German air force and
the German military machine. Our bombers dried up the flow of vital
oil and gasoline supplies not only to the German air force but to the
rest of the German Army and to German industry as well.
We have had experience too-deadly experience for the
Nazis-with our tactical air forces as distinguished from strategic bombing.
They wrecked the bridges and roads, the railroads and canals on which
the German Army counted. Germany's best panzer divisions-entire army
corps, in fact-were immobilized.
The air force of Japan is not as strong an opponent
as the Luftwaffe. Japanese industry is neither as great nor as scattered
as Germany's. The planes we are using and will continue to use against
Japan will be larger in size and more powerful in action than our bombers
in Europe.
Our Army planes and our Navy ships and planes are now
driving Japan out of the air, and when our strategic air force reaches
the Pacific in full might it will demolish the enemy's resources of
production. Our strategic bombardment of Japan is now well beyond its
initial phase. The missions of the Twentieth Air Force are mounting
in size and intensity. Substantial portions of Japan's key industrial
centers have been leveled to the ground in a series of record incendiary
raids. What has already happened to Tokyo will happen to every Japanese
city whose industries feed the Japanese war machine. I urge Japanese
civilians to leave those cities if they wish to save their lives.
Our tactical air forces, experienced and battle-wise,
will soon be ranging over the Japanese homeland from nearby bases.
The Japanese air force will be shattered by our Army
and Navy fliers as surely and relentlessly as the Luftwaffe. The concentration
of Japanese industry, so long an advantage, will now contribute materially
to Japan's downfall.
The Army Air Forces began its redeployment last December
when a heavy bomber group returned to this country from Europe, and
received B-29 training before moving to the Pacific. The following month
a B-25 medium-bomber group came to this country and proceeded, after
training, to fly A-26 attack bombers against the Japanese.
During the last month twenty bombardment groups have
received orders to move from Europe to the Far East by way of the United
States.
Our ground armies, our corps, and our divisions have
followed the best traditions of the American soldier for courage and
skill; and their leadership has been of the uniformly high quality which
results in victory.
The United States has been fortunate in having as the
Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy a man
of so great experience and ability as Fleet Admiral Leahy.
We have also been fortunate in having at the head of
our land and air forces men like General Marshall, General Eisenhower,
General MacArthur, and General Arnold. They have provided the inspiration
and the leadership for all our Army operations.
The American soldier of this war is as brave and as
magnificent as the American soldier has always been. He has the initiative
and ingenuity he has always had. But in this war he is a better soldier
and a more successful soldier than he has ever been before. For in this
war he has gone into battle better trained, better equipped, and better
led than ever before.
In the face of the formidable Nazi hordes which had
secured a stranglehold on western Europe, our armies, shoulder to shoulder
with those of our Allies, forced a landing on the shores of France.
In the short space of eleven months they drove the enemy from France,
Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland and forced him to unconditional surrender
in the heart of his own homeland.
To the south our troops and those of the Allies wrested
North Africa from the Axis, fought a dogged advance through Italy from
Sicily to the Alps, and pinned down a force that otherwise could have
brought substantial aid to the enemy on the eastern and western fronts.
The heroism of our own troops in Europe was matched
by that of the armed forces of the nations that fought by our side.
They and the brave men in the underground movements of the occupied
countries-all gave their blood to wipe the Nazi terror from the face
of the earth. They absorbed the blows of the German military machine
during the many months in which we were building up our expeditionary
forces, and they shared to the full in the ultimate destruction of the
enemy.
The same courage and skill which brought about the
downfall of the Nazis ire being displayed by our soldiers now fighting
in the Pacific. Many of them are veterans of the grim months following
Pearl Harbor.
Since 1942 our Army troops and Marines in the south
Pacific have thrown the enemy back from his furthermost advances in
New Guinea and the Solomons, have traveled 1,500 miles up the New Guinea
coastline, have conquered the Admiralty Islands, Biak, and Morotai.
Meanwhile, Marines and Army troops have been cleaning up in the Solomons
and the Palaus. In October of last year these magnificent achievements
culminated in the landing of our troops in Leyte. Four months later
they freed Manila.
Westward across the central Pacific other Marines and
Army units, in hard-fought battles, have forced the Japanese back four
thousand miles. Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima have been
the stepping-stones. Today Army and Marine divisions are slowly but
steadily sweeping the Japanese from Okinawa.
All of our campaigns in Europe and in the Pacific have
depended on long lines of communications and upon quantities of supply
unheard of in prior warfare. One of the marvels of Allied achievements
has been the organization, guarding, and operation of these world-girdling
supply lines.
For this we have to thank management and labor in our
war industries, our farmers and miners and other Americans-who produced
the equipment and supplies for ourselves and our Allies; the gallant
members of our Merchant Marine-who transported them overseas under the
guns of our Navy; and the men of our Army Service Forces-upon whose
work in clearing ports, rushing up supplies, and constructing roads,
railroads, bridges, highways, and gasoline pipe-lines the fate of battle
often depended.
There are also included in our experience in this war
miracles of saving human life as well as miracles of destruction of
the enemy. Since the invasion of Africa in November 1942, in all our
operations in Europe and in Africa we have lost about 1,600 soldiers
from sickness. In the Civil War the Union forces, never more than a
third as large as our forces in Europe, had 224,000 deaths from sickness.
In the three years since April 1942 the Army forces in the disease-infected
islands of the Pacific lost fewer than 1,400 men from sickness.
Surgery in this war has reduced the percentage of death
from wounds in the Army from 8.25 per cent in the last war to 4 per
cent in this one. This is due to many factors: the high professional
skill of the surgeons and nurses, the availability of blood and blood
plasma, penicillin, and other new miracles of medicine; the devotion
of the Medical Corps men who rescue the wounded under fire, the advanced
position of surgical staffs right up behind the front lines.
Shifting our ground and air strength from Europe to
the Far East presents transportation problems even greater and more
complicated than those involved in the initial deployment of our forces
to all parts of the world. Millions of men and millions of tons of supplies
must be moved half-way around the globe.
The movement of troops from Europe has been swift in
getting under way. They are coming by ship and they are coming by air.
Every day the process of transfer gains momentum.
After the first World War-when the only problem was
getting men home and there was no bitter, powerful enemy left to fight-it
took nearly a year to complete the evacuation of 1,933,156 men. This
time the Army Transportation Corps and the Air Transport Command plan
to move 3,000,000 troops out of Europe before a year passes.
It is not easy to visualize the volume of supplies
that must precede, accompany, and follow the soldiers going from Europe
and the United States into the Pacific. To maintain our forces in Europe
the Army shipped across the Atlantic sixty-eight million tons of equipment
and food-nearly eight times the total shipped in all the first World
War.
Now we must reclaim all of this equipment that is still
serviceable. We must supplement it with new production. And we must
make shipments of comparable size to the Pacific over supply lanes which
are three times as long as those to Europe.
The initial requirement of equipment for each man fighting
against Japan is about six tons, and an additional ton is needed each
month for maintenance.
Finding the ships to transport these supplies is not
the only difficulty. We must continue to develop in the Pacific new
harbors and bases out of practically nothing, install roads, and build
power systems.
Great as these problems of redeployment are, we are
not losing sight of the human aspect in shifting men from one side of
the world to the other. Wherever it can be done without slowing down
the pace of our projected operations in the Pacific, we are deploying
our soldiers by way of the United States so that they may have a chance
to visit their homes and loved ones before they go on to tackle the
Japanese.
On the basis of present estimates, only a small fraction
of the men now in Europe will have to go directly to the Far East without
first stopping off at home.
The remainder of our present European force will go
to the Pacific through the United States, will be assigned to necessary
military duties in this country, will be discharged, or will be kept
in Europe for occupation duty. Most of those who will go directly to
the Pacific are in supply and service units whose presence in the new
theater is essential to the immediate construction of harbors, bases,
communications, and airfields-from which to step up our blows against
Japan.
The Army is mindful that those who come through this
country want to get home with the least possible delay once their ship
docks or their plane lands. Everything is geared for speed to accomplish
this at the air and sea ports. Within twenty-four hours in most cases
they are aboard a train at Government expense bound for one of the nineteen
Army Personnel Centers, where the men immediately eligible for discharge
are separated from those who are destined for further service.
Men who are to remain on active duty are promptly "ordered"
home from the Personnel Center at Government expense, for a period up
to thirty days, plus travel time, for rest and recuperation.
The period spent at home is not charged against the
man's furlough time nor is it classed as leave of absence. It is "temporary
duty," and the soldier draws full pay for the period. His only
instructions are to have the best time he knows how until he reports
back to the Personnel Center. That is what I mean when I say that we
have not forgotten the human side of redeployment.
Relatives and friends of servicemen can do their part
in this program by not crowding around the ports and Personnel Centers
through which the men pass. The men will get home as soon as is humanly
possible. Troop movements on the Nation's railroads will become increasingly
heavy from now on. I ask for full public cooperation in preventing any
aggravation of this burden on domestic transportation, for it would
slow down the rate at which soldiers can be reunited with their loved
ones.
At the same time as we step up the movement of men
and munitions to the Far East, we have been exerting every effort to
increase the number of ships available to return men to this country
for discharge.
Three hundred and sixteen cargo ships are being converted
to help soldiers get out of Europe faster. They are not the most luxurious
ships ever seen, but they will get the men home. In addition, the British
are letting us use their three proudest passenger liners-the Queen Elizabeth,
the Queen Mary, and the Aquitania.
These, added to fifty of our own transport vessels,
800 bombers and transport planes, and such ships as we are able to use
out of the German merchant fleet, will make it possible to bring men
home for discharge without interfering with the main job of transferring
troops and equipment to the war against Japan.
The Army's system for selecting the soldiers for release
to civilian life represents a democratic and fair approach to this most
difficult problem. A poll was taken among enlisted men in all parts
of the world. They were asked what factors they believed should be taken
into consideration in deciding who should be released from the Army
first. More than 90 per cent said that preference should go to those
who had been overseas and in combat longest, and to those with children.
The Army spent two years developing a program of point
credits designed to carry out these views expressed by the soldiers.
It checked and rechecked its program and made comprehensive surveys
in order to make sure that the plan would achieve the objectives.
The system applies equally to the members of our Army
in all parts of the world. It embodies the principle of impartial selection
that we applied in drafting our citizen Army and that we shall continue
to apply in meeting the manpower requirements of our armed forces until
Japan is defeated.
By reducing the strength of the Army from 8,300 000
to 6,968,000 and by maintaining the Army calls on Selective Service
at a level substantially higher than requirements for actual replacements,
it will be possible to restore to their homes during the next year a
total of 2,000,000 officers and men, including those who will leave
because of wounds, sickness, age, and other specific causes, as well
as those who will leave under the point system.
To accomplish this while continuing to be liberal in
the deferment of men thirty years of age and over, it is the Administration's
policy to induct all non-veterans under thirty years of age who can
be replaced and who can qualify for the armed forces. Many of such men
who have thus far been irreplaceable will become available for induction
when the plants in which they are working are cut back or when they
can be replaced from time to time by cut-back-production workers and
returning veterans.
In the three weeks since the point system became effective
2,500 officers and 33,000 enlisted men and women from every theater
of war have received final discharge papers at Army Separation Centers.
During June, 50,000 high-score men are scheduled to leave Europe for
this country, and 33,000 are scheduled to come from the Pacific and
Asia. The great majority of these, a few days after they arrive, will
be civilians again.
Let no one be under the delusion that these discharges
are being authorized because the war is nearing an end or because we
feel the Japanese are easy to beat. They are being made because our
military leaders believe that we can reduce the over-all strength of
our Army at this time without jeopardy to our cause in the Pacific or
to the lives of the men fighting there.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, after consultation with
General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, have decided that our Army can
deliver its heaviest blows in the Pacific and win final victory most
quickly with a strength which a year from now will be about 7,000,000.
By maintaining our Army at this size, we shall be able
to more than double the force we now have in the Pacific and hurl against
the Japanese an overseas force larger than the 3,500,000 men who united
with our Allies to crush the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe.
These are the men who will be carrying the fight to
the enemy, but obviously they cannot operate effectively unless there
are adequate reserve troops in training in the United States, and also
an adequate base from which our advance troops can be supplied and serviced.
:
It is our plan that every physically fit soldier in
the United States who has not yet served overseas be assigned to foreign
duty when he completes his training or, if he is fulfilling an essential
administrative or service job, as soon as he can be replaced by a returning
veteran. This has been the Army's policy since the beginning of the
war. It will be rigidly adhered to in the redeployment period.
If it were not for the overwhelming ascendancy established
by our air and fleet units, we should have to send many more men to
the Pacific than we now intend. The Japanese have more than 4,000,000
troops under arms-a force larger than the Germans were ever able to
put against us on the western front. To back up this Army, they have
several million additional men of military age who have not yet been
called to the colors. We have not yet come up against the main strength
of this Japanese military force. The Japanese Army is organized into
100 combat divisions. Its air force, despite the heavy losses it has
suffered, still comprises over 3,000 combat planes. We are cutting heavily
into Japanese aircraft production through our Superfortress raids, but
Japan remains capable of producing planes at the rate of 1,250 to 1,500
a month.
Army casualties on Okinawa from March 18 to May 29
totaled 3,603 killed and missing and 14,661 wounded. The Marines in
the same period reported 1,889 dead and missing and 8,403 wounded. Navy
and Coast Guard losses were 4,729 killed and missing and 4,640 wounded,
an over-all total for all services of 10,221 killed and missing and
27,704 wounded, Japanese deaths were nearly six times as great as our
own. On May 29 the total of Japanese killed on Okinawa was 61,066.
That is an example of the increasing toughness of this
war as our troops get closer to Tokyo.
It is this kind of fighting we must be prepared for
in our future campaigns. All of our experience indicates that no matter
how hard we hit the enemy from the air or from the sea, the foot soldier
will still have to advance against strongly entrenched and fanatical
troops, through sheer grit and fighting skill, backed up by all the
mechanical superiority in flame-throwers, tanks, and artillery we can
put at his disposal. There is no easy way to win.
Our military policy for the defeat of Japan calls for:
(1) Pinning down the Japanese forces where they now
are and keeping them divided so that they can be destroyed piece by
piece.
(2) Concentrating overwhelming power on each segment
which we attack.
(3) Using ships, aircraft, armor, artillery, and all
other materiel in massive concentrations to gain victory with the smallest
possible loss of life.
(4) Applying relentless and increasing pressure to
the enemy by sea, air, and on the land, so that he cannot rest, reorganize,
or regroup his battered forces or dwindling supplies to meet our next
attack.
Of course the differences between the war in Europe
and the war in the Pacific will cause differences in war production.
The composition of the Army will be different, as will the equipment
issued to troops. There will be changes in strategic plans and in replacement
factors.
Until the expanded pipe-lines for the Pacific war are
filled, and until equipment arrives in substantial amounts from the
European theater, war production must continue at a high rate.
The Navy program will continue on an even keel.
There has been a sharp reduction in the program of
the Army Air Forces.
Similar sharp cuts in the program of supplies for our
ground troops are now being put into effect. Some new items of equipment
will be added. The emphasis will be shifted in others.
Thus, there will be a decreased production in heavy
artillery, artillery ammunition, trucks, tanks, and small arms.
There will be increased production in aircraft bombs,
atabrine, steel barges, wire and insect screening cloth, combat boots,
cotton uniforms, amphibious trucks, raincoats, distillation units, radio
relay units, special railway equipment, and motorized shop equipment.
In a number of important items there will be little
change in demand for ~ indefinite period. These include food, clothing,
petroleum products, lumber, and certain chemicals. It is likely that
all these will remain on the critical list. Leather is tight. So are
textiles. There is a shortage of cotton duck and fabrics for clothing.
The food problem has been accentuated by the steadily increasing numbers
the Army has been called upon to feed.
Accordingly, production for the Japanese war cannot
be taken as a matter of course. It will require a high percentage of
our resources.
War Production Board Chairman Krug has stated that
during the balance of this year, our munitions production will run at
an annual rate of $54,000,000,000, which is almost equal to the rate
of 1943, and more than nine-tenths the rate during the peak of 1944.
With these production objectives before us, we must
not slacken our support of the men who are now preparing for the final
assault on Japan. War production remains the paramount consideration
of our national effort.
These then are our plans for bringing about the unconditional
surrender of Japan. If the Japanese insist on continuing resistance
beyond the point of reason, their country will suffer the same destruction
as Germany. Our blows will destroy their whole modern industrial plant
and organization, which they have built up during the past century and
which they are now devoting to a hopeless cause.
We have no desire or intention to destroy or enslave
the Japanese people. But only surrender can prevent the kind of ruin
which they have seen come to Germany as a result of continued, useless
resistance.
The job ahead for this Nation is clear.
We are faced with a powerful Japanese military machine.
These are the same Japanese who perpetrated the infamous attack on Pearl
Harbor three and one-half years ago; they are the same Japanese who
ordered the death march from Bataan; they are the same Japanese who
carried out the barbarous massacres in Manila.
They now know that their dreams of conquest are shattered.
They no longer boast of dictating peace terms in Washington.
This does not mean, however, that the Japanese have
given up hope. They are depending on America tiring of this war-becoming
weary of the sacrifices it demands. They hope that our desire to see
our soldiers and sailors home again and the temptation to return to
the comforts and profits of peace will force us to settle for some compromise
short of unconditional surrender.
They should know better.
They should realize that this Nation, now at the peak
of its military strength, will not relax, will not weaken in its purpose.
We have the men, the materiel, the skill, the leadership,
the fortitude to achieve total victory.
We have the Allies who will help us to achieve it.
We are resolute in our determination-we will see the fight through to
a complete and victorious finish.
To that end, with the help of God, we shall use every
ounce of our energy and strength.
THE WHITE HOUSE, HARRY
S. TRUMAN
June 1, 1945.