Mushroom
Gold Member
Potsdam decree was a decree signed by Russia, America and Britain that called for Japan's immediate surrender or Japan would face utter annihilation, a hint that America had the bomb.
Japan didn't respond.
Oh, it is much more than that.
Potsdam actually called for a surrender of the military and not the government. "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces". This is something that I bet most do not know, because they have never actually read the document itself. It never called upon the surrender of the government, just the military forces. There were enough in the governments that knew the nation would never surrender their political and government, and that is what caused consternation among the Japanese as they could not understand surrendering their military and not their government. As they had always fought for complete wars of conquest.
And yes, Japan did indeed respond to the declaration.
Through back-channels, they had their Ambassador to the Soviet Union inform them that unless they agreed to the previous Japanese proposal (which Moscow refused to deliver) that they would continue the war to the end.
The "Big Six" met and talked about it, and outright rejected it 6-0.
Interestingly enough, an edited version was released to the public in Japan, which deleted phrases like the threat of "utter destruction".
And finally, we have the words of Premier Kantaro Suzuki. This is famously known as the Mokusatsu Speech.
I think that the joint statement is a rehash of the Cairo Declaration. The government does not think that it has serious value. We can only ignore [mokusatsu] it. We will do our utmost to complete the war to the bitter end.
Now Mokusatsu can be translated several ways. It literally is a combination of the words "Silence" and "Killing". Which means "Kill with Silence". In more simple words, they officially stated that it was rejected.
A rejection is much more than simply "no response".