Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II (Pivotal Moments in American History)

A new look at the drama that lay behind the end of the war in the PacificSigned on September 2, 1945 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender that formally ended the war in the Pacific brought to a close one of the most cataclysmic engagements in history.Behind it lay a debate that had been raging for some weeks prior among American military and political leaders.The surrender fulfilled the commitment that Franklin Roosevelt had made in 1943 at the Casablanca conference that it be "unconditional." Though readily accepted as policy at the time, after Roosevelt's death in April 1945 support for unconditional surrender wavered, particularly among Republicans in Congress, when the bloody campaigns on Iwo Jima and Okinawa made clear the cost of military victory against Japan.Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945 had been one thing; the war in the pacific was another.Many conservatives favored a negotiated su