Sometime in the last few days of the war, during the period when Vice Admiral Ōnishi Takijirō (大西瀧治郎), famed as the chief proponent of "special attack" (i.e., kamikaze) tactics was striving to overturn the decision to surrender, he described to his friend and neighbor Yatsugi Kazuo (矢次一夫), one of those shadowy "fixers" operating in the background of Japanese politics, how he—and presumably others among the hardliners—envisioned how by fighting on they could convince U.S. leaders that continuing the war to force surrender on the Potsdam Declaration's terms would confront them with the prospect of the Far East falling to communism even as fanatical Japanese resistance inflicted horrific losses on U.S. invasion forces.
The highlighted text below is an extract from a Yatsugi book whose title might be translated as "Secrets of Important Characters of the Showa Era", in which Chapter 10 is devoted to Ōnishi. My translation of the highlighted portion is slavishly literal, adding only a minimum of interpretive rephrasing for readability as English.
I find particularly intriguing Ōnishi's comment that "...we’d then have bought ourselves some time, and it would be quite alright then to make peace in line with developments in the international situation." To what degree were the hardliners in Japan factoring into their strategic calculations the fact that everyone in Europe was acutely aware that the geopolitical balance of power there depended on American and British strength, and that if they could inflict heavy losses on U.S. invasion forces there could be serious consequences not only in the Far East but in Western Europe as well?
To sum up Onishi’s fight-to-the-finish argument in one sentence, it was that the real fight starts now, that even if we’re 99 percent defeated, it’s enough to win the last battle. He stressed that it didn’t matter whether the site of that victory was on the sea near Japan or on the homeland. Becoming Vice Chief of [the Naval] Staff in May, he took many treasured and trusted officers of the staff into his confidence, working night and day to refine strategy and strengthen forces, preparing thoroughly to meet the intensifying advance of American forces, and seems to have been completely confident of immediately grasping when the battle would start and wielding an iron arm of annihilation.
According to him, this was the perfect opportunity to make the Navy Ministry, which no longer had a Combined Fleet, molt into in actuality an Air Force Ministry, turn to Special Attack [kamikaze] all the 10,000 planes preserved in the homeland, and attempt to strike a great blow to the American landing on the homeland operation scheduled for this fall.
With this, while on the one hand the nearly million-man American force would be suffering losses, and we were confident that because our various new weapons were finally coming into service we’d be able to inflict great losses on the B-29 raids and the [Navy] Task Force raids; at the same time we’d be rapidly gathering our Manchurian and northern China forces into southern Manchuria and northern Korea, and in central and southern China strengthen a defensive posture centered on Shanghai by drawing back to a Nanking-Hangzhou line. And if we then let the Soviet and Red Chinese armies flood into the vacated areas, [Nationalist?] China and the Soviet army would come into confrontation, and it was likely we could even bring about a U.S.-Soviet confrontation. So if we could succeed in dealing a devastating blow to America’s great homeland-invasion force, we’d then have bought ourselves some time, and it would be quite alright then to make peace in line with developments in the international situation. But since that couldn’t be done with a leadership having no fighting spirit, we’d need a militant cabinet composed of a just a small number of picked men, and it was here that that coup d'etat argument was born.
The original Japanese follows, corresponding text similarly highlighted. Kana as in original, e.g., 貰つて知つた rather than 貰って知った.
矢次一夫、昭和人物秘録、新紀元社 (1954/1/1)
Yatsugi, Kazuo、Shōwa jinbutsu hiroku, Shin Kigensha, Tōkyō, 1954
Pages 329-332
大西の抗戦論はこれを一口に云うと、戦さはこれからで、九十九度敗れても、 最後の一戦に勝てばよいというのだ。その勝つ場所はまた日本近海でも本土でもかまわない と主張する。彼は五月待望の次長になつて、自ら秘蔵し信頼する多くの軍令部将校を腹心に、 日夜戦略を練り戦力を蓄積し、次第に激化する米軍の侵攻に満を持て、一挙戦機を把握して セン滅の鉄腕を振うべく、満腹の自信を蔵していたようだ。彼によると、すでに連合艦隊な き海軍省は、実質を空軍省に脱皮させるのに絶好の機会であるとし、内地に温存の一万機を 全部特攻にして、今秋に予定される米の本土上陸作戦に大打撃を与えようというのだ。これ で米軍の百万に近い兵力は損害を受ける一方、数々の新兵器も漸く完成期に入つたから、B29 の来襲も機動部隊の来襲も大損害を与え得る自信があり、他方満洲北支の兵力は速かに南満 から北鮮にかけて集結させ、中南支もまた上海を中心に抗洲［杭洲？］南京の線に引き防禦 体形を固めることだ。そしてソ連軍と中共軍を日本軍の退却した地域に氾濫させれば、中国 とソ連とが対立し、ひいて米ソの対立に導き得るだろう。だから米軍の本土上陸の大部隊に 大打撃を与えることに成功すれば、あとはしばらく時が稼げるし、国際情勢の推移によつて 和平するならそれからでよい。ただしそのためには戦意薄弱の指導階級では駄目だから、少 数精鋭の人材で戦闘的内閣を必要とするとし、ここに例のクーデター論が生れたわけだ。