Suzuki Cabinet Surrender Deliberations at the PM Residence

Suzuki Kantaro, a retired admiral, formed his cabinet on April 7, 1945 and served until August 17, with Togo Shigenori as Foreign Minister, Anami Korechika as Army Minister and Yonai Mitsumasa as Navy Minister. The Prime Minister's Official Residence was the center of Japan's agonizing end-of-war deliberations. Suzuki was a survivor of the February 26 Incident of 1936, in which he was shot several times as Grand Chamberlain; that attack took place at the Grand Chamberlain's official residence, while the Prime Minister's residence was assaulted in the same uprising, so that his role in ending the war from that building nine years later carried a certain symbolism. After the Potsdam Declaration was issued on July 26, Suzuki stated on July 28 that the government would 'ignore' it (mokusatsu) and press on with the war, words the Allies took as rejection.

Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) and the Soviet Union's entry into the war on August 9, the Supreme War Council and the cabinet convened emergency sessions. The leadership was deeply divided: Togo and Yonai favoured acceptance on the single condition of preserving the national polity, while Anami, Army Chief of Staff Umezu Yoshijiro and Navy Chief of Staff Toyoda Soemu insisted on further conditions or else fighting to the end. At the Imperial Conference that ran from late on August 9 into August 10, Suzuki asked the Emperor to decide, and the Emperor supported the Foreign Minister's proposal.

The reply of US Secretary of State Byrnes, received on August 12, reopened the dispute on August 12-13, while army hardliners plotted a coup. A second Imperial Conference at 11 a.m. on August 14 produced a second Sacred Decision (聖断) to accept the declaration. The final cabinet meeting was then held at the residence, where the rescript ending the war was approved and countersigned by all ministers, formally implementing the decision.

At about 4:30 a.m. on August 15, hours before the surrender broadcast, Captain Sasaki Takeo of the Yokohama garrison, acting in parallel with the Kyujo Incident, led a 'National Kamikaze Corps' that included students of Yokohama Higher Technical School in an attack on the Prime Minister's Official Residence, and then set fire to the private homes of Suzuki, Privy Council President Hiranuma Kiichiro and others; Suzuki, warned by telephone from the residence, had already got away. Anami killed himself that day, the Emperor's broadcast went out at noon, and the cabinet resigned, handing over to the Higashikuni cabinet on August 17. The residence building of that time was relocated and remodelled in 2005 and now serves as the Prime Minister's official living quarters.