Germany had surrendered to the Allied armies months before, and only Japan was left to face the combined military might of the U.S. and Britain. Japan was in dire straits as well: all of the islands once in its possession were now taken over by the U.S. Its major cities were undergoing withering bombing attacks almost daily, and its supplies were dwindling. A hopeless situation, but Japan’s “Big Six” of war leaders were making preparations for home defense. On August 6, the U.S. upped the ante, dropping the first nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima. On August 8, the Soviet army invaded the Manchuria region of China, occupied by Japan at the time. Later that same day the second atom bomb fell on Nagasaki, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan intervened.

On this day, August 15, in 1945, a week after the bombing of Nagasaki, Emperor Hirohito addressed his subjects in a pre-recorded “jewel-voice broadcast,” (Gyokuon-hōsōa) in which he announced the surrender of Japan.

In the days between the bombing and the broadcast, Hirohito ordered the Big Six committee to signal surrender, a move the military considered dishonorable. The day before the broadcast as many as a thousand officers stormed the royal palace to attempt to find and destroy the recording. It was smuggled out in a basket of women’s underwear.