To fall into the hands of the Japanese during World War II was to enter a world of biblical horrors. One of the first to escape and tell his tale was a Col. William Dyess who had survived the Bataan Death March after the fall of the Philippines in 1942. His story horrified subscribers to the Readers Digest in 1944: Japanese noncommissioned officers entered the compound and ordered the Americans to drag out the bodies and bury them. We were told to put the delirious ones into a thatched shed a few hundred feet away. Then the grave-digging began. We thought we had seen every atrocity the enemy could offer, but we were wrong. The shallow trenches had been completed. The dead were being rolled into them. Just then an American soldier and two Filipinos were carried out of the compound. They were in a coma. A Japanese noncom stopped the bearers and tipped the unconscious men into the trench. The guards then ordered the burial detail to fill it up. As the earth began to fall about the American, he revived and tried to climb out. He hoisted himself to a standing position. Two Japanese guards placed bayonets at the throat of a Filipino on the burial detail. When he hesitated, they pressed the bayonet points hard against his neck. The Filipino raised a stricken face to sky. Then he brought his shovel down upon the head of his American comrade, who fell backward to the bottom of the grave. The burial detail filled it up.
American POWs during the Bataan Death March. (National Archives)
In China the Japanese established a medical experimental command known simply as Unit 431. Unit 431 plumbed depths of depravity that beggar description. Germ-warfare experiments were carried out using entire Chinese villages as subjects. Individual Chinese were dissected ALIVE and conscious. Weapons effects were tested by shooting bullets or shell fragments into living humans then dissecting the wounds as the patient writhed in pain. The Japanese referred to the live Chinese as logs and it became a point of pride to see how much suffering one could inflict before the log expired.
On Chichi Jima, captured American airmen were beheaded AND EATEN. Navy flyboy Lt. George H. W. Bush narrowly escaped this fate when he was rescued by an American submarine literally under the guns of the Japanese after being shot down during a raid over that island.
An Autralian POW about to be beheaded.
Among many of those who survived such horrors there was no question as to the use of the atomic bomb.
They questioned why it was stopped.
The formal Japanese acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was broadcast shortly after the Emperors radio broadcast to the Japanese people. It was nearly noon on August 15. Shortly thereafter a lone Japanese A6M2 Zero fighter approached the 3rd Fleet. It was pounced on by F6F Hellcats of Task Force 38 and was shot from the sky. It would be the last of over 5,000 Japanese planes to fall to the big Grumman fighter.
A war involving millions of men spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles doesnt just stop immediately. Indeed, Emperor Hirohito was so concerned his Army would resist surrender that he sent members of his family to individual commands to ensure their compliance. The 5,000 planes hidden throughout the home islands for use as kamikazes would no longer be needed.
Prime Minister Suzuki, having brought Japan to this point, could go no farther. He resigned and Hirohito named an uncle-in-law, Prince Higahikuni to be Prime Minister and Mamoru Shigemetsu as Foreign Minister. Shigemetsu had been an early advocate of peace and was considered a traitor by General Umezu, the Army Chief of Staff.
President Truman named General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Allied Commander for the purposes over overseeing the surrender and subsequent occupation of Japan. MacArthur quickly broadcast a message to the Japanese directing that hostilities cease immediately and that a delegation meet with him in Manila to work out the details of the surrender. On 19 August, two boldly neutral Betty bombers, painted white with green crosses in place of the familiar meatballs landed on Ie Shima , off Okinawa. From there the Japanese delegation was flown on an American C-54 to Manila. They were given a (unsigned) copy of the Instrument of surrender and told that American troops would begin landing on August 23. The Japanese pleaded that they needed time to establish full control of the military and asked for more time. This was granted and the first American soldiers from the 11th Airborne Division were now scheduled to arrive on August 26. Weather intervened and the landings actually took place on the 28th.
One of the Betty bombers that carried the Japanese delegation.
As the 11th Airborne troopers climbed out of their transports they were greeted by a banner erected by a young Navy pilot who had claimed engine trouble the day before and made an emergency landing at Atsugi Airfield. Welcome to the U. S. Army from the Third Fleet.
Meanwhile Admiral Halsey brought 258 ships of his Third Fleet into Tokyo Bay and anchored them there. In deference to President Truman, the battleship USS Missouri, named for his home state, was chosen to host the actual surrender ceremony. The ceremony would take place on the deck next to #2 turret. On a bulkhead overlooking the deck was the 31-star flag Admiral Perry had flown when he had anchored in Tokyo Bay some 92 years previous. (continued below)
Sunday, September 2, was set for the signing ceremony. An ordinary table was brought up and covered with a green baize cloth. Microphones were set up and all was ready. MacArthur arrived at 0843 and was received by Admirals Nimitz and Halsey. The rest of the invited representatives of the various allied nations also came on board and awaited the Japanese delegation led by Foreign Minister Shigimetsu and General Umezu. Umezu had resisted the very idea of surrender to the end and threatened suicide until a message was given him telling him it was a personal order from his Emperor to sign the document.
Shigemitsu had difficulty mounting the steps to the deck of the Missouri owing to an artificial leg, the result of an assassination attempt in the 1930s. Umezu, coming up behind him, refused to aid the old man.
The Japanese arrive on USS Missouri: Foreign Minister Shigemitsu in front left, Gen. Umezu on front right.
Once in front of the table Toshikazu Kase, one of Shigemitsus, staff noted the frigid atmosphere. He also noted the numerous small Japanese flags painted over various gun positions. He later wrote he felt, subjected to the torture of the pillory. A million eyes seemed to beat on us with the million shafts of a rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire.
MacArthur made a short speech Then with Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, USA, who had surrendered the Phillipines and General Sir Arthur Percival , who had surrendered at Singapore, flanking him, directed the Japanese to sign at the places indicated. Shigemitsu had problems figuring out where to sign. MacArthur told his Chief of Staff, Sutherland, show them where to sign. The pugnacious Admiral Bill Halsey chafed at the delay and thought to himself, Sign, damn you! Sign! Standing next to Halsey was Vice-Admiral John S. McCain who privately worried the Japanese would not live up to their end of the agreement. McCain, worn out from nearly four years of combat, would die of a heart attack four days later. His son would go on to be CINCPAC during the Vietnam War and his grandson is now Senator from Arizona.
General Douglas MacArthur signs the surrender document. Behind him are Gen. Percival and Gen. Wainwright. Adm. Halsey is visible directly above MacArthurs head.
By 9:25 all had signed and MacArthur ended the ceremony, Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. The proceedings are now closed. At precisely that moment the clouds which had covered Tokyo Bay parted and the last act of the day could proceed.
Four hundred fifty Navy planes and several hundred Army Air Force planes now crossed Tokyo Bay in an immense show of force. The Japanese, as they departed, were given customary honors befitting their positions, a symbolic gesture that they were no longer enemies.
It was over.
As the sun set over Tokyo Bay that day, the ships band of HMS Duke of York, the British flagship, was joined by the massed bands from all the Royal Navy ships present and struck up a hymn as the flags of all the allied nations were lowered from the signal yards. The name of the hymn was The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended.
The music inspired the Navys official historian, Admiral Morison, on board the Missouri, to pen this benediction to the American sailors, but also to all the American soldiers, airmen and Marines of the Second World War:
Nothing could have been more appropriate to the occasion than this Sunday evening hymn to the Author of peace and lover of concord. The familiar words and music, which floated over the now calm waters of the Bay to the American bluejackets, touched the mystic chords of memory and sentiment, reminding all hands of the faith that had sustained them through travail and sacrifice. It brought sailors back to base and made them feel their Navy had achieved something more than a military victory.
They were right. If victory over Japan meant anything beyond a change in the balance of power, it meant the eternal values and immutable principles, which had come down to us from ancient Hellas, had been reaffirmed and re-established. Often these principles are broken, often these values are lost to sight when people are struggling for survival; but to them man must return, and does return, in order to enjoy his Creators greatest gift life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Amen.
The Cost:
4th Marine Division Cemetery, Iwo Jima.
American dead on the beach at Normandy.
A B-17 goes down over Germany. The ten-man crew had no chance.
Thanks for the kind words. This started as just an normal post commemorating the end of the war but kind of "growed." There has been a lot of "revisionist" hogwash published in the last 30 years or so, and I just feel that it's high time we deal with the facts and not do overlays of featuring current political arguments particularly as applied to the final decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I find myself agreeing with the officer who stated that by July/August of 1945 there was never was really a "decision" to made. The US posessed a weapon that could potentially end the most destructive conflict in the history of man. To have NOT used it would have been a crime.
America did not kill Japanese with nuclear weapons in order to impress the Russians. Lacking the atomic attacks, the Japanese leadership was no closer to surrender on August 5, 1945 than they had been six months earlier. Conventional attacks they could rationalize, a weapon that could annihilate a city at one swipe was something different. It was the shock needed to force an end to the thing.
The quote from Paul Tibbets' sums up my feelings on the whole thing: Please try to understand this. Its not an easy thing to hear but please listen. There is no morality in warfare. You kill children. You kill women. You kill old men. You dont seek them out, but they die. Thats what happens in war.
Sources:
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