Posted on 08/14/2012 5:30:44 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
(Today marks the 67th anniversary of the announcement on August 14 (August 15 Tokyo time) 1945 by Emperor Hirohito of the acceptance of the Potsdam terms for unconditional surrender (with the condition that he could remain as a figurehead emperor). I find the period from Hirohito's announcement until the formal surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2 to be a fascinating period chock full of things you probably don't know. Although my last blog entry was about the Guadalcanal campaign, the next edition will be about a completely different topic than WWII.)
1. Although the formal surrender of Japan did not occur until September 2, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, the occupation of that nation began five days earlier when a team of 150 American personnel arrived at Atsugi airfield on August 28. They were originally supposed to arrive on August 25 but a Japanese delegation in Manila informed the Americans that several more day were needed to ensure that military resistors to the surrender could be disarmed. They were correct since a few days before the Americans arrived, Japanese pilots took off from Atsugi airfield and dropped leaflets on Tokyo and other cities urging resistance by the civilians. Fortunately those pilots were gone, along with any resistance, by the time the Americans arrived at Atsugi.
2. The surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2 was carefully planned...except for one small but very important detail. The fancy British mahony table brought aboard the Missouri for the surrender was too small for the two large documents that had to be signed. In desperation, an ordinary table from the crew’s mess was drafted as a replacement. It was covered by a green coffee-stained tablecloth from a wardroom. After the 2 surrender documents were signed on the table, it was returned to the mess and was being set for lunch until the ship’s captain and others realized it was an historical object and removed for posterity.
3. There were 280 allied warships in Tokyo Bay when the surrender took place but no aircraft carriers. They were out at sea as a reserve force just in case the Japanese changed their minds.
4. There was a thick cover of low dark clouds over Tokyo Bay during the 20 minute surrender ceremony. Unfortunately, 2000 planes were scheduled to fly over the bay the moment the ceremony finished. However, at the last moment the clouds suddenly parted, as if in a Hollywood movie production, and the sun burst through allowing all aboard the U.S.S. Missouri to view the mightiest display of air power ever seen.
5. When Emperor Hirohito announced over the radio the acceptance of the allied terms of surrender on August 15 (Tokyo time), very few Japanese listening to him understood what he was saying because he was using formal formal court language not used by the general populace. It wasn’t until the radio announcers followed up by describing what he said that the public understood what he meant.
6. After Emperor Hirohito made his surrender announcement, the Japanese public ran through a gamut of emotions...anger, despair, sadness, and relief. However, one Japanese person had a very different thought on his mind...how to make money off the surrender. He was Ogawa Kikumatsu, a book editor. Ogawa was on a business trip when the surrender was announced on the radio. He immediately returned to Tokyo by train and while traveling he began thinking of how to take advantage of the impending occupation.. By the time he reached Tokyo, he had his idea...to publish a guide booklet of Japanese phrases translated into English with the aid of phonetics. It took less than three days for Ogawa and his team to prepare the 32 page booklet and it was published exactly a month after the surrender. Its first run of 300,000 copies sold out immediately and by the end of 1945, 3.5 million copies had been sold. Here are some sample English phrases from the booklet followed by the phonetics that the Japanese used:
Thank you!
Thank you, awfully!
How do you do?
San kyu!
San kyu, ofuri!
Hau dei dou?
7. One of the biggest concerns of the Japanese government after the announcement by Hirohito on August 15 was to find “comfort girls” who would serve as a buffer to protect the chastity of the majority of the Japanese women from the occupation troops. Government funds were used to set up the “Recreation and Amusement Association” for this purpose. Ironically most Japanese prostitutes resisted recruitment since they believed wartime propaganda cartoons portraying Americans as having oversized sex organs and they didn’t want to risk bodily injury. Therefore, other women had to be recruited into the “buffer zone.”
8. The women of the Recreation and Amusement Association were known as Okichis after a woman named Okichi who was assigned to be the consort of the first American consul to Japan, Townsend Harris, in 1856 to keep him from hitting on other Japanese women. You can see Okichi portrayed in a 1958 movie, “The Barbarian and the Geisha,” starring Eiko Ando as Okichi and John Wayne as Townsend Harris. However, there is no record of consul Harris ever saying, “Hit the sack, pilgrim!”
9. Soupy Sales was almost torpedoed by the Japanese after the surrender... Although most Japanese surrendered peacefully following the surrender, some of them didn’t know about the surrender due to poor communications. The U.S.S. Randall, an attack transport, was on its way back to the states just after the surrender when a Japanese submarine was detected following it. One of the sailors aboard who performed a White Fang comedy act over the ship’s PA system, Seaman Milton Supman (Soupy Sales) worried that the Japanese submarine captain hadn’t heard about the surrender. Or perhaps the Japanese captain just didn’t like Soupy’s shtick. No torpedoes were fired nor was Soupy Sales harmed during that incident.
10. For a long time after the Japanese surrender, many imperial troops had not heard about it and took years to surrender. The last holdout was Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda who was discovered to be still holding out on Lubang island in the Phillipines in 1974. Although he was known to be a holdout he eluded searchers until he was found by a Japanese college dropout, Norio Suzuki, who was on a mission to travel the world in a search for Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman in that order. In 1986, Suzuki died in the Himalayas attempting to find the Abominable Snowman. It is unknown whether Suzuki ever found a panda but perhaps he was unable to travel to the San Diego Zoo to see them.
It meant little to average Americans viewing the photo, but to the Japanese it said clearly - "I'm in charge. You come to me when we call, and you can forget the fawning respect you have rec'd up to now."
Great list! Will you add me to your pints, please?
Welcome aboard, PINGEE #12.
Some things here might be of interest to you including about Soupy Sales and the surrender.
I thought I’d seen every film of the surrender. This is a new one.
Thanks very much for posting.
***many imperial troops had not heard about it and took years to surrender.***
When I was on GUAM back in 1968, along the roads there were fences with warning signs telling people NOT to go into the jungle! I figured it was that there were still Japanese fighters in there. I found there were.
First I’ve seen it, too. Very historic.
Apparently, he wasn’t there. It was signed on behalf of him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Instrument_of_Surrender#Surrender_ceremony
You both were very fortunate to have been there for that. Did you, by chance, get any pics that you can post?
Please add me to the 10 Things ping list.
Loved this, PJ-Comix.
There are lots of things I don’t know, so please add me to your ping list.
The Missouri web page has better pix than I took. You might visit the Mighty Missouri on line.
Last February, we visited the Midway in San Diego which was really impressive. If you can’t make it to Pearl, a trip to San Diego is a close second.
All kinds of airplanes are parked on the deck. Plus, as you tour the carrier, visitors have a tiny radio with ear phones. Punch in the exhibit number and the radio voice provides the history of what you’re looking at.
A tour of the Midway will take a full day.
Number 7, those wartime cartoons weren’t propagand but were true from Japanese perspective
The cool thing about them was many were very disrespectful compared to the pomp of Tokyo. A lot of pissed of troops were not feeling so mellow about the defeated.
Ok, I don’t normally request to be added to Ping lists, but in this case, I’ll make an exception!
Thanks,
Cuz
There has to be something inherently wrong with a society capable of such atrocities as the Japanese
The Massacre, Rape and Plunder of Nanking
http://www.olive-drab.com/od_history_ww2_ops_battles_1937nanking.php
Japanese forces advanced towards Nanking from Shanghai, attacking from three directions on 25 November. The Chinese General Tang Sheng Zhi commanded an army of over a hundred thousand men, but they were poorly led by officers who deserted as the fighting intensified. When the city fell on 13 December 1937, a third of the Chinese Army was still within the walls, shedding their uniforms and trying to hide among the civilians.
For a period of six weeks after the fall of Nanking, the Chinese were not simply murdered. They were tortured, brutalized, and raped. The Japanese used every variety of murder. Chinese victims were:
•Chased into the Yangtze River with machine guns, drowning them
•Drenched with gasoline, then shot so they burned like candles
•Mutilated by cutting off testicles or gouging out eyeballs, then burned while alive
•Tied to posts in groups, then executed with grenades or machine guns.
•Covered with acid until dead from the corrosive effects
•Attacked with awls or other tools or clubs
•Eviscerated and confronted with their internal organs
•Beheaded in swordplay displays by Japanese officers
•Used for grotesque experiments by Japanese doctors and scientists
Women and babies were singled out for special tortures:
•Women were beaten on the vagina with fists and other objects until dead
•Babies were skewered and tossed into boiling water
•Fetuses were cut from living pregnant women and put into jars of preservative
•Large numbers of women were gang raped and tortured, then killed
•Rape victims left alive had their stomachs cut open or their breasts chopped off
•Women were kept as sex slaves at the service of any Japanese man
Japanese soldiers laughingly made games out of these atrocities. Japanese officers organized contests to see what soldier could kill the most Chinese in a given time with numbers as high as 500 required to win. Tokyo newspapers, such as Nichi-nichi, printed stories about the contests with pride and praise for winners.
The Japanese government also sponsored bombings on villages to test germ warfare agents for later use on the United States.
I spent three years on the Midway, from February 1977 till January 1980.
Believe me when I say, it was the worst three years in my life.
So, forgive me, but I have absolutly no desire to see that rust bucket ever again.
In many ways, the Midway was an odd duck.
Built in ‘45 as a straight deck carrier, she saw no WW II action.
She was converted to an angle deck carrier and then underwent another surgery to remove guns afterward.
I was taken by the many aircraft parked on her deck, especially the RA-5 Vigilante (former nuclear bomber, later recon plane) that I was not familiar with. I was amazed that this really big airplane was able to take off and land from a carrier.
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