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."
Let me know if you want on the 10 Things You Don't Know About PING list.
His other dog hand puppet was "Black Tooth", the meanest dog in Detroit.
"The fancy British mahony mahogany table brought..."
"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..."
I know, picky, picky...
The Japanese copy of the surrender documents were so upsetting to the men who signed that they ordered a lower level officer to carry them back to Tokyo. The documents were tucked away in a book shelf and forgotten until about two years ago.
“...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.”
Is there any surviving, known historical film of that, PJ-C?
One other little known fact about the surrender...the japanese didn't speak english all that well, and the americans didn't speak japanese that well, so it was conducted in Austrian.
Wow, here’s a pic of it, and the Wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Missouri-flyover.jpg
Wowzer!
Here’s the surrender ceremony, in color (no flyover, though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5MMVd5XOK8
Thanks. I look forward to your next edition. Very interesting. I was 3 1/2 months old when the document was signed. I had to look to see if I had Soupy Sales as one of my Celebrities in Uniform and I did. Here’s the others I have compiled:
http://www.portcall24.com/Celebrities_In_Uniform.htm
San kyu for posting this!
and, of course, wwii didn’t really end till 1949 and thereafter; in ‘45 the new China Marines went directly to China to accept the surrender of Japanese troops there.....and ended up in combat w/the communist troops there, sometimes the marines were asisted by the Japanese troops, etc.
an era of history little publicized and unknown...
Semper Watching!
*****
Thanks!
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?
***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.
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.
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.
Oh, this is fascinating! Can I get on your Ping list please, thanks so much.
Could you add me to the list por favor?