The men who fought the Japanese are entitled to call them Japs when relating experiences. For example, the history of the 41st Infantry notes with pride the division took the fewest Japanese prisoners in McArthur’s army. In New Guinea, the 41st overran a Japanese position and discovered they had slaughtered and eaten American soldiers. Throughout the war routine Japanese treachery and brutality made the Pacific war a special hell.
There is a light year difference between those men and the Japanese of later generations and even those of that who rebuilt Japan. I remember how thankful we were when our LST returned to Yokosuka from Vietnam to have the Japanese yard workers swarm over our ship. Many of those who built the Imperial Japanese Navy that attacked Pearl Harbor now oversaw repair shops or crafted near miracles to make U.S. Navy ships ready deploy again.
Film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of those generations, who before surrender, were committed to the slogan “The Honorable Death of a Twenty Million”. He said, “When I walked the same route back to my home (after Hirohito’s broadcast of surrender), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise.….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
The Kokutai principle played a decisive role for Japanese surrender in 1945. The Japanese lived within a spiritual/political fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Subjected to this authority, average citizens forfeited individuality to a collective soul defining Japan and awaited the Empire’s decrees. With such national unity committed to Total War beneath the slogan of the “honorable sacrifice of 20 million Japanese lives”, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
Only Hirohito could submit because he held the heavenly Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable and conclude the war. The war and peace factions relented, and no one lost face, but most importantly Kokutai, the spiritual essence of Japan, was preserved. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations.
Great read. Thanks for sharing.
Japan is a funny country.
After the Emperor agreed to the surrender, the first B29’s to land in mainland Japan were armed with napalm in case they were attacked. Instead, the Japanese brought the crews tea and acted glad to see them.
They literally turned on a dime from hating Americans to liking them.
My FIL was in a support role in Asia. Two comments I remembered of his on the trip back was he was able to drink all the milk he wanted. Milk had been scarce where he had been. The second was one night on the way back the fleet shot off a lot of ammunition, as the US had more than they needed post war. He said it was pretty and impressive but it damaged his hearing.
Thank you for this article and especially for your well-informed observations & comments.
Bump for later.
One of my father’s duties was to act as the unit’s journalist so I have pictures he took of the surrender planes. He was slated to be in the 3rd wave of the invasion of Japan (Army Air Corps). My FIL was slated in the 1st (Marine).
Anyone interested should read Eugene Sledge’s book “With The Old Breed.” To say the battle was hell severely underrates it. IMO.
The war did not end for Marines of the 6th Division when the signing occurred...
It was sent to China...
My father was one of those on Okinawa, for the battle. He was an army engineer, in a battalion that specialized in building airfields. They were the first engineer battalion sent into the pacific after Pearl Harbor.
They stayed in Hawaii long enough to build all the WW2 army airfields, then went for the island campaigns. He never said how they felt about waiting for the invasion.
McArthur wanted the engineer regiment that my father’s battalion was in for the occupation of Japan, but they had been in the Pacific Theater longer than any other army engineer regiment. By regulation they should have been the first regiment sent home.
According to my father, the senior NCOs met with the general commanding Okinawa, and told him that if they weren’t sent home right away, the regiment would commandeer ships and sail away.
They were the first to board ship, and left behind brand new heavy equipment and machine shops that had been issued for invasion work. This is all according to my father.
At sea, 368 Allied ships—including 120 amphibious craft—were damaged while another 36—including 15 amphibious ships and 12 destroyers—were sunk during the Okinawa campaign.
There is a light year difference between those men and the Japanese of later generations and even those of that who rebuilt Japan. I remember how thankful we were when our LST returned to Yokosuka from Vietnam to have the Japanese yard workers swarm over our ship. Many of those who built the Imperial Japanese Navy that attacked Pearl Harbor now oversaw repair shops or crafted near miracles to make U.S. Navy ships ready deploy again.
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In the meantime, the US was building up Asian infrastructure, ports, etc. while bleeding our resources in a futile war.
Description of what an invasion of Japan would likely have looked like:
https://charliecompany.org/2015/02/24/declassified-plans-for-the-ww-ii-invasion-of-japan/
my dad survived the battle for Okinawa and thankfully didn’t have to invade the main islands, for which i’m personally grateful—because i probably wouldn’t be here if that invasion had happened.
instead my dad was returned to Japan, and married my Japanese mother some 10 years later. so he well understood the Japanese national ‘soul’ and had made his peace with it, despite the heavy costs he incurred with his family and with his military command structure. he had his own mind in the matter, and wouldn’t be gainsay-ed by higher authority. suffice it to say, Japanese would have looked at it very differently. but my mom’s side of the family accepted him immediately. if you’re Japanese, you understand why. if you’re American, you’re probably clueless.
it was a different story in America, i didn’t understand the hatred for us as a little kid when my dad brought us back, but now i well understand it, and count it justified given what the people of America lost in that no-quarter given war, against the pitiless, warrior Japanese elites.
suffice it to say, knowing the Japanese people intimately as he did, and without the A-bomb, my dad was not confident he and his marine buddies could successfully conquer Japan. after Okinawa, it was very much still an open question in his mind.
Excellent! Really enjoyed it-thank you!