V-J Day

10 August???  I called Ed this morning (14 August), Ed is  a 96-year old  vet who had served at Okinawa during that time.  He was in our local VFW chapter, but is now in a senior care facility near his children.  He recalled that all hands had gotten the word on the tenth that Japan had offered to surrender.  There was a lot of celebration.  He said the wild firing into the air was a bad mistake as several men were killed and wounded.

The US accepted on the 12th of August.  The only exception to the Japanese offer was that Hirohito could only remain in a purely ceremonial role and NOT as Japan's 'Heavenly Sovereign'.  There was a delay in Tokyo for debate about acceptance of Hirohito's eclipse - or continuation of the war.  So on 13 August (14 August in Japan) B29s from Tooey Spaatz Strategic Air Force Pacific resumed air raids attacking Iwakuni, Osaka, Tokoyama, Kumagaya, and Isesaki.  The PM, the Navy Minister, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs all opted for surrender.  The Army was more intransigent, or at least some firebrands there thought they could get away with a coup and continue the war.  They murdered a Lieutenant General who would not go along with them.  Hence the Kyūjō incident.

But wiser heads prevailed.  On the 14th (15th in Japan) Hirohito announced the surrender via radio to all in his nation so that they would know it was his personal decision to capitulate.  He stayed in that ceremonial Emperor role for another 44 years.  A good movie was made about the decision and the coup.  Back in 1967 the great Kihachi Okamoto directed "Japan's Longest Day" aka "The Emperor and the General".  Some dramatic license like all cinema, but well presented. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

 https://www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com/movies/japans-longest-day/1967

http://www.midnighteye.com/features/a-tribute-to-kihachi-okamoto/

There is a remake out titled "The Emperor in August" released five years ago on the 70th anniversary.  I have not seen it yet but hope too soon.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/08/05/films/complex-portrayal-emperor-hirohito/

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/14/national/history/emperors-wwii-surrender-aired-amid-turmoil-wartime-regime/

 I also called today and chatted with a elderly former Woman Marine who was stationed at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay as a supply clerk during the war.  She couldn't remember a lot.  Said she was on duty when the announcements were made so missed all the partying in downtown Frisco.

The formal surrender of course did not take place until two weeks later on board the U.S.S. Missouri on 2 September.

 https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1303405

 

UPDATE:  Much has been said about the estimated casualties if the Invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, had gone ahead.  In April 1945, a Joint Chiefs of Staff planning paper assessed possible casualties based on experience in both Europe and the Pacific given a troop list of 766,700 men and a 90-day campaign.   Based on the "Pacific Experience" JCS projected that the US Sixth Army could be expected to suffer 514,072 casualties (including 134,556 dead and missing).  There were three problems with that this assessment: 1] it only included casualties up to X+90 on Kyushu and not for the later invasion of Honshu on the Kanto Plain; 2] it did not include personnel losses at sea from Japanese air attacks; and 3] Japanese were easily able to accurately predict the Allied invasion plans and thus tripled their defenses on Kyushu from what the JCS estimates had been based on.  There were other estimates, MacArthur low-balled it at 105,000 total casualties but again that was only for Kyushu.  Mac had made a habit of underestimating enemy strength.  He did it in Luzon twice, here, and later in Korea.

Senior Navy admirals were against the invasion of the home islands.  This was based on their experience at the lengthy and costly Okinawa Campaign where 368 Allied ships were damaged while another 36 were sunk, and the 5000 Navy dead exceeded Army KIA and USMC KIA.  And probably based also on their experience at Iwo where Kamikazes sank an escort carrier, severely damaged a fleet carrier, and also damaged another escort carrier, an LST, and a transport.  They preferred a blockade with continuation of a conventional bombing campaign.  It might take longer but would save a lot of blood.

The Navy brass were also against the dropping of A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Truman, Admiral Leahy called it "the biggest damn fool thing we have ever done".  Admiral King called the rationale that the bomb would save American lives misplaced, because if Truman had been willing to wait a blockade would have "starved the Japanese into submission".  Admiral Nimitz considered the bomb "somehow indecent, certainly not a legitimate form of warfare".  Admiral Halsey, using military reasoning instead of humanitarian concern said "It was a mistake ever to drop it.  Why reveal a weapon like that to the world when it wasn't necessary."

 UPDATE#2:

David Sanger, NYT correspondent and author of a book on cyberwarfare, "The Perfect Weapon", tells his father's story about V-J Day.  His dad, LTJG Kenneth Sanger was a CIC director on a destroyer. 
Ahead of the surrender, he had to choose between two conflicting orders – one by McArthur instructing the fleet to allow Japanese officials to fly to Tokyo, and another from his captain, ordering him to blow them out of the sky. His Dad's account:

“I relieved the watch in the combat information center. As was routine I just read all the dispatches that had come in since the previous watch. And one of them was a dispatch from General MacArthur’s headquarters in the Philippines saying that if we intercepted any Japanese transport planes that were flying a red pennant from the tail of the fuselage that we were to let the planes through, I presume because they were flying the Japanese generals from China to Japan to receive the surrender. Anyway, we were to let this plane through."

"And about 10 minutes after I had read these dispatches, we had picked up a bogie, an unidentified aircraft, on that course, and I had 16 marines in Corsairs – they were marvelous pilots – and dispatched one division of these 16 planes, which would have included four planes including the flight leader. Marines being what they were all 16 marines went out to this intercept, and we intercepted this plane, of the type which was mentioned in the MacArthur dispatch. And it was flying a red pennant from the fuselage.

“And I ordered them not to fire, unless told to do so. Grudgingly, the flight leader acknowledged the order. And I got on the squawk box and called the bridge and told them what I had done. And our commanding officer said, “Shoot the son-of-a-bitch down, Sanger.”

Sanger's Dad debated this in his mind, while the planes were in air. In the end, “I returned the planes to us without firing. I guess I made the snap judgement that I would rather be court-martialed by my commanding officer than by Gen. MacArthur. So the plane went through as intended.”

VJ Day

Officially it was 2 September 1945 in a formal setting on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the famous photo of Dugout Doug MacArthur lording it over the ceremony.   It was about three weeks earlier on 10 August that the Swiss Embassy in Washington notified US Secretary of State James F Byrnes of Japan's intention to accept unconditional surrender.  There was just one small proviso, that Emperor Hirohito be permitted to remain in place.  Truman accepted.  Actual surrender was acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration just past noon of 15 August in Japan.  Because of time zone differences it was about 11 PM on 14 August in Washington DC.



The photo on the right was taken 19 August with MacArthur on the balcony of Manila City Hall.  Mac and the GIs and Filipinos below him are waiting for the Japanese delegation coming to accept the orders to surrender and return them to Tokyo.  City Hall, one of few buildings left standing, was still pockmarked by bullets from the Battle of Manila six months earlier which had resulted in the death of 1000 American GIs, 16,500+ Japanese, and 100,000 Filipinos. 


That Japanese delegation to Manila had flown from Tokyo to Sata Misaki on the southern tip of Kyushu and from there to Ie Shima , an island just off the western edge of Okinawa.

They flew in two twin-engined Mitsubishi G4M1 aircraft, AKA Bettys.  They had been stripped of all weapons and were painted white with green cross markings instead of the red meatball.   Partway to Ie Shima they were escorted by B-25 Mitchells and P-38 Lightnings, just in case some bushido fanatic tried to stop the peace talks (That was not paranoia on the part of the Americans on Ie Shima.  On 15/16 August on hearing of the surrender Japanese guards murdered over 100 American POWs.  Many Australian and British prisoners of war were murdered at Ranau and Sandakan in Borneo.  Plus at Batu Lintang in Borneo, death orders were proposed to murder some 2,000 POWs and civilian internees but the camp was liberated before they could be carried out.).   From Ie Shima they were put on a Douglas C54 Skymaster to proceed to Manila and meet Mac to accept the surrender orders.

Ie Shima or Ie Island, known as Iejima to the Japanese, is a very tiny island of about 23 square kilometers or less than nine square miles.  At that time it had one of the largest airfields in the Pacific.  Which is why it was selected for the changeover.  It is where Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle, was killed by machine gun fire when he was covering the 77th Division liberation of the island and airfield. Every April there is a memorial service there for him.

 It's a beautiful place today. Covered in gardens of vegetables and flowers.  Every April, in addition to the Ernie Pyle memorial, the island hosts the Iejima Island Lily Festival featuring acreage that looks like gigantic carpets of snow white lilys.

https://www.okinawanderer.com/2013/04/18th-iejima-island-lily-festival-set-for-two-week-run/


At MacArthur's dog and pony show on the 2nd (i.e. the formal surrender ceremony), the Japanese delegation was led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, Minister of Foreign Affairs and General Yoshijirō Umezu Chief of the IJA General Staff.  Mac's staff had specified all the details of the ceremony.  So was it a slap in the face to Admiral Nimitz that Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the IJN General Staff was not among them?  Some thought so at the time.  Both Shigemitsu and Umezu were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.  Umezu certainly deserved it for his time in China as CG of the Japanese 1st Army and later CinC of the Kwantung Army.  Umezu died in prison four years after the surrender.  Shigemitsu, known as Shiggy to the American press, got a raw deal and never should have been convicted.  He had opposed militarism his entire career in the diplomatic corps, had opposed the war, and he had "argued that the success of the proposed Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere depended on the equal treatment of China and other Asian nations with Japan."  It was Stalin that wanted him on trial.  He had been ambassador in Moscow in 1938, so he must have stepped on some toes there during the Japanese/Soviet border conflicts.  Despite depositions from both American and British diplomats about Shigemitsu's opposition to the war, MacArthur caved to the Soviets.  Or maybe it was Truman?   But Shiggy was released from prison in 1950 he eventually went into politics becoming a member of the Diet in 1952 and Deputy Prime Minister in 1954.