Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [351]
That afternoon, the Suzuki cabinet resigned. The elderly Prince Higashikuni reluctantly accepted the premiership. At 7 p.m. on 14 August Washington time, before a dense throng of politicians and journalists, Harry Truman read the announcement of Japan’s unconditional acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. He then sent a message to the Pentagon and the Navy Department, for onward transmission to American field commanders, ordering the cessation of all offensive operations against Japan. Early in 1943, an editorial in Collier’s magazine borrowed its headline from Cato’s Roman curse upon Carthage: “Delenda est Japonia.” Now the American curse seemed fulfilled. Japan was extinguished.
2. Despair and Deliverance
A FEW WEEKS before the Japanese capitulation, Gen. George Kenney’s chief air planner warned: “Considering the suicidal tactics915 and peculiar psychology of the Japs in comparison with the Hun…stress the possibility of continued air action regardless of surrender.” The Allies anticipated that many Japanese would reject the emperor’s call to lay down their arms; that American and British soldiers, sailors and airmen would have to continue to die, suppressing guerrilla resistance or even fighting conventional battles against the four million Japanese troops in the home islands, and three million more scattered across their overseas empire.
In late August 1945 there were indeed difficulties in reconciling some units to defeat, and dramatic suicides by individuals. When Vice-Admiral Matome Ugaki learned of the emperor’s broadcast, he ordered planes prepared, drank a farewell sake with staff at 5th Air Fleet, then drove to Oita airfield on north-east Kyushu carrying a sword presented to him by Yamamoto, whom he had served as chief of staff. Eleven Suisei dive-bombers stood ready. “Are you with me?” he demanded of the pilots. “Yes, sir!” they cried. Ugaki shook hands with them. A warrant officer whom he dispossessed of his cockpit seat insisted upon squeezing in beside him. During their subsequent flight, Ugaki made a voice transmission: “Despite the courage of every unit916 under my command over the past six months, we have failed to destroy the arrogant enemy and protect our divine empire, a failure which must be considered my own.” He left behind his diaries, together with a farewell note: “I shall vanish into the sky along with my vision.” His final flight accomplished nothing save his own extinction, aged fifty-five. All the planes save three, which sensibly turned back with “engine failure,” were shot down by American fighters. Ugaki made his death as contemptible as his life, by taking with him so many hapless young men.
In the days that followed, some thousands of Japanese chose immolation rather than acknowledge defeat. Among these were Gen. Shizuichi Tanaka, the Oxford-educated commander of Eastern Army who had suppressed the coup against the palace; Prince Konoe; Vice-Admiral Onishi, prime sponsor of the kamikazes; Marshal Sugiyama and his wife; ten young men who killed themselves on Tokyo’s Atago Hill, followed by two of their wives; eleven transport officers who chose to die in front of the Imperial Palace; and fourteen students who killed themselves on the Yoyogi parade ground. Hysteria seized some army officers. Tears fell in torrents across the nation. On a Philippine island, Lt. Hiroo Onoda and his little band of destitute Japanese soldiers found a message left by the Americans: “The war ended on August 15917. Come down from the mountains!” Neither he nor the others believed it: “There was no doubt in my mind this was an enemy trick.” Onoda remained in hiding for twenty-eight years.
What is remarkable, however, is not how