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Yet, despite such punishment, Japan fought on in Luzon, Burma, Borneo and especially on Okinawa, where even American flame-throwers and heavy armour made slow progress against determined Japanese counter-attacks in early May. ‘No one underestimated Jap,’ wrote George MacDonald Fraser with a fine and characteristic disregard for political correctness; ‘he might be a subhuman creature who tortured and starved prisoners of war to death, raped women captives, and used civilians for bayonet practice, but there was no braver soldier in the whole history of war.’12 The surrender of Germany seems to have had little or no effect on the Japanese, even though it meant that they would soon face the combined wrath of the Allies. (Stalin had promised at Yalta to declare war on Japan three months to the day after VE Day, and was as good as his word.) While Germans were surrendering at the rate of 50,000 a month in late 1944, the Japanese were fighting on, often virtually to the last man. ‘Even in the most desperate circumstances,’ recorded Major-General Douglas Gracey, commander of the Indian 20th Division in Burma, ‘99% of the Japs prefer death or suicide to capture. The war is more total than in Europe. The Jap can be compared to the most fanatical Nazi youth and must be dealt with accordingly.’13

The last significant naval action of the war took place in the Malacca Straits on 15 May 1945, where five Royal Navy destroyers sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro by torpedoes. Yet, despite no longer having a fleet capable of defending the mainland, the Japanese Government decided to fight on.14

The Strategic Air Offensive against Japan had been as pitiless as that against Germany, particularly the firestorm created by the great Tokyo Raid of 10 March 1945, in which 334 B-29s flattened 16 square miles of the capital, killed 83,000 people, injured 100,000 and rendered 1.5 million more homeless. It is regarded as the most destructive conventional bombing raid in history, and even bears some comparison with the nuclear bombs that were to come, although it has excited nothing like the amount of moralizing.15 With Mustang P-51s escorting the B-29s from Iwo Jima, the USAAF was able to establish almost complete air superiority in the skies over Japan for the last three months of the war; indeed major raids were undertaken from there even while there were still Japanese holding out in different parts of the island. Yet, although the bombing left ordinary Japanese – especially of course the city-dwellers – terrified and demoralized, there was no appreciable pressure put on the Government to end the war which all rational Japanese (including, it is alleged, Emperor Hirohito) could see was suicidal and unwinnable. The military clique that ran the Japanese Government felt no inclination to surrender, a course of action which they considered dishonourable.

Almost half of the residential area of Tokyo was destroyed by the end of the war, aided by the flammability of much of the paper and wooden housing. No fewer than 750,000 incendiary bombs were dropped at very low altitudes by 500 US bombers on the single night of 23 May, and a similar number the next night too. Yet Japan’s reaction, or at least that of her Government, was to fight on, and a resigned but obedient population, which had little practical alternative, went along with the decision. It was not until 22 June 1945 that resistance on Okinawa ended, nearly three months after the US forces had landed on an island that was 60 miles long but rarely more than 8 wide. On the very eve of victory, Buckner was fatally wounded by an artillery shell at an observation post on the front line, the most senior Allied officer to be killed by the enemy in the whole war. Four days later, Lieutenant-General Ushijima committed hara-kiri just as his command post was finally overrun. In all, 107,500 Japanese were known to have died in the battle, an additional 20,000 were buried underground in their caves during the fighting, and only 7,400 surrendered.