65th Anniversary of Japan's Surrender

Sept. 2, 1945/2010

Today marks the 65th anniversary since the end of World War II. Apologies this post is a day late, but hey, it's Labor Day weekend. Details of the events surrounding the surrender will be covered in it's normally scheduled time-slot five years from now. For now, here are a few highlights garnered from the web today.

On 14 August, 1945, Emperor Hirohito issued the Imperial Rescript of Surrender announcing that Japan accepted the terms set down in the Potsdam Declaration. On 15 August the country’s Foreign Ministry sent a telegram to its envoy in Switzerland asking him to inform the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China on the decision made by the Japanese Emperor. Japanese troops started to surrender, though more than two weeks remained before the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on board the battleship USS Missouri on 2 September.

Fights went on mainly on the Soviet-Japanese front. “The fate of Imperial Japan is being decided in Manchuria”, General Okamura, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Army, wrote on 12 August. But on 17 August, Emperor Hirohito issued an imperial edict bringing the war to a close. The edict said: “Now that Russia has joined the war, we see it wrong to continue fighting for it might bring new sufferings to our country and undermine the foundations of the empire”. Japanese soldiers continued to fight in Indonesia until mid July 1946. One forgotten and solitary soldier in the Philipines fought on until 1975, Heroo Onodo. More on him later.

Not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but participation of the Soviet Army in their Eastern Front was the main reason for Japan to stop fighting. According to estimates released by the Allies, without Soviet participation the war could have lasted for another 1-2 years, taking the lives of about 1 million American and 500 thousand British soldiers, as well as more than 10 million Japanese lives.
Both Moscow and Tokyo understood that the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was first of all addressed to the Soviet Union, to solidify the U.S. as having the most advancements in nuclear weapons technology and starting the nuclear cold-war age.

The end of World War II has not been widely marked in Japan. Many people, mostly veterans and followers of Bushido (ancient Samurai code), still cannot accept the defeat and abstain from attending official ceremonies. The Japanese ultra-nationalists, for example the former head of Japan’s air force Tosio Tamogami, talk about the possibility for Japan to have its own nuclear bomb. Mr. Tamogami`s hostile remarks get feedback from the influential Nippon Kaigi conservative think tank, its members lobbying for removal of ‘peace articles’ from the Japanese Constitution.