Japan: No Surrender in World War Two (2024)

By DavidPowers

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LieutenantOnoda

By the end of World War Two, Japan hadendured 14 years of war, and lay in ruins - with over three million dead. Whydid the war in Japancost so much, and what led so many to fight on after the end of thehostilities?

The end of hostilities

When Emperor Hirohitomade his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, andenjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', hebrought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that hadwracked his country for 14 years.

He never spoke explicitly about 'surrender'or 'defeat', but simply remarked that the war 'did not turn in Japan's favour'. It was a classic piece of understatement. Nearlythree million Japanese were dead, many more wounded or seriously ill, and the country lay in ruins.

To most Japanese - not to mention those whohad suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came asblessed relief. Yet not everybody was to lay down their arms. Tens of thousandsof Japanese soldiers remained in China, either caught in no-man'sland between the Communists and Nationalists or fighting for one side or theother.

Other, smaller groups continued fighting onGuadalcanal, Peleliu and in various parts of the Philippinesright up to 1948. But the most extraordinary story belongs to Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who continued fighting on the Philippine island of Lubang until 9March 1974 - nearly 29 years after the end of the war.

'Lieutenant Onoda... doggedlyrefused to lay down his arms...'

Two years earlier, another Japanese soldier,Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, had been found fishing in theTalofofo River on Guam. Yokoistill had his Imperial Army issue rifle, but he had stopped fighting many yearsbefore. When questioned by the local police, he admitted he knew the war hadbeen over for 20 years. He had simply been too frightened to give himself up.

Lieutenant Onoda, by contrast, doggedlyrefused to lay down his arms until he received formal orders to surrender. Hewas the sole survivor of a small band that had sporadically attacked the localpopulation. Although one of them surrendered in 1950 after becoming separatedfrom the others, Onoda's two remaining companions died in gun battles withlocal forces - one in 1954, the other in 1972.

A worthy enemy?

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After earlyattempts to flush them out had failed, humanitarian missions were sent to Lubang to try to persuade Lieutenant Onoda and hiscompanions that the war really was over, but they would have none of it. Eventoday, Hiroo Onoda insists they believed the missionswere enemy tricks designed to lower their guard. As a soldier, he knew it washis duty to obey orders; and without any orders to the contrary, he had to keepon fighting.

To survive in the jungle of Lubang, he had kept virtually constantly on the move,living off the land, and shooting cattle for meat. Onoda's grim determinationpersonifies one of the most enduring images of Japanese soldiers during the war- that Japanese fighting men did not surrender, evenin the face of insuperable odds.

'...Japanese fighting men didnot surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.'

Before hostilities with the Allies broke out,most British and American military experts held a completely different view,regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. In early 1941, General RobertBrooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief of British forcesin the Far East, reported that one of his battalion commanders had lamented,'Don't you think (our men) are worthy of some better enemy than the Japanese?'

This gross underestimation can in part beexplained by the fact that Japanhad become interminably bogged down by its undeclared war against China since1931. Since Japan was havingsuch difficulties in China,the reasoning went, its armed forces would be no matchfor the British.

The speed and ease with which the Japanesesank the British warships, the Repulseand the Prince of Wales, off Singapore just two days after the attack onPearl Harbor - followed by the humiliating capture of Singapore and Hong Kong- transformed their image overnight. From figures of derision, they were turnedinto supermen - an image that was to endure and harden as the intensity andsavagery of fighting increased.

Total sacrifice

Although some Japanese were taken prisoner,most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. In the last, desperatemonths of the war, this image was also applied to Japanese civilians. To thehorror of American troops advancing on Saipan,they saw mothers clutching their babies hurling themselves over the cliffsrather than be taken prisoner.

Not only were there virtually no survivors ofthe 30,000 strong Japanese garrison on Saipan,two out of every three civilians - some 22,000 in all - also died.

The other enduring image of total sacrificeis that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his planepacked with high explosives into an enemy warship. Even today, the word'kamikaze' evokes among Japan'sformer enemies visions of crazed, mindless destruction.

What in some cases inspired - and in others,coerced - Japanese men in the prime of their youth to act in such a way was acomplex mixture of the times they lived in, Japan's ancient warrior tradition,societal pressure, economic necessity, and sheer desperation.

'The other enduring image oftotal sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughinghis plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship.'

When Japanbegan its military adventures in China in 1931, it was a society inturmoil. Less than 80 years previously, it had been forced out oftwo-and-a-half centuries of self-imposed seclusion from the rest of the world,when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown, and Japanembarked on rapid modernisation under Emperor Meiji.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Japan wasbeginning to catch up with the world's great powers, and even enjoyed its ownversion of the Roaring Twenties, a period known rather more prosaically asTaisho Democracy.

But as shockwaves of the Great Depressionreached Japanese shores at the end of the 1920s, democracy proved to haveextremely shallow roots indeed. The military became increasinglyuncontrollable, and Japanwas gripped by the politics of assassination.

Bushido

Nationalists and militarists alike looked tothe past for inspiration. Delving into ancient myths about the Japanese and theEmperor in particular being directly descended from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, they exhortedthe people to restore a past racial and spiritual purity lost in recent times.

They were indoctrinated from an early age torevere the Emperor as a living deity, and to see war as an act that couldpurify the self, the nation, and ultimately the whole world. Within thisframework, the supreme sacrifice of life itself was regarded as the purest ofaccomplishments.

'Do not live in shame as aprisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.'

Japan's samurai heritage and the samurai code of ethics known as 'bushido'have a seductive appeal when searching for explanations for the wartime imageof no surrender. The great classic of Bushido - 'Hagakure'written in the early 18th century - begins with the words, 'Bushido is a way ofdying'. Its basic thesis is that only a samurai prepared and willing to die atany moment can devote himself fully to his lord.

Although this idea certainly appealed to theideologues, what probably motivated Japanese soldiers at the more basic levelwere more mundane pressures. Returning prisoners from Japan's previous major war with Russia in1904-5 had been treated as social outcasts. The Field Service Code issued byGeneral Tojo in 1941 put it more explicitly:

Do notlive in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.

Apart from the dangers of battle, life in theJapanese army was brutal. Letters and diaries written by student conscriptsbefore they were killed in action speak of harsh beatings, and of soldiersbeing kicked senseless for the most trivial of matters - such as serving theirsuperior's rice too slowly, or using a vest as a towel.

But John Dower, one of America's most highly respected historians ofwartime and post-war Japan,believes a major factor, often overlooked in seeking to explain why Japanesesoldiers did not surrender, is that countlessthousands of Japanese perished because they saw no alternative.

He argues that the attack on Pearl Harbor provoked a rage bordering on the genocidalamong Americans. Not only did Admiral William Halsey, Commander of the SouthPacific Force, adopt the slogan 'Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs', publicopinion polls in the United States consistently showed 10 to 13 per cent of allAmericans supported the 'annihilation' or 'extermination' of the Japanese as apeople.

Kamikaze

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Lieutenant Onoda,aged 78

It was a warwithout mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in1945. It noted that the unwillingness of Allied troops to take prisoners in thePacific theatre had made it difficult for Japanese soldiers to surrender. Whenthe present writer interviewed Hiroo Onoda for theBBC 'Timewatch' programme,he too repeatedly came back to the theme 'it was kill or be killed'.

'...the strategy behind thekamikaze was born purely out of desperation.'

The same cannot be said of the Special AttackForces, more popularly known as kamikaze. Yet, even though nearly 5,000 of themblazed their way into the world's collective memory in such spectacularfashion, it is sobering to realise that the number ofBritish airmen who gave their lives in World War Two was ten times greater.

Although presented in poetic, heroic terms ofyoung men achieving the glory of the short-lived cherry blossom, falling whilethe flower was still perfect, the strategy behind the kamikaze was born purelyout of desperation.

But to anyone who believes the kamikaze were mindless automatons, they have only to readsome of the letters they left behind. The 23-year-old IchizoHayashi, wrote this to his mother, just a few days before embarking on what heknew would be his final mission, in April 1945:

I ampleased to have the honour of having been chosen as amember of a Special Attack Force that is on its way into battle, but I cannothelp crying when I think of you, Mum. When I reflect on the hopes you had formy future ... I feel so sad that I am going to die without doing anything tobring you joy.

Selfless sacrifice, for whatever purpose, waspresent on all sides in the conflict.