The Burma Star Medal
Credit: British Badges and Medals
In April 1931, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 1936 Olympics (both winter and summer) to Germany. Subsequently, in July 1936, Japan was awarded the 1940 summer games. Such were the lengths that the international community went to to help procure stability in two countries that - for essentially the same reasons - were fervently embroiled in political extremism.
As we know, Hitler seized upon the Berlin games to promote his over-bearing brand of nationalism; however, in July 1938, the Japanese government - at that point brutally occupying portions of China - stated that it no longer wished to host the games. Very obviously, the regime in Tokyo had other things on its mind, or perhaps they were frustrated by the IOC’s refusal to allow the introduction of ‘bayoneting civilians’ to the decathlon.
Similar to Germany’s, the Japanese polity was born in the 1870s. Through Prussia, new Germany immediately became an established power. Not so Japan, for after centuries as a largely feudal, agrarian society in a less advanced region of the world, it was nowhere near.
Under American and British influence, though Japan set a course for swift and determined growth. By the 1890s, as with Germany, its economy had grown very strongly, but neither nation had the extensive natural resources that were essential in the new industrial age. Just as Germany had taken France’s coal and iron ore, Japan would eventually look to do the same in Asia: agricultural produce and minerals from Manchuria, coal from China, oil from the East Indies, rubber from Malaya and labour from everywhere. Sadly, all this would mean war. Another world war - the broadest ever known.
For the majority of Britons WWII would end in early-May 1945. There was a great rejoicing that distracted the whole country for a few days as people contemplated the end of a strange six-year existence and wondered what the future would bring. Menfolk began to stream home whilst well over 50,000 womenfolk were deciding whether to relocate to America.
VE Day is Spontaneously Celebrated in London
On 23rd May, the five-year wartime Coalition Government was put asunder when Churchill announced a general election for 5th July - with the result announced on 23rd July after the votes of servicemen still overseas had been counted. In tandem with news from the important world-shaping post-war conferences in San Franciso (UN) and at Potsdam, party political electioneering dominated current affairs. Less intensely, the country was cheered and entertained by cricket as England, led by Wally Hammond, took on Lindsay Hasset’s Australian Services side in five ‘Victory Tests’.
However, on the other side of the world for 950,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen - plus the Americans, Chinese and guerrillas of various nationalities - there was no opportunity to bathe in the optimism of spring and summer 1945. They were still fighting a fanatical Japanese military leadership that defiantly refused to countenance defeat; in spite of the loss of 2.5m people, it was still training its civilian population to meet an invading army with bamboo spears.
Britain and Japan had been long-term allies, whilst USA had - if somewhat crudely - forged modern Japan, so how had it all come to this?
Same Shit, Different Uniform - Hidecki Tojo Celebrating a Year of War - 8th December 1942
Credit: Getty Images
Save for its immediate neighbours, it took Japan a very long time to meet the wider world. In the reign of our King Henry VIII, the Portuguese and Dutch had been the first to interact with China and Japan; but from 1640 in the case of Japan and earlier in the case of China, the two nations turned inwards and self-isolated1. Eventually as the eighteenth century progressed, both nations were ‘persuaded’ to enter trade with the Europeans, through at a strictly limited number of their ports and only for regulated periods.
As the nineteenth century entered its middle decades, European industries were producing more goods than their people could consume. In anticipation of the age of steam-powered iron shipping the Suez Canal - which shortened the journey to the Far East by about 10 days - was constructed 1859-69. On its completion, almost overnight, the world became smaller and trade became even more profitable. Western industrialists pressed their governments for support in ‘forcing markets’.
China was the first to be bullied and the Japanese looked on. Then their turn came. The Americans - Commodore Mathew Perry and his ‘black’ gunboats - intervened in 1853, and eventually forced the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate into the ‘unequal’ Treaty of Simoda. Within months the British would follow suit, and soon afterwards the French and Russians too.
These Western interferences procured a full-scale civil conflict - the Boshin War - one that completely changed Japan’s destiny. Before 1870, the conservative feudalist isolation - Sakoku - of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan since 1603 was cast off, and the monarchy was restored. The Meiji dynasty resumed authority under the guidance of ‘progressive’ - i.e. ‘Western oriented’ - officials.
In China and Korea, institutional weakness would persevere well into the twentieth century, but the Japanese authorities had fully recognised the martial strength behind Western diplomacy and superintendence. China had been torn apart by indecision. The Japanese came to believe that to make their own country immune to foreign dominance, they had to imitate it, and, in the medium-term at least, cultivate it.
Accordingly, the Japanese authorities focused on economic, social and military reform along Western lines. Whilst the ‘remodeling’ adversely affected Japan in the short-term, a huge sea-change ensued. The country embraced the concepts of foreign trade, industrialisation, education of the populace, Western social mores and also their colonialism and militarism.
The state was expanded, road and rail infrastructure was developed and industrial production was increased - this included in the 1890s, the creation of a steel industry. One of the key men involved in this was Kageyoshi Noro who wrote a prime research paper for the Japanese government, in which he stated, “Steel is the mother of industry, and the basis for national security. Without steel, there can be no industry ..…..for it is recognized that the steel industry determines the destiny of a nation”2.
At around the same time, the new German nation was doing exactly the same.
Unfortunately for Japan it had insufficient quantities of the coal and iron ore that were required for the manufacture of steel; a situation which, in turn would become dramatically ‘unfortunate’ for China and Korea.
In 1873, Japan made military service - 3yrs and reserve - compulsory for 20yr olds. It was controversial, there were riots, and many dodged it by corrupt means, but it was indicative of the mindset and intentions of Japan’s governing classes. The law was revised in 1889, as military service became more popular after regular martial successes. It was changed again in 1927, at which point, there were no doubts as to the government’s future intentions.
No opportunity to ‘flex muscles’ and acquire territory was ever missed.
In 1874, Japan sent a ‘task force’ of six warships and nearly 4,000 men - under American command - to Formosa to punish indigenous tribes for the murder of 54 Japanese fishermen whose vessels had foundered on the island’s southern tip - in 1871. It was not an entirely successful operation for nearly 600 personnel died of disease, including its leader. Where it did succeed though was in revealing China’s weakness, and proving to the Japanese that naked aggression yielded results.
The following year, in 1875, the Japanese sent troops to Korea’s Ganghwa Island, a strategically vital location that controlled access up the Han River to Seoul. The following year, a manufactured outrage, forced a fight and an ‘unequal’ treaty on the Koreans which gave Japan exclusive trading rights there. The Korean barrier against the outside world, which had existed since 1599, was breached.
Unfortunately for the Koreans, as well as Japan, their land was also coveted by China and Russia. Indeed, the status and economy of the whole region - Sea of Japan, Manchuria and Korea - would be at the centre of dispute for decades afterwards.
Nearly 20 years later in 1894, Japan went to war with China in a dispute over political influence in Korea. Most of the world believed that Japan would lose, but a year later it emerged victorious and became a colonial power. The Chinese were forced to cede Formosa (Taiwan) and a small but important part of southern Manchuria, the Liaodong Peninsula and the harbour of Port Arthur as part the settlement.
However, Russia3 coveted the port, as it remained an ice-free year round, and persuaded France and Germany4 to join it in pressuring Japan into surrendering it, which it did so. Japan was greatly angered a few years afterwards when Russia pressured China into agreeing a lease of Port Arthur for 25yrs.
Japan was also angered by China agreeing to Russia’s construction of an extension of the Trans-Siberian rail link from Harbin down to Port Arthur. There was more friction in 1900 when Russia annexed most of southern Manchuria.
Determined that Western powers would not push them around again, and concerned about Russian expansion, Japan took direct action. When Russia began more ‘manouevring’ in the region in February 1904, Japan declared war with a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur followed by a violent pursuit of the ships that fled. Six months later, Port Arthur was put under siege and it fell in January 1905.
Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur - 1904 - the Remainder was Pursued and Sunk in the Yellow Sea
Credit: Alamy
In March, the decisive land battle at the capital of Manchuria - today’s Shenyang - was won by the Japanese, but at a cost of 50,000 soldiers on each side.
The world sat up and took notice, but in May it was astonished when news emerged that the Russian fleet, sent from the Baltic to bolster naval resources, was routed by the Japanese at Tsushima.
Both nations were exhausted by the costs of the war, and made overtures towards a settlement. The Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) brokered by the Americans5 and saw Japan gain primacy over Korea and control of much of south Manchuria, including the Liaodong Peninsula, Port Arthur and the railway that connected it with the rest of the region. It also gained the southern half of Sakhalin Island from Russia.
Actually, perhaps the British were not so astonished by what had happened at Tsushima. The Royal Navy (RN) had been involved with the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) for decades. In 1866 an agreement was signed whereby the RN would help Japan construct, develop, train and maintain a navy6. Throughout the 1890s, the Japanese had purchased numerous warships from Britain, and of the 15 principal ships that gained victory over Russia, ten had been constructed in Britain. All of the officers and crews had been trained in British naval tactics, gunnery and general practices. Indeed, the man who master-minded the victory at Tsushima, Admiral Togo - the ‘Nelson of the East’ - had been trained by the RN for a full seven years from 1871.
In 1902, following up on an a more ‘equal’ friendship treaty of 1894 (effected 1899), Britain and Japan made a formal alliance, a mutual aid pact designed in part, to place pressure upon Russia. For the British, the treaty marked an end to ‘splendid isolation’, whilst for Japan, there was significance and prestige in being able to negotiate an ‘equal treaty’, which mean it was recognised as a ‘proper power’.
There were practical advantages too, for in their war with Russia, Japan had benefitted greatly from British naval intelligence. On the other hand, the fact that Britain needed to make such an alliance probably also fostered a belief in Japan that in Britain was losing strength in the Far East. An alliance with Japan would enable a recall of battleships from Hong Kong and Singapore - ergo Britain was weak. Not as weak as Russia or China, but probably stretched beyond capacity in a world in which Germany and USA were expanding their navies and colonial interests in Asia.
In 1905 and 1911, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was extended. In 1905, Japan asserted that Korea was now under its protection, and was annexed as a colony in 1910.
US grew concerned about Japan’s aggressive growth. Korean citizens would have cause to be ‘concerned’ about Japanese aggression too. Between 1910 and 1945 countless thousands of them died through maltreatment and plain murder as the Japanese began the process of destroying Korean culture and pillaging its resources. The whole of Asia was forewarned about the Japanese character.
General Kamio Mitsuomi and Major-General Nathaniel Barnardiston at Tsingtao
Credit: National Army Museum
When war came in 1914, Japan viewed it as a three-fold opportunity: firstly, to exercise a territory grab (it seized German possessions in the Pacific7); secondly, to test its armed forces (in autumn 1914, its army and navy combined well in the three-month siege of the German enclave of Tsingtao with British forces8); and also to further its status as a world power (which succeeded greatly).
Buoyed by its status, in 1915, Tokyo issued its ‘Twenty-one Demands’ to Peking:
“These included obliging China to accept Japanese advisers to help run its finances and police forces, forbidding China from making any further territorial concessions to other foreign powers, and accepting all sorts of Japanese activity besides, from the building of railways to the establishment of Japanese temples, mining operations and schools. Had these demands been accepted in full, it would have amounted to an extraordinary ramping up of Japan’s political, economic and military influence on the continent. The US in particular, which regarded itself as a friend of China - poor treatment of Chinese migrants to the US notwithstanding - was especially angered by what even senior politicians in Japan regarded as a foolish diplomatic move”9.
Tokyo was also keen to learn as much possible about the practicalities, logistics and economics of an extended modern war. By the its end, Japan was supplying the Allies - particularly Russia (munitions) and France (ships) - with a tremendous amount of materiel which turned the Japanese economy on its head.
In martial terms, in addition to the Tsingtao operation, in 1918, the Japanese army intervened in Siberia to help ‘White Russians’ fight the Bolsheviks. The IJN escorted ANZAC troopships to Suez and also sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean which performed valuable work in anti-submarine operations.
Generally though, Japan had no direct experience of the assorted horrors of the trenches save for newsreels. Consequently, when the militarists took control of Japan in the 1930s, there were few practical arguments to warn of disaster.
In 1919, Japan was treated as a major power: one of the ‘Big Five’ at Versailles, a permanent member of the League of Nations and its requests for mandates over the Pacific islands it had occupied and Shandung in China were granted. They had also requested a ‘racial equality’ clause be inserted in the treaty and were angered when such was not adopted. Japan failed to see the irony in the fact that when their request was made in spring 1919, they were actively brutally oppressing the Koreans (and Taiwanese) which was excused on the basis that they were ‘inferior races not yet ready for treatment as equals’10.
Following Versailles, in 1921-22, the US invited nine nations to Washington to discuss partial naval disarmament and the overall situation in the Far East: Britain, France, Japan, France and Italy were invited to the main talks, whilst Belgium, China, Portugal, and the Netherlands would join to discuss the latter. Three major treaties emerged from the Washington Naval Conference, principally the ‘Five-Power Treaty’.
Without going into too much detail, the Americans’ aims were to reduce Japan’s influence in the Pacific and China, limit her naval power and to detach Britain from her former ally. Needless to say, Japan was dissatisfied. The cartoon below says it all - note that China is not even represented.
Cartoon by Clifford Berryman - Washington Star - 5th February 1922
The Japanese did not sit on their laurels. The age of aviation, and the aircraft-carrier, was significant for the whole world, but particularly so for island nations like Japan and Britain. The Royal Navy and its RN Air Service had made great strides in the latter years of the war, and were considered the principal authority in the field of naval aviation. Japan, deployed its treaty connections and historic relations going back to the 1860s, and attempted to ‘pick British brains’. The Americans persuaded the British against this, but as the stories of Frederick Rutland and William Forbes-Semple clearly illustrate, Japan was determined to expand its knowledge. America was right to be wary11.
The integrity of the agreements developed in Washington would last less than ten years. The ‘five powers’ met in Geneva in summer 1927, and again in London in spring 1930. Each time a specific class of vessel was added to tonnage limitations, but it was clear that there was discord and that nations were obeying agreements only in spirit. Further conferences were held in Geneva in 1932 and London again in 1936, by which time, Germany was building a new navy. War was brewing.
The 1930 conference was highly significant for Japan domestically. The militants had gained great influence and successfully campaigned to remove the ‘pacifists’ who had ‘disarmed Japan’ at London. Then in 1932, eleven junior naval officers assassinated Inukai Tshuyoshi - prime minister for six months - even though he had spoken out against the London Treaty and supported the invasion of Manchuria in autumn 1931. Bizarrely, they had also planned to assassinate Charlie Chaplin who was in Japan at the time, as a direct insult to America. The warped mindset of tyrants.
Naturally the invasion and creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo was accompanied by atrocities on civilians.cThe Japanese public were whipped up into a nationalist frenzy, and like in Germany in 1933, the events of 1931 made WWII almost inevitable. Japan paid no heed of global condemnation and formal sanctions, this was the 1930s after all and appeasement was the name of the game. In summer 1937, Japan invaded China and entered Peking - which some mark as the commencement of the Second World War - which was also, naturally accompanied by atrocities on civilians.
More American economic sanctions followed, but Tokyo pressed on regardless. Their plans were in motion. In summer 1941, Siam (Thailand) ‘agreed’ to ally itself with Japan. Then months later, came the invasion of SE Asia, followed hours later by the attack on Pearl Harbour.
In fact, despite its boldness and the level of destruction the attack achieved, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was a total failure. Gerhard Weinberg believes that their general strategy was totally wrong, its plans were over-ambitious and its leaders were very much flawed:
“A Japanese leader who has received more favorable attention than he deserves is Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku…in reality that an attack on the Americans in peacetime was practically guaranteed to destroy the Japanese strategic concept of conquering lots and then making a settlement in which they would keep many of their gains……(Pearl Harbour) was shallow…..in practice that would mean that ships torpedoed at their moorings would sink into the mud; they could not in reality be sunk…..We know that the Arizona exploded, but the other battleships settled onto the shallow harbor floor……and all except the Oklahoma were raised, repaired, and returned to action. It may have been just as well for Yamamoto’s peace of mind that he was dead by the time of the battle in the Surigao Strait in October 1944 when a substantial portion of the Japanese navy was demolished by six American battleships of which two had been allegedly sunk and three had been badly damaged in the Pearl Harbor raid…”12.
As for the USN’s aircraft-carriers, Yamamoto’s plans dictated that they would also be sunk at their moorings; but, this was impossible for the USS Yorktown was in Norfolk, Virginia, the USS Lexington and USS Enterprise were out in mid-ocean and USS Saratoga was in dock at Bremerton. Weinberg added, “Not a single officer in the room had the moral courage to say, ‘But your Excellency, how can we sink the Yorktown in Pearl Harbor when we know that it is with the American fleet in the Atlantic?”
Therein lies the inherent weakness of autocratic leadership - that would bring down both Japan and Germany - hubris, rigid stubbornness, bombast and no capacity for self-criticism.
However, things started well. Within six months of launching their infamous attacks of 7th-8th December 1941, the Japanese had occupied virtually every nation, territory and island east of India - though not the whole of China. They had even been able to attack northern the northern states of Australia, and land on American territory in the Aleutian Islands. In all cases, their ruthless brutality towards civilians, and POWs, was limitless and set a pattern of appalling misrule that would last until 1945.
Japanese Empire 1942
Credit: VidNews
Bringing the Japanese down would be a long, bitter struggle. Previously allies, Britain and Japan had only once before exchanged fire in anger. In August 1863, in response to regular attacks on British subjects at its newest trade post in Yokohama, the Royal Navy was sent to Kagoshima in Satsuma province. After being fired upon, the seven vessels13 bombarded the town. There were a dozen deaths on each side, but the Japanese paid an indemnity, which was accompanied by a large quantity of satsuma oranges, which established a British trend. From here, the relationship between Japan and the Royal Navy would flourish.
The next martial encounter between the side nations occurred on 7th December when a PBY Catalina from 205 Sqn. based at RAF Seletar in Singapore was attacked whilst on recon, by the Japanese invasion fleet heading for northern Malaya. The plane blew up in mid-air before a message could be got away. The plane’s skipper was Warrant Officer William Webb. He and his crew14 were the first Allied servicemen killed by the Japanese in WWII.
Credit: Alice Froomlake
Before it was over, there would be another half-a-million.
The Americans - with Australian and NZ assistance - took responsibility in the western Pacific, but progress was slow. Washington’s commitment to the ‘Germany first’ strategy constrained the build-up of men and materiel in the Pacific, particularly aircraft and their carriers. By late-1943 though, after major naval battles15, vicious jungle campaigns and almost continuous air combat, footholds had been gained in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. This allowed the consolidation of the air and naval resources necessary to launch a northwards sweep through the various groups of Pacific islands, into the Philippines and Borneo and ultimately onwards towards Japan. It would take two years.
The brevity of the previous paragraph is not intended to disregard or disrespect the gruesome bloodletting and scores of thousands of casualties that the campaign demanded. The Pacific War saw some of the bloodiest fighting in world history.
Similarly, on the continental mainland, from late-1942 - with US aid for the Nationalist Chinese in the north - British, Indian, Gurkha and African troops endured a 34-month see-saw struggle in Burma - which included Operation Longcloth16.
The turning point of the Burma Campaign came on the Indian frontier at Arakan, Kohima and Imphal. Like the German invasion of USSR, in early-1944 the Japanese attempted the impossible and tried to take India - only unlike the Wehrmacht, they did not even get through the front door. After four months of heroic fighting the Japanese suffered total defeat and retreated.
10th Gurkha Rifles Clear a Hilltop Position - a Scene Probably Typical of any Theatre in SE Asia or Pacific
So began the year-long process by which the Japanese were swept from Burma, first from the horrendous hill jungles in the west and then the central plains and the Chindwin and Irrawaddy valleys.
All in all, it took the Allies 45 months to rid the eastern hemisphere of Japanese barbary - but they would not go quietly. Like the Nazis, their military leadership exposed their people to at least six months of absolutely hopeless, pointless conflict, destruction and death that was concluded by nuclear weapons.
In spring 1945, Paul Fussell, a decorated infantry officer of the post-D-Day campaign - later an academic and author - was back in USA being trained for the invasion of Japan, which every soldier knew was going to be hellish.
In 1981, Fussell wrote an essay entitled ‘Thank God for the Atomic Bomb’ in which he explained with clarity why those operations against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary. Perhaps his most poignant and salient point relates to the battle for Okinawa - the last stepping stone before Japan. Here there were 225,000 fatalities, perhaps 120,000 of which were civilians, untold numbers by enforced suicides17.
The accumulated losses at Okinawa eclipsed those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. American planners had estimated that given similar - if not stronger - resistance to an invasion of Japan18 then it would have taken until November 1946 and two million lives to end the war.
More Fortunate Okinawan Civilians Emerge from Hiding/Shelter - June 1945
Credit: Getty Images
There were also suggestions that upon commencement of any invasion, every Allied POW under Japanese guard was to have been put to death. Doubtless, a scorched earth policy would have been executed in every town and city that Japan still held too. All in all then, the horrors of the three-month battle for Okinawa - preceded by similarly fanatical resistance at Iwo Jima - convinced Truman to proceed with the radical option.
The Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb took place on 16th July. Ten days later, at the Potsdam Conference, Truman, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek issued a declaration, which concluded with two sentences: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
Over 60 cities and towns in Japan had already received poundings from the US Air Force, and then, on 6th and 9th August the pledged ‘utter destruction’ was delivered upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only after the second attack did the Japanese government recognise reality, but its military members were determined to keep fighting. Emperor Hirohito met with his Supreme Council for the Direction of the War19 before midnight on 9th August. After admonishing the military for promising miracles but delivering disasters, he told those present that it was “necessary to bear the unbearable”20.
However, the council remained divided. Whilst it vacillated, the USAF continued to bomb selected targets and took 15,000 more lives - and lost It was decided that without surrender, 19th August would see another A-bomb dropped. Yet military officers everywhere, particularly the upper-middle ranks, urged resistance to the death and contemplated refusing their emperor’s command. There was even an attempted coup - just as 900 US bombers were pounding Tokyo suburbs.
When the time came, the protagonists of the coup and those who sympathized with them committed suicide, in their hundreds. It is not difficult to imagine what men such as these might have demanded of their people in defence of the Japanese homeland.
That time came at midday on 15th August when Emperor Hirohito took a previously unheard of step and addressed the nation personally. The word ‘surrender’ was not used, but he made it clear that resistance must, and would, end.
Like Germany and Berlin, Japan and Tokyo would be occupied and administered by the Americans and British. It was spring 1952 before the Japanese were permitted their own unsupervised government, and to this day, American troops remain in Japan.
At midnight on 14th August new British prime minister Clement Attlee informed the nation of ‘VJ Day’ and announced a two day holiday. There were celebrations in London which coincided with the State Opening of Parliament. Despite being voted out of office three weeks before, Churchill received the greatest ovation.
Not everyone was enthused though. In St Albans the cathedral dean, the Very Reverend Cuthbert Thicknesse denied the city’s civic authorities a thanksgiving service in ‘his church’. Apparently, he saw no cause acknowledge a victory gained by, “an act of wholesale indiscriminate massacre”21.
In the decades that followed, across the West there emerged in the media, academia, church and general populace legions of misinformed, moralising milquetoasts like Thicknesse who proclaimed - some with great shrillness - that dropping atomic bombs on Japan had been acts of gross wickedness.
The same breed of pious prigs also pronounced upon the activities of RAF Bomber Command over Germany from the same moral pulpit22. It highly unlikely that Cuthbert Thicknesse or any other critics - or their family members - had seen combat at Imphal or Iwo Jima, been held prisoner at Sandakan or Songkrai or else experienced the savagery of Japanese occupation in places such as Nanking, Manila and in fact every settlement in their new empire. As George Orwell famously noted23, these people are contemptible.
The Japanese proclaimed that they would end the dominance of European colonial powers and present ‘emancipated’ peoples with the benefits of their ‘Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. In fact, like the Germans in Europe, the Japanese leaders were fanatical in considering themselves superior, which of course meant that other peoples were considered inferior…….and they acted accordingly.
Chinese Civilian is Used for Bayonet Practice - Tianjin, 1939
Credit: Unknown
In WWII, Japan was responsible for the deaths of some 28 million people. They mostly Asians, those they had pledged to ‘liberate’ from Western oppression: Chinese, Malays, Filipinos, Thais, Burmese, Indonesians, Pacific islanders and of course 3m of their own. Also included in this number are 500,000 British, Commonwealth and American servicemen. The war simply had to end, but sanctimonious fools such as Thicknesse were content for another couple of million to die in the cruelest conventional combat in Japan.
Thanks to the scientists and Truman’s decisiveness, the slaughter of Okinawa would not be recreated many times over in the Japanese homeland. The two atomic bombs saved many more lives than they took. In taking steps to fight on, the wickedness lay with the insanity of the militarists in Tokyo who were willing to make pointless sacrifices of their people - just as the Germans had done.
Of 90,332 British casualties in the Far East, 29,968 British servicemen lost their lives. Of these, 12,433 were POWs worked and starved to death in Japanese camps or crammed into the airless holds of their ‘hell ships’24. British troops were on the hook for the invasion of Japan too - how many more would have died but for the A-bomb?
Though the surrender was effective immediately, it was only formally signed on the decks of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2nd September. It took 2-3 weeks before the Japanese garrisons across SE Asia were brought fully under control for other formal surrenders to take place.
This was mostly an orderly and peaceful protest, but colonialism was clearly at an end, well-organised groups in Burma, Vietnam of Sumatra made it clear that their British, French and Dutch masters were not going to be welcomed back, and if they did not like that then there would be fighting.
In a portent of future instability, on the day that the Japanese surrender was signed, Ho Chi Minh declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and used his Viet Minh guerrillas to reinforce his declaration. This necessitated the creation of a rather unusual counter-force: 20,000 British and Indian troops arrived in Saigon and worked with French POWs. They were reinforced by 100,000 Japanese POWs. It was a serious resistance movement that took until June 1946 to settle - but this is a story for another time.
Captive Japanese Troops Board a Train at Fanling in Hong Kong - September 1945
Credit: IWM
Britain was the only nation to fight every single day of WWII. It took 2,173 days to purge the world of the Godless, heartless and senseless brutality of the savage masses that had been brainwashed by the monstrous German and Japanese uniformed class.
Neither Japan nor Germany were invited to the summer Olympics in London in 1948.
I thank you.