You Know You Are Old When

[stuckmotor]

I was thinking about that after typing, and I can't swear it wasn't his wife or cousin. There was some female family member who arrived first, and was unable to convince him. As I remember it, the commander was only willing to get uniformed up and go speak with him when it became obvious that other tactics were not working. But I heard that story more than ten years ago, and of course our memory has ways of sometimes piecing together bits of other stories into one, and then convincing us it's right.

You were probably right the first time and I simply forgot.

 

[ultrarunner]

When you ask yourself why you haven't heard of any stubborn Japanese soldiers surrendering lately and discover the last one came out of the jungle in 1974.

The last one I heard was in the Philippines and would only surrender if ordered... quite a story.

 

[MossRoad]

2nd to last...

The Japanese soldier who kept on fighting after WW2 had finished

Lieutenant Onoda was still stubbornly fighting WW2 nearly thirty years after Japan had surrendered

www.history.co.uk

Last...

Private Teruo Nakamura

Teruo Nakamura - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[WinterDeere]

2nd to last...

The Japanese soldier who kept on fighting after WW2 had finished

Lieutenant Onoda was still stubbornly fighting WW2 nearly thirty years after Japan had surrendered

www.history.co.uk

Last...

Private Teruo Nakamura

Teruo Nakamura - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for posting that, Moss. The story of his post-surrender life turned out to be more interesting than the surrender that made him famous!

 

[MossRoad]

Thanks for posting that, Moss. The story of his post-surrender life turned out to be more interesting than the surrender that made him famous!

My dad was in the south pacific in WWII. When I was a kid, every once in a while one of these stories would come up and we'd talk about it. So kinda a personal connection for me.

 

[drssg]

That's actually a very interesting story, although there were at least a few of them right around that same time with similar stories.

I believe the one to which you were referring refused to believe Japan had lost the war, as "there would be no Japanese people left, if we lost the war". They originally flew his sister in to try to convince him, and he thought it was a ploy to trick him. Eventually they tracked down his former commander, and had him come in to speak with the soldier, and convince him their operation was most certainly "over".

I watched a PBS show on this subject a number of years ago, and it has stuck with me.

Japan's plan was to fight to the death of every Japanese man, woman, and child. They didn't believe that they could defeat the US military, but they didn't believe that the Americans had the stomach for such a slaughter. Their goal was to avoid an unconditional surrender, and preserve the Emperor position.

The traditional teaching is that Japan surrendered because we dropped the atomic bombs, and that could be. It's worth noting that the top Japanese military command did not even meet during the days between the first and second bomb. It simply didn't change their strategy.

The US had an agreement with Russia that our top priority was to help them defeat Germany, and then Russia would help us defeat Japan. Russia was dragging their feet on launching a ground invasion on Japan, but they had an invasion force formed at the time that Japan surrendered.

The speculation was that Japan had no doubt that the Russians would be open to slaughtering their entire population, so their bluff to preserve the Emperor would fail.

 

[WinterDeere]

Very good synopsis. I'd bet they also went into Truman's decision to use the bomb, which has been much-debated in the post-war years.

Of course he had to use the bomb, he really didn't have a choice, could you even imagine the political suicide of 2 - 4 million American casualties in a ground invasion, if he had not? Projected death toll of a Japanese ground invasion was 800,000 Americans, with 2 - 4 million total American casualties (wounded/MIA), and 5 - 10 million Japanese deaths.

Truman had no real choice, the bomb saved millions of lives and American casualties, despite taking unwarranted criticism after the fact. People who say he was attacking civilians truly have no clue as to how Japanese culture worked at the time, every citizen (women & children) was a soldier, who would defend their homeland to their death.

 

[masseyrider]

The Japanese were defeated by the time of the bomb. It was just a matter of getting the body to stop twitching.
The bombs were dropped for the benefit of the Soviets.
Their military was at it's peak and would have been nearly impossible to stop with conventional weapons if they had decided to invade Western Europe.
Dropping the bombs let them know the extreme power the USA had in it's arsenal and that it worked.
The Japanese were just the unfortunate recipients.

 

[WinterDeere]

The Japanese were defeated by the time of the bomb.

That's a matter of semantics. Yes, there was no way victory was in their future. But we were still looking at multiple millions of lives lost, and likely over 10 million total casualties, to make that defeat official. The bombs were our best means of avoiding all that.

 

[masscity]

Stalin knew about the bomb from his spies before we dropped it.