Part Three
In 1945, the Japanese were all but defeated, but they still wouldn't surrender. America knew that an invasion would be costly. It was estimated that Allied casualties would be over 800,000 men. This was because the higher-ups in the Japanese military, who had all sworn an oath to fight for the Emperor to the last man, would rather become extinct than to lose their honor by surrendering to the Americans.
Additionally, the Japanese felt that if they could make the cost of victory for the Allied forces so painful in the form of casualties and deaths, the Allieds would be willing to negotiate a settlement much more beneficial to the Japanese than the terms they would receive under an unconditional surrender.
In the book "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand, POW Louis Zamperini talks about seeing old women and children being trained with sharpened bamboo sticks to fight off American soldiers should they invade. An invasion wouldn't just be to the last man, it would be to the last man, woman, and child.
General Hirohito and the military felt they could inflict so much pain to the invading armies, that the Allied forces would be forced to negotiate, letting them keep some of their conquests. Meanwhile, as observed by Lt. Zamperini, the Japanese were preparing for the possible invasion by teaching their civilians to fight, and preparing defenses they developed in the war.
They had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kamikaze planes hidden in caves or forests. They had kamikaze power boats loaded with explosives, ready to hit the American fleet. If you remember what happened to the USS Cole in the 90's, then you know what a small boat with explosives can do to a battleship. They had men train with backpacks filled with explosives, prepared to crawl under American tanks.
For the Japanese, to surrender under American terms would be a humiliation, so they were indeed prepared to fight to the last man. For the Japanese military, who were all pledged to die for their Emperor, they were prepared to even sacrifice their whole nation to preserve their personal honor.
But, every day, the Japanese were starving or killing American POWs. Mainly, flyers who went down over Japan. In the island of Palawan alone, the Japanese, to prevent their rescue by Allied forces, herded over 150 POWs into an air raid shelter and incinerated all but nine of them.
Thousands of civilians in Japanese occupied territories in Asia and the offshore islands were dying every day because of Japanese mistreatment. So America and the Allied forces knew the war had to come to an end, one way or another, preferably sooner rather than later.
But even after President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese would only surrender under the condition that nothing happen to their Emperor. Had Allied leaders--Churchill, Stalin, and Truman--not agreed to that one condition--a guarantee for the Emperor's safety--the Japanese would not have surrendered. They wanted to be assured that their Emperor would not be arrested, tried, executed, and would remain their leader.
To this day, when the Japanese teach their children about World War Two, their explanation goes something like this: "One day, for no reason we can understand, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on us."
The atrocities the Japanese committed to the civilians of each country they invaded remain ignored and unapologized for. When they invaded the lower portion of China, they would take babies from their cribs or their mother's arms, and, swinging them by their feet, smash their tiny heads against the walls.
To the victims, no apologies, no reparations, no acceptance of responsibility. To the enemy soldiers who were captured in Bataan and were tortured and used as slave labor, they also received no apologies, no reparations, and no acceptance of responsibility.
Once, when my Dad was telling me these stories, I said to him, "Wow, the Japanese were like animals."
"No," my father corrected me, and then explained, "Animals kill for food. The Japanese killed for fun."
Raising My Father
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