Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  Dr. Michihiko Hachiya in Hiroshima had been working for nine consecutive days to care for those injured by the atomic bomb. After listening to the emperor’s broadcast, many of the patients in his ward burst out in anger. They shouted: “How can we lose the war! . . . Only a coward would back out now! . . . I would rather die than be defeated! . . . What have we been suffering for? . . . Those who died can’t go to heaven in peace now!” Dr. Hachiya noted that many who had expressed defeatist sentiments after the bombing now demanded that the fight should go on, as if they could not make sense of their terrible burns and the loss of loved ones unless the entire nation immolated itself in a final battle. “The one word—surrender—had produced a greater shock than the bombing of our city,” the doctor wrote in his diary. “The more I thought, the more wretched and miserable I became.”109

  But the emperor had expressed his will, and there was no opposing him. Most public anger was turned against the government and the military leadership. Some decried the leaders who had prevailed upon the emperor to surrender; others condemned the same leaders for having plunged Japan into a reckless and catastrophic war. Many were fearful, assuming that they were to be enslaved by the Allied victors. Shaking their heads, they simply repeated the inconceivable fact, again and again, in a daze: “We’ve been defeated.” And they asked one another, with wide eyes, “Now that we have been defeated, what will happen?”110 No one knew, but it was easy to imagine the worst, especially for those who had some inkling of how Japanese forces had behaved in China, Malaya, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Yet many others felt a dawning sense of relief. The air raids would finally end. They would not have to fight off an invading barbarian army with kitchen cleavers and bamboo spears. Perhaps the government would reopen the bathhouses, and they could all wash off the accumulated filth. Even on the night of August 15, the first night of the peace, air raid regulations were relaxed and electric lights were left on after dark. People took down their blackout shades. Hisako Yoskizawa, a secretary living in Tokyo, wondered how her neighbors were taking the momentous news, and concluded that “an unmistakable brightness in their faces told the story.”111

  On military bases, discipline broke down. Soldiers refused to take orders. Young hotheads vowed: “We’ll behead the evil subordinates of the Emperor!”112 Those posted overseas felt a keen desire to get home, to protect their families against the incoming army of occupation; they planned to desert the military as soon as they reached Japanese soil. Enlisted men who had been physically abused by their officers took the opportunity to exact revenge. One soldier who had expressed defeatist sentiments recalled: “I cheered that I had been right, and I was hit by an officer. I hit him back.”113 A nurse at an army hospital in Tochigi Prefecture watched several officers crying “Forgive me, forgive me!” while being beaten by their own men.114

  In a calmer frame of mind, Japanese servicemen considered whether it was their duty to kill themselves. Many did not relish the thought of returning home in defeat after so many others had given their lives. They did not expect to be greeted warmly by their neighbors, perhaps not even by their families, because they would be “bearing the dishonor of defeat.”115 Shoji Tsuchida, a kamikaze pilot stationed at Tachiarai Airbase, had expected to fly his last mission on the same day as the emperor’s broadcast. He wrote in his diary, “I feel the evanescence of the fate of defeat. The eyes of locals seem to be appealing to us for something, but the truth is that we have been stained with the stigma of defeat.”116 At Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo, officers were divided over whether or not they should comply with the surrender order, launch a guerilla resistance movement in the mountains, or kill themselves. Many vowed to fight, or die by their own hands, but one young lieutenant remarked, “Dying is the easier thing to do. Consider living under the ugly enemy. It will be harrowing and painful. . . . It will not be easy to live through the dark ages and to transmit our culture to the next age. But if this is not done, there will not be an age when the Japanese people are truly awakened.”117 Some who had given up all hope of surviving the war now realized with a surge of elation that they been granted a second life. The emperor’s statement had clearly absolved them of responsibility for the nation’s defeat, and had summoned them to the work of rebuilding a peaceful Japan. To defy surrender would dishonor his will and subvert his authority. The rescript had included this stern injunction, an echo of Meiji’s Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors: “Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion that may engender needless complications, and of any fraternal contention and strife that may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world.”118

  In the end, with surprisingly few exceptions, the great majority of Japanese officers and enlisted men of all ranks chose to live. “I thought of committing suicide, but was unable to go through with it,” a soldier in southern Kyushu later admitted. “ ‘I’ll be reborn seven times and attack America,’ I vowed. With this, I permitted myself to continue living.”119

  GENERAL ANAMI WAS ONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS. He did not hear Hirohito’s broadcast; he spared himself that mortification by taking the samurai’s way out in the early morning hours of August 15. He had been up all night, drinking sake and entertaining visitors, refusing to give any support to the attempted military coup d’état that was unfolding at the Imperial Palace. At dawn, the well-sodden general composed his traditional “poem upon departing the world.” With a few brushstrokes, Anami kept it simple:

  Not even a half word

  To be left behind

  For benevolence has been bestowed upon me by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor.120

  Then he plunged a short steel blade into his own abdomen, up to the hilt, and carved through his viscera, left to right. The blade severed the descending aorta, causing massive hemorrhaging into the abdominal cavity. He died slowly, painfully—and in the traditional Japanese view, honorably.

  One night later, Admiral Onishi performed the same gory ritual, thrusting the knife into his belly and carving out his own bowels. Many officers came to visit him in his death throes, but he refused their offers to put him out of his misery. It took him fifteen hours to bleed out. Lying in a pool of his own blood, this most warlike of hardliners told the young officers who visited him that they must obey the emperor and follow his instructions to strive for the peace of the world.

  General Shizuichi Tanaka, who had played a crucial role in putting down the August 14–15 rebellion, shot himself on August 24, the day the first advance detachments of U.S. occupiers set foot on Japanese soil. General Hajime Sugiyama, who had preceded Anami as army minister, shot himself on September 12; his wife, Keiko, killed herself a day later.

  General Tojo, the “little Mussolini” who had led his nation into a disastrous war, tried and failed to take his own life on September 11, 1945. As U.S. troops knocked on his front door, intending to arrest him as a war criminal, Tojo peeked out of a second story window. Realizing that he was cornered, he retreated into his study and shot himself in the chest. The wound was serious but not mortal. His captors rushed him to a hospital, where surgeons sewed up the wound and replaced his lost blood through an intravenous feed. The failed suicide was considered by Tojo’s countrymen as the crowning ignominy of his odious career. He made a full recovery, only to be convicted of war crimes and hanged in 1948.

  FROM HIS FIFTH AIR FLEET headquarters in Kyushu, Admiral Matome Ugaki had at first refused to believe the “hateful news” that the emperor had decided for surrender. After receiving confirmation by telephone from the Combined Fleet command bunker in Hiyoshi, he wrote in his diary that the leaders in Tokyo were “nothing but selfish weaklings who don’t think seriously about the future of the nation and only seek immediate benefits.”121 On the morning of August 15, he received orders to suspend attacks on enemy forces. The Fifth Air Fleet staff stood to attention while listening to the emperor’s noon broadcast. Ugaki did not understand all of it, but he understood enough to know that the war was
over. “I’ve never been filled with so much trepidation. As one of the officers the throne trusted, I met this sad day. I’ve never been so ashamed of myself. Alas!”122

  Since assuming command in Kyushu, Ugaki had sent thousands of young kamikaze flyers to their deaths. Now he resolved to follow them. He consigned his personal diary—fifteen leather-bound volumes of fastidious brush-stroke calligraphy—to the safekeeping of his Naval Academy Class of 1912 association.

  The Ugaki diary remains one of the most significant documentary records of the Pacific War. It covers the entire period of the war, beginning in the weeks leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Ugaki was chief of staff to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto; it continues through the vicissitudes of Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal, to the aerial assassination of Yamamoto in April 1943. In 1944, Ugaki had commanded the Japanese navy’s main battleship division, including the superships Yamato and Musashi, during the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf; and in 1945, as commander Fifth Air Fleet, he had been in charge of the largest kamikaze campaign of the war. Throughout it all, Ugaki had committed his private daily thoughts to his diary.

  Determined to be off before a formal ceasefire order arrived from Tokyo, Ugaki moved quickly. In his last entry, he wrote, “I myself have made up my mind to serve this country even after death takes my body from this earth.” In defeat, Japan would face a long crucible, and he hoped that all Japanese would “display the traditional spirit of this nation more than ever, do their best to rehabilitate this country, and finally revenge this defeat in the future.”123

  At 4:00 p.m., after drinking a final farewell toast of sake with the headquarters staff, Admiral Ugaki was driven the short distance to Oita Airfield. Eleven D4Y Suisei dive-bombers were lined up on the flight line. Twenty-two pilots and aircrewmen stood in ranks. All wore Rising Sun headbands. Orders had been given for a flight of five planes, but all of the aircrewmen wanted to fly the mission.

  Ugaki asked, “Will all of you go with me?”

  They shouted, with right hands raised: “Yes, sir!”

  Ugaki removed his rank insignia. He wore a green uniform, white gloves, and a traditional samurai short sword that had been a gift of Isoroku Yamamoto. In a photograph taken just before he boarded his plane, Ugaki gazed straight back into the camera. He appeared serene and determined, with the barest hint of a Mona Lisa smile.

  He climbed onto the wing of the lead plane and slid into the rear cockpit. The radioman-navigator, who normally occupied that seat, begged to be permitted to come aboard. Ugaki assented, and the young man wedged himself into the space just forward of the admiral’s knees.

  As the eleven planes taxied to the end of the runway, Ugaki’s white gloved hand was seen waving from the cockpit. The planes took off and droned away to the south. Three later returned and landed, their crews reporting “engine problems.”

  At 7:24 p.m., Ugaki’s plane radioed back to base. The attack group was proceeding to ram the “arrogant American ships” off the coast of Okinawa. No more was heard from them.124

  According to U.S. Navy reports, a handful of enemy planes had attempted diving attacks on transports anchored off Ie Shima Island, off the coast of Okinawa. All were shot down by antiaircraft fire, and no American vessels were hit or damaged. The next morning, the crew of a tank landing ship (LST-926) found wreckage of Japanese warplanes in the shallows off the island. The bodies were extracted from the wreckage and buried on the beach.

  Back at the Fifth Air Fleet barracks in Kyushu, an orderly collected Ugaki’s personal belongings, intending to send them on to his next of kin. He found a handwritten note, evidently written earlier that day. It read: “Having a dream, I will go up into the sky.”125

  Epilogue

  It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

  —ANNE FRANK, DIARY ENTRY OF JULY 15, 1944

  ON THE EVENING OF AUGUST 14, THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS WAS invited into the Oval Office. President Truman was seated behind his desk, with his cabinet secretaries, military chiefs, and aides standing behind him. Their beaming faces told the tale. The president came directly to the point. The Japanese government had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and therefore, the Second World War was over. The reporters rushed back to the press room, and moments later the news was on the wires. Soon a boisterous crowd gathered outside the White House gates. Admiral Leahy noted in his diary: “A noisy celebration is going on in the city with all motor cars sounding their horns, and great crowds of shouting people milling in the streets and bringing traffic to a standstill. The radio is bearing forth news of the celebration in cities from Los Angeles to Boston, in all of which the populace seems to be celebrating the war’s end with noise in crowded streets.” Leahy did not approve. He felt that the occasion called for calm, thoughtful, dignified reflection, “but the proletariat considers noise appropriate and the greatest number of people in democracies must have their way.”1

  They did have their way, in cities across the country, throughout the rest of that long summer evening and into the following day. Crowds poured into public squares, hands held up in triumph, mugging for the cameras, servicemen and civilians, men and women, black and white, victorious citizens abandoning themselves to a riotous bacchanal. In downtown business districts, the air was filled with scraps of torn-up paper thrown from high windows—makeshift ticker-tape—and toilet paper rolls trailing long tissue-streamers. The police stepped back and let it happen, declining to stop any but the most outrageous crimes against people or property. Bottles were passed from stranger to stranger. Automobiles inched forward, blocked by surging mobs, and people clambered onto the roofs and hoods, converting every passing vehicle into an impromptu parade float. In New York, a crowd of 60,000 poured into Times Square, where the electronic billboard on the angled building between Broadway and 7th Avenue was flashing: “Japs Surrender!” A Life magazine photographer snapped an iconic photo of a sailor kissing a nurse. Hal Buell, a navy lieutenant who had flown a dive-bomber for three years in the Pacific, found himself trapped in a packed mass of delirious New Yorkers, and because he was wearing his uniform he was “patted, pawed, kissed, and cheered.” He accepted a bottle of beer from a woman who shouted into his ear: “The war is over and my son is alive!” Buell and a fellow officer staggered through Manhattan that night, from one bar to the next, and no one let them pay for a drink.2

  In Los Angeles, a citizen remembered, “The celebrating was unbelievable. People were dancing in the streets, all of the stores were closed, and everybody joined in the celebration. Some streets were blocked off completely. You could only drive at a snail’s pace, if at all.”3 In Portland, Oregon, a woman recalled, “the hotel where we were staying just fell apart. There was no room service, no phone operators. Everybody was just running around out in the streets. It was chaos, just total chaos. A lot of people drinking, staggering around.”4 Patricia Livermore, who was visiting San Diego, wandered around the city and got caught up in the celebrations: “Any girl that was at the Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego got kissed and thrown in the Plaza fountain. I got thrown in about ten times.” Livermore and her friends were staying at the Pickwick Hotel. The local liquor stores had sold out their entire inventory, but the hotel bellhop hustled up a few bottles at markup prices. From their room on a high floor, they filled condoms with water and threw them from the window at the crowd below. “It was all we could use,” she explained, “because we couldn’t find any balloons.”5

  In Hawaii, where the territory passed much of the war under martial law, blackout regulations were merrily ignored and Honolulu bars stayed open all night. A packed mass of whiteha
ts celebrated on Hotel Street. Crowds began hauling coils of barbed wire away from the beaches. Some climbed the Aloha Tower and began tearing down the camouflage nets. The MPs, shore patrol, police, and national guardsmen either stood aside or joined the fun.

  In downtown San Francisco, V-J Day celebrations took a darker turn. As darkness fell, drunken civilians and servicemen battled police on Market Street. The mob smashed storefront windows, overturned cars, and preyed upon innocent citizens. Thirty streetcars were disabled or destroyed. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Windows are crashing from Sixth to Third streets. The police and shore patrol are unable to and not trying to stop it. There is barely five minutes without the clatter of plate glass punctuating a steady roar of voices and the explosions of firecrackers.”6 Overwhelmed by numbers, pelted by bricks and bottles, the police retreated. Two hours later, reinforced by MPs and shore patrolmen, they advanced up Market Street together in a line abreast, swinging their batons. Much of the mob scattered along side streets. Those who stood their ground were beaten, arrested, and thrown into paddy wagons. Eleven people were killed and about a thousand injured.7 This “Victory Riot,” as the hometown newspapers called it, was the deadliest in San Francisco’s history. But the mayhem received almost no national press coverage and was quickly forgotten.