At the same time, using all available air resources, we prepared to fly the 7th Division from Burma into Siam and, using the Bangkok airfield as a staging station, to lift part of the 20th Division into Indo-China to control Terauchi’s Supreme Headquarters in Saigon. The 5th Division, if not required in Malaya, was to sail to Singapore and 3 Commando Brigade to Hongkong. As soon after the occupation of Singapore as possible, the 26th Division was to be landed in Java and Sumatra. All these operations were about to begin, indeed the first ships of the Malayan force were already at sea and all headquarters buzzing with activity, when, on the 19th August, a very considerable spanner was thrown into their busy works.
The British and American Combined Chiefs of Staff had, ignoring Admiral Mountbatten, their Supreme Commander in South-East Asia, entrusted the overall control of the Japanese surrender to General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander in the Pacific. He decreed that the formal surrender in South-East Asia could take place only after it had been ceremonially completed in his own theatre. This, though inconvenient, might not have mattered so much had he not ordered, also, that no landings in or re-entry into Japanese-held territory would be made until he had personally received the formal surrender of the Japanese Empire. This ceremony was fixed for the 31st August, and thus for twelve days—actually fourteen as it was postponed until the 2nd September—the forces of South-East Asia had to mark time.
This delay in the formal surrender of the enemy in South-East Asia did not prevent preliminary meetings, on our ground, between our plenipotentaries and theirs, at which, after an initial tendency to argue, promptly and firmly suppressed, the Japanese showed a proper submissiveness and readiness to obey orders. But the delay could have had most serious consequences for our prisoners in Japanese hands. Admiral Mountbatten, now assured there would be no resistance, decided, in spite of the ban on landing, to fly in help to the prisoners. Our men and those of our Allies were daily dying in their foul camps; thousands were at the limit of weakness and exhaustion. Had he delayed for even a few days in sending supplies and relief personnel, many more would have died pathetically at the moment of rescue. The relief teams parachuted into the camps with magnificent courage, for they were by no means sure of the Japanese reaction to their arrival, but they could not, of course, bring with them great quantities of stores, medicine, or clothing. All that, and the evacuation of the prisoners to Burma, had to await the arrival of our troops. This was held up for a couple of weeks by the delays imposed in the surrender arrangements, and condemned our prisoners to a correspondingly longer stay in their camps.
The state of these camps and of their wretched inmates can only be realized by those who saw them as they were at this time. Except for derelict huts and bashas, the camps were little more than barbed wire enclosures in which wild beasts might have been herded together. The Japanese and Korean gaolers, almost without exception, were at the best callously indifferent to suffering, or, at the worst, bestially sadistic. The food was of a quality and a quantity barely enough to keep men alive, let alone fit them for the hara labour that most were driven to perform. It was horrifying to see them moving slowly about these sordid camps, all emaciated, many walking skeletons, numbers covered with suppurating sores, and most naked but for the ragged shorts they had worn for years or loin cloths of sacking. The most heart-moving of all were those who lay on wretched pallets, their strength ebbing faster than relief could be brought to them. There can be no excuse for a nation which as a matter of policy treats its prisoners of war in this way, and no honour for an army, however brave, which willingly makes itself the instrument of such inhumanity to the helpless.
Once the ceremonial surrender to General MacArthur had been staged on the 2nd September, we were free to occupy the Japanese-held territories. On the 3rd, our first detachments, mainly medical units to aid the prisoners, were landed by air near Bangkok, followed by headquarters and a brigade of the 7th Division. On the 11th September, Gracey and a small detachment of his 20th Division were staged through to Saigon and took control of Field-Marshal Tarauchi’s headquarters. The situation in Siam was well in hand, as the Regent and his government had for some time during the Japanese occupation been secretly working with us, organizing a resistance movement, and concerting measures for the day of liberation. In Indo-China fighting between local nationalist movements and the French, now released from internment, was already going on, and Gracey was faced with a most difficult politico-military situation in Allied territory, which he handled in a firm, cool, and altogether admirable manner.
The landing of Roberts’s 34 Corps over the beaches in the Port Swettenham–Port Dickson area, on the west coast of Malaya, went in on the 9th September as a tactical operation. There was no resistance, and even if there had been I think: the operation would have been a success, for the Japanese plans, as we afterwards discovered, were based on our landing elsewhere. The local inhabitants, Malays and Chinese, gave our men a great welcome. When, a little later, I landed myself to see how things were going, the first British soldier I met was a linesman of the Royal Signals, with his rifle slung, holding by one hand a little Chinese boy and by the other a little Chinese girl. Linked with these two grinning youngsters were half a dozen others, all laughing and snouting. The soldier was a little embarrassed to be found patrolling a telephone line with this unofficial escort, but the children enjoyed it immensely. Anyway, soldiers and children always go very well together.
On the 3rd September, Royal Marines from the fleet had taken over Penang Island from its Japanese garrison and, steaming on, the 5th Division had reached Singapore amid great local rejoicing on the 5th. Later the 26th Division, staging from Singapore, landed at Batavia in Java to deal with a very complicated and unhappy situation that had developed in the Dutch East Indies. Hongkong was reoccupied by 3 Commando Brigade on the 10th September. We were then ready to begin the disarming and collection in prisoner of war camps of the five hundred thousand Japanese troops in our area.
I had already, before the receipt of General MacArthur’s orders, issued instructions to all my commanders as to how the Japanese surrender was to be conducted in our area. In these I had laid down that all senior Japanese officers were to surrender their swords to appropriate British commanders in front of parades of their own troops. There had been some protests at this from our Japanese experts who averred that:
(i) The Japanese officer’s honour was so bound up with his Samurai sword that, rather than surrender it, he would go on fighting.
(ii) Alternatively, as the lawyers say, if he did surrender it before his men, he would never again be able to exercise command over them.
(iii) He would in fact, rather than be so publicly shamed, commit suicide.
My answers to these forebodings had been:
(i) If the Japanese liked to go on fighting, I was ready for them.
(ii) If the officers lost their soldiers’ respect I could not care less as I intended to separate them from their men in any case.
(iii) If the officers committed suicide I had already prepared for this by broadcasting that any Japanese officer wishing to commit suicide would be given every facility.
I was convinced that an effective way really to impress on the Japanese that they had been beaten in the field was to insist on this ceremonial surrender of swords. No Japanese soldier, who had seen his general march up and hand over his sword, would ever doubt that the Invincible Army was invincible no longer. We did not want a repetition of the German First War legend of an unconquered army. With this in mind, I was dismayed to be told that General MacArthur in his overall instruction for the surrender had decided that the ‘archaic’ ceremony of the surrender of swords was not to be enforced. I am afraid I disregarded his wishes. In South-East Asia all Japanese officers surrendered their swords to British officers of similar or higher rank; the enemy divisional and army commanders handed theirs in before large parades of their already disarmed troops. Field-Marshal Tarauchi’s sword is in Admiral Mountbat
ten’s hands; General Kimura’s is now on my mantelpiece, where I always intended that one day it should be.
In Singapore on the 12th September 1945 I sat on the left of the Supreme Commander, Admiral Mountbatten, in the line of his Commanders-in-Chief and principal staff officers, while the formal unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces, land, sea, and air, in South-East Asia was made to him. I looked at the dull impassive masks that were the faces of the Japanese generals and admirals seated opposite. Their plight moved me not at all. For them, I had none of the sympathy of soldier for soldier, that I had felt for Germans, Turks, Italians, or Frenchmen that by the fortune of war I had seen surrender. I knew too well what these men and those under their orders had done to their prisoners. They sat there apart from the rest of humanity. If I had no feeling for them, they, it seemed, had no feeling of any sort, until Itagaki, who had replaced Field-Marshal Tarauchi, laid low by a stroke, leant forward to affix his seal to the surrender document. As he pressed heavily on the paper, a spasm of rage and despair twisted his face. Then it was gone and his mask was as expressionless as the rest. Outside, the same Union Jack that had been hauled down in surrender in 1942 flew again at the masthead.
The war was over.
CHAPTER XXIII
AFTERTHOUGHTS
GENERALS have often been reproached with preparing for - the last war instead of for the next—an easy gibe when their fellow-countrymen and their political leaders, too frequently, have prepared for no war at all. Preparation for war is an expensive, burdensome business, yet there is one important part of it that costs little—study. However changed and strange the new conditions of war may be, not only generals, but politicians and ordinary citizens, may find there is much to be learned from the past that can be applied to the future and, in their search for it, that some campaigns have more than others foreshadowed the coming pattern of modern war. I believe that ours in Burma was one of these.
This may seem a curious claim to make for the struggles of comparatively ill-equipped men, groping through jungles. Yet a painters’ effect and style do not depend on how many tubes of colour he has, the number of his brushes, or the size of his canvas, but on how he blends his colours and handles his brushes against the canvas. Looking back on the Burma campaign, which presented, at least to me, a strange unity and completeness, I have many afterthoughts. Of these, I have here chosen a few, not because they are, perhaps, the most unusual or dramatic, but because they seem—again to me—to have some interest for the future.
Higher Direction
For the poor showing we made during the first phase of the war in Burma, the Retreat, there may have been few excuses, but there were many causes, most of them beyond the control of local commanders. Of these causes, one affected all our efforts and contributed much to turning our defeat into disaster—the failure, after the fall of Rangoon, to give the forces in the field a clear strategic object for the campaign. As a result, our plans had to be based on a rather nebulous, short-term idea of holding ground—we were not even sure what ground or for what purpose.
When the loss of Rangoon made it impossible to reinforce, or even adequately to maintain the army in Burma, still more when the Chinese divisions began to give way, it was only too plain that the Allies had no immediate hope of driving back the Japanese and very little of even holding them. At this time, those concerned in London and Washington with the conduct of global war, hard pressed as they were on more vital fronts, tended to overlook Burma. Yet a realistic assessment of possibilities there and a firm, clear directive would have made a great deal of difference to us and to the way we fought. Burma was not the first, nor was it to be the last, campaign that had been launched on no very clear realization of its political or military objects. A study of such campaigns points emphatically to the almost inevitable disaster that must follow. Commanders in the field, in fairness to them and their troops, must be clearly and definitely told what is the object they are locally to attain.
The organization of the command in a theatre is, of itself, of the utmost importance. The first step towards ultimate victory in South-East Asia was the setting up of a supreme command, controlling all Allied forces, land, sea, and air, in the area. There will always be difficulties, national and personal, in the creation and working of such a headquarters. In South-East Asia these were greater than in similar commands in Africa, Europe, or the Pacific, because of the underlying difference between the British and American attitudes towards the Burma campaign. The clash of personalities, too, was fierce, and often, as with Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek, aggravated by distance. There will always be these frictions to a greater or lesser degree in any Supreme Headquarters, but where Allied forces are operating together, there is no effective solution other than a Supreme Headquarters.
The Japanese Army
This was the first time since the Crusades, with the possible exception of some of our Indian wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that the British had fought an Asian or African enemy, whose armament and military organization had been comparable to their own. Like our predecessors, the Russians in their war against Japan, we found a war against such a foe, at any rate to begin with, an extremely unpleasant and startling experience. Yet, because we possessed certain basic qualities which the Russians of that day did not, we eventually succeeded where they failed.
The Japanese, in the earlier stages of the campaign, gained the moral ascendancy over us that they did, because we never seriously challenged their seizure of the initiative. They bought that initiative, fairly and inevitably, by paying for it with preparation. Our lack of preparation in Burma, military, administrative, and political, made it difficult for our commanders even to bid for the initiative. But we should have tried harder than we did and taken more risks to gain it. Even when weaker, as we were in the earlier stages, to adopt a static defence, to try merely to hold ground, unless relief and reinforcement are at hand, is fatal. The only hope is to take the offensive at least locally whatever the risk and by daring and surprise throw out the enemy’s plans. The Japanese were ruthless and bold as ants while their designs went well, but if those plans were disturbed or thrown out—ant-like again—they fell into confusion, were slow to readjust themselves, and invariably clung too long to their original schemes. This, to commanders with their unquenchable military optimism, which rarely allowed in their narrow administrative margins for any setback or delay, was particularly dangerous. The fundamental fault of their generalship was a lack of moral, as distinct from physical, courage. They were not prepared to admit that they had made a mistake, that their plans had misfired and needed recasting. That would have meant personal failure in the service of the Emperor and loss of face. Rather than confess that, they passed on to their subordinates, unchanged, the orders they had themselves received, well knowing that with the resources available the tasks demanded were impossible. Time and again, this blind passing of responsibility ran down a chain of disaster from the Commander-in-Chief to the lowest levels of leadership. It is true that in war determination by itself may achieve results, while flexibility, without determination in reserve, cannot, but it is only the blending of the two that brings final success. The hardest test of generalship is to hold this balance between determination and flexibility. In this the Japanese failed. They scored highly by determination; they paid heavily for lack of flexibility.
The strength of the Japanese Army lay, not in its higher leadership, which, once its career of success had been checked, became confused, nor in its special aptitude for jungle warfare, but in the spirit of the individual Japanese soldier. He fought and marched till he died. If five hundred Japanese were ordered to hold a position, we had to kill four hundred and ninety-five before it was ours—and then the last five killed themselves. It was this combination of obedience and ferocity that made the Japanese Army, whatever its condition, so formidable, and which would make any army formidable. It would make a European army invincible.
Our Forces<
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In Burma we not only fought against an Asian enemy, but we fought him with an army that was mainly Asian. In botn respects not a few of us with little experience of Asians had to readjust many ideas, among them that of the inherent superiority of the white man as a soldier. The Asian fighting man is at least equally brave, usually more careless of death, less encumbered by mental doubts, little troubled by humanitarian sentiment, and not so moved by slaughter and mutilation about him. He is, by background and living standards, better fitted to endure hardship uncomplainingly, to demand less in the way of subsistence or comfort, and to look after himself when thrown on his own resources. He has a keen practised eye for country and the ability to move across it on his own feet. He has not the inherent disinclination to climb hills that the city-bred, motor-riding white man has. Much—I had almost written most—of our fighting in Burma took place at night. Night fighting is, in effect, a form of dispersed fighting because, although men may be close together, they see little and suffer the fears and anxieties of isolation. The more civilized we become, the more we draw our soldiers from well-lighted towns, the more clumsy and frightened shall we be in the dark, and the greater the odds in favour of a more primitive foe.
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