Conduct Under Fire

by John A. Glusman

  Yet here were the Kempeitai telling them in so many words that they were worth no more than the dirt beneath their heels. Murray felt the years of rage, resentment, and wounded pride well up in him. He drew himself up to his full six feet, jabbed his finger at Captain Nakamura, and said:

  “Listen, you goddamned son of a bitch. We won the war. And if you don’t treat us with the respect that is our due as officers of the United States Navy, I’ll see to it that your ass is strung from the highest lamppost in Tōkyō!”

  The victor commanded the vanquished, his language torn from the mouths of the Japanese. Fred looked at Murray in amazement. Had he gone mad? He was the junior navy medical officer and had no authority whatsoever to say what he had. Were he the senior medical officer, he still would have had no right to make such a threat. For God’s sake, Fred thought, we’ll all be shot! A moment of stunned silence followed. The Kempeitai blanched. Seconds felt like hours. Then Nakamura did an about-face and abruptly left the room.

  The army washed its hands of the ex-POWs, and the Foreign Office took over. After much haggling, the doctors agreed to return to Kōbe if they could first contact the Swiss consulate in Tōkyō, the official representative of U.S. interests in Japan. Fujisaki escorted them to the American embassy building, where the consulate had temporary quarters. There they were greeted by Dr. Erwin Bernath, whom they remembered from his visit to the Kōbe POW Hospital in October 1944. Fred handed over the roster of Maruyama POWs to Bernath, who promised to deliver to Allied headquarters the doctors’ request to evacuate their tubercular patients. He would also reassure the families of the POW doctors that they were safe. Bernath then rounded up his staff associates, called some friends (including the Swedish delegate, Per Bjoerstedt, who lived in Shioya), and threw a small party to celebrate the arrival of the Americans.

  The next day, August 29, the doctors checked out of the Imperial Hotel. The tab came to 115.20 yen for rooms and 138.30 yen for meals. Charge it to the U.S. Navy, they told the hotel clerk. They left Tōkyō by train under Kempeitai escort. Nakao Kiyoaki kicked four Japanese soldiers out of their seats so he and the Americans could sit down on the journey back to Ōsaka. Once settled in, he explained that had the Kempeitai failed to prevent the ex-POWs from meeting with MacArthur, only seppuku could have absolved them from shame.

  Murray was struck by how able-bodied and healthy the Japanese seemed. Whether raw recruits or returning veterans, they were well fed and in high spirits. Two and a half million soldiers, claimed Nakao, had been ready to defend an American landing on Japan. When the train passed Yokohama, the doctors had their first glimpse of the U.S. Navy in nearly four years. The sight of the Third Fleet in Sagami Bay, the help that had finally made its way—battleships, cruisers, and destroyers—brought tears to their eyes. They were going home.

  There was a race within the American military to be the first to set foot on the Japanese Home Islands. Lieutenant General Eichelberger, commander of the Eighth Army, asked MacArthur if he could precede his arrival in Japan by two days to ensure his safety in Yokohama. MacArthur gave him two hours. On August 30 hundreds of C-47s from Okinawa bearing the bulk of the 11th Airborne Division arrived in three-minute intervals at Atsugi, followed by the 27th Infantry Division. To secure the Yokosuka Naval Base, the American fleet brought in the 6th Marine Division and the 4th Marine Regimental Combat Team, whose predecessors had so valiantly defended Corregidor. Then around 1400 that afternoon “a beautiful plane” touched down at Atsugi named The Bataan.

  As the 11th Airborne’s military band struck up “Ruffles and Flourishes,” out stepped MacArthur, clenching a long corncob between his teeth.

  “He hesitated a moment,” remarked one Japanese observer, “and gazed upward toward the horizon from left to right and took a momentary Napoleon-like pose, reminding viewers of a victor and a conqueror.”

  “Bob,” MacArthur said to Eichelberger, “this is the payoff.”

  Eichelberger agreed, though he “wasn’t quite sure what the payoff would be.” Just a few days before, “bitter fighting” had erupted at Atsugi when the Japanese Army, deeply distrustful of the kamikaze pilots, removed all of the propellers from their planes. American soldiers had arrived in Japan, but they were outnumbered “thousands to one.” Entire divisions of Japanese soldiers still hadn’t demobilized. The local navy air force—the Sagamihara Air Corps—was determined to engage American forces, while the Special Attack Corps vowed to attack the battleship USS Missouri in Tōkyō Bay, until dissuaded by Prince Takamatsu, an emissary of the emperor.

  The reception at Atsugi was gracious and went off without incident. Sandwiches had been prepared by the kitchen staff of the Imperial Hotel.

  Before he arrived in Japan, MacArthur had formulated fifteen objectives for the American occupation. Many of the principles had already been articulated and argued over by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) and its Far East Subcommittee during the previous two years in Washington and were formalized in the directive entitled “United States Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan,” sent to MacArthur by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  First destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize political power. Separate church from state.

  The New Grand Hotel in Yokohama quickly became the nexus for army, air force, and navy officers, as well as the international press. The old Customs House, which had been painted black to avoid detection during air raids, served as the advance GHQ/AFPAC, which had jurisdiction over U.S. troops in the Far East and Japan, composed primarily of the 200,000-man-strong Eighth Army. A separate headquarters organization, GHQ/SCAP, would be established in Tōkyō to oversee the civil administration of Japan.

  Following on MacArthur’s heels was the Recovered Personnel Section from Okinawa, charged with finding and repatriating 32,624 ex-POWs throughout Japan. Once located and evacuated, they were no longer ex-POWs, they were Recovered Allied Military Personnel, or RAMPs. Their new name reflected the new lives they had just begun.

  Technically, the liberation of POWs was the responsibility of the Eighth Army, but when the Recovered Personnel Section showed up at Ōmori, they discovered that the navy had liberated the camp twelve hours earlier. At a conference aboard the Missouri on the morning of August 29, the navy’s top brass decided that although the naval landings were not scheduled until August 30, the POWs in camps around Tōkyō Bay should be released immediately. The seriously ill would be transferred to the hospital ship, the USS Benevolence, which was about five miles offshore in Tōkyō Bay.

  Commodore Joel T. Boone, medical officer of the Third Fleet, won the distinction of being the first American officially ashore in the Tōkyō environs after the capitulation of Japan. Temporarily designated medical officer of Task Force 31, Boone was in charge of all medical officers and corpsmen assisting in the evacuation of ex-POWs. That afternoon Boone left the USS San Juan by LCVP (landing craft, vehicle personnel) with Commodore R. W. Simpson, commander of Task Group 30.6; Commander Harold E. Stassen, Simpson’s chief of staff; Dr. Junod of the ICRC; and Chaplain Robinson of the Missouri, who served as interpreter. They were guided to Omori by navy planes flying overhead. As they approached the camp, they saw ex-POWs standing on the dock naked. Men dove into the water and began swimming toward the LCVP, but the officers on board urged them back to shore, fearful of causing injury. When the landing party reached Ōmori, they found a Swedish Red Cross representative waiting at the camp gate, having been denied entry. The Americans demanded to see the commandant, Colonel Sakaba, and informed him that they were there to liberate the POWs. Sakaba replied that the War Ministry had not instructed him to release them. A heated argument ensued, in which Commodores Simpson and Bo
one, who were unarmed, explained that they represented Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. Sakaba continued to object until Simpson and Boone simply shoved him aside and entered the various camp buildings, beginning with the dispensary. Boone described the scene:The excitement of the prisoners was a never-forgettable sight. Many of them were unclad, some clad merely with a G-string, others with trunks, while some others were dressed in non-descriptive apparel. . . . Commodore Simpson, Commodore Boone and Commander Stassen circulated among the prisoners of the camp and into the various buildings to appraise the situation and to inform the prisoners that they were free. The scene was one of wild exultation.

  Once the situation was under control, Boone went to Shinagawa, the hospital camp for the Tōkyō area that he had heard about from Dr. Junod and which was just a few miles north of Omori. He waved when he saw POWs in the windows, but there was no response. They had no idea the moment of liberation had come. When they finally recognized Boone as an American officer, “those that were able to, ran out of doors and jumped through windows, running toward him, hugging him, yelling and literally kissing him and falling at his feet in their excitement.”

  The conditions at Shinagawa were horrific. POWs were emaciated, and the buildings that housed them were filthy. They lived on mud floors and had no blankets. As Simpson radioed Halsey’s headquarters on entering the camp, “There has never been a blacker hellhole than the prisoner-of-war hospital that we are now evacuating.”

  Of the first group of prisoners screened aboard the Benevolence, Boone reported that 85 percent of them suffered from severe malnutrition, while there were numerous cases of beriberi and tuberculosis. The signs of intense suffering, emotional distress, and fear were unmistakable. Boone was shocked at their condition. “Nobody came out of Japan hating the Japs more than I did,” he remarked, “and I say that as a physician and a man who was born a Quaker.”

  Fred, Murray, and Stan spent the night at Ōsaka No. 1 Headquarters Camp, which was still under the supervision of Colonel Murata. The next day a young Russian commandeered a car and drove them to Maruyama. The camp was deserted except for a few cooks. While the navy doctors were in Tōkyō, the Kōbe municipal police department had arranged for food and supplies to be sent into the compound. The ICRC hadn’t made it there yet. Then on August 29, after Fred, Murray, and Stan appealed to Erwin Bernath in Tōkyō for emergency medical assistance, patients and staff were evacuated by bus and ambulance from Maruyama to a wing of the Ōsaka Red Cross Hospital. There were beds with clean sheets, plenty of medical supplies, and patients were tended by Japanese nurses who couldn’t have been more cooperative. To all appearances, the “mission of mercy” had been a success.

  Under the stewardship of Chief Surgeon Dr. Hara, the Ōsaka Red Cross Hospital began receiving patients from subcamps within a fiftymile radius. Ōhashi was pleased to see his old friends again. Page remained cool over their violation of protocol. In the next few days, so many planes made area food drops that Page signaled the pilots to stop. One canister killed a woman next door after it crashed through her roof. The hospital itself was hit, though no injuries were sustained.

  Food, clothing, books, copies of Life magazine, Lucky Strikes, and news sheets had been air-dropped by navy Grummans from the USS Randolph and planes from the U.S. Far Eastern Air Force. Over at Wakinohama, RAMPs opened packages that included messages from American pilots such as “See You in New York,” “Texas Is Proud of You,” and “Never a Dull Moment.”

  The navy doctors spent the night on the roof of the Ōsaka Red Cross Hospital, but they were too excited to sleep. Fred stayed up with William McGaffin, a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. He peppered the reporter with questions. So much was new to him—the helmets of the occupation forces, their carbines and Jeeps, the K-rations he was tasting for the first time. He pored over magazine advertisements, reminisced about dancing in the Forest Room of the Drake Hotel in Chicago, and worried that “everyone back there is so far ahead of us now.” He wondered who this new kid singer Frank Sinatra was.

  When McGaffin told him he’d be returning to “a world of squawking juke boxes,” Fred inquired, “What’s a juke box?”

  Meanwhile General Albert C. Wedemeyer, commander of American forces in China, proposed that Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright, recently freed from Sian, Manchuria, be invited to attend the formal surrender ceremony on September 2. General Douglas MacArthur readily agreed. The occasion was rich in symbolism and drama.

  On an overcast Sunday morning, the haggard general beloved by his troops on Bataan and Corregidor stood behind MacArthur on the hot quarterdeck of the battleship Missouri in Tōkyō Bay. To his left was Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival, the British commander when Singapore fell to the Japanese. Behind them was a phalanx of Allied admirals and generals in khaki against the backdrop of the greatest armada in the world. The thirty-one-starred flag from Commodore Perry’s flagship, Mississippi, lay in a glass case atop a bulkhead. The canvas and leatherbound surrender documents rested on a table nearby. The battleship’s flagstaff flew the same Stars and Stripes that had waved from the Washington Capitol on December 7, 1941, while the colors of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the veranda deck. Sailors leaned over railings, stood on gun turrets, and sat on masts craning for the best view as the navy band struck up “Anchors Aweigh.”

  A hush descended over the Missouri as the Japanese delegation came on board. Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, who had lost a leg in an assassination attempt fifteen years before in Shanghai, walked gingerly on an artificial limb and seated himself with difficulty at a mess table covered with green baize. He was dressed in a swallowtail coat, striped pants, a silk top hat, and yellow gloves. No words were exchanged between Shigemitsu and MacArthur. General Umezu, chief of the Imperial Army General Staff, wore formal military garb. To Kase Toshikazu, a member of the Foreign Office educated at Amherst and Harvard, it was “the torture of the pillory.” Said 2nd Lieutenant Sakamoto, a nisei linguist: “The whole scene was as if a huge lion had cornered a tiny, helpless-looking mouse in a cage. If ever there was a scene that brought home to me how sad a defeated nation can be—this scene was it.” MacArthur finally spoke:It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfilment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.

  Suddenly the battleship’s quarterdeck, recorded Kase, was transformed “into an altar of peace.” At precisely 9:03 A.M. Shigemitsu signed the instrument of surrender on behalf of Emperor Hirohito, followed by Umezu for the Imperial General Staff. Then MacArthur added his signature on behalf of the Allied powers, but not before handing Wainwright one of the pens he used and giving Percival another; he completed his signature with a small red fountain pen of Mrs. MacArthur’s. After a mere twenty minutes the ceremony was declared over. In a final salute 400 B-29s and 1,500 carrier planes roared over the Missouri. Then, in what seemed poetic justice to some and an act of divine intervention to others, “the sun burst through low-hanging clouds,” reported The New York Times, “as a shining symbol to a ravaged world now done with war.”

  The Missouri had no broadcast facilities, so MacArthur stepped up to another microphone for a recording that was rushed to the communications ship Ancon and transmitted around the world:Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. . . . As I look back upon the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in
war.

  Ōhashi considered the surrender ceremony a disgrace. It was laughable, he wrote in his diary, to think of General Umezu, who had been so adamantly opposed to the Potsdam Declaration, taking part in it. As for General Yamashita Tomoyuki, the “Tiger of Malaya,” who had lost most of the Philippines to American forces by June 1945, he should have killed himself rather than capitulate.

  The good doctor was tormented by feelings of humiliation and he was anxious for Colonel Murata, whose fate under the Allied occupation could easily be linked to his own. He was most concerned about his family. In the first week of occupation, newspapers recorded 931 offenses by American soldiers in Yokohama, ranging from armed robbery to rape. In Kanagawa Prefecture alone, 1,336 rapes by American GIs were reported in the first ten days.

  Outwardly Ōhashi was gracious and dignified. He invited Page and Fred to the Miyazaki home in Nishinomiya, where he still lived with his family. He introduced them to his wife, Yukako, and his eldest daughter, Yasuko, who let the Americans choose a Japanese doll from her collection. Ōhashi presented Page with an ancestral sword. He gave Fred a kimono for his mother along with his personal fan, which he explained was a symbol of life.

  Sensō owari. The war is over.