VJ Day
Two cheering American servicemen supporting a girl, wearing on her chest a newspaper giving the news of the Japanese surrender. © IWM EA 75895
For many British people, the first knowledge they had of the war ending, was from newspaper headlines, which read “Japan Surrenders!” There were scenes of celebration redolent of those which Britain had experienced on VE Day, on the 8th May 1945.
The formal signing of the surrender terms by Japandid not occur until the 2nd September, aboard the United States’ battleship Missouri – anchored in Tokyo Bay. The United States continues to commemorate VJ Day on that date.
The news that Japan had surrendered, brought a feeling of relief, to Allied servicemen. They would no longer be risking death or injury in combat. Many who had been serving in the Pacific and Burma cherished the hope that they would soon be able to return home, to their loved ones.
Donald Lashbrook who was serving in Rangoon, Burma, recollected, ’VJ Day came and we heard that it was all over, the atomic bomb had been dropped. It was all over. Everybody was “we’re on our way home”.’
For many of the Allied prisoners of war held by the Japanese, the physical and emotional impact of a brutal captivity would continue for the remainder of their lives. Some of those former captives may have considered themselves fortunate to have been alive – almost 30 per cent of the inmates of Japanese POW camps died.
On the 15th August 1945, Emperor Hirohito took the unprecedented step of personally broadcasting to the Japanese people. The Emperor’s voice had not previously been heard by his subjects – who regarded him as an incarnate divinity. The situation faced by Japan was stated as follows, ‘Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage, is indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilisation.’
Michiko Nakamoto, who had suffered severe burns, as a consequence of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima, recalled her feelings, upon hearing that the war had ended, ‘I didn’t like the thought of losing the war and I couldn’t bear it, but then no more air raids and we could sleep at night without going to the underground shelter, so that was some relief. So it’s a mixed feeling.’
The Japanese population had experienced extreme food shortages during the latter part of the war, due to the sinking of merchant ships, by the United States Navy. The government in Japan had been advising people how to prepare meals from acorns, grain husks, sawdust, snails, grasshoppers and rats! The repatriation of demobilised Japanese soldiers exacerbated these starvation conditions. In a letter to a friend, Sherwood R. Moran, of the United States’ Navy wrote, ‘Tokyo, the first war casualty I’ve seen, is a devastated , immodest mess, but the silence is what gets me most…’.
The survivors in the liberated concentration camps struggled to survive the effects of starvation. British troops encountering the emaciated figures at Bergen-Belsen, initially offered their own rations. The food was too rich for intestines which had shrunk so severely. The diligent efforts of British doctors and medical students, found the right combination of fluids and foods to nurse the survivors back to health.
