Surrender can refer either to the surrender of individual soldiers or small groups of soldiers, the surrender of a larger military formation by its commander, or the surrender of an entire nation.
The Allied and Japanese attitudes towards surrender
were very
different. The Allied attitude was based on the Roman doctrine of just
war
that was inherited and modified by the Christian West. Under this
doctrine, the
purpose of a just war was not to
physically annihilate the enemy, but to impose one's will on him.
Unnecessary killing and
destruction was to be avoided. Thus, surrender
was generally regarded as
honorable when further resistance was pointless. Mass Allied surrenders
were common in
the first six months of the war, when the Japanese Centrifugal Offensive
swept aside all opposition. Thereafter Allied troops became very
reluctant to surrender, both because of the fear of atrocities and because the
strategic setting had become such that Allied troops were less
likely to find themselves in hopeless tactical situations.
To the Japanese Army of the Pacific War, operating under a twisted
version of the ancient Bushido
code, surrender was unthinkable. The most honorable fate for a warrior
was to die while taking many enemies with him (as with the kamikazes.) Ordinary death in
battle was the next most honorable fate, while suicide was the
preferred alternative to surrender. Very few Japanese officers
were captured alive until the final months of the war, and not many
then. Surrenders by enlisted men were more common but still infrequent.
Japanese troops who found themselves in a hopeless tactical situation
would usually adopt gyokusai
(玉砕) or "shattered jewel" tactics. These took
the form of a suicidal charge (the so-called banzai charge) or of simply taking
up defensive positions and defending them to the death. The latter
became
the preferred option in the last months of the war. However, by late
1944, the Army had abandoned the term gyokusai
in favor of "all achieved a heroic death in battle" because gyokusai had become associated in
the public mind with the defeats at Tarawa
and Makin.
Under traditional bushido, captives were to be treated with mercy. This injunction failed to make it into the code of the modern Japanese Army. Allied prisoners of war were regarded by the Japanese as completely dishonorable and were subject to appalling treatment. It did not help that discipline within the Japanese Army itself was brutal, and many of the prison camp guards were Korean conscripts who were at the bottom of the military pecking order. The Korean guards were mistreated by their Japanese NCOs, and mistreated Allied prisoners in turn.
Japanese prisoners of war were usually treated humanely, in part
because Allied
intelligence officers
considered prisoners to be valuable intelligence
assets. The Japanese did nothing to prepare their men for the
possibility of capture, since that possibility was unthinkable, and
Japanese prisoners tended to talk freely with their captors. Many
Japanese prisoners begged their captors to allow them to remain in
Allied countries and to not inform their government of their capture
rather than face the dishonor of returning alive to their families.
These requests were refused, since such notification was
required under the laws
of war.
Surrender by individuals or small groups was not nearly as common in
the Pacific as in the European theater. Japanese enlisted men would
occasionally surrender in small numbers once they were cut off and
their officers killed. This became increasingly common as the war
progressed. Individual Allied troops surrendered in some numbers early
in the war, but this became less common as fear of mistreatment became
widespread. In either case, surrender was signaled by waving a white
flag or raising one's empty hands above one's head.
There were numerous allegations that Japanese troops feigned surrender in order to kill the Allied troops attempting to receive their surrender, often with a concealed grenade. Following the battle of the Tenaru River on Guadalcanal, wounded Japanese shot a number of Marines, and the Marines responded by firing additional rounds into all the Japanese bodies on the battlefield. Vandegrift was shocked by the incident, and wrote to the Marine Corps commandant (Frank 1990):
General, I have never heard or read of this kind of fighting. These people refuse to surrender. The wounded wait until men come up to examine them ... and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade.
Japanese sailors rescued at sea sometimes turned on their rescuers, as when a survivor from sunken destroyer Yugumo killed the American sailor from PT-163 who offered him a cup of coffee. As a result, many Allied soldiers and units became averse to giving Japanese the opportunity to surrender, in technical violation of the Geneva conventions forbidding a "no quarter" policy.
Morison gives an example of the extremes to which Japanese sailors would go to avoid capture:
On their way north, the bluejackets topside in destroyer Spence were goggle-eyed at an exhibition of Japanese bushido. Ordered to investigate a life raft, they observed what appeared to be seven bodies in it. The seven bodies suddenly sat up and started talking. One of them, apparently the officer, broke out a 7.7mm machine gun, which each man in succession placed in his mouth, while the officer fired a round which shot the back of the man's head off. After six had been bumped off, the officer stood up, addressed a short speech in Japanese to Spence's commanding officer on the bridge, and then shot himself.
The extraordinary reluctance of Japanese soldiers to surrender was
regarded by the Allies at the time as an indication of fanatical
devotion to the Emperor. While
that was doubtless a factor, particularly among the officer corps,
other elements may have been at play. Inoue Hayashi, a junior Japanese
Army officer, claimed that the iron rule against surrender was
necessary to prevent a total collapse of morale (Hastings 2007):
If we were told to defend this position or that one, we did it. To fall back without orders was a crime. It was as simple as that. We were trained to fight to the end, and nobody ever discussed doing anything else. Looking back later, we could see that the military code was unreasonable. But at that time, we regarded dying for our country as our duty. If men had been allowed to surrender honorably, everybody would have been doing it.
The Japanese occasionally tried to induce individual surrender by
Allied troops by dropping "surrender
cards" promising proper
treatment if the soldier followed the surrender instructions printed on
the card. These
cards sometimes featured a photograph of a nude Western woman on
the reverse side to entice the Allied soldiers. The cards proved
ineffective for their intended purpose.
A military officer may surrender his command to the enemy when his situation becomes hopeless. In theory, such surrenders can be conditional or unconditional, though few large unit surrenders during the Second World War were received on any conditions beyond basic adherence to the laws of war. Subordinates of a commander who surrenders may attempt escape (like any prisoner of war) but, if they engage in military activities after their commander surrenders, and before they are able to rejoin their chain of command, they are considered unlawful combatants and do not enjoy the legal protections due prisoners of war. The Japanese routinely executed American soldiers who became guerrillas in the Philippines following Wainright's surrender, and the Allies threatened to execute Japanese troops who refused to turn themselves in after the general surrender in August 1945.
There was only one surrender of an organized Japanese military unit prior to the general surrender of August 1945. This was a single starving platoon surrendered by its lieutenant in New Guinea (Newman 1995). Surrender of large Allied units was common during the first months of the war, with units of brigade size or larger surrendered by their commanders in Hong Kong, Malaya, the Philippines, and Java. In every case, the surrender was unconditional, which the Japanese chose to interpret as meaning that even the laws of war did not apply.
At the time Wainright surrendered Corregidor, there was some ambiguity regarding the American chain of command. MacArthur believed himself to still be the commander of all American troops in the Philippines, in spite of the fact that he was then in Australia. If MacArthur was correct, then Wainright had authority only over the troops on Corregidor. However, the Japanese insisted that radio instructions from Washington to Corregidor proved that Wainright was the commander of all American troops in the Philippines. Thus Homma had some legal basis for his threat to execute any Americans in the Philippines who did not turn themselves in after Wainright surrendered. On the other hand, the reluctance of other Philippines commanders to surrender suggests that they did not understand themselves to be under Wainright's command. They did not surrender until Homma threatened to massacre the Corregidor garrison, an action that would have violated the laws of war regardless of the command situation.
Japan announced its surrender as a nation on 15 August 1945, and a
cease-fire went into effect shortly thereafter, although the surrender
ceremony
that formally ended hostilities did not take place until 2 September
1945. The remaining Japanese armed forces in the field surrendered as
soon thereafter as arrangements could be made.
Responsible leaders in Japan recognized that their country's bid for Asian hegemony had failed following the loss of Saipan in July 1944. The Tojo cabinet fell and was replaced by a new cabinet under retired general Koiso Kuniaki. The Emperor's chamberlain, Kido, indicated to Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru that the Emperor wished to find a diplomatic settlement of the war. However, the intransigent Army leadership made it very dangerous for anyone to propose peace, and the war continued to drag on. Japanese leaders were not ready at this point to surrender on terms acceptable to the Allies in any case. Even the "doves" were prepared to hold out for a negotiated surrender under which Japan would be unoccupied; would retain control of Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa; and would try its own military leaders for war crimes. These terms were very similar to those given Germany under the Versailles Treaty and would have been rejected out of hand by the Americans.
On 11 May 1945 the top leaders agreed to seek peace on these terms
through the Russians, but the
Soviet ambassador was not approached until 3 June. By then it was far
too late for a Russian-mediated settlement, as the Russians were
preparing to intervene in northeast Asia.
The decision to surrender followed three events that made it clear to all but the most die hard Japanese militarists that the war was lost. The first was the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine, which made it impossible for Japan to import enough food to feed its civilian population, let alone maintain military production. This process was essentially complete by mid-1945. The second event was the dropping of nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945. The third was the declaration of war by Russia on 9 August, followed by a swift and crushing invasion of Manchuria.
Historians have long debated the importance of these three elements in forcing the surrender, with those philosophically opposed to the nuclear bombings tending to discount their importance relative to the other two elements. However, there are indications that the nuclear attacks made a profound impression on the Emperor, who broke precedent by acting to resolve the deadlock in the Japanese Cabinet in favor of accepting the Allied surrender terms.
These terms were spelled out in the Potsdam Declaration, and
amounted to something just short of an unconditional surrender. The
Allies
insisted on the occupation and complete demilitarization of Japan, but
offered vague guarantees not to deindustrialize Japan and to restore
Japanese sovereignty at an unspecified future date. The
Japanese leadership were divided over whether to accept the terms of
the Potsdam Declaration with the sole additional provision that the
Imperial House be retained, or to insist that Japan not be occupied,
her military not be disbanded, and any war crimes trials be conducted
by Japanese courts.
The Russian declaration of war ended Japanese hopes (never realistic
in any case) of an alliance with Russia. However, the Japanese Army
still believed, not without reason, that they could inflict serious
enough casualties when the
Allies invaded Japan (Operation DOWNFALL)
to force the Allies to the negotiating table. Prime Minister Suzuki
even speculated that the Potsdam Declaration was a sign of weakness.
However, on 9 August
1945, Suzuki stunned the cabinet by inviting the Emperor
to express his will and resolve their deadlock. The Emperor promptly
called on the Cabinet to accept the Potsdam Declaration with the sole
proviso to retain the Imperial House.
The Allies responded:
From the moment of the surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms....
The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.
The armed forces of the Allied powers will remain in Japan until the purposes set forth in the Potsdam Declaration are achieved.
Continued anxiety over the postwar status of the Emperor contributed to continuing resistance to surrender, with the Army Minister, Anami Korechika, leading the die hards. When the Allies began dropping leaflets with the text of the Potsdam Declaration on Japan, along with the susequent exchange of notes, political pressure to bring the war to an end increased. Whether the war could have been ended sooner by offering clearer guarantees regarding the Emperor, without the need for the nuclear attacks, remains a contentious issue among historians. It is the belief of this author that the decision to surrender was a very close thing even with the nuclear attacks.
References
Hastings
(2007)
Morison (1950, 1953)
Newman (1995)
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