An unnecessary insult to Japan at its surrender?

World War II General WWII Discussion
#41

Ok, I’ve thought about this a little more and I’ve had a change of thinking. You said it was an “unneccessary” insult. Let’s agree it was an insult, I say so what? and Why not? After all the horrendous things the Japanese forces did to Allied soldiers and the people of the lands they conquered, they had it coming. So we flew a flag, big deal? Of all the things we as victors we could have done to the Emporer or the Japanese people at large, sticking Perry’s flag in their faces was quite tame. Besides, I bet that the Japanese didn’t even know it was there, and if that was true, it wouldn’t have been an insult at all.

And by the way, this was your original quote:

“The formal surrender of the Japanese Imperial Government, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and all Japanese and Japanese-controlled armed forces wherever located, was signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) at 0908 on 2 September 1945. Looking down upon the ceremony, to present a reminder of an earlier occasion on which Japanese truculence had been humbled by American sea power was the American Flag which had flown over Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry’s flagship USS Mississippi (Sidewheel Steamer) when he steamed into the Bay of Yedo (Tokyo Bay, as it was known after 1868) in 1853.”

I read a “reminder of an earlier occasion”. Where are your contemporay documents that specifically state that this act was a deliberate “insult”. Something from General McArthur perhaps? Admiral Nimitz? Halsey? Or are you just extrapolating?

I believe the Japanese as a whole looked upon the democracies as weak and ineffectual. Diplomacy was the order of the day for us, we never lifted up one hand against them for their invasion of China. They knew our military was in a weakened state and it was only when the American oil embargo was finally enacted that they were starting to see we meant to do something different. Those officers who had been to America knew our potential, but their leadership still thought that no one could match the “Bushido” fighting ethic.

As for the ships, yes they were there to ensure the surrender, but I maintain that they and the atomioc bombs were the ultimate insult. The great Japanese military forces had been utterly defeated and here we were on their doorstep.

As for the atomic bombs, they were developed primarily for Germany, but with them deafeated and the prospect of a full scale invasion of Japan entailing enormous casualties the atom bombs were the perfect weapon against an island nation whose soldiers fought to the death. Insults were not intended by them or our ships, but rather the end result, if we are talking about what is or is not an insult. Think of it, a people who go to war as only a last resort defeats a warrior nation? I think that was quite the insult in itself.

#42

So far as the seabourne forces go, that’s pretty accurate. Blame for that is somewhat divided though - the British didn’t really have suitable forces available until early 1945, while the US side did their best to keep the British out. King had to be directly overruled by Roosevelt , and in his memoirs Halsey wrote “it was imperative that we forestall a possible postwar claim by Britain that she had delivered even a part of the final blow that demolished the Japanese fleet… an exclusively American attack was therefore in American interests.”. Even at that the BPF was planned to be something like 25% of Allied airpower for Downfall.

I’m having trouble working out what the US ground strength was in the Pacific - looks to me to be of the order 200,000-400,000, but I don’t have any decent books so can’t tie it down better than that. I will say that those numbers look pretty small to me so I’m probably missing something major.
The British/Commonwealth/Empire 14th Army in Burma hit almost a million men by 1944. Chinese Nationalist forces peaked at about 6 million.
The difference being that China and Burma were major land areas where massive force could be brought to bear on major Japanese armies. The US island-hopping campaign by it’s very nature never had that opportunity until it got to Japan proper - and so massive land forces appear never to have been employed.

#43

You make a good point on the land forces numbers. Yes, if I recall Commonwealth forces were large, probably more so than the Americans. Would like to see the actual figures as to the numbers.

#44

To an extent it’s missing the point anyway - the war was fought by an alliance, and the Commonwealth/Empire could divert forces to the Far East because the US had shifted a lot to Europe. The Indian Army could get to Burma more easily than Europe, while the US could get to Europe more easily than it could to those areas of the Far East where there were major Japanese forces.

#45

Agreed.

The significance is not in displaying (it wasn’t flown) Perry’s flag but that the flag represented a previous armed assault on Japan which was not justified by anything Japan did. Perry’s assault was motivated purely by America’s desire to force Japan to open itself to trade with America. Not that America was alone among Western powers in that pursuit at the time, but it was the only one which achieved it and purely by force of arms, albeit without bloodshed.

Given Perry’s example of bullying American military power exercised against a weaker nation for its own benefit, what was wrong with Japan exercising its power against weaker nations from Korea to China and then its expansion in what became the Pacific War?

There is a great and sad irony, obviously lost on those responsible for it, in displaying Perry’s flag to humiliate the Japanese at the end of their unsuccessful expansionist war when it represented exactly the same sort of conduct by America which brought Japan into the international arena and led directly to the Pacific War.

I don’t see it that way when one considers that Perry’s flag represented an earlier American assault upon and subjugation of Japan, but one which was without the moral and legal justification which attended the surrender of Japan in 1945. Displaying the flag to insult the Japanese in 1945 strikes me as ill-informed and misplaced triumphalism, designed to humiliate Japan to no good purpose with the risk of becoming an unnecessary focus for resentment towards the victor.

As for what ‘we as victors’ could have done to the Emperor:

  1. Assuming that ‘we as victors’ refers to Americans, other forces fought and suffered losses in that war, notably the usually forgotten Chinese.
  2. The Americans, as distinct from the other forces who also fought the Japanese, chose not to try the Emperor as a war criminal but instead airbrushed history and presented him as the pawn of the militarists when he was fully involved in all aspects leading up to and during the war.
  3. Sticking Perry’s flag in Japanese faces was indeed quite tame compared with America’s disgraceful actions in not prosecuting the Emperor; not prosecuting the vile ****s who ran Harbin but instead protecting and using them for their knowledge of bacteriological warfare etc; and, with a degree of British support, abandoning prosecution of Japanese war criminals towards the end of the 1940s when American and British interests dictated that the stout anti-communists in the militarist ranks of defeated Japan were exactly the sort of Allies they wanted to confront the communists in China and the USSR; and generally in allowing the same bastards who ran Japan before the surrender to run it afterwards and pretty much avoid the war guilt and related consequences forced upon the Germans whose conduct overall was about on the same bestial level.

See #19.

See #19

I think we may be at cross purposes in our use of the term ‘insult’.

You seem to me to be using it similarly to the medical use when an injury or infection etc is referred to as an ‘insult’ to the organ or body, but the events you refer to as other insults are to me just part of the necessary course of the war.

I am using ‘insult’, so far as Perry’s flag is concerned, in the sense of an act calculated to offend and or humiliate the target of the act, being Japan. I see everything else up to that point as just a necessary part of defeating Japan.

But the presence of Perry’s flag was an unnecessary part of the surrender ceremony and served no good purpose.

#46

It depends upon the part of the war you’re talking about, and whether you want to focus on fighting surface ships or the whole picture.

The American naval forces were the major part of the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea; Guadalcanal; and all of Midway. And of the American advances in 1944-45.

However, what seems generally to be unknown or ignored is the contribution made by the Dutch with the naval and merchant forces they withdrew to Australia. I and others have posted on it in a thread or three in this forum, but without the Dutch merchant ships supplying the troops the initially primarily Australian but increasingly American effort in Papua New Guinea 1943-44 which paved the way for MacArthur’s advance could not have occurred. The Dutch also took surface ships and submarines which they based in Australia and were used against the Japanese. I can’t find the relevant threads at the moment.

#47

I don’t know the numbers and it would depend upon which part of the war against Japan one was looking at.

I can’t comment on the BCI theatre as I lack knowledge.

The Americans were alone in the central Pacific thrusts westwards in 1944 onwards, but not in previous years further south.

The numbers in the Pacific are less important than the strategic impact they had.

On a short term basis the most important Allied land troops against the Japanese were the Americans on Guadalcanal and the Australians in Papua in the second half of 1942 as they stemmed the Japanese advance.

On a longer term basis the Australian and American troops in New Guinea 1943-44 were the most important land troops, as distinct from US Marines and Army in amphibious assaults elsewhere, as they laid the basis for MacArthur’s advance from 1944 and tied down a very large number of Japanese troops; diverted Japanese resources in attempts to supply them; and precluded them from being used to defend islands attacked by the Americans in their central Pacific thrusts.

In a way, for three years the Pacific war really took place in New Guinea. It was an important side theatre that for the length of the war conveniently pinned down 350,000 elite Japanese troops as MacArthur island-hopped his way to Tokyo.

In New Guinea, Japan lost 220,000 troops. In a land that was never imagined to become a battlefield, not by late-Tokugawa southward advance protagonists who envisaged the Philippines as a possible war theatre, not by Meiji intellectuals who saw the prize in Malaya and in Indonesia, not even by the General Staff at the outbreak of war.

It is an irony of Pacific war history that several other islands come to mind immediately when we speak of action in the Pacific, but not New Guinea. The many battles there are little known, except to specialists who study that place and period and to people in Australia, although the war on that island was the most drawn out and frustrating of battles in the Pacific war.
http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT0000179E

#48

Well, in this case that never happened. Japan has become America’s most steadfast ally in the Pacific, even relying on us to provide the bulk of their defense. They have redily taken to many things “American”. We couldn’t have been nicer to a defeated foe.

#49

If you look at the history you’ll find that Japan didn’t become ‘America’s most steadfast ally in the Pacific’ but that America protected and exploited the conservative elements in Japan, being largely the same militaristic and anti-communist elements which took Japan to war against America, to bolster America’s western front against Soviet and Chinese communism.

You might like to look at what Japan has in its Self Defence force before claiming that Japan relies upon America to provide the bulk of Japan’s defence.

You’re certainly correct that America ‘couldn’t have been nicer to a defeated foe’. If America had treated Japan as it treated Germany we wouldn’t have the remnants of the same elements and attitudes which led to the Pacific War and which still allow significant elements in Japanese government and education, among others, to deny Japan’s war guilt, whereas these things are often crimes in modern Germany. Indeed, if America had maintained the contempt for Japan as exemplified by showing Perry’s flag at the surrender, Japan would have been left in ashes.

As for Japan being ‘America’s most steadfast ally in the Pacific’, could you point to the Japanese contributions to, for example, military forces and casualties in the Korean and Vietnam wars compared with, for example, those of other Pacific nations such as Australia and New Zealand? And the same for Gulf Wars 1 and 2, Afghanistan and Iraq? Events like this don’t suggest that the Japanese are delighted to have American forces on their soil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTHUlxDyS9s&feature=related

#50

Such as baseball?

How does that compare with the continuing belief in the Emperor as a god, despite Hirohito’s apparent renunciation of his divine status after the war? Which those disposed to continue their belief in the imperial divinity dismiss, as a god cannot declare himself not to be a god under duress from a victor. Even Nixon at his worst didn’t believe he was a god. So how have those Japanese who believe in imperial divinity taken to things American?

Anyway, why is it necessarily a good thing to take to many things American?

Is American ‘democracy’ as practised by electing the candidate with the biggest bankroll and the most populist policies to the Presidency necessarily any better than the corruption inherent in post-war Japanese selection of their leaders?

Why should Japan adopt anything from America? Japan was a fully functioning society long before a few refugees from Europe colonised America a few hundred years ago.

Is there some international covenant that says that all nations must follow the American, or European, model in everything?

Given the butchery engaged in by America (Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War 1 etc) and Europe (endless, and as recently as a couple of decades ago in the Balkans along the lines of the worst things the Nazis and Japanese did), and the colonialisation of various lands by them, wasn’t Japan’s Pacific War no more than an emulation of the aggressive conquests of other peoples’ and lands by the Americans and Europeans in China and elsewhere?

If so, that suggests that the Japanese had readily taken to American ideas to start the war.

#51

I never said it was “necessarily a good thing” to take anything American. The relationship between the Japanese and Americans is what it is. I’ve been to Tokyo and seen the kids all dressed up like 1950’s rockabilly. McDonalds or KFC anyone?

We Americans are just like any other humans here on earth. The pursuit of international power to enrich American business interests is part and parcel of that power. It seems you read into what you want to read of the things I say, or in this case the flying of Perry’s flag as an insult to the Japanese butchers of WW2. Oh, those poor Japanese, they were so insulted! I didn’t realize what we had done and have been crying rivers of tears since you started this thread.

Why are you so antagonistic towards us Americans? Are you of Japanese descent with an ax to grind? Or if you are Austrailian of European descent you would have been singing quite a different tune if Austrailia had been included under the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity” sphere.

#52

So Japan is just an extension of 1950s America focused on modern American fast food?

I hadn’t realised it was that simple.

I thought Japan was a somewhat more complex society with rather different traditions and values descended from the original god emperor of the Yamato people as modified by the changes following Perry’s forced involvement of Japan with America and the West.

Sorry.

I thought I was responding to what you said and, as it appeared to me, said very clearly.

My apolgies for upsetting you to the point of tears.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of diplomacy and international relations on the grand scale which was the background to the Japanese surrender and future relations with America and the West.

You appear to be looking at from the standpoint of insulting the Japanese butchers.

So why don’t you get upset about the primarily American failure to prosecute the little bastard who presided over the whole lot of butchery, being Hirohito, and the American protection given to the butchers of Harbin and so on?

I’ll leave that to others with a long knowledge of my posts on this forum to judge.

But it seems to me that you perceive any criticism of American conduct as anti-Americanism.

I don’t.

It was.

It’s just that Japan failed to complete that part of its program. A lot of our men and women died preventing it at a time when America was never at risk of being part of the Greater East Co-Prosperity Sphere nor, unlike us, of invasion.

Now that you’ve had your little dummy spit of irrelevant sarcasm and condescension, would you like to address the original topic in a rational and historically informed fashion? Or, as appears from your posts, are you incapable of doing so because you lack any deep, or any, knowledge of the relevant history and base your opinions on the novel notion of the Japanese as WWII butchers who magically converted themselves into 1950s rockabillys and consumers of KFC and Maccas which made them America’s most steadfast ally in the Pacific, which explains everything about Japan from the surrender onwards?

#53

That was good, especially your last paragraph. My hat is off to you for that one. (No sarcasm this time).

You said: “I was looking at it from the standpoint of diplomacy and international relations on the grand scale which was the background to the Japanese surrender and future relations with America and the West.” And then said: “So why don’t you get upset about the primarily American failure to prosecute the little bastard who presided over the whole lot of butchery, being Hirohito, and the American protection given to the butchers of Harbin and so on?”

“Little bastard”? “Butchery”? “American protection”? Now now my friend, you seem to be a bit upset at how Hirohito was dealt with, but was concerned about future relations between the US/West and Japan because of the flag. So which is it? Now, I already know your viewpoint on the flag, but should Hirohito have been dealt with severely as you seem to suggest, (thereby raising the potential to cause problems between us and Japan in the future) or not? If you were so concerned about “future” relations than perhaps the policy towards Hirohito was the correct one, as you maintain the policy concerning the flag was not.

I never liked the accomadation that was made as regards the Emporer. He was the supreme leader and nothing was done by the militarists without his ok. A quick trial and execution would have been my recommendation, but Truman with Mcarthur’s advice thought differently. So, I concur with having Perry’s flag flown AND would have supported a quick trial and execution of the Emperor. All future relations would have been worked out somehow.

#54

Forgive me but isn’t this a bit of a tempest in a teapot? Were the Japanese in their dire situation even aware the flag was there? It takes two to make an insult: an insultor and and an insultee. Absent the latter, the question is moot. I didn’t read anywhere in here that the flag was flown. I read that the flag was in a glass case and not in the direct line of sight of the Japanese delegation. I didn’t read anywhere that the presence of the flag was even pointed out to the Japanese. Nor have I read anything in my history books about a Japanese reaction to the presence of the flag.

Someone with a sense of history - possibly MacArthur himself - thought the presence of the flag was apt and appropriate. But then it might also have been someone in Washington whose bright idea it was for Perry’s flag to have been present both at the time of Perry’s incursion and at the end of the Pacific War. It makes an interesting placard in a museum.

Either way, methinks, it matters but very little in the larger scheme of things. Perhaps there are those who who are a bit too quick to find fault and feel insulted even when the putative targets of that insult were clueless. At the risk of unleashing howls of protests, if it was intended to be an insult, it failed spectacularly.

#55

I agree, you make some valid points here. I wonder what happened to Rising Sun? I’d like to hear his rebuttal.