VJ Day: A WW2 hero and an account of Japan’s past

The last Japanese soldier to formally surrender after the country’s defeat in World War II was Hiroo Onoda.

Lieutenant Onoda finally surrendered his sword on March 9, 1974. He had spent 29 years in the Philippine jungle. In interviews and writing after his return to Japan, Lt. Onoda said he was unable to accept that Japan had capitulated.

To many outsiders, Onoda looked like a fanatic. But in Imperial Japan, his actions were perfectly logical. Onoda had sworn never to surrender, to die for the emperor. He believed that the rest of his countrymen, and women, would do the same.

Of course they did not. On August 15, 1945, Japan’s supreme divine being, Emperor Hirohito, did what no emperor had done before: he went on the radio. Atomic bombs had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The day the second bomb went off, Joseph Stalin declared war on Japan. Soviet forces were already sweeping over Manchuria. Within weeks, they would land on the northern island of Hokkaido. Hirohito accepted that surrender to the Americans was his best choice.

Even the surrender of the emperor hardly happened. On the morning of August 15, a group of young officers led their troops to the Imperial Palace grounds. They tried to capture the recording of that speech. They believed that the war was far from lost. The home islands of Japan had yet to invade. The great army in China was still largely undefeated.

The officers were not very worried about massive civilian casualties caused by the American bombing of the cities of Japan. Instead, they were focused on one thing: the survival of the imperial system. Japan should not succumb to peace until the emperor is secured.

The young officers managed not to stop the broadcast. But they got their wish – after the surrender the US decided Hirohito would probably not be tried as a war criminal. Instead, he would remain on the throne, effectively an American puppet.

It was often a shrewd move by Douglas MacArthur, the American general who ruled Japan until 1949. MacArthur used the emperor to push his own agenda – to conservatively transform Japan into a modern American-style democracy.

The victorious allies put 28 members of Japan’s war leadership to the test. Seven, including Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were hanged. But others were never accused. Among them were Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, the emperor’s uncle, and the man who led Japanese troops in the infamous rape of the Chinese capital, Nanjing.

Sparring was seen by MacArthur as a necessary evil. But his decision has allowed Japan, even encouraged, to avoid a deep reckoning with its past.

Another man who escaped trial was Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi had played a leading role in the occupation of Manchuria and was a close ally of war leader Hideki Tojo. The Americans decided not to accuse him. Instead, in 1948, Kishi was released. He was banned from politics while the American occupation lasted.

But in 1955, Kishi constructed the formation of a new political force – the Liberal Democratic Party. Soon he would be his leader and the Prime Minister of Japan. His rehabilitation was complete, and the party he helped form had ruled Japan for most of the previous 65 years.

Nobusuke Kishi’s daughter married the son of another powerful political dynasty – a man named Shintaro Abe. He would continue with the Japanese Foreign Minister, and to father his own son, named Shinzo.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is far from unique in his family history. Japan’s political dynasties have remained remarkably strong.

Shinzo Abe was reputably close to his grandfather. The old man had a profound influence on the political views of young Shinzo. Like many of his allies on the right, Nobusuke Kishi thought that the lawsuits of the war crimes he escaped from the battle. Its lifelong goal remained the scrapping of the pacifist constitution after the war.

In a 1965 speech, Kishi called for the reform of Japan as “a means to completely eradicate the effects of the defeat of Japan and the American occupation”.

When the critics of Japan in China and Korea say that the country has never properly apologized for what it did in World War II, they are wrong. Japan has repeatedly apologized. The problem is the other words and actions taken by Japan’s leading politicians. They suggest that the apology is not entirely sincere.

In 1997, a new group was formed by the political elite of Japan. It’s called Nippon Kaigi. It is not a secret society, but many Japanese remain unaware of its existence or its goals.

These goals are to “recreate Japan’s national pride and identity based on the imperial family”, to scrap the pacifist constitution, to respect the national flag, national anthem and national history, and the military power of Japan to build up.

Prominent among the 38,000 members of Nippon Kaigi are Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

Another member of Nippon Kaigi, until his death, was Hiroo Onoda. The Japan where Lieutenant Onoda returned in the mid-1970s was not to his liking. He believed that the post-war generation was going smoothly. For a time he moved to Brazil and lived on a cattle ranch. Later he returned to Japan and opened a school to train young Japanese in the skills that had helped him survive his three decades in the jungle.

When Hiroo Onoda died in 2014 at the age of 91, Prime Minister Abe’s spokesman was effective in his eulogy. He gave no hint of the futility of his lone war, as mention of the Filipino villagers he had murdered long after the surrender of Japan. Instead he described Hiroo Onoda as a Japanese hero.