Nobody Told Us the War Was Over

[MIflyer]

A USAAF C-46 pilot lands in immediate postwar Japan and discovers that not everyone got the Memo from the Emperor.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oBmy5trLZE

 

[Gnomey]

Good one!

 

[MIflyer]

I recall reading where a C-46 pilot flying in and out of China was told immediately after the war that they needed to go make contact with a Japanese garrison near Hong Kong. They flew over there, came out of the clouds, and found an A6M5 tucked in close, with its radial engine closer to their fuselage than theirs were. But the pilot was smiling.

Guy probably was pleased at not having to be a Kamikaze.

 

[SaparotRob]

...

Guy probably was pleased at not having to be a Kamikaze.

Or being shot at.

 

[MIflyer]

Or being shot at.

The USN Admiral commanding our forces off Japan issued an order saying that the war was over but if any Japanese aircraft attacked to shoot them down in a friendly manner.

The last Kamikaze raid was launched after the cease fire had been declared and included the Admiral who had thought up the idea, but was never heard from again after they took off and no US forces reported attacks.

 

[Warspite63]

A USAAF C-46 pilot lands in immediate postwar Japan and discovers that not everyone got the Memo from the Emperor.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oBmy5trLZE

What a fantastic account! I wonder how many times similar incidents occurred?...... and how they turned out. I know of the August 17 incident when Japanese fighters attacked a B-32. I am guessing the incident described here was at a later date, as the US Army had established some form of garrison in the area

 

[MIflyer]

I am guessing the incident described here was at a later date, as the US Army had established some form of garrison in the area

Ya gotta wonder if the Japanese troops knew about the US garrison or just figured they would hold on until someone told them differently.

I read of some British POWs who were at a camp in Japan and after the Emperor made his announcement they told the Japanese that MacArthur had ordered them by means of their secret radio to seize all of the Japanese guns there. The next day the Japanese guards and their leaders turned over all their guns. Some of the POWs decided to go looking for the Allied invasion forces, got on a train and went to Tokyo. Some English-speaking Japanese civilians they met along the way told them that they were sorry that the POWs had been mistreated and that they had not known that was happening.

It speaks well for the Japanese people that POWs could board a train that soon after the fighting stopped and travel safely. Me, I would not have done it unless it was a real necessity.

 

[special ed]

I had a roomie while in USAF in 1960 who had been previously in an SA-16 unit. As a courtesy, they flew air crew they picked up to their own base rather back to his base at Okinawa. He told of incidents in the late 50s at island bases. Japanese were known to be in the jungles at these bases. At one base he was warned they most likely were hostile. At another, the pastime for U.S. newbies was to sit on the chow hall back steps and watch for the non-hostile Japanese to retrieve food left outside a gate installed for the purpose of feeding the Japanese. There had been no hostile encounters at this particular base which prompted the gate installation. Roy said he sat on the steps the night he was there and never saw them get the food, although if he nodded off, food boxes were gone each time he roused awake. At a Marine base he was told the Japanese may or may not be hostile as the only problem occurred when two Marines took two females in a Jeep into the jungle and all four were found the next day with throats cut. At the time he was stationed @ Okinawa, about three fourth of the island was off limits to USAF members and and of course he and a buddy went souvenir hunting and found a cave with small rail tracks leading in which led to a large bowl like morter which would be rolled to the cave entrance to fire down on troops. He had a picture of him and a buddy standing on each side and it appeared about a meter wide. These caves were continually being resealed as they were unsealed by persons unknown. His last year there, the Japanese Self Defense force parade had a small two man tank and trailer said to have been found on the island in running order.

 

[fannum]

Dad was a USAAF supply officer, remaining in the service after WWII. We were assigned to the Occupation Forces in '46, and I have some insights to the attitudes of post war allied and former enemy countries.
Upon arrival in Tachikawa, we occupied former officer quarters to which running water, bathrooms and steam heat had been added though the house walls were thin. We were encouraged to hire local help to aid the economy, and had a young teen house boy, Kato, and probably 50ish maid Kawasaki, spending each day with us. The Japanese as a whole in that central Tokyo area were accepting of their status, respectful and friendly, though some former officers Dad had to deal with were bureaucratic, and according to him, politely frustrating.
Jump ahead to early '70s, I tracked down Kato, who then was married and living in Northern Japan, and visited him. He spoke little English, though his teen daughters had enough skills that we enjoyed some good exchanges.
Per the C-46 pilot's experience, as I was then visiting a Fuji Industries manufacturing plant nearby, I was told that the region was considered much like our US hill people, a bit isolated, independent, feisty and suspicious of big city ways. That may have influenced the Japanese Lieutenant's posturing and show of force.
To carry this on a bit, we returned to the Rome, NY AFB for two years, then in '51, Dad joined Eisenhower's SHAPE staff in Paris, installing supply bases all over Europe and North Africa, later being based out of central Chateauroux, then for two years in Ramstein, Germany.
On the MATS ship (USNS Darby) across the Atlantic, we docked in Portsmouth for a few days, and Mom taxiied us to London and we spent time with locals. Even in '51, the Labour government still had them on wartime restrictions and rationing, and the locals had little access to sugar, butter or spices, which Mom charmed from the ship's cooks, and we delivered a trunkful (sorry, bootfull) of bags and big tins to our Portsmouth hosts.
We were surprised to find many Parisians distant and even resentful, and the French Communists/Socialists kept fomenting street riots, strikes and demonstrations, toppling the government several times during our three years there. We became accustomed to "YANKEE GO HOME" brushed prominently on walls and buildings by our recent allies.
By contrast, we were well received in the Black Forest region of then still divided Germany, with American, French, British as well as Russian sectors. Our base housing was only separated by a short woodland path and no security from the local villages, and we had many joint Boy Scouting and social activities. The allied sectors were dedicated to eradicating the wartime damage and reviving industry, with cleared rubble and new construction everywhere ... in contrast to the Russian sector, and ironically, the damaged sections of France. The only exception was in largely untouched and pristine Bavaria, during the war and then the vacationland of Germany. It also had been a political hotspot, the cradle of National Socialism, and when there on ski and snow holidays, we'd occasionally get surly attention or be ignored by mostly younger men who had not been of age to be conscripted ten years earlier.

 

[MIflyer]

The author of a book on the B-29 raids on Japan said that he was stationed there in the 1950s, flying B-50's. Some locals were hired to do some work in his house and he had on display a desk model of the B-50, which of course looks almost exactly like a B-29. He noted how the workmen looked at that B-50 model with wide eyes, calling it a "B-Ju-Ni-Ki" and he took pains to tell them that was not a B-29 and he had never flown those in the war. He did not want angry men in his house.

But he found he had nothing to worry about. The Japanese were not angry; they were as impressed as hell. Anyone who could build machinery like that and fly halfway around the world to flatten cities were people to be admired, not hated.

We became accustomed to "YANKEE GO HOME" brushed prominently on walls and buildings by our recent allies.

The future editor of Le Monde French newspaper stated that the greatest danger to France was not the Germans but the Americans, who would bring a different. more vigorous culture and their own brand of Capitalism. When did he write that? In May 1944, the month before the invasion of Normandy.

And remember that in 1939 the French Communists were not in favor of France fighting to defend Poland and Belgium. The Nazis were, after, all Socialists, and had signed a non-aggression pact with the Communist USSR.

During the war downed Allied airmen did not know whether to ask the French police for help or expect them to turn them over to the Germans for the pay they offered. Both were known to happen.

 

[yosimitesam]

The USN Admiral commanding our forces off Japan issued an order saying that the war was over but if any Japanese aircraft attacked to shoot them down in a friendly manner.

The last Kamikaze raid was launched after the cease fire had been declared and included the Admiral who had thought up the idea, but was never heard from again after they took off and no US forces reported attacks.

Yep. That was Adm. Halsey.