Hiroshima: VJ Day

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Welcome to We have Waser Making You Talk USA with me, Al Murray, James Holland, and John McManus, of course.

We're scattered to the four winds.

If I sound a little different on

your earphones, that's because I'm in a kitchen in France.

Jim's actually, for once, at home in the Holland bunker.

I've just got oil on my hands from cheap work.

Perfect.

John, is this your office at work or your office at home?

It's my office at home.

Yeah, so it's a mess, you know, as you can tell.

And so this is my McManus bunker.

God knows, hundreds of books in here, including Jim Holland and Al Murray.

Well,

very sweet of you, John.

What we thought we'd talk about today, all these anniversaries of the end of the the war upon us, is the USS Missouri and the signing of the Japanese surrender, which is what's good about this is that it's a self-contained event.

Starts when they get up at 4.30 in the morning and it ends once the signatures have done.

The signatures are done and the Japanese are...

It is, however, an absolute, it's an extraordinary event.

As if you want to see people in a way at their best, in particularly MacArthur, actually, at their best, which may surprise some listeners that we would consider that there was such a possibility, Then this is really the moment for it, isn't it?

And John, you've written about this moment in particular, and James, you wrote about an aspect of it.

In our book, Victory 45, yep.

There is a book called The Mighty Mo, if anyone's very interested, which is a series of recollections of people who served and commanded on it.

Because let's not forget this battleship was in operation in the Gulf War, 1992.

Yeah.

You know, which I think is really interesting because one of the criticisms that people throw at the Royal Navy, for example, in the Second World War is, yeah, they had all the, you know, they had the world's largest navy in 1939, but all their battleships are really out of date.

They might have been laid down or created in the First World War, but they certainly weren't out of date.

These are such huge investments that they're designed to last for decades.

And what you do is you just upgrade the weapon system and the technology on it, but the ship remains a ship.

It's got the same corridors, it's got the same walkways, it's got the same, you know, layout and all the rest of it.

You just upgrade it because it's the creating the battleship that costs all the money.

Yeah.

And Missouri is more or less brand new, having gotten into service the previous summer, you know, 1944.

Yeah.

And, you know, like you said, it's still going to be in service.

Although it went into mothballs for a while in that interwar period, like 30 years or so.

They brought it back for the 1980s and the Gulf War.

But, you know, upgraded the weapons platform.

But what I think is so appropriate for the U.S., the war begins with battleships in the sense of Pearl Harbor getting hit and battleships getting sunk temporarily, most of them.

And now it ends aboard a battleship.

There's a kind of

neat synergy to the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yes.

And also it starts in the harbor of Pearl Harbor, which is a U.S.

naval harbor, and it ends in Tokyo Bay, which is obviously a Japanese harbor.

Yeah.

Again, nice synergy there as well.

And aboard a ship that represents where the Americans have got to in the time since rearmament.

There is this fantastic description by Jonathan Wainwright, who has been captured by the Japanese

when he has to surrender the Philippines.

So MacArthur leaves the Philippines in early March 1942 under the orders of President Roosevelt, heads off to Australia and leaves Jonathan Wainwright in charge.

And it's obviously the massive poison chalice.

Wainwright knows that he's going to have to surrender.

There's no way out of this fix.

So he surrenders there.

And of course, he then spends the next rest of the war in the captivity of the Japanese, being moved from, you know, first of all, from Manila and then to somewhere else, then somewhere else.

And he ends up in Manchuria.

You know, there's this line where he's finally relieved and he ends up in Nanching and he gets this new uniform and everything.

And he goes, ah, so that's what a Jeep looks like, you know, because he just hasn't seen it.

And, you know, when he's when he's taken prisoner of the Japanese, American troops are still wearing the Brody helmet, they're still wearing the old Tommy helmet, you know, they're not wearing the M1 that we're all so familiar with, that's such a feature of American soldiers in the Second World War.

They've got Springfields, not Garans, you know, they've got a whole host of kit that has just gone the way of the dodo.

And when he is taken out at around 8 a.m.

on the morning of the 2nd of September to join the USS Missouri, he says, I simply could not believe that that anything could be so huge and so studded with guns.

Yeah, there's 260 ships out there.

I mean, it's an enormous amount of naval hardware.

The 1st Cavalry Division, by the way, as the surrender ceremonies are starting to unfold, 1st Cavalry Division is just simply coming ashore to do the occupation.

So they're kind of spectators.

Their ships glide by and they see the sailors all on the decks of the USS Missouri.

Of course, Wainwright is there too, as an honored guest.

And yeah, I mean, so he's astounded at all this.

He'd had his liberation is really not easy either because, you know, he's deep in Manchuria.

They're not sure how they're going to get him out, who's going to do what.

It's this whole clandestine thing.

28th of August or something.

Yeah, it's late.

It's like a couple of weeks after the war actually ends.

And it's this whole clandestine thing.

The Soviets are involved.

There's OSS involved.

There's locals involved.

There's other POWs involved.

He had been beaten.

He had been tortured mentally, of course, and somewhat physically.

He'd been, he was in rotten shape.

He had worked as a slave laborer, in essence, for part of his time.

And then they tried to use him as a propaganda piece.

He thought he was going to be sent home in disgrace if he ever was liberated and tried for court-martial for surrendering.

Instead, of course, he gets the Medal of Honor, which he richly deserved.

So, yeah, by the date of the USS Missouri, when that happens, this has just been a whirlwind for Wainwright.

He had met up, been reunited with MacArthur a couple of days earlier at their hotel, the New Grand Hotel in Tokyo.

In Manila.

Well, in Manila, too.

Yeah.

So he's going to be part of that as well.

So General Yamashita or Yamashita will surrender.

Then he goes to the Philippines and he's part.

Oh, yes, because he's witness of the next surrender, isn't he?

Yeah.

And this shows you a lot about Wainwright.

Of course, you know what all happened to him during the war, but he was...

He made a point after the Manila proceedings to basically sidle up to those who are going to be, you know, in control of the newly captured Japanese and say, make sure to give them correct treatment.

And that to me is the measure of somebody, after everything he'd been through, you would think he might be vindictive and want to make sure they were treated poorly.

Yeah.

Always pay the better man, right?

But this marks the tone, really, of the surrender as it proceeds on the day, isn't it?

And it's fascinating that MacArthur is at the heart of all this.

It's very much run by his staff on his terms, even though it's on a U.S.

Navy vessel.

So there's obviously the business of what do you do with Nimitz?

Where does Nimitz fit into the picture?

Because he's a Navy commander and they fly both their standards, standards, don't they?

But quite interestingly, he basically hands over to MacArthur for this, doesn't he?

Yeah, it's actually one of these moments where their two personalities work very well in this context because Nimitz did not...

really want to preside over the proceedings and have that kind of public face and all that.

It's not really his thing.

MacArthur, that is totally his thing.

All the stage craft and right out front.

And so they come up with this compromise whereby Nimitz will sign on behalf of the United States and MacArthur, quite fittingly, I suppose, as the senior officer will sign on behalf of the whole Allied powers.

And they will, yeah, they'll have both of their five-star ranks, their flags flying in the USS Missouri.

And by the way, USS Missouri is at Pearl Harbor today.

It's there now and you can go and visit it.

And the two five-star flags are still there.

Wow.

Incredible ship.

That's incredibly cool.

Well, John, let's first things first.

Why don't we just talk a little bit about the USS Missouri, what action it sees?

Because it only gets christened by Truman's daughter, Margaret, in, I think, January 44, doesn't it?

Something like that.

And it doesn't go, you know, that's when it first has the bottle shattered, you know, smashed against it.

And, you know, it gets out in time for Okinawa and so on.

But it has a sort of limited amount of experience.

What's the scale of the U.S.

Navy in 1945 compared to, let's say, 1941?

Oh, there's no comparison.

Right.

In 1941, you know, I mean, we talk about this a lot, how you've got three fleet carriers that are away from Pearl Harbor, of course, on the day of the attack.

And then eventually you've got, you know, three fleet carriers available for you at Midway, you know, half a year later by the end of the war by Okinawa.

I mean, you're talking about four times that many fleet carriers available just for that operation, roughly speaking.

Not to mention all the escort carriers, the light carriers.

I mean, on and on and on it goes.

Battleships, too.

I mean, six of the eight that were sunk at Pearl Harbor are going to be resalvaged and reused again and back in service.

Missouri is newer, of course, like you said, Jim.

And so it's in combat as of like summer 1944.

It fights in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and it's hit by kamikaze attacks.

There's one in particular that scores like a direct hit right below or near one of the gun turrets.

And this is, I think, kind of interesting too, in terms of like the better nature of things.

At the order of the captain, the crew recovered the body of the kamikaze pilot and buried him with full military honors.

Wow.

You know, that right there, you know, in the midst of this kind of violence, I think is not, you know, terribly common, but it is maybe a harbinger for the future.

And again, today, you know, Missouri is just, it's a really neat thing to visit because it's basically like a museum piece, too.

And there's an actual sort of exhibit to the kamikazes and to that particular pilot, the photographer who got the shot.

It's really an amazing kind of thing.

Gosh.

In a way, that presages the ceremony that you're going to have.

And of course, Missouri is chosen because Truman is president by September 45, and it's done done as a kind of an homage to him.

Plus, it's a suitable platform for such an extensive ceremony.

It's physically possible to do it there.

Yeah, she's a big ship, isn't she?

Huge.

Kind of 300 feet long, isn't she?

58,000 tons.

Yeah, I think it was Iowa-class, isn't she?

They start out with a projected crew of like 1,800 ratings, and then a couple of hundred officers.

And she's got a thousand more souls on board by the time of the surrender, because obviously they've had to extend their anti-aircraft cover on the ship in reaction to kamikaze.

It's fascinating.

And And now you know how we quite often say things are bristling with weaponry.

Yeah.

This has got nine 16 inch, 10 5 inch, 10 quadruple 40 millimeter cannons and 49 20 millimeter cannons on it.

That is some firepower.

And some people did say that it looked like a giant hedgehog, literally bristling with cannons and huge guns and all the rest of it.

And the other thing, too, that they got ready for this ceremony.

And this is, so yes, Japan surrenders August 14th, 15th.

Really, that's just kind of like a handshake business deal where the real details have to be worked out.

So, by the time we get to the surrender ceremony, there's been a lot of permutations, deliberations, dictations, whatever you want to say, to make it to this point where we're beginning the occupation.

We have this kind of formal ceremony.

And of course, this is right in MacArthur's wheelhouse, this idea of the formal stagecraft and ceremony.

And so, they're going to do it up.

There's this incredible odyssey for the flag that Commodore Matthew Perry, you know, had flown aboard his ship during the early expeditions to Japan in the mid-19th century.

That flag was in the museum at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

And they designate an officer to basically escort that flag all the way to the Missouri on the other side of the world.

It's this whole odyssey across America that he has and then across the Pacific.

And he gets it there just in time.

So they basically put that flag, this old flag, up above what today is called the surrender deck, you know, where you've all seen the famous pictures of the Japanese delegation and everybody watching and all that.

So, right there above them, very close to the captain's cabin and where Admiral Halsey was staying, you know, when he was aboard this ship, is that flag and it remains there today.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And it is absolutely huge.

I mean, just to go back to the 58,000 tons, it's not as big as the Yamato, which I think was 73 or something.

You know, if you think the Prince of Wales and Renown, they're kind of 43,000, 42,043,000 tons.

You know, so they are large British battleships.

This is another 15,000 tons on top of that.

It's a big beast, isn't it?

It's a fast battleship.

Yeah, and big enough as well to be used as an oil tanker and refueling vessel in operations off Japan because they can't get the supply vessels there in quick enough order.

I mean, she's absolutely state-of-the-art, isn't she, for where the U.S.

Navy has got.

Yeah, it is.

And also, and christened in the Brooklyn Navy Yard by Margaret Truman, who is, at the time, was the daughter of Senator Harry S.

Truman.

Yeah, and that tells you a little something about how high esteem he was held in even before he becomes the nominee for vice president the next summer.

Pretty influential senator by that point in time because he was a key guy on one of the oversight committees of the wartime spending and mobilization and all that.

So that that got him kind of heavily involved with some of the key movers and shakers in the in the Roosevelt administration in a good way.

But also, John,

is it the Missouri after Truman or is it Truman involved because it's Missouri?

You know, which comes first?

Is that such a concern?

I think it's a little bit of the latter.

Yes, but why not the USS, Arkansas, you know, South Dakota or something?

I mean, of course, it's going to be Missouri because Missouri is the greatest state in the Union, and I say that as a Missourian, of course.

No, it's all born in there.

No, I mean, it's the third ship, I think, that had that name.

And absolutely, there was no question once Truman was involved in that kind of mobilization.

that if we were building a new fast battleship that Missouri would be in play for one of the names.

And of course, as you guys know, battleships were named after states, of course.

And Margaret Truman, by the way, became a famous novelist later in life.

And she had quite a literary career.

She was

a piano player and singer at that time as a young person.

Oh, yeah, she was.

And she wasn't terribly good.

And he was very supportive of her, wasn't he?

Well, I mean, she got a bad review one time and Truman got all angry and wanted to fight the guy and all this kind of stuff.

That's true.

But yeah, in the near term, of course, Missouri is chosen as an homage to the new president and because it's new and it's a good platform and all that.

So it makes sense.

But I mean, just the level of preparations for this whole ceremony is incredible.

So, and a lot of it is through MacArthur's headquarters.

He's got a guy named Colonel Whipple, who is his headquarters commandant, who's basically in charge of, you know, like a wedding planner, how like the wedding planner orchestrates everything on the day and prepares everything.

It's really a very similar.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's a better term.

It's a showrunner.

And that's what this guy is doing.

I found in the archives, you know, all the planning and some of the documents, they had it mapped out, who was going to arrive when, who was going to stand when.

And that's the other thing that I think is really cool to think about.

You know, when you see the pictures of all the Allied officers standing there, it's not random.

It was basically worked out well beforehand who was going to stand where.

And believe me, those spots at the front row are the premium spots.

So when you look carefully, you'll notice officers who have a major, major role in the victory.

George Kenney would be an example, Robert Eichelberger, Walter Krueger.

I mean, it's a mix, of course, of flag officers and generals.

And I mean, it's so elaborately planned.

They even ate two breakfasts that morning, you know, one before they left to get aboard the destroyers and after they got aboard destroyers.

So it's just, it's really amazing to think of.

There's representatives of China, the UK, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands even, and New Zealand.

So everyone, everyone who the Japanese is basically either attacked or then caught tangled up with is present, right?

So, I mean, it's striking, I think, the Canadians are there.

You know, you can understand why the Dutch might be, but I think

so it's a sort of gesture of complete allied unity in that regard, isn't it?

It absolutely is.

And it showed you Japan picked fights with a lot of people.

And here they all were.

Here they all were.

Absolutely.

And yeah.

So even the Canadians and the Canadian representative famously, you know, signs in the wrong place.

And so then they have to kind of scratch it out.

And they're a little worried what's going to happen, you know, with the Japanese, how they would react to that and all.

But yeah, it's very inclusive.

And so MacArthur, when he's presiding over the ceremony, he's speaking for the whole Allied coalition.

That's how he's thinking.

Yeah.

And then, of course, obviously Wainwright standing right behind behind MacArthur and Percival from, you know, the Singapore surrender.

Those two are given prominent places in the ceremony.

The other thing to note in terms of MacArthur, MacArthur tended to get kind of a nervous, upset stomach when you have big occasions.

So when he came aboard that day, he moves into the captain's cabin, which where Admiral Halsey was staying.

as the flag officer aboard.

And MacArthur had an upset stomach and he went into the head, as of course the the Navy would call it, and a little privacy and he retched.

So his doctor was right there.

Dr.

Egberg says, are you okay?

Can you continue?

And MacArthur's like, yeah, I'm okay.

This happens to me.

And he came out and he was okay.

One of those things that would happen to him every now and again.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting.

Stillwell also, who's present, he went to the toilet as well, didn't he?

And

his diary entry is really, really funny.

Oh, what does he say?

He says he basically, all these others are writing about the stately moment and the impact impact of history.

And Stillwell writes in his diary, you know, went and took a crap and then went up top, you know, or something like that.

Yeah, that's no brilliant.

I took a crap and then went on deck.

But the captain of the Missouri, Captain Stuart S.

Murray, he's only been given a few days warning.

You know, it's everyone to the pump and desperately trying to kind of wash and clean and get it all ready.

Because, you know, when these things are at sea, it doesn't take long for them to start rusting and streaks of rust running down the side, all that kind of stuff.

I mean, they pretty quickly get in a fairly rough state.

So to get it all ready and spick and span is quite an undertaking, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the crew is working for days on this.

Some of them, like you said, I mean, they're scrubbing things, you know, getting everything ready.

They're arranging things.

They build a platform for the, I mean, there's hundreds of reporters and photographers there.

So they build a whole platform for that so they can get a good view of the surrender deck.

Then they rehearse it all.

They use sailors to rehearse who's going to stay in where and for the Japanese delegation to come ashore.

Somebody's supposed to stand in for Nimitz and they have this crusty old chief Botswan's mate.

And so there's this little glitch during the rehearsal where they're playing the Admiral's March for when Nimitz is supposed to be

entering.

And the Botswan's mate freezes up and he's like, oh, me an Admiral.

But the other thing, John, is they have to do all this while at sea because they don't have time to pull into port.

So the decks and bulkheads, you know, all the repainting that goes on, you know, all has to be done while at sea.

The brass fittings are polished, you know, all of that.

Yeah.

Uniforms clean and pressed, etc.

All has to be done at sea.

And then when you do have people like Wainwright arrive, I mean, I think what's really interesting is Wainwright, for instance, is being reunited with people that he was at staff college with or the American equivalent with before the war.

So for instance, Admiral Halsey and him are old pals, aren't they?

Who they're reunited aside from, you know, Stillworld taking his crap, there is actually a lot of emotion present.

Yeah, so Wainwright and Halsey had known each other for many, many years since they were together at the war college.

Of course, they hadn't seen each other for a long time.

And Halsey had known a lot about Wainwright's difficult captivity.

As Halsey's later telling, this was very emotional for him to see the kind of condition Wainwright was in.

But you can imagine what he's like after all these years of captivity.

And he'd had, you know, he'd had a couple of good weeks of good meals under his belt by then.

Even then, he looked pretty threadbare.

So Halsey almost broke down weeping.

when they saw each other and vice versa.

And of course, the other thing, too, all these flag and general officers milling around there, some had worked together during during the war, some knew about one another, some hadn't seen another for years.

And so, it's just this really kind of crowning moment where the victors could get together and talk.

And, like Eichelberger, you know, he's just, you know, what he's like.

I mean, he's chatting with everybody, and especially a lot of the foreign commanders, the Soviets, the French, the British, the Canadians, the Chinese.

He's wanting to meet everybody and renew acquaintances.

And so, you know, when you think about that unbalanced, you know, the history of warfare, the victors don't get that kind of moment very often.

It's unique.

You've also got people, though, who are, for want of a better word, as mobilized against the Japanese as they possibly could be.

Because there's obviously there's been a racial aspect to the American approach to the war in the Pacific.

And so there must be officers there who are not keen on having to face Japanese people at all.

For sure.

Wedded to the idea of killing as many as they possibly can, right?

Yeah, I mean, Halsey is bloodthirsty.

Yeah, I think the delegation party very quickly seem when they come aboard i mean they are much diminished and they're led by the japanese foreign minister who's mamoru shigamitsu right and he's got formal morning coat stiff collar top hat and everything he just looks so anachronistic and the japanese are certainly feeling cowed you know it's all set up to to do this one thing which is to completely humiliate the japanese i think it sort of succeeds pretty quickly Well, to humiliate them in the sense that to make it very clear, you've lost and we're dictating the terms.

But I also think that there's a higher nobility to it in the sense of saying, but we're moving on and we're going to help transform your country.

When Hiro Hito hears about what the proceedings are like, he's incredibly relieved because, you know, there had been a concern that they would just come in and slash and burn, that the Allies would.

I mean, and

this surrender ceremony sets a different tone.

I mean, MacArthur basically says, you know, the issues have been decided on the battlefield.

Now it's time to put war behind us and have a kind of better future for a better humanity for all of us.

And he's basically, MacArthur's making a pacifist kind of argument in his really quite noble statement against war itself.

He says we've had our last chance because now nuclear weapons are in play.

And I think that's certainly front of mind for everybody.

And

his view is that we need to learn from that now and all work towards something better.

And the really sad thing to think about is that this is the same guy who five years later basically wants to nuke China.

uh during the korean war yeah so that's humanity right that we we have our good days and bad days.

We're going to take a quick break now, and then hopefully when we return for the break, the Japanese will sign that surrender they've come for.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, John McManus, James Holliday, where we're talking about the signing of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri on the 2nd of September, 1945, and MacArthur's statement.

It's really, I think it's worth reading, probably in full, if you'll bear with me.

I'm not going to do a voice, because I don't know, I can't do it, I don't know what MacArthur.

What does MacArthur sound like?

MacArthur sounded like this, and he was very stately the way he spoke.

Okay, we are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude an agreement whereby peace may be restored.

The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world, and hence are not for our discussion or debate.

Nor is it for us here to meet, representing, as we do, a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice, or hatred.

But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our people unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understanding that they are here formally to assume.

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope for all mankind, that from this solemn occasion, a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.

The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese imperial forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender before you.

I mean, as you say, John, those are fantastically fine words, especially given that, you know, the absolute do-or-die nature of the last phase of the war on the part of the Japanese, the desire to extract as much blood from the Americans as they possibly can.

These are incredible words.

And as you say, five years later, look the bastards.

But let's talk about the actual process, the actual surrender itself from beginning, middle, and end.

And the Japanese delegation and who they are.

Let's start there.

Who have the Japanese sent?

It's 11 people.

Yeah, so they've sent several people from the foreign ministry, including Shigamitsu, who you mentioned earlier.

And he had, by the way, he had lost a leg in 1932 during an explosion in Shanghai by a Korean nationalist.

So this was part of the rehearsal for the crew of the USS Missouri is to rehearse how somebody with an artificial leg would get up the ladders.

And you guys have been aboard these kind of ships and whatnot.

And you know, those are narrow ladders and it's steep.

And so their irreverent crew, they designated one guy as, quote, Peg Leg Pete.

That's what they called him, the little slang name for Shigamitsu, to play him.

And so they had rehearsed that too.

But when it came to it, of course, it was tough for him to get up the the ladder and it took it was awkward and took several moments um so he's got another a young guy 42 year old guy named kasei with him who's also from the foreign ministry who had gone to harvard and amherst so he was fluent in english there were representatives of the imperial general headquarters too mainly in the imperial army and uh and one in fact the ranking officer was a kind of a firebrand who wanted to continue the war.

So he didn't want to be there, but obviously he's there at the behest of Hirohito.

So every one of these guys, I would say, only in my opinion, is kind of expendable politically from Hirohito's standpoint, that they can be tainted with involvement in this.

It's all this kind of shadow dance that's going on there, but they're also very worried about what the occupation is going to be like.

Yeah, well, they might be.

But there's an amazing eyewitness account of all this from Toshikazu Kase,

who's one of the diplomats who's sent there.

And he says, we were, I felt, being subject to the torture of the pillory.

A million eyes seemed to beat on us with the million shafts of rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire.

I felt them sink into my body with a sharp physical pain.

But obviously being Japanese and brought up on the Pushido code, then he knows how to, the pain is just an emotion, right?

They endured it.

Yes, he knows how to control himself in such a situation.

They did.

So, I mean, what that must have been like, because here they are, these 11 guys, and everybody's staring at them.

Hundreds of eyes bordering to them.

All the media, the flag and general officers standing there in the surrender deck, crewmen, you know, as we've seen those pictures, of course.

Well, there's 225 reporters, aren't there?

Yeah, yeah, and they're all up on that platform, a lot of them, a wooden platform that the crew had built.

So it must have been very difficult for the delegation to not meet eyes with the people staring at them, especially on their peripheral vision or whatever.

And I mean, to see, you know, because George Kenney, by the way, MacArthur's air officer, you know, just visibly sneering at them.

And

yet others were curious, you know, well, there's a little more bygone be bygones like Eichelberger.

But it had to be just so excruciating for them.

And maybe that was something of the point.

Yeah.

Well, you certainly know who's lost.

Well, yes, we've further 250 warships and the fly past, and there's no doubting who's won.

I mean, part of this must be after Versailles, everyone's thinking, you know, the Germans exit the Versailles Treaty thinking they've been hard done by and believing they haven't lost somehow.

So there's got to be some of the thinking in this that's just you've really got to let them know that they have lost.

Even though, I mean, after all this, MacArthur does go ashore in Japan in his trademark outfit and, you know, is easily a target for an angry Japanese man not reconciled to the end of the war with a rifle, right?

They know that they're trying to get a society to sort of accept things rather than carry on dying hard, right?

So part of what's going on here is this really laying down the law as to who's lost, because the Americans know they can't occupy the whole of the Japanese home islands.

They couldn't.

then occupy and suppress an uprising, could they?

No.

And so you've got to be saying that as loudly as you can politically, that you've lost here.

I mean, even the fact the Japanese are in, Jim says they're in high starch collars and top hats, and they're surrounded by, you know, American officers who aren't wearing ties and it all looks sort of, you know, old world and modern world confronting one another there and then, right?

It's the old world and the new world with these top hats and whatnot.

But for the Allies, I think there's a great balance here.

because you want to make it clear you've won the war, but without completely humiliating and debasing them to where they might still be angry and want to fight.

And that's what, you know, keeping Hirohito in place is really about on many levels, having that social control, because there's no way you could subdue this country, you know, certainly not bloodlessly.

And so it is really a balance.

And there's also for the Americans, there's a balance too of inclusiveness to the Allies in the surrender ceremony, but also kind of shoving them out of the occupation.

I mean, that's what's at play here, too.

Yeah.

Especially the Soviets.

We don't want them involved.

And so, you know, so it's really quite delicate and quite successful, I think, on those lines.

I think Case,

you know, his account is absolutely amazing.

So he's like, if you see the pictures, he's the young guy in the top hat.

So he says later, yeah, he felt that humiliation, but he says later in his account, you know, if we had won the war, if it had gone the other way,

I don't think it would have been this noble, the proceedings.

So it's a really interesting moment of self-examination of saying, and he even says, I think the outcome of this war, the reason is moral, that they had the moral high ground and we didn't.

So he's really quite honest.

Wow.

And the other

interesting thing about this guy is who his niece is.

His niece is very, very well known to all of us.

Her name is Yoko Ono, if you can even believe that.

What?

Yeah, amazing.

Yes, Kase's niece is Yoko Ono.

She came from a very wealthy and powerful, influential family in Japan.

And

this guy, you know, obviously had significant elite influence to have studied in the U.S.

and to be this high up in the foreign ministry that young.

And, you know, so yeah, I just think that's so interesting that that sort of history link there.

Yeah, isn't it?

What do the USS Missouri surrender ceremonies and the Beatles have in common?

The connective tissue is yoko.

That's the best pub quiz ever.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'll know this hell.

At what point do they decide that the unconditional surrender will be conditional, i.e., the Hirohito can survive?

I mean, that decision gets made, right?

Yeah, the big six decide on that just before the coup goes off on the 14th.

So, you know, there's that moment where there's deadlock and he says, well, I've come to a decision and they all have to do as he says.

And he accepts the adjustment to the cockatai, which is that the allies are in charge of him.

And everyone beneath him is then still subordinated to him.

When do the allies accept it?

When he announces the, you know, the rescript on the 15th, they take that as the green light for that new situation because they have dangled.

That's what they've dangled to him anyway.

Burns has offered that as the solution.

And it's the British government go, yeah, fine, no problem, because they can get their heads around a constitutional monarchy, basically.

And that's the only people they run it by, which is, I think, really interesting.

But the signing of the surrender itself, so the 11, the delegates are there, and you're absolutely right.

They really are.

They're ants in the microscope, aren't they?

Right under the lens.

And they come aboard at 8.56 a.m.

Yep.

That's when they come aboard.

So it's a nine o'clock.

So why is it so early in the morning?

Is that so it can be broadcast in the U.S.?

Yep.

Exactly.

The earlier the better.

And also, too, you know, you wanted a good weather day.

I mean,

it's one of these sort of late summer days where you're cool in the shade and you're a little warm in the sun.

The waters are calm.

The optics are good.

You know, you're likely to have that on September 2nd and during the early to mid-morning.

I mean,

it's all of the above.

And then it's very formal, how they approach the table and how it's read to them.

Al read the statement, of course, that General MacArthur said.

And

MacArthur was holding the paper and his hands were shaking a little bit, again, betraying his nervousness a little bit, which I think really humanizes him.

You know, as much as he wanted to be this Olympian god, he's a human being, you know.

And so, and then, and then there's the signing and there's this awkward moment where the foreign minister is not quite sure where he's supposed to sign.

There's a silence and then MacArthur barks to his uniformly hated chief of staff, Sutherland.

Sutherland, show him where to sign, you know, and he does.

Wow.

And it's just everybody watching, you know?

And then, of course, it's for the Allies to sign.

They're done by eight minutes past nine.

They're signed by the

0908 hours.

And then MacArthur sits down and signs a copy.

for the Allied powers, which is a different leather-bound copy.

It's obviously one of these things.

There's no point in the Japanese government taking it home with them.

You know.

it does need signing in the least duplicate, right?

Exactly.

Yep.

So it's basic for the Allies to have this.

And

of course, you know, as we've said, he's going to partially sign his name and then give a pen to Wainwright, partially sign his name, give a pen to Percival and to others too.

And he's going to keep one for himself.

But Wainwright really appreciated that gesture, of course.

The amazing thing is that, and the sad thing, Wainwright died, I think it's eight years later to the day and the exact day wainwright basically you know eventually drank himself to death partially over the trauma he'd had but he's such a national hero that it's too much of a good thing one of his west point classmates said that he was isolated in his hero's cage and it was so well put because wainwright had a big parade when he came home this and that he was always a big drinker and there was always people wanted to party with him and use his name and you know for business and whatever so i think about that a lot when i see that picture of wainwright standing there in what is certainly you know a great uplifting moment for him but there's also this kind of pervasive sadness about him on some level isn't there there was a wistfulness of him and there's that famous picture of macartha gripping his arms when they reunited for the first time and macarthur just goes well you know i'm glad to see you and warrant goes well i'm glad to see you And then he has that dinner and he says that amazing speech after the dinner.

This is the eve of the signing ceremonies on the 1st of September.

And he says, tonight in Yokohama, again, a free American officer with a weapon in my hand, my gratitude goes out to the American people for their generous and sympathetic understanding of the misfortune which befell me in the Philippines in May 1942.

Through the generosity of my great commander, General MacArthur, I'm here to witness the greater misfortune of my enemy.

I mean, it's just, it's amazing stuff, isn't it?

Really is.

And he then does that amazing speech, doesn't he?

Because he goes back to, goes to Washington and gets awarded with the Medal of Honor, doesn't he, on the kind of front lawn at the White House?

And this is, it's like the 9th of September.

So it's like, you know, he's literally come out of prison, seen a Jeep, got flown to, you know, in Nanching, gets kitted out with some sort of oversized uniform, then gets flown to Manila.

From Manila, then gets flown to Tokyo Bay, you know, then gets flown back to Manila the same day, I think, or overnight, because he's then got to witness a surrender.

You know, and these are, these are long flights in 1945 because he's then got to witness the surrender and not in Manila, but in the northern part of Luzon the following day on the 3rd of September, I think I'm right.

Then he has to get back to Manila, get on a plane again, you know, fly to San Francisco and then from San Francisco to Washington.

There he is

on the 9th of September.

And he says, it's now over and we are at peace.

But in the name of all my comrades who suffered with me, I pray that this nation will never again neglect the strength of its defenses.

In all the joy I feel on returning to my land, there is the memory of the last days of Corregidor and the awful months that followed.

And that's and hundreds of thousands of people turned out for that parade in Washington, D.C.

for him.

You know, like I said, he was just a hero coast to coast.

It's, uh, it was too much, though.

It was overwhelming and it was, it was hard to handle and for him, especially.

And it's really a sad tale on many levels, too.

It's, yeah, incredible.

And the uniform, you mentioned the uniform, Jim.

Al Wiedemeyer lent him his own uniform because, you know, Wainwright was in veritable rags once he comes into Wiedemire's headquarters in China.

And Wiedemeyer is the successor to Joe Stillwell.

And basically, Wainwright's like, do you have any new uniforms?

And Wiedemeyer says, sure, I'll give you one of mine.

And

like you said, it was baggy on him.

And yeah, Skinny Wainwright is just an amazing guy on many levels.

Yeah.

And his reunification with MacArthur is interesting, too, as MacArthur called him Jim, which was an old nickname from West Point that he had.

And because they were at West Point roughly together, I think MacArthur was class of 03 and Wainwright class of 06, had known each other many years since.

And there was a bit of hypocrisy in MacArthur's greeting because he had taken steps behind the scenes during the war to make sure Wainwright did not get the Medal of Honor because he was angry at Wainwright for surrendering.

So this is there's always another side of MacArthur.

There's always something kind of crappy going on too that you're like, oh, really?

So he did that.

But of course, by this, by the time Wainwright is liberated and the war is coming to an end, MacArthur's attitude had changed.

And his old affection for Wainwright had come out too.

So Wainwright must have known about some of this, but he never said a crossword about MacArthur the rest of his life, even though people tried to prod him to his credit.

Wainwright being Wainwright, he always took the high road.

But what's interesting about this occasion is it is one where the Americans, you know, the attitude is to take the high road, what you've got to do.

As exactly as you point out, the Japanese come away from it thinking, you know, situation have been reversed, you know, there wouldn't have been a ceremony like this, would it?

And that MacArthur as well finds it in himself to actually reach for this higher attitude that then the Japanese can they can take home with them and Hirohito can say, wow, you know, they treated us well given the circumstances.

Although there is then a gigantic fly past once the surrender is signed, endless aircraft fly overhead, it's being done in the shadow of incredible military might.

But the fact that they choose this tone, I think, is, to be honest, it's a triumph for the Americans, isn't it?

Because you consider the inciting incident is Pearl Harbor.

Desire for revenge on the part of America is very much what feeds the complexion of the war and then the racial element of the fighting, particularly in the Pacific.

And that you should then come out the other end of it, you know, MacArthur, it's been settled on the battlefield.

We've got to move on.

It's amazing, really.

It is amazing.

But revenge is a dish that is best served with the backing of huge military might.

Well, of course.

Of course.

And we had it.

Exactly.

It's easy to be magnanimous when there's B-29s blanking out the sun, I suppose.

Quite an elaborate operation, too, that Halsey had coordinated with the aerial commanders.

And it's really like the first major flyover.

That's now kind of an American tradition, you know, from the Super Bowl and any really any game, you know, there's going to be flyovers practically.

And that's the first major.

Which is why it's so humiliating if you're British in 2025, because

what flies over is like about five aircraft.

But if anyone's interested, there is fantastic newly colorized and restored footage of the surrender ceremony, which of course was filmed.

But now you can see it in Glorious Technicolor.

And there is also, by the way, on YouTube, there is a video of a one to 200 scale model of the surrender ceremony on the Missouri.

Every single person has been included on this, and it's absolutely jaw-dropping in its detail and perfection.

It is.

It's so.

It's almost as elaborate as the planning they had for the ceremony.

I mean, it's...

Yeah, it probably took a lot longer to do, I should.

Probably did.

And so that's why Casey was writing his account, by the way, is Hirohito wanted to know how did this go today.

He didn't want to hear from the general who had surrendered because he knew he was pissed off.

He wanted to hear from somebody who was more of a neutral observer, which Case was as a young man and an up-and-coming guy.

And I think that's interesting, too, that whole element of it.

I mean, it's the magnanimous side.

It's the sort of internecine kind of...

politics that are going on there.

It's looking to the future and the past, you know, because you've got Commodore Perry's flag right there.

You've got these top hats and all that kind of stuff from yesteryear.

And and then you've got this modern battleship and then you've got the sailors aboard who think this is the time now to go home and actually it's the time now for occupation you know so there's so many subplots to it yeah well thanks john been brilliant to to talk through that with you and by the way ladies if you like listening to john talk then what you really need to do is come to we have ways festival september the 12th to the 14th not far away now and john you're we've got you doing a variety of things actually we're getting the most bang we possibly can for our park aren't we, Jim?

Yeah, yeah, we most certainly are because this year we've got a newly formatted version of Super Gehern, which in English is Mastermind.

And actually, this time we're playing it kind of about as straight as we can ever play it, which isn't that straight.

And it's going to be like the BBC's Mastermind, isn't it?

With four contestants, each having two minutes on their specialist subject, followed by a general knowledge round.

And John is going to be answering questions on his specialist subject, General James M.

Gavin.

What's not to like?

What is not to like?

Exactly.

So true, my friend.

What's not to like slim jim i mean come on there's no downside for sure

and i think it's fair to say there's going to be a fair bit of gavin in this year's festival there will be huge fans here on looking forward to that enormously john look forward to seeing you in person thanks everybody for listening go to wehavewaysfest.co.uk for your tickets we will see you all very soon cheerio cheerio see ya