1945-1946 Pictorial: In The Aftermath

[bitterlyclingin]

Taken during the time when America's sweat, blood, toil, and tears had earned this nation the right to present the eagle as its national symbol. After Tuesday 6 November, the Great Lakes Lamprey or the lowly tapeworm will be more apropos.

World War II: After the War - In Focus - The Atlantic

 

[bitterlyclingin]

Photo number 45, Japaneses soldier Onoda was hailed as a folk hero upon his return home, because he did not surrender.

The General, second in command under Ushijima, on Okinawa when the Americans landed April 1st, 1945 did not commit ritual suicide as his commander did when the island eventually fell to the Americans, but chose to try to find some means of fleeing the island by watercraft or air. Unable to escape, he sought refuge under the guise of a simple gardener working at one of the large Okinawan estates where he was apprehended by American forces, July, 1945.
From a book written later by him we learn that the remnants of the Japanese fleet returned in secrecy to the sanctuary of the harbor at Okinawa July, 1944. The men who had sailed aboard those ships were restricted to shipboard for fear of word of and the magnitude of the disaster that been inflicted on the Japanese Navy during the Battle of the Phillipine Sea would leak out and get back to the home islands and the Japanese people. We also learn that Japanese officers, after the Americans had landed, were restricted to one rice ball and one tin of pineapple per day. Enlisted men received less. The General despised the "Horse mounting" technique the Americans had put into use for assaulting and subdueing the Japanese defensive positions, labeling them as barbaric.
After his release from an American prison and return home to Japan he was regarded and treated openly as a pariah for his act of surrendering.