It was an extremely disciplined nation. There was not a single instance of defiance of the edict, and a proud nation, after gaining unbelievably rapid victories in the initial stages of the War, was now humbled into surrender, and that without any preconditions. In the trauma of this humiliation, the Russians played Judas by reneging the Russo–Japanese non-aggression pact, and declaring war on Japan. They marched into Manchuria and this was the unkindest cut of all. But at the time, I remember it paled into insignificance because Japan was still struggling to come to terms with itself over the abject surrender.
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Going back to 16 July, after the Americans had succeeded in detonating the first atomic device in history, the results were rushed to President Truman. He was with the British Prime Minister Churchill at the Potsdam Conference, where the infamous decision to drop the two bombs was taken. The hypocrisy lay in the statement by Truman that this was necessary to shorten the war and thereby save ‘hundreds of thousands of lives, both American and Japanese’. Major General J F C Fuller, in his incisive A Strategic and Tactical History of the Second World War, has put things in the correct perspective.
Two days before we left our barracks, we received the wonderful news that Netaji was arriving in Tokyo. This gave us an immense sense of relief.
‘Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the outcome of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretexts of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified. In fact, knowing as President Truman and Mr Churchill did of the powers of the new weapon, its use could have implied but one thing only, namely, “Unless surrender is immediate, the slaughter of the Japanese people will be unlimited.” This is equivalent to a gangster saying to the victim “Unless you do as I ask, I will shoot your family.”’
He further adds,
‘If the saving of lives were the true pretext, then instead of reverting to a type of war that would have disgraced Tamerlane, all President Truman and Mr Churchill needed to have done was to remove the obstacle of unconditional surrender, when the War could have been brought to an immediate end.’
The United States Strategic Survey (the Pacific War), which was carried out immediately after the War came to the conclusion that ‘by August 1945, even without direct air attack on her cities and industries, the overall level of Japanese war production would have declined below its peak level of 1944 by 40 to 50 per cent solely as a result of interdiction of overseas imports.’ Fuller rightly concludes that ‘[T]herefore, it would seem highly probable that had strategic bombing been centred on the destruction of Japanese merchant shipping and railways instead of on industries and cities, by August 1945, further resistance would have been impossible.’ In plain language it meant that there was no call for the inhuman incendiary bomb raids on a civilian population, and of course no possible reason for their having dropped the atom bombs that caused such untold and inhuman misery.
We got the news that Netaji had died in an air crash when his plane was taking off for Japan from Taihoku”¦ We were numb with disbelief and could not stop crying. It was as if our own parent had died and we were abandoned all of a sudden.
The Academy was now closing down and it was not possible for us to stay there any longer. Hundreds of Japanese cadets had already been sent to their homes, and except for a skeleton staff, the others had been asked to leave. The Academy authorities paid us all the allowances that lay in our accounts. The Indian Independence League gave us 10,000 yen each from the fund meant for us, and we were told that a building would be hired for us to stay in.
Two days before we left our barracks, we received the wonderful news that Netaji was arriving in Tokyo. This gave us an immense sense of relief. He would tell us what we had to do under these circumstances.
The building hired for us to move into would not be ready for some days, and as we could not wait for that and stay on in the Academy, we were invited to stay with Anand Mohan Sahay, an expatriate and a great patriot who had done immense good work for India’s independence.
The day we were to move from the Academy, however, turned out to be one of the worst days of our lives. We got the news that Netaji had died in an air crash when his plane was taking off for Japan from Taihoku. This together with the fact that we had not been able to fulfil our ambitions and that our work was halted midway was too much to bear. We were numb with disbelief and could not stop crying. It was as if our own parent had died and we were abandoned all of a sudden. Our grief overwhelmed us.
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The Academy offered us transport and we made our way to Mr Sahay’s house. I remember that on the journey, each of us hoped secretly that the news was not true, and that there could have been some mistake in the transmission of facts. But when we reached the Sahay home, our hopes were dashed to the ground. A number of Indian friends had gathered there and the scene was pathetic. All eyes were red with tears and each face expressed profound shock. No one would answer questions as we joined the group of mourners. No one knew quite what to do as the blow dealt by fate was staggering, that too, so soon after the calamity of the Japanese surrender.
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