Mr Tatsuo Hayashida, a Japanese officer, arrived from Taihoku with Netajis ashes”¦, and it was decided that the ashes be kept in the safe custody of one of Tokyos shrines. The place decided upon was the Renkoji Temple in the city centre of Tokyo.
The next day, we were told that Colonel Habibur Rehman, who was travelling with Netaji in the ill-fated aircraft, was arriving by a relief plane, and that he was in a serious condition and had sustained severe burns on his face and body. A delegation was dispatched to the airport to receive him, and he was brought to Mr Sahay’s house. He was indeed in a very bad condition with burns on one side of his face, and a large burn patch on his body.
Two days later, Mr Tatsuo Hayashida, a Japanese officer, arrived from Taihoku with Netaji’s ashes. The cube-shaped urn was covered in white cloth. Mr SA Ayer who was the Minister of Publicity in the Azad Hind Government and a right-hand man of Netaji was in Tokyo then, and it was decided that the ashes be kept in the safe custody of one of Tokyo’s shrines. The place decided upon was the Renkoji Temple in the city centre of Tokyo.
We gathered there one night and in a simple ceremony performed by the head priest of the Renkoji Temple, the ashes were kept in a place of honour with a photograph of Netaji in full INA uniform in front of the urn. The ashes are still there. Neither the Indian government nor Netaji’s close relations have deemed it fit to bring them over to India, even after all these years. The government’s reluctance to do so was an aspect of politics, but the family clearly believed that he could not have died.
All those who kept up the pretence that Netaji was alive, even after the Government of India’s enquiry committees had disproved the theory, had some purpose to their plan. However, no one realised that they were insulting the memory of a great revolutionary who, in the heat and turmoil of a world war, managed to travel secretly from Germany to Malaya in a submarine and then galvanised the entire southeast Asian Indian community into forming the Azad Hind government and the Indian National Army. Would such a great man, if he were alive, stay in hiding?I believe that if Netaji had been alive and not killed in the air crash, he would have returned to India after the British left its shores. And if he had come in at that time, he might have stolen the hearts of the populace and taken the place that other leaders took. Netaji was shrewd and far-sighted, and he made the national language Hindustani, not Hindi, and the language of common people. The script was democratically roman.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, more than being a born leader, was an able commander who could, and more importantly, did take decisions. There was no vacillation in his demeanor or actions. He was strong-willed, like the immortal Sardar Vallabhai Patel, and if both these men had been alive at this time, they would have done great things for the country, but that was not to be. Netaji died at a very inopportune juncture of the nation’s birth.
Consequent to the Emperors declaration of unconditional surrender, the Japanese envoys signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the US battleship USS Missouri, and the Second World War came to an official end. We waited apprehensively for the Americans to land in Tokyo.
Coming back to our story in Japan, a building was hired for us and we shifted into it. We were five to a room, as the 35 from the erstwhile Army Academy now joined us. Money was no problem, as apart from the large sum we had been given earlier, we were getting a monthly allowance. The only snag was that there was almost nothing for sale and we had no boarding facilities. We had to fend for ourselves. Somehow, we managed quite comfortably. We used to send foraging parties to the farms in the suburbs of Tokyo, and get fresh vegetables, fruit and other foodstuff. In fact we were doing better than the Japanese authorities had managed to in the last two years.
Consequent to the Emperor’s declaration of unconditional surrender, the Japanese envoys signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the US battleship USS Missouri, and the Second World War came to an official end. We waited apprehensively for the Americans to land in Tokyo. It was certain that the Japanese would receive them with discipline and decorum, since the Emperor willed it, but we were not too sure of the kind of reception we would receive when they found out about us.
Under American Occupation
The day and the manner in which the Americans landed was memorable. Transport planes escorted by hordes of fighter- and bomber-aircraft appeared over the Tokyo landscape. People may at first have misunderstood this and thought that the War was on again and an attack imminent. But this was not the case. The Amercians had probably done this with a dual purpose. Clearly, they wanted to display their awesome might. This was also a preemptive measure.
After a few days of occupation, our representative met the American authorities. They did not know what to do with us. One of the officers said that they had nothing against us and went on to joke that the Americans had also fought the same British for their Independence.
As the planes landed one by one on the runway, the fighters hovered overhead on guard. As the troops disembarked, they deployed and boarded trucks and jeeps that were to take them in a victory procession through the streets of Tokyo. There were no disturbances and not a single hand was raised against them. Instead, the public had lined up in the streets and children waved to them. It was typical of American diplomacy that they made friends, especially with the children by giving them chewing gum and chocolates.
The start of the occupation of Japan went like clockwork, with the full cooperation of the vanquished. Many of the American officers and others we met later told us that they had landed with apprehension, expecting that the Japanese would take revenge on them for the bombing. They too wanted to take revenge on the citizens for Japan’s having waged such an expensive war—expensive in terms of the number of American dead and wounded. But when they actually saw the civilian population, they could not believe that the polite, disciplined and friendly people were of the same stock as the brutal hard-fighting frontline soldiers they had faced earlier. This was exactly how we felt when we first came to Japan from the war-torn areas of Burma, Malaya and the Philippines.
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