page_title: Horror in the East
section_title: Part Two – Death before Surrender
hierarchical_section_title: Horror in the East / Part Two – Death before Surrender
context_page_description: Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II is a two-part BBC documentary film that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army in the lead up to and during World War II. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japanese. It was written and produced by Laurence Rees and narrated by Samuel West.
context_section_description: Writer-producer Laurence Rees looks at the Kamikaze phenomenon - " What could be more impossible to understand?" [yet] he says, "one of the most extraordinary things which making the series has done is this - I think I understand now why some of them did it, down to a meeting with a kamikaze pilot, he actually volunteered to become a pilot - he explained the dreadful social pressure that he and his family were living under - if he didn't go to volunteer he knew his family would be ostracised, shunned, - from his point of view it was a sensible, sane thing to do."
  When U.S. Marines tried to re-take Japanese-held islands like Tarawa in 1943, the ferocious way in which the Japanese were prepared to fight to the death did not make the Americans respect them more. To many Americans, their refusal to surrender, like their attack on Pearl Harbor and their mistreatment of prisoners, became another sign they were a dishonourable foe. Michael Witowich: "I thought they were very cruel, sadistic, and they wanted to die for their emperor and we had to go on and help them die for their emperor." (The film soundtrack plays an excerpt from We're gonna have to slap, the dirty little jap, recorded New York, 18 February 1942). Gene La Rocque (USS MacDonough): "We had been taught that the Japanese were sub-human when we got into the attack, but of course we had no love for Hitler, or the Nazis - but we also had many people in America of German descent, Italian - it was an entirely different view we had of the Italians, of the Germans, than we had of the Japanese."  Rees's documentary shows a photo published in the war in Life – the girlfriend of an American sailor next to a souvenir from him – the skull of a Japanese signed by her boyfriend's comrades.
  Japanese soldiers fighting the Australians in New Guinea committed cannibalism. Japanese forces were sent to New Guinea in 1942 but without sufficient preparation – they were simply abandoned. In late 1943, forbidden to surrender and cut off from their supplies, they began to starve – some resorted to cannibalism of their own and enemy dead. According to Professor Yuki Tanaka: "The cannibalism was organised group practice, rather than individually practised." A Japanese major-general wrote an order prohibiting the eating of human flesh but this meant flesh "excluding enemy flesh".
  The first signs that large numbers of civilians as well as soldiers might be prepared to die for their emperor rather than surrender came in 1944, 1,400 miles (2,300 km) south of the home islands of Japan, on the island of Saipan. Japanese propaganda about Saipan emphasised the nobility of dying in the struggle against the British and Americans. With the capture of islands like Tinian and Saipan, heavy bombers were now in easier range of targets on the home islands of Japan and the Allies now launched the biggest aerial bombardment the world had ever seen - more than 160000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Japan in an effort to make the Japanese accept unconditional surrender.
  On 10 March 1945 Tokyo was fire bombed. Over 300 Boeing B-29 bombers dropped incendiaries which caused a fire storm. About 100,000 died. Despite the destruction in Tokyo opinion was still divided in the Japanese government in the months that followed about what should be done. Accepting unconditional surrender might, some feared, mean the elimination of the institution of the emperor itself. Hirohito and his military leaders believed that, in order to negotiate a more advantageous peace, Japan needed to win one big victory - and the Kamikaze would provide the means. Sporadic isolated kamikaze attacks had occurred in 1944 - now in the spring of 1945 kamikazes were to sortie en masse for the first time. A student from Tokashiki Island: "I didn't think that they were wasting their lives, I believed they were sacrificing their lives for their country. The Japanese people belonged to the emperor - we were his children." The testimony of a pilot suggests that not all kamikaze volunteered as freely as the propaganda sometimes suggested. Kenichiro Oonu
caption: The Americans expected the Japanese to defend the beaches on Okinawa - but on 1 April 1945 when 50000 American troops came ashore they found their arrival virtually unopposed.
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