The 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, also known as Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day), has just been commemorated, marking the surrender of Japan to the Allied forces on Aug 15, 1945. On this historic day, the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, speaking for the first time ever on a live radio broadcast, announced the momentous decision that Japan was surrendering. Almost three weeks later, on Sept 2, the formal surrender document was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
This milestone event brought to an end a war that had been raging in Asia for 14 years. This timescale may come as a surprise to many people living in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Europe, who have always tended to view history from a very Western perspective. Many Americans date the Pacific theater of World War II from Dec 7, 1941, when Japan’s surprise attack on the American naval base in Pearl Harbor propelled the country into declaring war on Japan the following day. The British prime minister at that time, Winston Churchill, actually declared war on Japan nine hours ahead of the US. This was in response to Japanese attacks on the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, which had been coordinated by Japan to synchronize with the Pearl Harbor attack. Britain at that time was already mired in the European theater of war, fighting Nazi Germany, and Churchill was clearly delighted when Pearl Harbor dragged a previously reluctant US into what now was very much a world war. In his own words, that night he “went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful”.
So, for both the US and the UK, the war against Japan dated from December 1941 and lasted for three and a half years. For China, however, this had been a marathon, dating back to 1931, when it was invaded by Japanese forces. For 14 years, China had fought, single-handedly for the most part, in what it termed the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45). The clear message here is that history should always be viewed from a much broader perspective than through a narrow national lens. Virtually no mention of China’s role in resisting Japan is made in the popular Western narrative, and certainly not in Hollywood’s version of “how America won the war”.
Yet China played a key role in the war, and the scale of its suffering over 14 years of conflict was enormous. Millions of Chinese lives were lost, both in the fighting and in atrocities committed by Japanese troops against civilians. Perhaps the most notorious example was the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops carried out a campaign of rape and mass executions, slaughtering up to 300,000 Chinese people. It’s estimated that over 20 million Chinese were killed (a total of over 35 million Chinese were killed or injured) during the war. To put this in perspective, the death toll of other World War II participants included 420,000 Americans, 450,000 British, 3 million Japanese and 7 million Germans. Only the Soviet Union’s death toll, approximately 20 million, matched the horrendous Chinese loss of life. There is little mention of this sacrifice in Western accounts of the war. Nor is there sufficient recognition of the role played by Chinese forces in keeping Japanese troops mired in China for so many years and for costing the Imperial Japanese army an estimated 480,000 men. This was a critical factor in thwarting Japan’s imperial ambitions in Asia and the Pacific, slowing the speed of its advance, and maintaining resistance until the American deployment of atomic bombs in August 1945 brought the war to a dramatic end. As with the Soviet Union’s contribution to Allied victory over Nazi Germany, China’s contribution to victory over Japan deserves proper recognition in the West.
At a time when nuclear weapons have proliferated and international tensions have intensified, the events of August 1945 are a salutary reminder to all nations of the horrors of pressing the nuclear button. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a sobering reminder to all nuclear powers never to go down that road. If they do, it’s unlikely there will be anyone around in another 80 years to argue whether the decision was justified or just plain MAD
The 80th anniversary of VJ Day has been an opportunity to reflect on this and set the historical record straight. However, there is also a much bigger, universal issue on which we all need to reflect. This is, of course, the broader theme of man’s inhumanity to man. They say that the first casualty of war is truth, but morality and human decency are also inevitable casualties. World War II illustrates the truth of this in so many ways, with horrors on the battlefield being matched by the most appalling atrocities against prisoners of war and civilians. The Holocaust marked a moral low in Europe, while in Asia, massacres such as the one in Nanjing became almost routine, promoted by Hirohito’s scorched earth strategy, directing Japanese forces to “kill all, burn all, and loot all”. It is perhaps ironic that these crimes against humanity were brought to an abrupt end by what some consider to be the “ultimate war crime”.
On Aug 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, another was dropped on Nagasaki. An estimated 224,000 men, women and children were killed by the blasts and their radioactive aftermath. This demonstration of awesome power broke Japanese morale and led directly to Hirohito’s unconditional surrender. Debate has raged ever since on whether the US’ action was justified. Some have hailed the bombings as being a legitimate and necessary means to bring an appalling war to an end. Others have condemned the bombings as “war crimes”.
Some historians have argued that the use of atomic weapons was the only way to force a quick Japanese surrender, saving the lives of soldiers on both sides, as well as the lives of civilians. They say that the alternative was for the war to continue for months, with conventional bombing, the slow process of liberating occupied lands, and a ground invasion of Japan leading to millions of deaths.
Other historians believe that the use of atomic bombs was an unnecessary display of force, arguing that Japan was already on the verge of surrender and that such a devastating and indiscriminate attack was unjustified. They accuse the US of seeking revenge against the Japanese in retribution for the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor and the cruel treatment and killing of American prisoners. They point out that a few days after the bombings, then-US president Harry Truman wrote: “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.” There is also a strong suspicion that the deployment of atomic bombs was just as much a show of power to America’s ideological rival, the Soviet Union, as it was to Japan. The US was keen to demonstrate its new weapon to Moscow, signaling its unrivaled military superiority in the postwar world. Furthermore, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki just one day after the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan, on Aug 8, 1945. This has been interpreted by some as a clear message to Moscow that the war was ending and to keep its forces out of a region that the US now saw as its own postwar sphere of influence.
These arguments and the controversy surrounding the atomic bombs have been reignited by the 80th anniversary of VJ Day. At a time when nuclear weapons have proliferated and international tensions have intensified, the events of August 1945 are a salutary reminder to all nations of the horrors of pressing the nuclear button. “Mutually assured destruction” (with the appropriate acronym MAD) was a term coined in the 1960s, spelling out the consequences of nuclear war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a sobering reminder to all nuclear powers never to go down that road. If they do, it’s unlikely there will be anyone around in another 80 years to argue whether the decision was justified or just plain MAD.
The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
