Report of Surrender and Occupation of Japan and Korea

This is a government report about the various surrenders of Japan.

Yes, surrenders, in plural. Everyone knows about the surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri, but that was dealing only with Japan itself. There were Japanese troops on lots of islands and in China, and each group had to surrender. Sometimes it was easy and went well; sometimes the U.S. soldiers had trouble convincing the Japanese troops that the war was actually over.

The report was done on February 11, 1946.

This is the introduction to the report. It shows that the U.S. did not know how the separated Japanese garrisons would react. They might go along with the general surrender, or they might try and fight it out. In general, things went well.

There was only a limited amount of ships available, and the choice had to be made between bringing back the Japanese troops, or using the ships for shipment of food to Japan, and the food shipments won out. This, of course, made sense.

Note also that the Japanese were not allowed to convert their ships for passenger use.

This one was in the Marshall islands, and was Mille Atoll. the Japanese commander was Captain Masanari Shiga. The troops originally numbered 5101. There were only 2395 left, and they were half-starved, according to the report.This is interesting. U.S. air attacks killed 780 of the troops. Illness killed 180, and malnutrition killed 1550. In other words, illness and starving killed twice as many as our attacks did.

Captain Shiga killed himself, probably by using poison. He would have been tried as a war criminal, surely, since he was implicated in the execution of five American fliers in January of 1944.

This deals with the surrender of troops on Aka Shima and Tokashiki Shima. These are both somewhere in the Ryukyu Islands, according to a map in the report.

This deals with the Morotai surrender. This was one of the islands where the U.S. had invaded but taken over only parts of the island, living some isolated Japanese garrisons in hill and jungle areas.

Marcus Island, located between Wake Island and the Bonins. There was around 2500 Japanese troops there, most ill and emaciated.

The Palaus. Lieutenant General Sadae Inous was the commander who surrendered this area. There were a fair number of Japanese troops left here, and various labor troops.

This section deals with some islands south and west of the Palaus that had some Japanese troops on each island. None of the groups knew that the war was over.

Rota island surrenders. There were over 2600 Japanese troops left on the island.

Pagan island in the northern Marianas. Over 2200 troops were left and 486 Japanese civilians, all of whom had a very limited food supply left to them. Within a couple of weeks or so they would have run out of food.

Truk Atoll. Truk was another of the by-passed areas and had 49,000 troops, plus around 80,000 other troops in the area. Many of the troops were starving, a worm infestation having destroyed the sweet potatoes they had been subsisting on.

Three more small islands near Truk. Total of around 1,000 troops.

Wake Island. Originally the island had more Japanese troops on it when it was by-passed, but American bombing had killed around 600 and starving and/or disease had killed another 1288. It's obvious from the figures for the surrenders that disease and starvation was a very major problem for the Japanese troops that were left. All their supply shipments had stopped, of course, and the groups that had been by-passed had no way to get out to get other supplies.

The Bonins. There were a fair number of troops on the islands, and, unlike most others, they had adequate food.

Aguijan Island, near Tinian. There were only 67 troops on the island.

Jaluit in the Marshall Islands. There were originally 2205 Japanese troops, and 1903 were left to surrender, making them a very fortunate group indeed to have so many still alive of their original number.

Yap Atoll. There were over 4000 Japanese Army troops left, plus Japanese civilians, Korean and Formosan civilians, and over 1100 Japanese Navy personnel. The Japanese troops on the islands actually helped American Seebees in fixing roads on the island.

Wotje Island, in the Marshalls. Originally there were 3298 people on the island, counting troops and civilians, both. There were 2103 Navy personnel; only 497 lived long enough to surrender. There had been 429 Army men, and only 136 were left. Out of 766 civilians, only 436 survived. Although 564 of these people had been killed by U.S. air attacks, malnutrition killed 1235 and illness killed 166.

Maloelap island. This was another by-passed island. Originally, there were 1772 Navy personnel; only 734 were left. There had been 368 Army personnel, of which 172 were left, and only 260 of an original 957 civilians were left.

Ryukyu Islands. There were some 60 islands involved in the surrender of 105,000 Japanese troops.

Sorol, Eauripik, Ifalik Islands. Very few Japanese were on these, and five of those chose to kill themselves rather than surrender.

Kusaie, in the Carolines Islands. Most of the group of troops and civilians had survived.

Ponape, in the Eastern Carolines.

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