Eyewitness (28 page)

It was just before two o’clock in the morning when we went up a flight of bare stone steps and down a narrow corridor into a schoolroom which for months General Eisenhower’s staff had been using as a map room at its advanced command post. It was an ‘L’ shaped room, 40 feet long at the longest and 30 feet deep at the deepest. Its walls were covered with great green-and-white maps, where the fronts of the war’s dying days were elaborately marked by coloured crayons and silks, or flagged up and pinned.

A long deal table had been set up under the battle maps, and it had a black painted top. It was set with 15 yellow deal chairs, with wooden seats, and on it sat 13 blocks of plain white paper and 13 yellow pencils. There were six little white inkpots, and a black writing set, nothing else.

Under the searing lights, the space about that black-topped table seemed a sort of vacuum into which all the world’s hopes had been drawn as the minutes of waiting dragged on. They drew a little chalkline on the floor beyond which we were forbidden to walk until the signatories and the high officials were seated. Black cables of recording gear coiled over a shabby blue, white and red carpet which covered most of the floor.

Looking at a little square calendar someone had set above the table, I was reading over and over again ‘Monday, May 7, 1945.’ Cameramen and technicians raced about, bent on double-checking their machinery. The staff officers paced restlessly, watching their wristwatches. Then at 2.29 a.m., a colonel walked in briskly, and said: ‘Get ready, gentlemen, they’re coming.’

There was an echo of brisk footsteps in the corridor, and the Allied delegation led by Admiral Sir Harold Burrough (Britain) walked in – all except the Frenchman General Francois Sevez and General Bedell Smith, General Eisenhower’s Chief-of-Staff, the chief signatory for the western Allies.

Admiral Burrough and Major-General Suslapatov (Russia) were the only men upon whom the cracking, nervous strain of the last hours and days seemed to have left no impression. Admiral Burrough’s high-boned face gleamed ruddily. Major-General Suslapatov, a hugeshouldered giant of a man, seemed to fill his tight-waisted Russian jacket and striped whip-cord breeches with a sort of bounding physical defiance of the room’s weighted tension. The Russian’s gold teeth gleamed as he smiled in casual conversation, making asides to his little bald interpreter, M. Cherbiev. All the others showed the greatest strain. There were violet shadows under the eyes and their faces were pale and slack.

Five minutes later, the Frenchman came in, bowed to the table, and shook hands nervously with his nearest neighbour. Then came Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith. He was never a robust-looking man, but under the glare of the lights he looked ghastly, ill and exhausted. All stood a little stiffly behind the chairs awaiting the Germans. Lights hissed and cracked. We began to sweat heavily in the steadily mounting heat.

At exactly 2.30 a.m. the new chief of the German General Staff, Col- General Jodl, and General-Admiral Hans von Friedeburg arrived – scraggy men in uniforms that had known wear. Both were fair-haired, fading to grey, both a little bald. They were accompanied by their aides who were freshly shaven and brushed, their skins pale pink, and their eyes glassy through lack of sleep.

Jodl and Friedeburg walked with rapid nervous pace to the table. For a second they stood stiffly to attention until Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith, with a slight acknowledging bow, motioned them to take the seats provided on the opposite side of the table. They sat abruptly. Lieut-General Bedell Smith in a low scarcely audible voice, asked them if they full understood the terms of the documents to be signed. They murmured assent and Colonel-General Jodl tapped the table restlessly.

There was a delay of a few minutes while the procedure of signature was adjusted. Then the hush exploded into a flurry of furtive movement as the signing of little pieces of white foolscap, on which was typed the act of surrender, began. Each document was in quadruplicate. Naval, land and air authorities of all the signatory Powers attached their signatures.

Cameras began to make a low whirring sound and dozens of small flashlights popped. Cameramen, still bent double, scuttled from point to point ripping black paper from film packs and adjusting lenses. They moved and worked with incredible speed and dexterity. Every gesture, every muscle twitch was recorded.

Pen nibs moved swiftly as aides passed copy after copy. Air Marshall Robb was the only man at the table who did not watch every movement of the signatures. He looked across the table obliquely at the maps to seem almost abstracted.

Spotlights shone brilliantly on M. Chierniev’s completely bald head. The Russians were the only ones at the table upon whose countenances could be discerned the faintest expression of satisfaction. They sat absolutely motionless and upright, with their chests out. Their slightly slanted eyes were narrowed and fixed unwinkingly on the Germans.

Quite suddenly it was over. Lieutenant-General Bedell Smith made a quick movement, and delivered the first written orders to the capitulators. Colonel-General Jodl said something inaudible to the British interpreter, and the interpreter said with startling loudness: ‘He asks permission to say a few words.’ Lieutenant-General Bedel Smith inclined his head, and Colonel-General Jodl rose and leaned slightly forward, the tips of his long pink fingers pressed down against the table.

He said in German with a low monotone: ‘General, with this signature the German people and the German armed forces are, for better or worse, delivered into the victors’ hands. In this war, which has lasted more than five years, both have achieved and suffered more, perhaps, than any other people in the world. In this hour I can only hope the victor will treat them with generosity.’

The Germans then turned and walked quickly from the room. Colonel-General Jodl’s eyes were suffused with tears and his face had withered into bitter lines of humiliation and despair. General-Admiral von Friedeburg was less visibly affected. The Allied delegation filed quietly out in pairs, talking in low voices. Major-General Suslapatov’s gold teeth were gleaming again.

That was how they made peace in Europe.

Whatever came after was an anticlimax. The arc lights fizzled down, the cameramen wiped sweat from their eyes and mopped their strained, white faces. ‘The Press will follow me,’ said General Frank Allen, chief of SHAEF’s public relations division.

We dutifully crowded into the narrow door to see the beaten Germans pay their formal call upon the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, seated behind an elaborate little desk in a green-curtained office, the flags of the United Nations draped on his right. We dutifully noted that Admiral Burrough was delightedly shaking hands with the Russians. We heard General Eisenhower record in a quiet clear, but tired voice his simple ‘victory’ speech. His eyes, too, were purple shadowed and his cheeks hung slackly.

But the moment of thankfulness was gone. It went when Colonel- General Jodl’s voice tailed into silence on the word so few Germans have ever known – the word ‘generosity’.

Wilfred Burchett

Wilfred Burchett’s early career as a journalist is coloured by his later activities from the ‘other side’ in Korea and Vietnam.

Pat Burgess noted in 1986 that ‘across the total span of war reporting from World War II to Vietnam stands Wilfred Burchett, to some a hero, to others a malignant colossus who betrayed his craft and became no more than a political agent, using journalism to spy and push a political line. What Burchett did was enlarge the complexities which confront every journalist tempted to take sides.’

Burchett is alleged to have interrogated or been present at the interrogation of Australian P.O.W.s during the Korean War.

Born in Poowong in country Victoria in 1911, Burchett became an accidental foreign correspondent by bombarding newspapers with letters and cables. He had always wanted to be a journalist, studying languages at home and taking himself to Europe in the 1930s. He tried to enlist in the Spanish Civil War, found himself in China in the late 1930s, and writing for the London
Daily Express
from Chungking. He did important and dangerous work from Burma which resulted in the book
Wingate Adventure
– among the four he wrote during World War II.

But it is his scoop reporting as the first journalist into Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb that is his biggest claim to fame, published in the
Daily Express
on September 5th, 1945. The dropping of the bomb was no news, but the effects of it were – the headline was ‘The Atomic Plague … I write this as a warning to the world.’

Even here there is controversy – not about whether Burchett actually went there, but about how he got the copy out, and who wrote the words that were published. A colleague on the
Express
, Henry Keys, lost the toss about who was to go, and remained in Tokyo. He claimed later that Burchett’s dispatch did not come through, and that he had written it. The editor back in London, Arthur Christianson, also had a hand. The question of sending 3000 words by morse code also comes up. Impossible say some.

In the end the question cannot be satisfactorily resolved – the story got out, was published around the world, was correct and was under Burchett’s wartime by-line.

The by-line on the story was actually Peter Burchett – which was not an error. When Burchett first began working for the
Express
in Chungking, he had employed an assistant named Peter Kiang who sent cables for him and signed them, for the sake of brevity, Peter Burchett.

The American military angrily denied that the story was true, saying that Burchett had fallen victim to Japanese propaganda.

At Burchett’s funeral in 1983, the eulogy was delivered by an American journalist and author, T.D. Allman, who made the perceptive point: ‘It was a considerable ordeal to reach Hiroshima but it was an infinitely greater accomplishment, back then, to
understand
the importance of Hiroshima.’

*

On the 6th of August, I was on Okinawa inspecting the immense developmental work done there; the great Super Fortress bases laid down, the hundreds of miles of roads, thousands of acres of ground cleared, and already covered with supplies for the invasion. Standing near the end of a long line of troops, waiting for midday ‘chow’, with tin plate and mug in hand, I could hear the radio crackling and indistinct words about a powerful new bomb which had just been tried. To me and a few score people standing with me, the damp Okinawa heat and our hunger seemed more important than any new bomb. No-one paid much attention to the broadcast of President Truman’s announcement. No-one in that mess hall realised that a few hundred miles to the north the most deadly weapon of all time had been unleashed and the birth of a new source of power demonstrated.

It took several hours of repeated broadcasts before the significance of what had happened dawned on us. Then the reaction was ‘What the hell’s the good of us working to develop this place? They won’t need any thousand bomber raids any more.’

Back at Guam, where 20
^th
Air Force had its headquarters, the first photos of Hiroshima were soon available, and even the layman could see that something new and terrible had been accomplished by atomic bombing. One bomb had wiped out an area equivalent to that cleared by four or five hundred Super Fortresses in normal incendiary raids. And in Hiroshima the devastated area included the built-up part of the city, not just the bamboo and paper shack section.

Within a week of the atom bomb tearing Hiroshima apart it was obvious the Japs wanted to get out of the war. On the 15th of August, before the surrender terms had been accepted, the 4
^th
Marine Regiment, the same unit with which I had landed for the invasion of Guam, were embarked for landing operations in Japan. Officers and men were conscious of the honour bestowed on the regiment that it should have been selected for this prize job of the whole Pacific war. Their previous assignment had been as part of the 6
^th
Marine division on Okinawa, where they suffered over 100 per cent casualties, including men twice wounded and replacement casualties.

General MacArthur was to fly two airborne divisions to an airfield about 20 miles from Tokyo. The Navy was to put the 4
^th
Marine regiment ashore at the great Yokosuka naval base, ten miles south of Yokohama. There was uneasy speculation aboard the transport on which I travelled as to whether or not the Japs would resist. It was a slender occupation force with which to face three or four million armed Japs. We began to feel even more uncomfortable as we cruised off the Japanese coast and heard reports of Japs still shooting at our planes and suicide attacks against shipping off Okinawa.

Our transport fleet dropped anchor on the 28th of August in Sagami Bay, just west of the entrance to Tokyo Bay, in the shadow of Mount Fujiyama. That beautiful first evening, when we lay at anchor surrounded by the greatest concentration of battleships and cruisers seen in this war, and watched the sun set in a magnificent blaze of colour behind Mount Fujiyama, was the realisation of the ambitions of every man afloat since the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor. For the first time men could relax and luxuriate in the thought that it was really over and they were still alive. The calm of the smooth olive-green waters of Sagami Bay, the peaceful profile of mist-swathed Fujiyama, were matched by the unhurried indifference of the Japanese people we could see on the shores. They did not appear to have any fight left in them, as we watched them through telescopes and binoculars. Adults were bathing, children paddling and splashing about as if life had always followed its normal course for them and always would. They seemed curiously uninterested in the vast armada that had suddenly appeared on their back doorstep.

Americans and British were vying with each other in smartening up their ships for the triumphal entry into Tokyo Bay on 30th of August. The British battleship
King George
was the first to fly its peacetime flags and replace the brass caps on gun muzzles. Everything that could be polished and painted was painted and polished.

On the 29th of August, the first enemy prize submarines were brought into the harbour. One, a huge craft with displacement of 5000 tons and hangar space for four aeroplanes, was easily the largest of its kind in the world, twice the size of the famous French
Surcouf
. The size of the Jap subs was a surprise to Allied naval men, but the Japs had used them very little for offensive purposes. Their main role was the supply of outlying garrisons with food and munitions.

In the small hours of the morning of the 30th, our convoy weighed anchor. Dawn found us moving through the narrow straits into Tokyo Bay, the shoreline dotted with white flags denoting Jap gun positions. Battleships and cruisers were drawn up opposite our landing beaches, the bared muzzles of the big battleships pointed shorewards, ready to smother any attempt to interfere with the landing. British Marines had landed before dawn on two small islands in the bay to remove essential parts from Jap coastal guns there.

Crowded into a landing barge headed for the shore we all had a sharp curiosity as to the nature of our reception. Either this was the easiest landing we had made or it would be the bloodiest. If the Japanese wanted to make a fight of it, one Marine regiment would be wiped out in a short time. We were to land in regular battle formation, with five assault waves, followed by reinforcements with guns and tanks. We churned in towards the beach, past the burned-out hulk of the battleship
Nagato
. There was no sign of life on shore, and our barge came to rest gently on the beach, the door was lowered and we swarmed ashore without a shot being fired.

Marines spread out across what had been a parade ground of the Yokosuka naval barracks, setting up preliminary defence positions. Within a few minutes a team of bedraggled-looking Japanese, some in civilian clothes, others in nondescript uniforms, marched nervously down to the parade ground to offer their services as interpreters.

They had been drawn from the ranks of post-office employees, bank clerks and school teachers, and were as badly scared a group of men as I have ever seen. In Yokosuka town, shops and houses were closed and shuttered. For the first hour or two there was no sign of life. Gradually people began to peep from windows and open their doors an inch or two. By midday some shop doors were wide open and by late afternoon people were walking the streets, returning from hiding in the hills and doing a brisk trade in the few souvenirs available. It was notable that food shops were completely bare, that every gap caused by bombing had been turned into some sort of garden, that people had even rigged off tiny plots on the footpaths with stones, filled them in with dirt and were growing tomatoes and eggplants on top of the kerb stones. Civilians seemed amazed and relieved that Allied troops did not rampage through the city shooting, robbing and raping as their own soldiers would have done in similar circumstances.

Tokyo was the main goal for correspondents, and as there seemed to be trains running from Yokosuka station, Bill McGaffin, of
Chicago
Daily News
, and I, bought a ticket at the station and caught a train for Tokyo. McGaffin had been in America when the surrender offer was made and flew out to join the fleet just in time to be in at the death.

We created a sensation on the train. We were the only foreigners aboard, and although the train was packed, people cleared a space for us and stood around watching us with a mixture of fear and curiosity, but as far as we could see, no resentment. We knew little Japanese, and had to ask at each station whether that was Tokyo. Information was readily forthcoming, and soon an English-speaking Jap was thrust forward to explain how many stops the train would make before we reached the capital.

The train travelled by way of Yokohama, and from the time we reached to within three or four miles of that city until we reached Tokyo, we travelled through devastation that we thought must be without parallel. That was before I visited Hiroshima.

Mile after mile the train rattled through districts which had formerly been the most densely populated in the world. Now there was nothing left but flat acres with green growing through the ashes, and hundreds of shacks improvised from rusted corrugated iron remnants of factories. Factories were reduced to shambles of concrete rubble, twisted girders and shattered, rusty machinery.

Residential districts had disappeared almost without trace. We began to feel more and more nervous, sitting there surrounded by people who were technically still our enemies, with the evidence of such terrible destruction on every side. The Japs, however, gazed stolidly at us and the ruins, and showed neither hatred nor resentment at our presence.

Our first goal was the Imperial Hotel, but we found this taken over by colleagues who had landed with General MacArthur’s airborne troops a few hours ahead of the Marines. We went to the only other hotel still extant in Tokyo, the Dai Iti. It was a bizarre situation. We were the first signs of occupation the manager had seen. He apologised that the hotel was full, and in any case uncomfortable. He explained that we would be the only foreigners amongst a hotel full of Japanese, some of whom, as he expressed it, were ‘hotheads’. After more apologies and explanations he agreed to give us rooms and produced forms for us to fill in, exactly as if we had arrived on a Cook’s tour. Solemnly we filled in answers to such questions as at what port we had landed, how long we would remain in Japan, had we been in Japan before, what references could we give in Japan. The manager was concerned when we told him we could not complete the section referring to passport and visa particulars.

Tokyo for those first few days was a prime example of how completely the Japanese people had accepted defeat. A couple of weeks earlier to think of surrender was to commit a treachery. The propaganda services instilled into people’s minds that with their wonderful suicide weapons no invasion of Japan would be possible. Every person was to be mobilised and ready to mow down with bamboo spears any invader who succeeded in setting foot on the sacred soil of Japan. Now, a couple of days before the surrender was signed, a handful of correspondents without any supporting troops had taken over the nation’s capital, and they occupied it alone for eight days. They registered in the hotels, wandered where they wished without molestation. The Emperor had told people to behave and not to cause ‘incidents’, so the people behaved. Just as the initial wave of suicides outside the Emperor’s palace stopped the instant the Emperor ordered no more suicides.

Much of the built-up portion of Tokyo was intact. The large modern concrete and stone buildings facing the Imperial palace were hardly touched. Most of the damage was in the residential quarter, where the first fire raid on the 10th of March killed 100,000 people in two hours, according to local figures. Three-quarters of Tokyo’s population had fled to the country, most of the rest were living in the one-roomed, rusty iron shacks that had sprung up like weeds among the ruins, or in open dugouts that offered scant protection against the wet and cold that was already setting in in early September.