No Honorable Cessation

"Like myself, you are an infantry general long schooled and practised in infantry warfare," wrote Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., to the Japanese commander on Okinawa. "You fully know that no reinforcements can reach you. I believe, therefore, that you understand as clearly as I that the destruction of all Japanese resistance on this island is merely a matter of days, and that this will entail the necessity of my killing the vast majority of your remaining troops. ... I will acquaint [your representatives] with the manner in which an orderly and honorable cessation of hostilities may be arranged."

Planes parachuted three copies of the note into the enemy positions. But the likeness which Buckner saw between himself and the unnamed Japanese commander was not even skin-deep. The enemy, with 32 1/2 hours in which to decide, let the opportunity pass. The surrender proposal was ignored; Buckner's troops went on with the killing.

When the next-to-last major enemy pocket on Okinawa (on Oroku Peninsula) was being mopped up, as many as 145 Japs surrendered in a single day. It almost seemed that the lower ranks might be seeing the light. But the prisoners were mostly Okinawan and Korean service troops, far from typical of Jap fighting men. The typical attitude was shown by Jap officers who shot their enlisted men for trying to surrender. And for each soldier who even tried, there were many more who willingly killed themselves.

The slowly growing haul of Japanese prisoners, observed on both Okinawa and Luzon, was characteristic of the last days of campaigns in which the Japs have been defeated. Cut off without hope of relief, often half-starved, with few officers left, some enemy enlisted men decide to live.* There was no sign yet that any large number of enemy troops would be ready to surrender until total national defeat was upon them. And Premier Suzuki was intensifying his efforts to pump the savage military code of Bushido into civilians at home, men and women alike.

* On Iwo, only a few score Japs were captured in three and a half weeks of battle; after it was over, 600 or more surrendered.

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