From Victory ’45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders, by James Holland and Al Murray (Grove Atlantic, 2025), Kindle pp. 266-268:
For Japanese commanders, surrender was in itself unacceptable and suicide preferable – death, however it came, either fighting on to the finish or taking one’s own life, was the way battle should end. In the combat on Iwo Jima from 19 February to 26 March, the Americans took a total of 216 prisoners from a Japanese Army and Navy force of 20,000, at which the Americans had had to throw 110,000 troops in total, costing them 6,821 dead as well as 19,217 wounded. On Okinawa civilians hurled themselves from the cliffs rather than be taken prisoner – this can be seen to be believed in American footage.
Only one Japanese unit broke the taboo and surrendered in the entire war: the 1st Battalion of the 329th Infantry on New Guinea, also known as the Takenaga Unit, who had been chased into the interior by the Australians. They numbered only fifty men. In April 1945 their officers decided that enough was enough – Japanese troops tended to travel light, hoping that their victories came quickly and they could scavenge supplies from their enemies or the local inhabitants wherever they were fighting. Prolonged campaigns being hunted down didn’t sit well with this tactical style. The Australians were astonished to discover one of their own leaflets, which suggested the Japanese surrender, with a scrawled offer to do just that, left on a pole in the jungle. Contact was made on 2 May, and Lieutenant-Colonel Masaharu Takenaga parlayed terms; the next day five officers, four warrant officers, thirty-three NCOs and other ranks went into the bag. It was a unique triumph for the Australian forces, and one they made much of – new propaganda leaflets dropped on the enemy spread the word, causing the commander of the Eighteenth Army, General Hatazō Adachi, to break down and cry at the dishonour they had shown the Emperor.
As Emperor, Hirohito was where the bushidō buck stopped. At least, within the kokutai, that was the rule the highest echelons of Japanese politics claimed to observe. Following Okinawa, though, the Emperor found himself strangely out of step with the recently created Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, the Gunji Sangiin. This core council, known as the Big Six, was running the war and advising the Emperor. The Big Six consisted of the Prime Minister, retired Admiral Kantarō Suzuki, seventy-seven – he had been Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet in the 1920s; Minister of Foreign Affairs Shigenori Tōgō, sixty-two, Minister of the Army General Korechika Anami, fifty-eight; Minister of the Navy Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, sixty-five; Chief of the Army General Staff General Yoshijirō Umezu, sixty-three, and Chief of the Navy General Staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda, sixty. These men had been part of the Japanese higher echelons throughout the war and intransigence sat at the heart of their thinking – their resolve remained intact in spite of their attempts to marshal a Plan B with the Soviets.
Allied forces also captured roughly 10,000 Korean, Taiwanese, and Okinawan POWs, many of whom resented their Japanese officers.
Far Outliers 