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Last time we spoke about the surrender of Japan. Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender on August 15, prompting mixed public reactions: grief, shock, and sympathy for the Emperor, tempered by fear of hardship and occupation. The government's response included resignations and suicide as new leadership was brought in under Prime Minister Higashikuni, with Mamoru Shigemitsu as Foreign Minister and Kawabe Torashiro heading a delegation to Manila. General MacArthur directed the occupation plan, “Blacklist,” prioritizing rapid, phased entry into key Japanese areas and Korea, while demobilizing enemy forces. The surrender ceremony occurred aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, with Wainwright, Percival, Nimitz, and UN representatives in attendance. Civilians and soldiers across Asia began surrendering, and postwar rehabilitation, Indochina and Vietnam's independence movements, and Southeast Asian transitions rapidly unfolded as Allied forces established control. This episode is the Aftermath of the Pacific War Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The Pacific War has ended. Peace has been restored by the Allies and most of the places conquered by the Japanese Empire have been liberated. In this post-war period, new challenges would be faced for those who won the war; and from the ashes of an empire, a defeated nation was also seeking to rebuild. As the Japanese demobilized their armed forces, many young boys were set to return to their homeland, even if they had previously thought that they wouldn't survive the ordeal. And yet, there were some cases of isolated men that would continue to fight for decades even, unaware that the war had already ended.  As we last saw, after the Japanese surrender, General MacArthur's forces began the occupation of the Japanese home islands, while their overseas empire was being dismantled by the Allies. To handle civil administration, MacArthur established the Military Government Section, commanded by Brigadier-General William Crist, staffed by hundreds of US experts trained in civil governance who were reassigned from Okinawa and the Philippines. As the occupation began, Americans dispatched tactical units and Military Government Teams to each prefecture to ensure that policies were faithfully carried out. By mid-September, General Eichelberger's 8th Army had taken over the Tokyo Bay region and began deploying to occupy Hokkaido and the northern half of Honshu. Then General Krueger's 6th Army arrived in late September, taking southern Honshu and Shikoku, with its base in Kyoto. In December, 6th Army was relieved of its occupation duties; in January 1946, it was deactivated, leaving the 8th Army as the main garrison force. By late 1945, about 430,000 American soldiers were garrisoned across Japan. President Truman approved inviting Allied involvement on American terms, with occupation armies integrated into a US command structure. Yet with the Chinese civil war and Russia's reluctance to place its forces under MacArthur's control, only Australia, Britain, India, and New Zealand sent brigades, more than 40,000 troops in southwestern Japan. Japanese troops were gradually disarmed by order of their own commanders, so the stigma of surrender would be less keenly felt by the individual soldier. In the homeland, about 1.5 million men were discharged and returned home by the end of August. Demobilization overseas, however, proceeded, not quickly, but as a long, difficult process of repatriation. In compliance with General Order No. 1, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters disbanded on September 13 and was superseded by the Japanese War Department to manage demobilization. By November 1, the homeland had demobilized 2,228,761 personnel, roughly 97% of the Homeland Army. Yet some 6,413,215 men remained to be repatriated from overseas. On December 1, the Japanese War Ministry dissolved, and the First Demobilization Ministry took its place. The Second Demobilization Ministry was established to handle IJN demobilization, with 1,299,868 sailors, 81% of the Navy, demobilized by December 17. Japanese warships and merchant ships had their weapons rendered inoperative, and suicide craft were destroyed. Forty percent of naval vessels were allocated to evacuations in the Philippines, and 60% to evacuations of other Pacific islands. This effort eventually repatriated about 823,984 men to Japan by February 15, 1946. As repatriation accelerated, by October 15 only 1,909,401 men remained to be repatriated, most of them in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the Higashikuni Cabinet and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru managed to persuade MacArthur not to impose direct military rule or martial law over all of Japan. Instead, the occupation would be indirect, guided by the Japanese government under the Emperor's direction. An early decision to feed occupation forces from American supplies, and to allow the Japanese to use their own limited food stores, helped ease a core fear: that Imperial forces would impose forced deliveries on the people they conquered. On September 17, MacArthur transferred his headquarters from Yokohama to Tokyo, setting up primary offices on the sixth floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Building, an imposing edifice overlooking the moat and the Imperial palace grounds in Hibiya, a symbolic heart of the nation.  While the average soldier did not fit the rapacious image of wartime Japanese propagandists, occupation personnel often behaved like neo-colonial overlords. The conquerors claimed privileges unimaginable to most Japanese. Entire trains and train compartments, fitted with dining cars, were set aside for the exclusive use of occupation forces. These silenced, half-empty trains sped past crowded platforms, provoking ire as Japanese passengers were forced to enter and exit packed cars through punched-out windows, or perch on carriage roofs, couplings, and running boards, often with tragic consequences. The luxury express coaches became irresistible targets for anonymous stone-throwers. During the war, retrenchment measures had closed restaurants, cabarets, beer halls, geisha houses, and theatres in Tokyo and other large cities. Now, a vast leisure industry sprang up to cater to the needs of the foreign occupants. Reopened restaurants and theatres, along with train stations, buses, and streetcars, were sometimes kept off limits to Allied personnel, partly for security, partly to avoid burdening Japanese resources, but a costly service infrastructure was built to the occupiers' specifications. Facilities reserved for occupation troops bore large signs reading “Japanese Keep Out” or “For Allied Personnel Only.” In downtown Tokyo, important public buildings requisitioned for occupation use had separate entrances for Americans and Japanese. The effect? A subtle but clear colour bar between the predominantly white conquerors and the conquered “Asiatic” Japanese. Although MacArthur was ready to work through the Japanese government, he lacked the organizational infrastructure to administer a nation of 74 million. Consequently, on October 2, MacArthur dissolved the Military Government Section and inaugurated General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, a separate headquarters focused on civil affairs and operating in tandem with the Army high command. SCAP immediately assumed responsibility for administering the Japanese home islands. It commandeered every large building not burned down to house thousands of civilians and requisitioned vast tracts of prime real estate to quarter several hundred thousand troops in the Tokyo–Yokohama area alone. Amidst the rise of American privilege, entire buildings were refurbished as officers' clubs, replete with slot machines and gambling parlours installed at occupation expense. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over Tokyo, while the display of the Rising Sun was banned; and the downtown area, known as “Little America,” was transformed into a US enclave. The enclave mentality of this cocooned existence was reinforced by the arrival within the first six months of roughly 700 American families. At the peak of the occupation, about 14,800 families employed some 25,000 Japanese servants to ease the “rigours” of overseas duty. Even enlisted men in the sparse quonset-hut towns around the city lived like kings compared with ordinary Japanese. Japanese workers cleaned barracks, did kitchen chores, and handled other base duties. The lowest private earned a 25% hardship bonus until these special allotments were discontinued in 1949. Most military families quickly adjusted to a pampered lifestyle that went beyond maids and “boys,” including cooks, laundresses, babysitters, gardeners, and masseuses. Perks included spacious quarters with swimming pools, central heating, hot running water, and modern plumbing. Two observers compared GHQ to the British Raj at its height. George F. Kennan, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, warned during his 1948 mission to Japan that Americans had monopolized “everything that smacks of comfort or elegance or luxury,” criticizing what he called the “American brand of philistinism” and the “monumental imperviousness” of MacArthur's staff to the Japanese suffering. This conqueror's mentality also showed in the bullying attitudes many top occupation officials displayed toward the Japanese with whom they dealt. Major Faubion Bowers, MacArthur's military secretary, later said, “I and nearly all the occupation people I knew were extremely conceited and extremely arrogant and used our power every inch of the way.” Initially, there were spasms of defiance against the occupation forces, such as anonymous stone-throwing, while armed robbery and minor assaults against occupation personnel were rife in the weeks and months after capitulation. Yet active resistance was neither widespread nor organized. The Americans successfully completed their initial deployment without violence, an astonishing feat given a heavily armed and vastly superior enemy operating on home terrain. The average citizen regarded the occupation as akin to force majeure, the unfortunate but inevitable aftermath of a natural calamity. Japan lay prostrate. Industrial output had fallen to about 10% of pre-war levels, and as late as 1946, more than 13 million remained unemployed. Nearly 40% of Japan's urban areas had been turned to rubble, and some 9 million people were homeless. The war-displaced, many of them orphans, slept in doorways and hallways, in bombed-out ruins, dugouts and packing crates, under bridges or on pavements, and crowded the hallways of train and subway stations. As winter 1945 descended, with food, fuel, and clothing scarce, people froze to death. Bonfires lit the streets to ward off the chill. "The only warm hands I have shaken thus far in Japan belonged to Americans," Mark Gayn noted in December 1945. "The Japanese do not have much of a chance to thaw out, and their hands are cold and red." Unable to afford shoes, many wore straw sandals; those with geta felt themselves privileged. The sight of a man wearing a woman's high-buttoned shoes in winter epitomized the daily struggle to stay dry and warm. Shantytowns built of scrap wood, rusted metal, and scavenged odds and ends sprang up everywhere, resembling vast junk yards. The poorest searched smouldering refuse heaps for castoffs that might be bartered for a scrap to eat or wear. Black markets (yami'ichi) run by Japanese, Koreans, and For-mosans mushroomed to replace collapsed distribution channels and cash in on inflated prices. Tokyo became "a world of scarcity in which every nail, every rag, and even a tangerine peel [had a] market value." Psychologically numbed, disoriented, and disillusioned with their leaders, demobilized veterans and civilians alike struggled to get their bearings, shed militaristic ideologies, and begin to embrace new values. In the vacuum of defeat, the Japanese people appeared ready to reject the past and grasp at the straw held out by the former enemy. Relations between occupier and occupied were not smooth, however. American troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Much of the violence was directed against women, with the first attacks beginning within hours after the landing of advance units. When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence, and drunken brawling ensued. Newspaper accounts reported 931 serious offences by GIs in the Yokohama area during the first week of occupation, including 487 armed robberies, 411 thefts of currency or goods, 9 rapes, 5 break-ins, 3 cases of assault and battery, and 16 other acts of lawlessness. In the first 10 days of occupation, there were 1,336 reported rapes by US soldiers in Kanagawa Prefecture alone. Americans were not the only perpetrators. A former prostitute recalled that when Australian troops arrived in Kure in early 1946, they “dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly every night.” Such behaviour was commonplace, but news of criminal activity by occupation forces was quickly suppressed. On September 10, 1945, SCAP issued press and pre-censorship codes outlawing the publication of reports and statistics "inimical to the objectives of the occupation." In the sole instance of self-help General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when locals formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, 8th Army ordered armored vehicles into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms. Misbehavior ranged from black-market activity, petty theft, reckless driving, and disorderly conduct to vandalism, arson, murder, and rape. Soldiers and sailors often broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape, and even murder were widely reported. Gang rapes and other sex atrocities were not infrequent; victims, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned to prostitution in desperation, while others took their own lives to avoid bringing shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer; Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely, and restitution for victims was rare. Fearing the worst, Japanese authorities had already prepared countermeasures against the supposed rapacity of foreign soldiers. Imperial troops in East Asia and the Pacific had behaved brutally toward women, so the government established “sexual comfort-stations” manned by geisha, bar hostesses, and prostitutes to “satisfy the lust of the Occupation forces,” as the Higashikuni Cabinet put it. A budget of 100 million yen was set aside for these Recreation and Amusement Associations, financed initially with public funds but run as private enterprises under police supervision. Through these, the government hoped to protect the daughters of the well-born and middle class by turning to lower-class women to satisfy the soldiers' sexual appetites. By the end of 1945, brothel operators had rounded up an estimated 20,000 young women and herded them into RAA establishments nationwide. Eventually, as many as 70,000 are said to have ended up in the state-run sex industry. Thankfully, as military discipline took hold and fresh troops replaced the Allied veterans responsible for the early crime wave, violence subsided and the occupier's patronising behavior and the ugly misdeeds of a lawless few were gradually overlooked. However, fraternisation was frowned upon by both sides, and segregation was practiced in principle, with the Japanese excluded from areas reserved for Allied personnel until September 1949, when MacArthur lifted virtually all restrictions on friendly association, stating that he was “establishing the same relations between occupation personnel and the Japanese population as exists between troops stationed in the United States and the American people.” In principle, the Occupation's administrative structure was highly complex. The Far Eastern Commission, based in Washington, included representatives from all 13 countries that had fought against Japan and was established in 1946 to formulate basic principles. The Allied Council for Japan was created in the same year to assist in developing and implementing surrender terms and in administering the country. It consisted of representatives from the USA, the USSR, Nationalist China, and the British Commonwealth. Although both bodies were active at first, they were largely ineffectual due to unwieldy decision-making, disagreements between the national delegations (especially the USA and USSR), and the obstructionism of General Douglas MacArthur. In practice, SCAP, the executive authority of the occupation, effectively ruled Japan from 1945 to 1952. And since it took orders only from the US government, the Occupation became primarily an American affair. The US occupation program, effectively carried out by SCAP, was revolutionary and rested on a two-pronged approach. To ensure Japan would never again become a menace to the United States or to world peace, SCAP pursued disarmament and demilitarization, with continuing control over Japan's capacity to make war. This involved destroying military supplies and installations, demobilizing more than five million Japanese soldiers, and thoroughly discrediting the military establishment. Accordingly, SCAP ordered the purge of tens of thousands of designated persons from public service positions, including accused war criminals, military officers, leaders of ultranationalist societies, leaders in the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, business leaders tied to overseas expansion, governors of former Japanese colonies, and national leaders who had steered Japan into war. In addition, MacArthur's International Military Tribunal for the Far East established a military court in Tokyo. It had jurisdiction over those charged with Class A crimes, top leaders who had planned and directed the war. Also considered were Class B charges, covering conventional war crimes, and Class C charges, covering crimes against humanity. Yet the military court in Tokyo wouldn't be the only one. More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. Among these, many, like General Ando Rikichi and Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, chose to commit suicide before facing prosecution. Notable cases include Lieutenant-General Tani Hisao, who was sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the Nanjing Massacre; Lieutenant-General Sakai Takashi, who was executed in Nanjing for the murder of British and Chinese civilians during the occupation of Hong Kong. General Okamura Yasuji was convicted of war crimes by the Tribunal, yet he was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who kept him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang. In the Manila trials, General Yamashita Tomoyuki was sentenced to death as he was in overall command during the Sook Ching massacre, the Rape of Manila, and other atrocities. Lieutenant-General Homma Masaharu was likewise executed in Manila for atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March. General Imamura Hitoshi was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he considered the punishment too light and even had a replica of the prison built in his garden, remaining there until his death in 1968. Lieutenant-General Kanda Masatane received a 14-year sentence for war crimes on Bougainville, though he served only four years. Lieutenant-General Adachi Hatazo was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in New Guinea and subsequently committed suicide on September 10, 1947. Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro received three years of forced labour for using a hospital ship to transport troops. Lieutenant-General Baba Masao was sentenced to death for ordering the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2,200 Australian and British prisoners of war perished. Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake was sentenced to death by a Dutch military tribunal for unspecified war crimes. Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu was executed in Guam for ordering the Wake Island massacre, in which 98 American civilians were murdered. Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae was condemned to death in Guam for permitting subordinates to execute three downed American airmen captured in Palau, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951 and he was released in 1953. Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio was sentenced to death in Guam for his role in the Chichijima Incident, in which eight American airmen were cannibalized. By mid-1945, due to the Allied naval blockade, the 25,000 Japanese troops on Chichijima had run low on supplies. However, although the daily rice ration had been reduced from 400 grams per person per day to 240 grams, the troops were not at risk of starvation. In February and March 1945, in what would later be called the Chichijima incident, Tachibana Yoshio's senior staff turned to cannibalism. Nine American airmen had escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, eight of whom were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot. Over several months, the prisoners were executed, and reportedly by the order of Major Matoba Sueyo, their bodies were butchered by the division's medical orderlies, with the livers and other organs consumed by the senior staff, including Matoba's superior Tachibana. In the Yokohama War Crimes Trials, Lieutenant-Generals Inada Masazumi and Yokoyama Isamu were convicted for their complicity in vivisection and other human medical experiments performed at Kyushu Imperial University on downed Allied airmen. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, which began in May 1946 and lasted two and a half years, resulted in the execution by hanging of Generals Doihara Kenji and Itagaki Seishiro, and former Prime Ministers Hirota Koki and Tojo Hideki, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, specifically for the escalation of the Pacific War and for permitting the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Also sentenced to death were Lieutenant-General Muto Akira for his role in the Nanjing and Manila massacres; General Kimura Heitaro for planning the war strategy in China and Southeast Asia and for laxity in preventing atrocities against prisoners of war in Burma; and General Matsui Iwane for his involvement in the Rape of Nanjing. The seven defendants who were sentenced to death were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, including the last Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Generals Araki Sadao, Minami Hiro, and Umezu Shojiro, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, former Prime Ministers Hiranuma Kiichiro and Koiso Kuniaki, Marquis Kido Koichi, and Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, a major instigator of the second Sino-Japanese War. Additionally, former Foreign Ministers Togo Shigenori and Shigemitsu Mamoru received seven- and twenty-year sentences, respectively. The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals, including the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, which tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial, as MacArthur granted immunity to Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro and all members of the bacteriological research units in exchange for germ-w warfare data derived from human experimentation. If you would like to learn more about what I like to call Japan's Operation Paper clip, whereupon the US grabbed many scientists from Unit 731, check out my exclusive podcast. The SCAP-turn to democratization began with the drafting of a new constitution in 1947, addressing Japan's enduring feudal social structure. In the charter, sovereignty was vested in the people, and the emperor was designated a “symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people in whom resides sovereign power.” Because the emperor now possessed fewer powers than European constitutional monarchs, some have gone so far as to say that Japan became “a republic in fact if not in name.” Yet the retention of the emperor was, in fact, a compromise that suited both those who wanted to preserve the essence of the nation for stability and those who demanded that the emperor system, though not necessarily the emperor, should be expunged. In line with the democratic spirit of the new constitution, the peerage was abolished and the two-chamber Diet, to which the cabinet was now responsible, became the highest organ of state. The judiciary was made independent and local autonomy was granted in vital areas of jurisdiction such as education and the police. Moreover, the constitution stipulated that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights,” that they “shall be respected as individuals,” and that “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall … be the supreme consideration in legislation.” Its 29 articles guaranteed basic human rights: equality, freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin, freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Finally, in its most controversial section, Article 9, the “peace clause,” Japan “renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation” and vowed not to maintain any military forces and “other war potential.” To instill a thoroughly democratic ethos, reforms touched every facet of society. The dissolution of the zaibatsu decentralised economic power; the 1945 Labour Union Law and the 1946 Labour Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective action; the 1947 Labour Standards Law established basic working standards for men and women; and the revised Civil Code of 1948 abolished the patriarchal household and enshrined sexual equality. Reflecting core American principles, SCAP introduced a 6-3-3 schooling system, six years of compulsory elementary education, three years of junior high, and an optional three years of senior high, along with the aim of secular, locally controlled education. More crucially, ideological reform followed: censorship of feudal material in media, revision of textbooks, and prohibition of ideas glorifying war, dying for the emperor, or venerating war heroes. With women enfranchised and young people shaped to counter militarism and ultranationalism, rural Japan was transformed to undermine lingering class divisions. The land reform program provided for the purchase of all land held by absentee landlords, allowed resident landlords and owner-farmers to retain a set amount of land, and required that the remaining land be sold to the government so it could be offered to existing tenants. In 1948, amid the intensifying tensions of the Cold War that would soon culminate in the Korean War, the occupation's focus shifted from demilitarization and democratization toward economic rehabilitation and, ultimately, the remilitarization of Japan, an shift now known as the “Reverse Course.” The country was thus rebuilt as the Pacific region's primary bulwark against the spread of Communism. An Economic Stabilisation Programme was introduced, including a five-year plan to coordinate production and target capital through the Reconstruction Finance Bank. In 1949, the anti-inflationary Dodge Plan was adopted, advocating balanced budgets, fixing the exchange rate at 360 yen to the dollar, and ending broad government intervention. Additionally, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was formed and supported the formation of conglomerates centered around banks, which encouraged the reemergence of a somewhat weakened set of zaibatsu, including Mitsui and Mitsubishi. By the end of the Occupation era, Japan was on the verge of surpassing its 1934–1936 levels of economic growth. Equally important was Japan's rearmament in alignment with American foreign policy: a National Police Reserve of about 75,000 was created with the outbreak of the Korean War; by 1952 it had expanded to 110,000 and was renamed the Self-Defense Force after the inclusion of an air force. However, the Reverse Course also facilitated the reestablishment of conservative politics and the rollback of gains made by women and the reforms of local autonomy and education. As the Occupation progressed, the Americans permitted greater Japanese initiative, and power gradually shifted from the reformers to the moderates. By 1949, the purge of the right came under review, and many who had been condemned began returning to influence, if not to the Diet, then to behind-the-scenes power. At the same time, Japanese authorities, with MacArthur's support, began purging left-wing activists. In June 1950, for example, the central office of the Japan Communist Party and the editorial board of The Red Flag were purged. The gains made by women also seemed to be reversed. Women were elected to 8% of available seats in the first lower-house election in 1946, but to only 2% in 1952, a trend not reversed until the so-called Madonna Boom of the 1980s. Although the number of women voting continued to rise, female politicisation remained more superficial than might be imagined. Women's employment also appeared little affected by labour legislation: though women formed nearly 40% of the labor force in 1952, they earned only 45% as much as men. Indeed, women's attitudes toward labor were influenced less by the new ethos of fulfilling individual potential than by traditional views of family and workplace responsibilities. In the areas of local autonomy and education, substantial modifications were made to the reforms. Because local authorities lacked sufficient power to tax, they were unable to realise their extensive powers, and, as a result, key responsibilities were transferred back to national jurisdiction. In 1951, for example, 90% of villages and towns placed their police forces under the control of the newly formed National Police Agency. Central control over education was also gradually reasserted; in 1951, the Yoshida government attempted to reintroduce ethics classes, proposed tighter central oversight of textbooks, and recommended abolishing local school board elections. By the end of the decade, all these changes had been implemented. The Soviet occupation of the Kurile Islands and the Habomai Islets was completed with Russian troops fully deployed by September 5. Immediately after the onset of the occupation, amid a climate of insecurity and fear marked by reports of sporadic rape and physical assault and widespread looting by occupying troops, an estimated 4,000 islanders fled to Hokkaido rather than face an uncertain repatriation. As Soviet forces moved in, they seized or destroyed telephone and telegraph installations and halted ship movements into and out of the islands, leaving residents without adequate food and other winter provisions. Yet, unlike Manchuria, where Japanese civilians faced widespread sexual violence and pillage, systematic violence against the civilian population on the Kuriles appears to have been exceptional. A series of military government proclamations assured islanders of safety so long as they did not resist Soviet rule and carried on normally; however, these orders also prohibited activities not explicitly authorized by the Red Army, which imposed many hardships on civilians. Residents endured harsh conditions under Soviet rule until late 1948, when Japanese repatriation out of the Kurils was completed. The Kuriles posed a special diplomatic problem, as the occupation of the southernmost islands—the Northern Territories—ignited a long-standing dispute between Tokyo and Moscow that continues to impede the normalisation of relations today. Although the Kuriles were promised to the Soviet Union in the Yalta agreement, Japan and the United States argued that this did not apply to the Northern Territories, since they were not part of the Kurile Islands. A substantial dispute regarding the status of the Kurile Islands arose between the United States and the Soviet Union during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco, which was intended as a permanent peace treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers of World War II. The treaty was ultimately signed by 49 nations in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, and came into force on April 28, 1952. It ended Japan's role as an imperial power, allocated compensation to Allied nations and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes, ended the Allied post-war occupation of Japan, and returned full sovereignty to Japan. Effectively, the document officially renounced Japan's treaty rights derived from the Boxer Protocol of 1901 and its rights to Korea, Formosa and the Pescadores, the Kurile Islands, the Spratly Islands, Antarctica, and South Sakhalin. Japan's South Seas Mandate, namely the Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, and Caroline Islands, had already been formally revoked by the United Nations on July 18, 1947, making the United States responsible for administration of those islands under a UN trusteeship agreement that established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In turn, the Bonin, Volcano, and Ryukyu Islands were progressively restored to Japan between 1953 and 1972, along with the Senkaku Islands, which were disputed by both Communist and Nationalist China. In addition, alongside the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan and the United States signed a Security Treaty that established a long-lasting military alliance between them. Although Japan renounced its rights to the Kuriles, the U.S. State Department later clarified that “the Habomai Islands and Shikotan ... are properly part of Hokkaido and that Japan is entitled to sovereignty over them,” hence why the Soviets refused to sign the treaty. Britain and the United States agreed that territorial rights would not be granted to nations that did not sign the Treaty of San Francisco, and as a result the Kurile Islands were not formally recognized as Soviet territory. A separate peace treaty, the Treaty of Taipei (formally the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty), was signed in Taipei on April 28, 1952 between Japan and the Kuomintang, and on June 9 of that year the Treaty of Peace Between Japan and India followed. Finally, Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, though this did not settle the Kurile Islands dispute. Even after these formal steps, Japan as a nation was not in a formal state of war, and many Japanese continued to believe the war was ongoing; those who held out after the surrender came to be known as Japanese holdouts.  Captain Oba Sakae and his medical company participated in the Saipan campaign beginning on July 7, 1944, and took part in what would become the largest banzai charge of the Pacific War. After 15 hours of intense hand-to-hand combat, almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers were dead, and Oba and his men were presumed among them. In reality, however, he survived the battle and gradually assumed command of over a hundred additional soldiers. Only five men from his original unit survived the battle, two of whom died in the following months. Oba then led over 200 Japanese civilians deeper into the jungles to evade capture, organizing them into mountain caves and hidden jungle villages. When the soldiers were not assisting the civilians with survival tasks, Oba and his men continued their battle against the garrison of US Marines. He used the 1,552‑ft Mount Tapochau as their primary base, which offered an unobstructed 360-degree view of the island. From their base camp on the western slope of the mountain, Oba and his men occasionally conducted guerrilla-style raids on American positions. Due to the speed and stealth of these operations, and the Marines' frustrated attempts to find him, the Saipan Marines eventually referred to Oba as “The Fox.” Oba and his men held out on the island for 512 days, or about 16 months. On November 27, 1945, former Major-General Amo Umahachi was able to draw out some of the Japanese in hiding by singing the anthem of the Japanese infantry branch. Amo was then able to present documents from the defunct IGHQ to Oba ordering him and his 46 remaining men to surrender themselves to the Americans. On December 1, the Japanese soldiers gathered on Tapochau and sang a song of departure to the spirits of the war dead; Oba led his people out of the jungle and they presented themselves to the Marines of the 18th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Company. With great formality and commensurate dignity, Oba surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgis, and his men surrendered their arms and colors. On January 2, 1946, 20 Japanese soldiers hiding in a tunnel at Corregidor Island surrendered after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water. In that same month, 120 Japanese were routed after a battle in the mountains 150 miles south of Manila. In April, during a seven-week campaign to clear Lubang Island, 41 more Japanese emerged from the jungle, unaware that the war had ended; however, a group of four Japanese continued to resist. In early 1947, Lieutenant Yamaguchi Ei and his band of 33 soldiers renewed fighting with the small Marine garrison on Peleliu, prompting reinforcements under Rear-Admiral Charles Pownall to be brought to the island to hunt down the guerrilla group. Along with them came former Rear-Admiral Sumikawa Michio, who ultimately convinced Yamaguchi to surrender in April after almost three years of guerrilla warfare. Also in April, seven Japanese emerged from Palawan Island and fifteen armed stragglers emerged from Luzon. In January 1948, 200 troops surrendered on Mindanao; and on May 12, the Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before. On January 6, 1949, two former IJN soldiers, machine gunners Matsudo Rikio and Yamakage Kufuku, were discovered on Iwo Jima and surrendered peacefully. In March 1950, Private Akatsu Yūichi surrendered in the village of Looc, leaving only three Japanese still resisting on Lubang. By 1951 a group of Japanese on Anatahan Island refused to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy to remove them. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the bodies of a Saipan-based B-29. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors from three ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan woman. Personal aggravations developed from the close confines of a small group on a small island and from tuba drinking; among the holdouts, 6 of 11 deaths were the result of violence, and one man displayed 13 knife wounds. The presence of only one woman, Higa Kazuko, caused considerable difficulty as she would transfer her affections among at least four men after each of them mysteriously disappeared, purportedly “swallowed by the waves while fishing.” According to the more sensational versions of the Anatahan tale, 11 of the 30 navy sailors stranded on the island died due to violent struggles over her affections. In July 1950, Higa went to the beach when an American vessel appeared offshore and finally asked to be removed from the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon arrival, told authorities that the men on the island did not believe the war was over. As the Japanese government showed interest in the situation on Anatahan, the families of the holdouts were contacted in Japan and urged by the Navy to write letters stating that the war was over and that the holdouts should surrender. The letters were dropped by air on June 26 and ultimately convinced the holdouts to give themselves up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, “Operation Removal” commenced from Saipan under the command of Lt. Commander James B. Johnson, USNR, aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Johnson and an interpreter went ashore by rubber boat and formally accepted the surrender on the morning of June 30, 1951. The Anatahan femme fatale story later inspired the 1953 Japanese film Anatahan and the 1998 novel Cage on the Sea. In 1953, Murata Susumu, the last holdout on Tinian, was finally captured. The next year, on May 7, Corporal Sumada Shoichi was killed in a clash with Filipino soldiers, leaving only two Japanese still resisting on Lubang. In November 1955, Seaman Kinoshita Noboru was captured in the Luzon jungle but soon after committed suicide rather than “return to Japan in defeat.” That same year, four Japanese airmen surrendered at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea; and in 1956, nine soldiers were located and sent home from Morotai, while four men surrendered on Mindoro. In May 1960, Sergeant Ito Masashi became one of the last Japanese to surrender at Guam after the capture of his comrade Private Minagawa Bunzo, but the final surrender at Guam would come later with Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi. Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi survived in the jungles of Guam by living for years in an elaborately dug hole, subsisting on snails and lizards, a fate that, while undignified, showcased his ingenuity and resilience and earned him a warm welcome on his return to Japan. His capture was not heroic in the traditional sense: he was found half-starving by a group of villagers while foraging for shrimp in a stream, and the broader context included his awareness as early as 1952 that the war had ended. He explained that the wartime bushido code, emphasizing self-sacrifice or suicide rather than self-preservation, had left him fearing that repatriation would label him a deserter and likely lead to execution. Emerging from the jungle, Yokoi also became a vocal critic of Japan's wartime leadership, including Emperor Hirohito, which fits a view of him as a product of, and a prisoner within, his own education, military training, and the censorship and propaganda of the era. When asked by a young nephew how he survived so long on an island just a short distance from a major American airbase, he replied simply, “I was really good at hide and seek.”  That same year, Private Kozuka Kinshichi was killed in a shootout with Philippine police in October, leaving Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo still resisting on Lubang. Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo had been on Lubang since 1944, a few months before the Americans retook the Philippines. The last instructions he had received from his immediate superior ordered him to retreat to the interior of the island and harass the Allied occupying forces until the IJA eventually returned. Despite efforts by the Philippine Army, letters and newspapers left for him, radio broadcasts, and even a plea from Onoda's brother, he did not believe the war was over. On February 20, 1974, Onoda encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki Norio, who was traveling the world and had told friends that he planned to “look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order.” The two became friends, but Onoda stated that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders. On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed-upon place and found a note left by Suzuki. Suzuki had brought along Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender. Intelligence Officer 2nd Lt. Onoda Hiroo thus emerged from Lubang's jungle with his .25 caliber rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades. He surrendered 29 years after Japan's formal surrender, and 15 years after being declared legally dead in Japan. When he accepted that the war was over, he wept openly. He received a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine. Onoda was reportedly unhappy with the attention and what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. He wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography published in 1974. Yet the last Japanese to surrender would be Private Nakamura Teruo, an Amis aborigine from Formosa and a member of the Takasago Volunteers. Private Nakamura Teruo spent the tail end of World War II with a dwindling band on Morotai, repeatedly dispersing and reassembling in the jungle as they hunted for food. The group suffered continuous losses to starvation and disease, and survivors described Nakamura as highly self-sufficient. He left to live alone somewhere in the Morotai highlands between 1946 and 1947, rejoined the main group in 1950, and then disappeared again a few years later. Nakamura hinted in print that he fled into the jungle because he feared the other holdouts might murder him. He survives for decades beyond the war, eventually being found by 11 Indonesian soldiers. The emergence of an indigenous Taiwanese soldier among the search party embarrassed Japan as it sought to move past its imperial past. Many Japanese felt Nakamura deserved compensation for decades of loyalty, only to learn that his back pay for three decades of service amounted to 68,000 yen.   Nakamura's experience of peace was complex. When a journalist asked how he felt about “wasting” three decades of his life on Morotai, he replied that the years had not been wasted; he had been serving his country. Yet the country he returned to was Taiwan, and upon disembarking in Taipei in early January 1975, he learned that his wife had a son he had never met and that she had remarried a decade after his official death. Nakamura eventually lived with a daughter, and his story concluded with a bittersweet note when his wife reconsidered and reconciled with him. Several Japanese soldiers joined local Communist and insurgent groups after the war to avoid surrender. Notably, in 1956 and 1958, two soldiers returned to Japan after service in China's People's Liberation Army. Two others who defected with a larger group to the Malayan Communist Party around 1945 laid down their arms in 1989 and repatriated the next year, becoming among the last to return home. That is all for today, but fear not I will provide a few more goodies over the next few weeks. I will be releasing some of my exclusive podcast episodes from my youtube membership and patreon that are about pacific war subjects. Like I promised the first one will be on why Emperor Hirohito surrendered. Until then if you need your fix you know where to find me: eastern front week by week, fall and rise of china, echoes of war or on my Youtube membership of patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel.

Last time we spoke about the Soviet Victory in Asia. After atomic bombings and Japan's surrender, the Soviets launched a rapid Manchurian invasion, driving toward Harbin, Mukden, Changchun, and Beijing. Shenyang was taken, seeing the capture of the last Emperor of China, Pu Yi. The Soviets continued their advances into Korea with port captures at Gensan and Pyongyang, and occupation of South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, ahead of anticipated American intervention. Stalin pushed for speed to avoid US naval landings, coordinating with Chinese forces and leveraging the Sino-Soviet pact while balancing relations with Chiang Kai-shek. As fronts closed, tens of thousands of Japanese POWs were taken, while harsh wartime reprisals, looting, and mass sexual violence against Japanese, Korean, and Chinese civilians were reported.  This episode is the Surrender of Japan Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  With the Manchurian Campaign over and Japan's surrender confirmed, we've reached the end of the Pacific War and the ushering of a new era. This journey took us 3 years, 8 months, and 27 days and it's been a rollercoaster. We've gone over numerous stories of heroism and horror, victory and defeat, trying to peel back a part of WW2 that often gets overshadowed by the war in Europe. Certainly the China War is almost completely ignored by the west, but fortunately for you all, as I end this series we have just entered the China war over at the Fall and Rise of China Podcast. Unlike this series where, to be blunt, I am hamstrung by the week by week format, over there I can tackle the subject as I see fit, full of personal accounts. I implore you if you want to revisit some of that action in China, jump over to the other podcast, I will be continuing it until the end of the Chinese civil war. One could say it will soon be a bit of a sequel to this one. Of course if you love this format and want more, you can check out the brand new Eastern Front week by week podcast, which really does match the horror of the Pacific war. Lastly if you just love hearing my dumb voice, come check out my podcast which also is in video format on the Pacific War Channel on Youtube, the Echoes of War podcast. Me and my co-host Gaurav tackle history from Ancient to Modern, often with guests and we blend the dialogue with maps, photos and clips. But stating all of that, lets get into it, the surrender of Japan. As we last saw, while the Soviet invasion of Manchuria raged, Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on August 15. Public reaction varied, yet most were stunned and bewildered, unable to grasp that Japan had surrendered for the first time in its history. Many wept openly as they listened to the Emperor's solemn message; others directed swift anger at the nation's leaders and the fighting services for failing to avert defeat; and some blamed themselves for falling short in their war effort. Above all, there was a deep sympathy for the Emperor, who had been forced to make such a tragic and painful decision.  In the wake of the Emperor's broadcast, war factories across the country dismissed their workers and shut their doors. Newspapers that had been ordered to pause their usual morning editions appeared in the afternoon, each carrying the Imperial Rescript, an unabridged translation of the Potsdam Declaration, and the notes exchanged with the Allied Powers. In Tokyo, crowds of weeping citizens gathered all afternoon in the vast plaza before the Imperial Palace and at the Meiji and Yasukuni Shrines to bow in reverence and prayer. The shock and grief of the moment, coupled with the dark uncertainty about the future, prevented any widespread sense of relief that the fighting had ended. Bombings and bloodshed were over, but defeat seemed likely to bring only continued hardship and privation. Starvation already gripped the land, and the nation faced the looming breakdown of public discipline and order, acts of violence and oppression by occupying forces, and a heavy burden of reparations. Yet despite the grim outlook, the Emperor's assurance that he would remain to guide the people through the difficult days ahead offered a measure of solace and courage. His appeal for strict compliance with the Imperial will left a lasting impression, and the refrain “Reverent Obedience to the Rescript” became the rallying cry as the nation prepared to endure the consequences of capitulation. Immediately after the Emperor's broadcast, Prime Minister Suzuki's cabinet tendered its collective resignation, yet Hirohito commanded them to remain in office until a new cabinet could be formed. Accordingly, Suzuki delivered another broadcast that evening, urging the nation to unite in absolute loyalty to the throne in this grave national crisis, and stressing that the Emperor's decision to end the war had been taken out of compassion for his subjects and in careful consideration of the circumstances. Thus, the shocked and grief-stricken population understood that this decision represented the Emperor's actual will rather than a ratified act of the Government, assuring that the nation as a whole would obediently accept the Imperial command. Consequently, most Japanese simply went on with their lives as best they could; yet some military officers, such as General Anami, chose suicide over surrender. Another key figure who committed seppuku between August 15 and 16 was Vice-Admiral Onishi Takijiro, the father of the kamikaze. Onishi's suicide note apologized to the roughly 4,000 pilots he had sent to their deaths and urged all surviving young civilians to work toward rebuilding Japan and fostering peace among nations. Additionally, despite being called “the hero of the August 15 incident” for his peacekeeping role in the attempted coup d'état, General Tanaka felt responsible for the damage done to Tokyo and shot himself on August 24. Following the final Imperial conference on 14 August, the Army's “Big Three”, War Minister Anami, Chief of the Army General Staff Umezu, and Inspectorate-General of Military Training General Kenji Doihara, met at the War Ministry together with Field Marshals Hata and Sugiyama, the senior operational commanders of the homeland's Army forces. These five men affixed their seals to a joint resolution pledging that the Army would “conduct itself in accordance with the Imperial decision to the last.” The resolution was endorsed immediately afterward by General Masakazu Kawabe, the overall commander of the Army air forces in the homeland. In accordance with this decision, General Anami and General Umezu separately convened meetings of their senior subordinates during the afternoon of the 14th, informing them of the outcome of the final Imperial conference and directing strict obedience to the Emperor's command. Shortly thereafter, special instructions to the same effect were radioed to all top operational commanders jointly in the names of the War Minister and Chief of Army General Staff. The Army and Navy authorities acted promptly, and their decisive stance proved, for the most part, highly effective. In the Army, where the threat of upheaval was most acute, the final, unequivocal decision of its top leaders to heed the Emperor's will delivered a crippling blow to the smoldering coup plot by the young officers to block the surrender. The conspirators had based their plans on unified action by the Army as a whole; with that unified stance effectively ruled out, most of the principal plotters reluctantly abandoned the coup d'état scheme on the afternoon of 14 August. At the same time, the weakened Imperial Japanese Navy took steps to ensure disciplined compliance with the surrender decision. Only Admiral Ugaki chose to challenge this with his final actions. After listening to Japan's defeat, Admiral Ugaki Kayō's diary recorded that he had not yet received an official cease-fire order, and that, since he alone was to blame for the failure of Japanese aviators to stop the American advance, he would fly one last mission himself to embody the true spirit of bushido. His subordinates protested, and even after Ugaki had climbed into the back seat of a Yokosuka D4Y4 of the 701st Kokutai dive bomber piloted by Lieutenant Tatsuo Nakatsuru, Warrant Officer Akiyoshi Endo, whose place in the kamikaze roster Ugaki had usurped, also climbed into the same space that the admiral had already occupied. Thus, the aircraft containing Ugaki took off with three men piloted by Nakatsuru, with Endo providing reconnaissance, and Ugaki himself, rather than the two crew members that filled the other ten aircraft. Before boarding his aircraft, Ugaki posed for pictures and removed his rank insignia from his dark green uniform, taking only a ceremonial short sword given to him by Admiral Yamamoto. Elements of this last flight most likely followed the Ryukyu flyway southwest to the many small islands north of Okinawa, where U.S. forces were still on alert at the potential end of hostilities. Endo served as radioman during the mission, sending Ugaki's final messages, the last of which at 19:24 reported that the plane had begun its dive onto an American vessel. However, U.S. Navy records do not indicate any successful kamikaze attack on that day, and it is likely that all aircraft on the mission with the exception of three that returned due to engine problems crashed into the ocean, struck down by American anti-aircraft fire. Although there are no precise accounts of an intercept made by Navy or Marine fighters or Pacific Fleet surface units against enemy aircraft in this vicinity at the time of surrender. it is likely the aircraft crashed into the ocean or was shot down by American anti-aircraft fire. In any event, the crew of LST-926 reported finding the still-smoldering remains of a cockpit with three bodies on the beach of Iheyajima Island, with Ugaki's remains allegedly among them. Meanwhile, we have already covered the Truman–Stalin agreement that Japanese forces north of the 38th parallel would surrender to the Soviets while those to the south would surrender to the Americans, along with the subsequent Soviet occupation of Manchuria, North Korea, South Sakhalin, and the Kurile Islands. Yet even before the first atomic bomb was dropped, and well before the Potsdam Conference, General MacArthur and his staff were planning a peaceful occupation of Japan and the Korean Peninsula. The first edition of this plan, designated “Blacklist,” appeared on July 16 and called for a progressive, orderly occupation in strength of an estimated fourteen major areas in Japan and three to six areas in Korea, so that the Allies could exercise unhampered control over the various phases of administration. These operations would employ 22 divisions and 3 regiments, together with air and naval elements, and would utilize all United States forces immediately available in the Pacific. The plan also provided for the maximum use of existing Japanese political and administrative organizations, since these agencies already exerted effective control over the population and could be employed to good advantage by the Allies. The final edition of “Blacklist,” issued on August 8, was divided into three main phases of occupation. The first phase included the Kanto Plain, the Kobe–Osaka–Kyoto areas, the Nagasaki–Sasebo area in Kyushu, the Keijo district in Korea, and the Aomori–Ominato area of northern Honshu. The second phase covered the Shimonoseki–Fukuoka and Nagoya areas, Sapporo in Hokkaido, and Fusan in Korea. The third phase comprised the Hiroshima–Kure area, Kochi in Shikoku, the Okayama, Tsuruga, and Niigata areas, Sendai in northern Honshu, Otomari in Karafuto, and the Gunzan–Zenshu area in Korea. Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff initially favored Admiral Nimitz's “Campus” Plan, which envisioned entry into Japan by Army forces only after an emergency occupation of Tokyo Bay by advanced naval units and the seizure of key positions ashore near each anchorage, MacArthur argued that naval forces were not designed to perform the preliminary occupation of a hostile country whose ground divisions remained intact, and he contended that occupying large land areas was fundamentally an Army mission. He ultimately convinced them that occupation by a weak Allied force might provoke resistance from dissident Japanese elements among the bomb-shattered population and could therefore lead to grave repercussions. The formal directive for the occupation of Japan, Korea, and the China coast was issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on August 11. The immediate objectives were to secure the early entry of occupying forces into major strategic areas, to control critical ports, port facilities, and airfields, and to demobilize and disarm enemy troops. First priority went to the prompt occupation of Japan, second to the consolidation of Keijo in Korea, and third to operations on the China coast and in Formosa. MacArthur was to assume responsibility for the forces entering Japan and Korea; General Wedemeyer was assigned operational control of the forces landing on the China coast and was instructed to coordinate his plans with the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek; and Japanese forces in Southeast Asia were earmarked for surrender to Admiral Mountbatten. With the agreement of the Soviet, Chinese, and British governments, President Truman designated MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on August 15, thereby granting him final authority for the execution of the terms of surrender and occupation. In this capacity, MacArthur promptly notified the Emperor and the Japanese Government that he was authorized to arrange for the cessation of hostilities at the earliest practicable date and directed that the Japanese forces terminate hostilities immediately and that he be notified at once of the effective date and hour of such termination. He further directed that Japan send to Manila on August 17 “a competent representative empowered to receive in the name of the Emperor of Japan, the Japanese Imperial Government, and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters certain requirements for carrying into effect the terms of surrender.” General MacArthur's stipulations to the Japanese Government included specific instructions regarding the journey of the Japanese representatives to Manila. The emissaries were to leave Sata Misaki, at the southern tip of Kyushu, on the morning of August 17. They were to travel in a Douglas DC-3-type transport plane, painted white and marked with green crosses on the wings and fuselage, and to fly under Allied escort to an airdrome on Lejima in the Ryukyus. From there, the Japanese would be transported to Manila in a United States plane. The code designation chosen for communication between the Japanese plane and US forces was the symbolic word “Bataan.” Implementation challenges arose almost immediately due to disagreements within Imperial General Headquarters and the Foreign Office over the exact nature of the mission. Some officials interpreted the instructions as requiring the delegates to carry full powers to receive and agree to the actual terms of surrender, effectively making them top representatives of the Government and High Command. Others understood the mission to be strictly preparatory, aimed only at working out technical surrender arrangements and procedures. Late in the afternoon of August 16, a message was sent to MacArthur's headquarters seeking clarification and more time to organize the mission. MacArthur replied that signing the surrender terms would not be among the tasks of the Japanese representatives dispatched to Manila, assured the Japanese that their proposed measures were satisfactory, and pledged that every precaution would be taken to ensure the safety of the Emperor's representatives on their mission. Although preparations were made with all possible speed, on August 16 the Japanese notified that this delegation would be somewhat delayed due to the scarcity of time allowed for its formation. At the same time, MacArthur was notified that Hirohito had issued an order commanding the entire armed forces of his nation to halt their fighting immediately. The wide dispersion and the disrupted communications of the Japanese forces, however, made the rapid and complete implementation of such an order exceedingly difficult, so it was expected that the Imperial order would take approximately two to twelve days to reach forces throughout the Pacific and Asiatic areas. On August 17, the Emperor personally backed up these orders with a special Rescript to the armed services, carefully worded to assuage military aversion to surrender. Suzuki was also replaced on this date, with the former commander of the General Defense Army, General Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, becoming the new Prime Minister with the initial tasks to hastily form a new cabinet capable of effecting the difficult transition to peace swiftly and without incident. The Government and Imperial General Headquarters moved quickly to hasten the preparations, but the appointment of the mission's head was held up pending the installation of the Higashikuni Cabinet. The premier-designate pressed for a rapid formation of the government, and on the afternoon of the 17th the official ceremony of installation took place in the Emperor's presence. Until General Shimomura could be summoned to Tokyo from the North China Area Army, Prince Higashikuni himself assumed the portfolio of War Minister concurrently with the premiership, Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai remaining in the critical post of Navy Minister, and Prince Ayamaro Konoe, by Marquis Kido's recommendation, entered the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio to act as Higashikuni's closest advisor. The Foreign Minister role went to Mamoru Shigemitsu, who had previously served in the Koiso Cabinet. With the new government installed, Prince Higashikuni broadcast to the nation on the evening of 17 August, declaring that his policies as Premier would conform to the Emperor's wishes as expressed in the Imperial mandate to form a Cabinet. These policies were to control the armed forces, maintain public order, and surmount the national crisis, with scrupulous respect for the Constitution and the Imperial Rescript terminating the war. The cabinet's installation removed one delay, and in the afternoon of the same day a message from General MacArthur's headquarters clarified the mission's nature and purpose. Based on this clarification, it was promptly decided that Lieutenant General Torashiro Kawabe, Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff, should head a delegation of sixteen members, mainly representing the Army and Navy General Staffs. Kawabe was formally appointed by the Emperor on 18 August. By late afternoon that same day, the data required by the Allied Supreme Commander had largely been assembled, and a message was dispatched to Manila informing General MacArthur's headquarters that the mission was prepared to depart the following morning. The itinerary received prompt approval from the Supreme Commander. Indeed, the decision to appoint a member of the Imperial Family who had a respectable career in the armed forces was aimed both at appeasing the population and at reassuring the military. MacArthur appointed General Eichelberger's 8th Army to initiate the occupation unassisted through September 22, at which point General Krueger's 6th Army would join the effort. General Hodge's 24th Corps was assigned to execute Operation Blacklist Forty, the occupation of the Korean Peninsula south of the 38th Parallel. MacArthur's tentative schedule for the occupation outlined an initial advance party of 150 communications experts and engineers under Colonel Charles Tench, which would land at Atsugi Airfield on August 23. Naval forces under Admiral Halsey's 3rd Fleet were to enter Tokyo Bay on August 24, followed by MacArthur's arrival at Atsugi the next day and the start of the main landings of airborne troops and naval and marine forces. The formal surrender instrument was to be signed aboard an American battleship in Tokyo Bay on August 28, with initial troop landings in southern Kyushu planned for August 29–30. By September 4, Hodge's 24th Corps was to land at Inchon and begin the occupation of South Korea. In the meantime, per MacArthur's directions, a sixteen-man Japanese delegation headed by Lieutenant-General Kawabe Torashiro, Vice-Chief of the Army General Staff, left Sata Misaki on the morning of August 19; after landing at Iejima, the delegation transferred to an American transport and arrived at Nichols Field at about 18:00. That night, the representatives held their first conference with MacArthur's staff, led by Lieutenant-General Richard Sutherland. During the two days of conference, American linguists scanned, translated, and photostated the various reports, maps, and charts the Japanese had brought with them. Negotiations also resulted in permission for the Japanese to supervise the disarmament and demobilization of their own armed forces under Allied supervision, and provided for three extra days of preparation before the first occupying unit landed on the Japanese home islands on August 26. At the close of the conference, Kawabe was handed the documents containing the “Requirements of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,” which concerned the arrival of the first echelons of Allied forces, the formal surrender ceremony, and the reception of the occupation forces. Also given were a draft Imperial Proclamation by which the Emperor would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and command his subjects to cease hostilities, a copy of General Order No. 1 by which Imperial General Headquarters would direct all military and naval commanders to lay down their arms and surrender their units to designated Allied commanders, and the Instrument of Surrender itself, which would later be signed on board an American battleship in Tokyo Bay. After the Manila Conference ended, the Japanese delegation began its return to Japan at 13:00 on August 20; but due to mechanical problems and a forced landing near Hamamatsu, they did not reach Tokyo until August 21. With the scheduled arrival of the advanced party of the Allied occupation forces only five days away, the Japanese immediately began disarming combat units in the initial-occupation areas and evacuating them from those areas. The basic orders stated that Allied forces would begin occupying the homeland on 26 August and reaffirmed the intention ofImperial General Headquarters "to insure absolute obedience to the Imperial Rescript of 14 August, to prevent the occurrence of trouble with the occupying forces, and thus to demonstrate Japan's sincerity to the world." The Japanese government announced that all phases of the occupation by Allied troops would be peaceful and urged the public not to panic or resort to violence against the occupying forces. While they sought to reassure the population, they faced die-hard anti-surrender elements within the IJN, with ominous signs of trouble both from Kyushu, where many sea and air special-attack units were poised to meet an invasion, and from Atsugi, the main entry point for Allied airborne troops into the Tokyo Bay area. At Kanoya, Ugaki's successor, Vice-Admiral Kusaka Ryonosuke, hastened the separation of units from their weapons and the evacuation of naval personnel. At Atsugi, an even more threatening situation developed in the Navy's 302nd Air Group. Immediately after the announcement of the surrender, extremist elements in the group led by Captain Kozono Yasuna flew over Atsugi and the surrounding area, scattering leaflets urging the continuation of the war on the ground and claiming that the surrender edict was not the Emperor's true will but the machination of "traitors around the Throne." The extremists, numbering 83 junior officers and noncommissioned officers, did not commit hostile acts but refused to obey orders from their superior commanders. On August 19, Prince Takamatsu, the Emperor's brother and a navy captain, telephoned Atsugi and personally appealed to Captain Kozono and his followers to obey the Imperial decision. This intervention did not end the incident; on August 21 the extremists seized a number of aircraft and flew them to Army airfields in Saitama Prefecture in hopes of gaining support from Army air units. They failed in this attempt, and it was not until August 25 that all members of the group had surrendered. As a result of the Atsugi incident, on August 22 the Emperor dispatched Captain Prince Takamatsu Nabuhito and Vice-Admiral Prince Kuni Asaakira to various naval commands on Honshu and Kyushu to reiterate the necessity of strict obedience to the surrender decision. Both princes immediately left Tokyo to carry out this mission, but the situation improved over the next two days, and they were recalled before completing their tours. By this point, a typhoon struck the Kanto region on the night of August 22, causing heavy damage and interrupting communications and transport vital for evacuating troops from the occupation zone. This led to further delays in Japanese preparations for the arrival of occupation forces, and the Americans ultimately agreed to a two-day postponement of the preliminary landings. On August 27 at 10:30, elements of the 3rd Fleet entered Sagami Bay as the first step in the delayed occupation schedule. At 09:00 on August 28, Tench's advanced party landed at Atsugi to complete technical arrangements for the arrival of the main forces. Two days later, the main body of the airborne occupation forces began streaming into Atsugi, while naval and marine forces simultaneously landed at Yokosuka on the south shore of Tokyo Bay. There were no signs of resistance, and the initial occupation proceeded successfully.  Shortly after 1400, a famous C-54  the name “Bataan” in large letters on its nose circled the field and glided in for a landing. General MacArthur stepped from the aircraft, accompanied by General Sutherland and his staff officers. The operation proceeded smoothly. MacArthur paused momentarily to inspect the airfield, then climbed into a waiting automobile for the drive to Yokohama. Thousands of Japanese troops were posted along the fifteen miles of road from Atsugi to Yokohama to guard the route of the Allied motor cavalcade as it proceeded to the temporary SCAP Headquarters in Japan's great seaport city. The Supreme Commander established his headquarters provisionally in the Yokohama Customs House. The headquarters of the American Eighth Army and the Far East Air Force were also established in Yokohama, and representatives of the United States Pacific Fleet were attached to the Supreme Commander's headquarters. The intensive preparation and excitement surrounding the first landings on the Japanese mainland did not interfere with the mission of affording relief and rescue to Allied personnel who were internees or prisoners in Japan. Despite bad weather delaying the occupation operation, units of the Far East Air Forces and planes from the Third Fleet continued their surveillance missions. On 25 August they began dropping relief supplies, food, medicine, and clothing, to Allied soldiers and civilians in prisoner-of-war and internment camps across the main islands. While the advance echelon of the occupation forces was still on Okinawa, “mercy teams” were organized to accompany the first elements of the Eighth Army Headquarters. Immediately after the initial landings, these teams established contact with the Swiss and Swedish Legations, the International Red Cross, the United States Navy, and the Japanese Liaison Office, and rushed to expedite the release and evacuation, where necessary, of thousands of Allied internees.  On September 1, the Reconnaissance Troop of the 11th Airborne Division conducted a subsidiary airlift operation, flying from Atsugi to occupy Kisarazu Airfield; and on the morning of September 2, the 1st Cavalry Division began landing at Yokohama to secure most of the strategic areas along the shores of Tokyo Bay, with Tokyo itself remaining unoccupied. Concurrently, the surrender ceremony took place aboard Halsey's flagship, the battleship Missouri, crowded with representatives of the United Nations that had participated in the Pacific War.  General MacArthur presided over the epoch-making ceremony, and with the following words he inaugurated the proceedings which would ring down the curtain of war in the Pacific “We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues, involving divergent ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all our peoples unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understandings they are here formally to assume. It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past — a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice. The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender now before you…”.  The Supreme Commander then invited the two Japanese plenipotentiaries to sign the duplicate surrender documents : Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, on behalf of the Emperor and the Japanese Government, and General Umezu, for the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. He then called forward two famous former prisoners of the Japanese to stand behind him while he himself affixed his signature to the formal acceptance of the surrender : Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, hero of Bataan and Corregidor and Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur E. Percival, who had been forced to yield the British stronghold at Singapore. General MacArthur was followed in turn by Admiral Nimitz, who signed on behalf of the United States. Alongside the recently liberated Generals Wainwright and Percival, who had been captured during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines and Singapore respectively, MacArthur then signed the surrender documents, followed by Admiral Nimitz and representatives of the other United Nations present. The Instrument of Surrender was completely signed within twenty minutes. Shortly afterwards, MacArthur broadcast the announcement of peace to the world, famously saying, “Today the guns are silent.” Immediately following the signing of the surrender articles, the Imperial Proclamation of capitulation was issued, commanding overseas forces to cease hostilities and lay down their arms; however, it would take many days, and in some cases weeks, for the official word of surrender to be carried along Japan's badly disrupted communications channels. Various devices were employed by American commanders to transmit news of final defeat to dispersed and isolated enemy troops, such as plane-strewn leaflets, loudspeaker broadcasts, strategically placed signboards, and prisoner-of-war volunteers. Already, the bypassed Japanese garrison at Mille Atoll had surrendered on August 22; yet the first large-scale surrender of Japanese forces came on August 27, when Lieutenant-General Ishii Yoshio surrendered Morotai and Halmahera to the 93rd Division. On August 30, a British Pacific Fleet force under Rear-Admiral Cecil Harcourt entered Victoria Harbour to begin the liberation of Hong Kong; and the following day, Rear-Admiral Matsubara Masata surrendered Minami-Torishima. In the Marianas, the Japanese commanders on Rota and Pagan Islands relinquished their commands almost simultaneously with the Tokyo Bay ceremony of September 2. Later that day, the same was done by Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae in the Palaus and by Lieutenant-General Mugikura Shunzaburo and Vice-Admiral Hara Chuichi at Truk in the Carolines. Additionally, as part of Operation Jurist, a British detachment under Vice-Admiral Harold Walker received the surrender of the Japanese garrison on Penang Island. In the Philippines, local commanders in the central Bukidnon Province, Infanta, the Bataan Peninsula, and the Cagayan Valley had already surrendered by September 2. On September 3, General Yamashita and Vice-Admiral Okawachi Denshichi met with General Wainwright, General Percival, and Lieutenant-General Wilhelm Styer, Commanding General of Army Forces of the Western Pacific, to sign the formal surrender of the Japanese forces in the Philippines. With Yamashita's capitulation, subordinate commanders throughout the islands began surrendering in increasing numbers, though some stragglers remained unaware of the capitulation. Concurrently, while Yamashita was yielding his Philippine forces, Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio's 109th Division surrendered in the Bonins on September 3. On September 4, Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu and Colonel Chikamori Shigeharu surrendered their garrison on Wake Island, as did the garrison on Aguigan Island in the Marianas. Also on September 4, an advanced party of the 24th Corps landed at Kimpo Airfield near Keijo to prepare the groundwork for the occupation of South Korea; and under Operation Tiderace, Mountbatten's large British and French naval force arrived off Singapore and accepted the surrender of Japanese forces there. On September 5, Rear-Admiral Masuda Nisuke surrendered his garrison on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshalls, as did the garrison of Yap Island. The overall surrender of Japanese forces in the Solomons and Bismarcks and in the Wewak area of New Guinea was finally signed on September 6 by General Imamura Hitoshi and Vice-Admiral Kusaka Jinichi aboard the aircraft carrier Glory off Rabaul, the former center of Japanese power in the South Pacific. Furthermore, Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, representing remaining Japanese naval and army forces in the Ryukyus, officially capitulated on September 7 at the headquarters of General Stilwell's 10th Army on Okinawa. The following day, Tokyo was finally occupied by the Americans, and looking south, General Kanda and Vice-Admiral Baron Samejima Tomoshige agreed to travel to General Savige's headquarters at Torokina to sign the surrender of Bougainville. On September 8, Rear-Admiral Kamada Michiaki's 22nd Naval Special Base Force at Samarinda surrendered to General Milford's 7th Australian Division, as did the Japanese garrison on Kosrae Island in the Carolines. On September 9, a wave of surrenders continued: the official capitulation of all Japanese forces in the China Theater occurred at the Central Military Academy in Nanking, with General Okamura surrendering to General He Yingqin, the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China National Revolutionary Army; subsequently, on October 10, 47 divisions from the former Imperial Japanese Army officially surrendered to Chinese military officials and allied representatives at the Forbidden City in Beijing. The broader context of rehabilitation and reconstruction after the protracted war was daunting, with the Nationalists weakened and Chiang Kai-shek's policies contributing to Mao Zedong's strengthened position, shaping the early dynamics of the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. Meanwhile, on September 9, Hodge landed the 7th Division at Inchon to begin the occupation of South Korea. In the throne room of the Governor's Palace at Keijo, soon to be renamed Seoul, the surrender instrument was signed by General Abe Nobuyuki, the Governor-General of Korea; Lieutenant-General Kozuki Yoshio, commander of the 17th Area Army and of the Korean Army; and Vice-Admiral Yamaguchi Gisaburo, commander of the Japanese Naval Forces in Korea. The sequence continued with the 25th Indian Division landing in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan on Malaya to capture Port Dickson, while Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro's 2nd Army officially surrendered to General Blamey at Morotai, enabling Australian occupation of much of the eastern Dutch East Indies. On September 10, the Japanese garrisons on the Wotje and Maloelap Atolls in the Marshalls surrendered, and Lieutenant-General Baba Masao surrendered all Japanese forces in North Borneo to General Wootten's 9th Australian Division. After Imamura's surrender, Major-General Kenneth Eather's 11th Australian Division landed at Rabaul to begin occupation, and the garrison on Muschu and Kairiru Islands also capitulated. On September 11, General Adachi finally surrendered his 18th Army in the Wewak area, concluding the bloody New Guinea Campaign, while Major-General Yamamura Hyoe's 71st Independent Mixed Brigade surrendered at Kuching and Lieutenant-General Watanabe Masao's 52nd Independent Mixed Brigade surrendered on Ponape Island in the Carolines. Additionally, the 20th Indian Division, with French troops, arrived at Saigon as part of Operation Masterdom and accepted the surrender of Lieutenant-General Tsuchihashi Yuitsu, who had already met with Viet Minh envoys and agreed to turn power over to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945, the Viet Minh immediately launched the insurrection they had prepared for a long time. Across the countryside, “People's Revolutionary Committees” took over administrative positions, often acting on their own initiative, and in the cities the Japanese stood by as the Vietnamese took control. By the morning of August 19, the Viet Minh had seized Hanoi, rapidly expanding their control over northern Vietnam in the following days. The Nguyen dynasty, with its puppet government led by Tran Trong Kim, collapsed when Emperor Bao Dai abdicated on August 25. By late August, the Viet Minh controlled most of Vietnam. On 2 September, in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As the Viet Minh began extending control across the country, the new government's attention turned to the arrival of Allied troops and the French attempt to reassert colonial authority, signaling the onset of a new and contentious phase in Vietnam's struggle.  French Indochina had been left in chaos by the Japanese occupation. On 11 September British and Indian troops of the 20th Indian Division under Major General Douglas Gracey arrived at Saigon as part of Operation Masterdom. After the Japanese surrender, all French prisoners had been gathered on the outskirts of Saigon and Hanoi, and the sentries disappeared on 18 September; six months of captivity cost an additional 1,500 lives. By 22 September 1945, all prisoners were liberated by Gracey's men, armed, and dispatched in combat units toward Saigon to conquer it from the Viet Minh, later joined by the French Far East Expeditionary Corps, established to fight the Japanese arriving a few weeks later. Around the same time, General Lu Han's 200,000 Chinese National Revolutionary Army troops of the 1st Front Army occupied Indochina north of the 16th parallel, with 90,000 arriving by October; the 62nd Army came on 26 September to Nam Dinh and Haiphong, Lang Son and Cao Bang were occupied by the Guangxi 62nd Army Corps, and the Red River region and Lai Cai were occupied by a column from Yunnan. Lu Han occupied the French governor-general's palace after ejecting the French staff under Sainteny. Consequently, while General Lu Han's Chinese troops occupied northern Indochina and allowed the Vietnamese Provisional Government to remain in control there, the British and French forces would have to contest control of Saigon. On September 12, a surrender instrument was signed at the Singapore Municipal Building for all Southern Army forces in Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, and the eastern islands; General Terauchi, then in a hospital in Saigon after a stroke, learned of Burma's fall and had his deputy commander and leader of the 7th Area Army, Lieutenant-General Itagaki Seishiro, surrender on his behalf to Mountbatten, after which a British military administration was formed to govern the island until March 1946. The Japanese Burma Area Army surrendered the same day as Mountbatten's ceremony in Singapore, and Indian forces in Malaya reached Kuala Lumpur to liberate the Malay capital, though the British were slow to reestablish control over all of Malaya, with eastern Pahang remaining beyond reach for three more weeks. On September 13, the Japanese garrisons on Nauru and Ocean Islands surrendered to Brigadier John Stevenson, and three days later Major-General Okada Umekichi and Vice-Admiral Fujita Ruitaro formally signed the instrument of surrender at Hong Kong. In the meantime, following the Allied call for surrender, Japan had decided to grant Indonesian independence to complicate Dutch reoccupation: Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta signed Indonesia's Proclamation of Independence on August 17 and were appointed president and vice-president the next day, with Indonesian youths spreading news across Java via Japanese news and telegraph facilities and Bandung's news broadcast by radio. The Dutch, as the former colonial power, viewed the republicans as collaborators with the Japanese and sought to restore their colonial rule due to lingering political and economic interests in the former Dutch East Indies, a stance that helped trigger a four-year war for Indonesian independence. Fighting also erupted in Sumatra and the Celebes, though the 26th Indian Division managed to land at Padang on October 10. On October 21, Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake and Vice-Admiral Hirose Sueto surrendered all Japanese forces on Sumatra, yet British control over the country would dwindle in the ensuing civil conflict. Meanwhile, Formosa (Taiwan) was placed under the control of the Kuomintang-led Republic of China by General Order No. 1 and the Instrument of Surrender; Chiang Kai-shek appointed General Chen Yi as Chief Executive of Taiwan Province and commander of the Taiwan Garrison Command on September 1. After several days of preparation, an advance party moved into Taihoku on October 5, with additional personnel arriving from Shanghai and Chongqing between October 5 and 24, and on October 25 General Ando Rikichi signed the surrender document at Taipei City Hall. But that's the end for this week, and for the Pacific War.  Boy oh boy, its been a long journey hasn't it? Now before letting you orphans go into the wild, I will remind you, while this podcast has come to an end, I still write and narrate Kings and Generals Eastern Front week by week and the Fall and Rise of China Podcasts. Atop all that I have my own video-podcast Echoes of War, that can be found on Youtube or all podcast platforms. I really hope to continue entertaining you guys, so if you venture over to the other podcasts, comment you came from here! I also have some parting gifts to you all, I have decided to release a few Pacific War related exclusive episodes from my Youtuber Membership / patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel. At the time I am writing this, over there I have roughly 32 episodes, one is uploaded every month alongside countless other goodies. Thank you all for being part of this long lasting journey. Kings and Generals literally grabbed me out of the blue when I was but a small silly person doing youtube videos using an old camera, I have barely gotten any better at it. I loved making this series, and I look forward to continuing other series going forward! You know where to find me, if you have any requests going forward the best way to reach me is just comment on my Youtube channel or email me, the email address can be found on my youtube channel. This has been Craig of the Pacific War Channel and narrator of the Pacific war week by week podcast, over and out!

Last time we spoke about the Battle for South Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. In August 1945, as Japan teetered on the edge of destruction following the atomic bombings, a desperate situation unfolded. The Soviet Union launched a sudden invasion of Manchuria, catching Japanese forces off guard. On August 14, Japan's decision to surrender was made, announced to the world the following day. However, the Kwantung Army resisted fiercely, engaging in frantic evacuations. In South Sakhalin, Japanese defenders clashed with advancing Soviet troops, facing overwhelming odds. By August 18, chaos reigned on the Japanese side, with forces surrendering and civilians in panic. As the Soviets pushed forward, the situation became increasingly dire for Japan. Despite valiant resistance, the imminent defeat became clear. In a moment of critical decision, Emperor Hirohito accepted the surrender terms, officially sealing Japan's fate and marking the end of the Pacific War. However the Soviets had not yet stopped their onslaught.  This episode is the Soviet Victory in Asia Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  We are drawing near to the real conclusion of this series! Japan has officially surrendered, however the Soviets are not done just yet. East asia is a delicious piece of cake, laid wide open and Stalin intends to take every piece he can grab before the curtain falls. Now as we last left off it was August 18, and General Yamada's Kwantung Army had surrendered to the Soviet forces led by Marshal Vasilevsky, who were advancing rapidly through Manchuria. Yet, some Japanese units, like those at Kalgan, continued to resist occupation until the month's end. On August 19, following Yamada's announcement that all military operations had ceased, a Soviet delegation arrived at Hsinking.  A daring operation took place, where a 225-strong detachment from the 6th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade, part of the 5th Guards Tank Corps, was airlifted to the city's main airfield. This mission, along with others, was carried out under orders from Marshal Vasilevsky on August 18, following the commander's initial offer of surrender from the Kwantung Army. Vasilevsky's directive was urgent: “The Japanese resistance is broken, and the challenging road conditions hinder the swift advance of our main forces. We need to deploy specially formed, fast-moving, and well-equipped units to capture Changchun, Mukden, Jilin, and Harbin immediately. These units should remain flexible for future missions, regardless of their distance from the main forces.”The push to accelerate operations came directly from Stalin himself. In Kulichkin's biography of Marshal Vasilevsky, he recounts a pivotal phone call on August 15. Stalin was informed that the Japanese had “lost command and control” and were unable to mount a strong defense, with their forces divided into several fragmented groups. Vasilevsky confidently stated, “Even a miracle cannot save the Japanese from total defeat,” stressing the need to maintain the momentum of the offensive. Stalin's response was straightforward: “Good. We need to increase the pace. What proposals do you have?” Vasilevsky revealed plans to use airborne assault forces against larger cities like Harbin, Changchun, Jilin, and Mukden, alongside advanced mobile units across all combined arms armies. These units, consisting of tanks and assault guns, were fully equipped with desantniki, ready to engage firmly in the ongoing operations. The landing at Shenyang revealed a remarkable twist of fate. Waiting at the airfield for evacuation to Japan was none other than the recently abdicated Emperor Puyi of Manchukuo. On August 15, 1945, Puyi tuned in to the radio and listened to Emperor Hirohito's address announcing Japan's surrender. In this historic speech, the Showa Emperor referred to the Americans' use of a "most unusual and cruel bomb," which had just devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For Puyi, this was the first revelation of the atomic bombings, information that the Japanese had conveniently withheld from him until that moment. The aircraft carrying Major Chelyshev's force, escorted by fighter planes, landed at 1:15 PM without any opposition and captured him. This small unit's survival hinged on remaining unchallenged, and they successfully secured the airfield. They also freed several Allied personnel held at the nearby Hoten prisoner-of-war camp. As soon as the landing was secured, additional reinforcements were airlifted in later that day, led by General Kravchenko, the commander of the 6th Guards Tank Army. He formally accepted the city's surrender, and the Soviets then transported Puyi to the Siberian town of Chita.  Meanwhile, Vasilevsky's ground offensive pressed on, mostly unopposed, though some resistance persisted. In the Transbaikal Front, Marshal Malinovsky's General Pliyev led his cavalry-mechanized units against the Japanese forces at Kalgan. Other units reached Jehol and accepted the surrender of the 108th Division. General Danilov's 17th Army secured the Shanhaiguan coast, while General Managarov's 53rd Army pushed towards Kailu. The main force of General Kravchenko's 6th Guards Tank Army regrouped at Tungliao and Kaitung, preparing to advance south toward Mukden. General Lyudnikov's 39th Army steadily approached Changchun, confronting the bypassed 107th Division, and General Luchinsky's 36th Army occupied Tsitsihar, accepting the surrender of the 136th Independent Mixed Brigade. At the same time, on General Purkayev's 2nd Far Eastern Front, General Teryokhin's 2nd Red Banner Army continued its siege of the Aihun fortified region. Meanwhile, a forward detachment moved slowly south through the Lesser Khinghan Mountains. General Mamonov's 15th Army began capturing and processing prisoners from the many retreating Japanese units after a successful amphibious assault secured Sansing. The Amur Flotilla supported the army's push towards Harbin, while General Pashkov's 5th Rifle Corps finally reached Poli, which had already been occupied by other Soviet units. In Marshal Meretskov's 1st Far Eastern Front, forward detachments of General Zakhvatayev's 35th Army began arriving at Linkou, focusing on the surrender of Japanese units in the area. Rear elements effectively eliminated the last traces of enemy resistance in the Hutou fortified area.  After a challenging struggle through the wetlands and the capture of Mishan on August 12, advanced detachments of the 35th Army's main force, the 66th and 363rd Rifle Divisions, continued their advance against minimal opposition. The situation was starkly different to their rear, where the 1056th Rifle Regiment of the 264th Rifle Division, supported by the heavily reinforced 109th Fortified Region, worked to dismantle the now-isolated Hutou fortified area. Despite the dire circumstances, the garrison refused to surrender. Thus, the focus shifted to systematically eliminating their defenses, which became a painstaking task. The attackers deployed an artillery destruction group, secured air supremacy, and utilized well-trained assault formations. Their techniques included pouring kerosene or gasoline into ventilation shafts of underground structures, sometimes in alarming quantities. For instance, two tonnes of gasoline were recorded being poured into a single installation before ignition was applied. Despite the brutal and methodical obliteration of their positions, the defenders continued to ignore orders to surrender. Notably, on August 18, a Japanese prisoner was sent under a flag of truce to inform those still holding out that the war was officially over; tragically, he was hacked to death by a sword-wielding officer. Ultimately, this stubbornness led to catastrophic consequences: about 3,000 defenders were killed, blasted and burned, before a small number finally capitulated. Additionally, advanced detachments of General Beloborodov's 1st Red Banner Army reached Shangzhi before continuing towards Harbin, and forward elements of General Krylov's 5th Army pushed on toward Jilin. General Chistyakov's 25th Army commenced disarming General Murakami's 3rd Army, while the 10th Mechanized Corps advanced rapidly westward, crossing the Laoilin Mountain passes to arrive at Tunhua by nightfall. Over in North Korea, the 335th Rifle Division successfully landed in Chongjin, as General Kabanov's Southern Defense Region prepared for an assault on Gensan. In South Sakhalin, despite the surrender of the 125th Regiment and ongoing negotiations with General Mineki's 88th Division, Soviet forces opted to proceed with the planned landing at Maoka. Consequently, Admiral Andreyev's Northern Pacific Flotilla departed from Sovetskaya Gavan in the morning, carrying the bulk of the 113th Rifle Brigade along with a battalion of marines for the long and challenging voyage to Maoka. On Shumshu Island, as General Gnechko's forces were landing their artillery to renew their assault, Japanese officers unexpectedly approached the Soviets under flags of truce, carrying a letter from General Tsutsumi proposing negotiations for surrender. Representatives from both sides began discussions, and by 6 PM, the 91st Division formally surrendered the garrisons of Shumshu, Paramushir, and Onekotan. On August 20, Gnechko dispatched a small detachment on six vessels to seize control of the airfield at Kataoka. However, as they crossed the Second Kuril Strait, batteries on both sides of the narrow waterway opened heavy fire on the Soviet ships, forcing them to withdraw. This breach of the surrender agreement sparked a renewed offensive at 1 PM, coordinated with air strikes. The bases at Kataoka and Kashiwabar were bombed by 61 aircraft, which dropped over 200 bombs, enabling ground troops to push forward up to six kilometers. It was not until General Tsutsumi intervened that the Soviets were assured the Japanese would indeed lay down their arms. Meanwhile, Andreyev's convoy arrived at Maoka harbor on the morning of August 20, successfully landing the first wave of marines amid heavy fog. They quickly spread out and secured the area while the second and third waves of infantry followed behind. By noon, the port area was secured, and the marines began advancing eastward into the city, supported by infantry on their flanks. Taken by surprise, the Japanese defenders were ultimately compelled to retreat, with the 113th Rifle Brigade pursuing them through the mountains to the villages of Futamata and Osaka. In Manchuria, between August 20 and 21, Vasilevsky's units continued their advance to occupy the region's main centers. Stalin urged for greater speed, fearing that any delay might prompt President Truman to order General MacArthur's air-naval assault forces to land there. Notably, Pliyev's first column successfully captured Kalgan, while his second column moved south toward Beijing, securing Gubeikou at the border. Located in one of the passes through the Great Wall, marking the border between Manchukuo and China, the town was garrisoned by Japanese units. These forces surrendered upon the approach of the Soviet troops, who then quickly advanced toward Beijing, about 100 kilometers away. Although not the former capital itself, this area was under the control of Chinese Communist forces known as the 8th Route Army, who aligned with the Soviets. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek was acutely aware that any Japanese capitulation to the Communists in northern China would allow the latter to occupy vital territories, making their removal difficult. Consequently, he commanded the 8th Route Army not to accept any Japanese surrenders, insisting they only surrender to Nationalist forces, with dire punishments threatened for defiance. Adding to the complexity, the Soviet Union and China had signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, discussed at Yalta, just six days earlier on August 14. This treaty promised mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in each other's internal affairs. The Soviets had also committed to providing “moral support and aid in military supplies and other material resources” exclusively to the National Government as the legitimate central authority of China. Thus, a significant political and military predicament loomed. However, the Soviets quickly extricated themselves from this situation when Malinovsky issued an order forbidding Pliyev's forces from crossing the border. As Pliyev recounted, his formations were poised just halfway between Chengde and Beijing, needing “only one 'leap' to the Chinese capital.” He noted, “I had to suspend the offensive and move north beyond the Great Wall.” Units from the 6th Guards Tank Army occupied both Changchun and Mukden, initiating a rail movement towards Port Arthur and Dairen. For those curious, at Pingfan and Changchun, General Shiro Ishii and the remaining personnel from Units 731 and 100 were captured by Soviet forces. In a tragic turn of events, all test subjects were murdered and cremated, while the Japanese attempted to destroy evidence of their facilities but were unable to do so in time. Following their capture, the Soviets launched an extensive campaign to uncover the secrets behind Units 731 and 100, leading to the Khabarovsk Trial. If you want to learn more about what I would call “japans operation paperclip”, the secret dealings between Unit 731 and the Allies after the war, I did make an episode about it over on my patreon. Its pretty gruesome stuff so big disclaimer there.' The Soviets arrived to Dairen on 24 August, although these places had surrendered to air-landed forces two days earlier. This was, no doubt, much to the relief of Stalin, as these were amongst the main locations where he most feared American intervention. Indeed, on the day of the landing he had told Vasilevsky to ‘keep in mind' the fact that any delay could mean ‘Truman will order General MacArthur to land his naval assault forces'. The long-resisting 135th Independent Mixed Brigade finally surrendered at Aihun, while advanced units of the 2nd Red Banner Army secured Nencheng and Peian before pushing towards Tsitsihar and Harbin. Forward detachments from the 15th and 1st Red Banner Armies also reached the already-occupied Harbin. Furthermore, advanced units of the 5th and 25th Armies arrived in Jilin to reinforce the air-landed detachment there. Additionally, units from the 88th Rifle Corps and the 10th Mechanized Corps began their southward movement into Korea, heading toward the 38th Parallel. In North Korea, Kabanov dispatched a marine battalion and other units, totaling around 2,000 men, to occupy the fortified port of Gensan on August 20. The following morning, the landing force arrived and disembarked without opposition. However, the Japanese garrison refused to surrender until orders from higher command were received. Meanwhile, Japanese troops began to peacefully surround the harbor area, while Soviet sailors and marines, in a similarly calm manner, took up their defensive positions. As Kabanov noted, “An incomprehensible situation arose, neither peace nor war. The enemy has numerical superiority, but he neither fights nor wants to capitulate.” Unsurprisingly, he added, “the night passed in suspense.” The surreal situation was resolved when Rear Admiral Hori Yugoro and Colonel Tado boarded the frigate EK-3 to meet with Captain Studenichnikov on the morning of August 22. During their discussions, they attempted to negotiate terms, but the Soviet captain issued a bold threat of an immediate large-scale air strike and the initiation of hostilities at the port unless they surrendered unconditionally. While the latter was likely an empty threat, the Japanese officers signed the surrender agreement nonetheless. The process of surrendering the garrison began that evening and continued until August 26. In total, the Soviets captured more than 7,000 officers and men, along with all their military equipment. Looking toward the northern Kuriles, Japanese forces on Shumshu finally began to lay down their weapons on the afternoon of August 22, as Gnechko's units spread out to secure the island. In Manchuria, airborne detachments were also landed at Dairen and Port Arthur to secure these key administrative centers before the Americans could take control. Vanguard units of the 6th Guards Tank Army arrived to reinforce them two days later. Meanwhile, in South Sakhalin, heavy fighting persisted at Futamata despite Mineki's ceasefire agreement on August 22. Soviet air strikes supported the ground forces when weather conditions allowed, and the Japanese finally surrendered by the nightfall of August 23. At the same time, Andreyev dispatched three marine battalions on a small convoy to capture Otomari. However, a fierce storm forced the flotilla to seek refuge in the port of Honto on the morning of August 24. Once the storm subsided that evening, the force left a company of marines to garrison the port and resumed their voyage to Otomari, arriving there on the morning of August 25, just as elements of the 113th Rifle Brigade reached the eastern outskirts of the city. By noon, the 88th Division surrendered, and the city was secured. Shortly after, the 214th Tank Brigade arrived at Toyohara to secure South Sakhalin's administrative center. Thus, the South Sakhalin operation concluded with nearly 18,320 Japanese soldiers taken prisoner. Yet, this wouldn't mark the end of operations for General Cheremisov's 16th Army. Stalin pushed for the 87th and 135th Rifle Brigades, along with three marine battalions, to assemble at Otomari and execute amphibious landings on the southern Kurile Islands, specifically, Etorofu, Shikotan, and Kunashiri, and the islets of the Habomai group. The failure to include the Kuril Islands in the areas designated for surrender to Soviet forces in Truman's General Order No. 1, originally issued on August 15, exacerbated Stalin's inherent suspicions regarding American intentions. Consequently, Vasilevsky was instructed to organize landings on the Kurils, ensuring that, similar to Port Arthur, Soviet occupation would manifest physically through boots on the ground. Despite Truman's subsequent correction of the omission, mistrust endured, as did the directive to occupy the islands. However, where Stalin hesitated was concerning Hokkaido. Truman's somewhat abrupt rejection of Stalin's demand for a portion of Hokkaido undoubtedly irritated the Soviet dictator, yet he chose not to take further action. Scholarly debates have arisen around the rationale behind Stalin's ‘retreat.' When viewed within the framework of his stated geostrategic goal of securing the Soviet Union's sea lines of communication in the Pacific, it becomes understandable. Churchill once likened the Soviet Union's challenges in this regard to those of a “giant with his nostrils pinched.” A look at the map reveals that control of the Kurils would significantly alleviate this pressure in the Far East, making their acquisition crucial. Similarly, occupying southern Sakhalin would allow the Soviet Union to control the northern side of the La Pérouse Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Okhotsk. The strait's opposite shore is formed by the northern coast of Hokkaido, and possessing this area would undeniably enhance the security of communications and is therefore highly desirable. However, any unilateral action in this regard would incur a significant and public breach with the Americans, the consequences of which could not be easily predicted. Given that Stalin's claim to the Kurils was firmly based on the agreement reached at Yalta, an agreement which Truman honored, his choice to avoid completely rupturing relations with the U.S. was motivated by strategic self-interest. Consequently, Andreyev's flotilla, carrying these units, departed Otomari on August 27, reaching the west coast of Etorofu at 3:15 AM on August 28. The landing, conducted using small boats, went unopposed and was met by the surrender of General Ogawa's 89th Division. The occupation of the other islands was also peaceful, with the Soviets securing Kunashiri by September 2, and Shikotan and the Habomai islets by September 5. The remaining northern Kurile Islands surrendered without incident as elements of Gnechko's Kamchatka forces arrived at Paramushir on August 24, Onekotan and Shiashkotan on August 25, Matsuwa by August 26, Shimushiru on August 27, and Uruppu by August 29. In total, 63,840 prisoners were taken throughout the Kuriles. On August 24, air-landed detachments arrived at the cities of Pyongyang and Kange to secure the last administrative centers in North Korea. Two days later, units of the 25th Army reached Gensan. With this move, albeit with some geographical liberties, Chistyakov asserted that "the troops of the 25th Army, on the orders of Marshal Meretskov, reached the 38th Parallel.” In the days that followed, units of General Kushibuchi's 34th Army gradually began to surrender and disarm. Finally, in Manchuria, most of Yamada's units had surrendered and were being disarmed. However, one unit continued to resist until the end of the month. The bypassed and encircled 107th Division was engaged in fierce fighting for survival against the 94th Rifle Corps. Due to a lack of communication with Kwantung Army Headquarters, they did not receive any ceasefire orders. As a result, a staff officer from General Iida's 30th Army was dispatched by plane to locate the division and deliver the ceasefire orders. The 107th Division was found near Chalai, and the plane made a forced landing between the Japanese troops and the opposing Soviet forces. The staff officer successfully delivered the orders terminating hostilities in that sector on August 30, which the Japanese troops promptly complied with. By September 1, units of the 53rd Army occupied Kailu, Chaoyang, Fuhsin, and Gushanbeitseifu, while forward detachments secured the Chinchou area on the Liaotung Peninsula. This marked the conclusion of the Manchurian campaign, with the Soviets claiming to have captured between 594,000 and 609,000 prisoners of war across Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and North Korea. The captured Japanese military personnel were subjected to forced labor in Siberian internment camps, as well as camps in Sakhalin, Manchuria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia. A significant number were assigned to the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline. Unfortunately, the treatment of prisoners of war was deemed inhumane and mishandled. Many suffered from malnutrition, overwork, cave-ins, floods, unsanitary working conditions leading to epidemics, harsh winter weather, violent guards, and brutal suppression of even mild resistance. Disturbingly, some Japanese prisoners were even lynched by their fellow captives. Estimates suggest that between 60,000 and 347,000 Japanese died in captivity. Although 18,616 prisoners were released in 1946, the process of repatriating prisoners of war extended into the 1950s. Those who remained after 1950 were detained for various convictions. However, their release began in 1953 under different amnesties. Following Josef Stalin's death and the subsequent Khrushchev Thaw, the Soviet attitude toward the remaining Japanese prisoners shifted significantly. Accompanied by Soviet officials, they were taken on tours of cities and allowed to purchase gifts for their families. Before repatriation, a banquet in Khabarovsk, hosted by Nikolai Gagen, included high-ranking prisoners such as Jun Ushiroku as attendees. The last major group of 1,025 Japanese POWs was released on December 23, 1956. After that, some Japanese POWs were released in small groups, with some only returning in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Interestingly, some prisoners who had been held for decades, many of whom had married and started families during their captivity, chose not to return permanently to Japan. The Soviets committed numerous war crimes during their invasion and occupation of Manchuria and other Japanese territories. During the invasion, Soviet soldiers killed and raped Japanese civilians and looted civilian property. Following the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on August 9, 1945, a large number of Japanese citizens residing in the region sought to repatriate to Japan. The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers supervised this mass movement and, in October 1945, delegated responsibility to Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare. The Kwantung Army, which was meant to protect the Japanese settlers in Manchuria, quickly retreated and abandoned them. With most able-bodied men drafted into the army, the majority of those left behind were women, children, and the elderly, rendering them highly vulnerable to attacks from Soviet soldiers and local Chinese seeking revenge.In Soviet-occupied Manchuria and North Korea, the repatriation of Japanese civilians was characterized by violent expulsions, accompanied by widespread looting, mass killings, and rampant sexual violence perpetrated by both Soviet soldiers and local populations seeking retribution. Many Japanese civilians succumbed to starvation, disease, mass killings, and mass suicides. Approximately 223,000 Japanese civilians residing in the Soviet-occupied zones died, most within a year and a half after August 9, 1945. Regarding the extensive rape of Japanese women and girls by Soviet soldiers, a former Japanese soldier, Wakatsuki Yoshio, detailed these grim experiences in his memoir, The Records of Postwar Repatriation “What word can possibly describe the violence committed by the Soviet soldiers on Japanese women? I can only think of the word “hideous”. The victim could be a girl of twelve or thirteen years old or an old lady of almost seventy years old. These soldiers did not choose the sites where they raped them, in public, in broad daylight, even on snow-covered roads”. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 left many Japanese women stranded after their male family members were either conscripted or killed. These women, including young girls, endured severe hardships, facing gang rapes by Soviet soldiers and local Chinese militia groups. In a desperate effort to survive, many were forced to marry Chinese men, either out of necessity or in exchange for assistance in repatriating their remaining family members. Disturbingly, some victims were as young as thirteen. Some women were held in groups and subjected to repeated sexual violence over extended periods. In certain instances, to ensure the safety of the group, members of the Japanese community offered women to their perpetrators. There were also reports of women voluntarily submitting themselves to protect their families, younger peers, or others in their communities. After Japan's defeat in 1945, leaders of the Kurokawa Settler Group in Manchuria offered approximately 15 young women, aged 17 to 21, to Soviet soldiers in exchange for protection. This tragic practice continued from September to November 1945, with some of the women later being offered to Chinese soldiers as well. With no protection from Japanese soldiers, Japanese women often had to devise unique strategies to avoid rape. Memoirs from female repatriates detail various escape tactics. Some women hid in attics every night, narrowly avoiding capture or even gunfire. Others managed to trap intruders in rooms before fleeing or bribed Soviet soldiers with valuables, such as wristwatches, to secure their escape. Notably, some women, particularly former geisha and bar workers, voluntarily went with Soviet soldiers to protect others. These women were referred to as tokkōtai (kamikaze) for their self-sacrifice. Additionally, it wasn't just Japanese women who suffered; Korean and Chinese women were also victims of sexual violence at the hands of various perpetrators in Manchuria. British and American reports indicate that Soviet Red Army troops looted and terrorized the local population in Shenyang, a city in Manchuria. A foreign witness described how Soviet troops, formerly stationed in Berlin, were permitted by the Soviet military to enter Shenyang for "three days of rape and pillage." In Harbin, Soviet forces ignored protests from leaders of the Chinese Communist Party regarding the widespread mass rape and looting committed by their troops. In the immediate aftermath of the war in 1945, in areas of Manchuria occupied by the National Revolutionary Army, 176 Koreans were killed, 1,866 were injured, 3,468 were detained, and 320 were raped by armed Chinese mobs. The attacks against Korean residents in Manchuria were believed to stem from a perception of Korean collaboration with Japanese colonial rule. One of the most infamous instances was the Gegenmiao massacre. On August 10 and 11, Xing'an was bombed, nearly destroying its urban functions. It is estimated that 3,000 of the 4,000 civilians. Anticipating the Soviet invasion, Xing'an had prepared an evacuation plan divided into three groups based on residential area and workplace. The Kwantung Army, however, failed to inform the General Office officials about their retreat. As a result, residents in the eastern area, many of whom were self-employed or office workers, had difficulty obtaining information and securing transportation, while those in the western area had military personnel who were first to learn of the situation. Some of the civilians with a handful of armed men had proceeded on foot towards Gegenmiao Township, about 35 kilometers southeast of Xing'an Street, to wait for a train at Gegenmiao Station and then evacuate to Baichengzi. They aimed to receive protection from the Kwantung Army in Baichengzi. Around 11:40 AM on August 14 in the vicinity of Gegenmyo Hill, where a Lamaist temple was located, they encountered an infantry unit consisting of 14 Soviet medium tanks and 20 trucks. The column reportedly stretched for two kilometers, with about a hundred survivors among them. Soviet troops launched an attack from the hilltop, deploying tanks with machine-gun fire. The tanks attacked multiple times, and when they ceased, Soviet soldiers disembarked and ruthlessly shot and bayoneted survivors. Many who escaped death from gunfire were still severely injured or witnessed family members being killed. Some were left holding their loved ones or chose to commit suicide. It is estimated that only about a hundred survivors were later confirmed, including nearly 200 schoolchildren from the Xing'an Street Zaiman National School. Kwantung Army units, which were supposed to escort the civilians and counterattack, had already retreated southward. Even after the Soviet soldiers left, sporadic gunfire continued, presumably due to suicides. Local residents began to plunder the bodies, stripping them of clothes and valuables. Others drowned in the river while attempting to escape. Reports tell of one woman who had her child killed by Soviet soldiers, only to later face an attack from Chinese militia, who stripped her of her clothes and mutilated her. Surviving mothers and children were also attacked, and those separated were often taken by the Chinese. At the time, it was common for Japanese boys to be sold for 300 yen and girls for 500 yen. Some survivors gathered together and began committing mass suicide, killing those who wished to end their lives. Others expressed intentions to form a death squad with rifles for revenge but ultimately did not resist.   After the war ended on August 15, attacks on displaced persons continued. A 12-year-old girl who joined a group of about ten women after the incident reported that they were attacked and robbed, taking over a week to reach Zhenxi Station, 10 kilometers from Gegenmiao Station. The women sought shelter in an abandoned house near the station but were discovered by Soviet soldiers that night who assaulted them until midnight. Afterward, the soldiers piled dry grass into the house, setting it ablaze in an attempt to burn the women alive. The girl and her sister managed to escape through a window, but many others could not flee in time due to the fire's rapid spread. The girl was forced to live as a residual orphan afterward. Fortunately, some Chinese, Mongolians, and Koreans provided food for the survivors, with some Chinese showing kindness towards the children. Those orphaned children, whose parents had been killed, became known as residual orphans, with about 30 in this unfortunate situation. Many women were forced to become residual women as well. Tragically, around 200 students from a local school, including the headmaster and his wife, were killed during this chaos. Some historians believe the attack stemmed from Soviet soldiers mistaking the refugees for armed Japanese troops because men within the group were carrying firearms for protection. In general, displaced persons at this time often carried small weapons like rifles, and some groups were even armed with light machine guns. In the pioneer groups, women sometimes participated in fighting against bandits, and in the Sado pioneer group incident, children above the fifth grade were forced into combat, regardless of gender. There may also have been prior skirmishes with other Japanese civilian groups before the war's end, further complicating the situation as the Soviet Army, which included female soldiers, may have regarded these mixed civilian and armed groups as a threat. According to Soviet military combat records, on August 14, the Soviet 17th Guards Rifle Division, 19th Guards Rifle Division, 91st Guards Rifle Division, and 61st Tank Division were stationed northwest of Gezhne Temple, but there was no combat activity in the area. On August 15, this unit advanced toward Bai Chengzi and occupied Bai Chengzi Station, which was then taken over by tanks from the 61st Tank Division. Despite extensive documentation, nothing about this incident was revealed until 2014 during the process of perestroika. Reports from British and American sources indicate that the 700,000 Soviet troops occupying Manchuria also terrorized and looted the local population in Mukden. They were not deterred by Soviet authorities and engaged in what was described as "three days of rape and pillage," with similar atrocities occurring in Harbin and across the country. Amid the mass repatriation of Japanese civilians living in the region, Japanese women in Manchuria faced repeated sexual violence at the hands of Russian soldiers every day. In North Korea, it was similarly reported that Soviet soldiers raped both Japanese and Korean women. Additionally, Soviet soldiers looted the property of Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans residing in Manchuria and North Korea. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Amid chaotic surrenders, Emperor Hirohito accepted defeat, but Soviet advances continued relentlessly. As they pushed deeper, the Soviets captured key cities, including Harbin, while Japan's soldiers and civilians struggled for survival against the onslaught. War crimes committed by Soviet troops added to the tragedy, with rampant violence against Japanese civilians. Amidst political tensions, the Soviets secured territory, culminating in the surrender of remaining Japanese forces. The grim conclusion of this campaign marked a profound shift in the power dynamics of East Asia and paved the way for post-war ramifications.

In recognition of this month's celebrations honoring the end of legal slavery in the United States, we bring you this week a conversation on "A New Birth of Freedom: Commemorating Juneteenth in Kentucky" led by Dr. Patrick Lewis, of the Filson Historical Society, back on June 18, 2021 - the first year that Juneteenth was recognized as a federal holiday. Watch recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8e5L7a1pME Dr. Patrick Lewis is now the President of the Filson Historical Society. A Trigg County native, he graduated from Transylvania University and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Kentucky. He has worked for the National Park Service and the Kentucky Historical Society. Lewis is author of For Slavery and Union: Benjamin Buckner and Kentucky Loyalties in the Civil War (2015). Emancipation in the United States was over 200 years in the making by the time the 13th Amendment officially ended human bondage in 1865. The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was signed into law in 2021, making Juneteenth a federal holiday. But earlier versions of the holiday have been celebrated in the South since the mid-1860s. Kentucky recognized the holiday in 2005 through a proclamation by the General Assembly. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky in 1809, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that individuals enslaved in Confederate territories were to be freed. Effective January 1, 1863, the legal status of millions of enslaved individuals in the Southern states changed, but the Proclamation depended heavily on the Union Army for enforcement, with most Southern enslavers ignoring the executive order. Beyond the Confederacy, enslaved people in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation. Being a geographic outlier from the Confederacy, Texas was especially slow and inconsistent in enforcing the Proclamation, and many African Americans remained enslaved. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 and declared all persons previously enslaved in Texas to be freed. Supported by more than 2,000 federal troops, General Granger was finally prepared to enforce the emancipation of Texas's enslaved population. The following year, on the anniversary of the order, free African Americans in Texas organized celebrations to commemorate the occasion, originally calling it “Jubilee Day.” Outside of the South, Maryland and Missouri had both ended slavery within their state boundaries by early 1865. However, it wasn't until the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, that slavery was fully abolished in the United States, forcing Kentucky and Delaware to recognize the freedom of their enslaved population. In Texas, joyous events commemorating the end of slavery evolved over the years with one major change: renaming the holiday Juneteenth in the 1890s. Following the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Juneteenth events emerged on a bigger stage throughout the country. In Louisville in 2020, local organizers, activists, and leaders created a Juneteenth festival to celebrate Black culture and resilience. Two years later in 2022, former Mayor Greg Fischer signed an ordinance that declared Juneteenth a city holiday. In Kentucky, the most widespread regional celebration of Jubilee Day is August 8th, a date originating from Paducah and Western Kentucky's diaspora. This year, the Filson is helping sponsor and support the August 8th Emancipation Day Celebration at Louisville's West End Women's Collaborative, led by Filson Community History Fellow Mariel Gardner on Friday, August 8th, 5pm - 8pm at ELAhouse, 3835 Hale Avenue Louisville, KY 40211. https://www.wewc4art.com/play Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 7pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at https://forwardradio.org

This Day in Legal History: JuneteenthOn this day in legal history, June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that all enslaved people in Texas were free. This day, now known as Juneteenth, marked the effective end of slavery in the United States—coming more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The delay was due in large part to the limited presence of Union troops in Texas to enforce the proclamation.Granger's announcement informed Texas residents that “all slaves are free,” a declaration that redefined the legal and social landscape of the state and solidified the federal government's authority over the Confederacy's last holdout. While the Emancipation Proclamation had declared freedom for slaves in Confederate states, it did not immediately end slavery everywhere, nor did it provide enforcement mechanisms beyond Union military power. Juneteenth represents the day when emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the Confederacy through legal and military authority.In the years following, Juneteenth became a symbol of African American freedom and resilience, celebrated with community gatherings, education, and reflection. Texas made Juneteenth a state holiday in 1980, the first state to do so. On June 17, 2021, it became a federal holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. The legal significance of Juneteenth lies in its embodiment of both the promise and the delay of justice, highlighting the gap between the law's proclamation and its realization.A conservative legal group, Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP), has sued the Michigan Law Review and its affiliated leadership, claiming that its member selection process illegally favors women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ+ applicants. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the complaint alleges that personal statements and holistic review metrics are evaluated using race and sex preferences, violating both federal and state anti-discrimination laws. The group contends that conservative students, especially those associated with the Federalist Society, are excluded from review committees due to their presumed opposition to the practice.FASORP is backed by attorney Jonathan Mitchell and America First Legal, led by former Trump official Stephen Miller. The organization has brought similar legal challenges against NYU and Northwestern, and its suit aligns with broader attacks on diversity policies at elite institutions. It seeks an injunction, damages, and court oversight of a revised selection process for the journal, along with a halt to federal funding until changes are made.The group claims violations of Title VI and Title IX, as well as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1985, the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Equal Protection Clause. The review's five-part selection process—including essays and grades—has no fixed evaluation formula, which FASORP argues opens the door to discriminatory discretion. Judge Judith E. Levy is assigned to the case.Conservative Group Accuses Michigan Law Review of Selection BiasA federal judge in Texas has struck down a Biden administration rule aimed at protecting the privacy of patients seeking abortions and gender-affirming care. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) overstepped its authority when it adopted the rule, which barred healthcare providers and insurers from disclosing information about legal abortions to state law enforcement. The decision halts enforcement of the rule nationwide.Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, argued that HHS lacked explicit congressional approval to implement heightened protections for procedures viewed as politically sensitive. The rule was introduced in 2024 following the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, as part of the Biden administration's efforts to defend reproductive healthcare access.The lawsuit was brought by Texas physician Carmen Purl, represented by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, which claimed the rule misused privacy laws unrelated to abortion or gender identity. Previously, Kacsmaryk had temporarily blocked enforcement of the rule against Purl, but this week's decision broadens that to all states.HHS has not responded publicly to the ruling, and a separate legal challenge to the same rule remains active in another Texas federal court. The case underscores ongoing tensions between federal privacy regulations and state-level abortion restrictions in the post-Roe legal environment.US judge invalidates Biden rule protecting privacy for abortions | ReutersXlear, a hygiene product company, has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), challenging the agency's authority to require “substantiation” for product claims under its false advertising rules. The suit, filed in federal court in Utah, follows the FTC's recent decision to drop a case it had pursued since 2021, which alleged that Xlear falsely advertised its saline nasal spray as a COVID-19 prevention and treatment product.Xlear argues that the FTC is exceeding its legal mandate by demanding scientific backing for advertising claims, stating that the FTC Act does not explicitly authorize such a requirement. The company's legal team is leaning on the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which limited the deference courts must give to federal agencies when interpreting statutes—a significant departure from the longstanding Chevron doctrine.The company seeks a court ruling that merely making claims without substantiation does not violate FTC rules. Xlear has also criticized the agency for engaging in what it calls “vexatious litigation,” claiming it spent over $3 million defending itself before the FTC abandoned its lawsuit without explanation.The FTC has not yet commented or made a court appearance in this new case. The challenge could set important precedent on the scope of agency power over advertising standards in the wake of the Supreme Court's shift on judicial deference.Lawsuit challenges FTC authority over 'unsubstantiated' advertising claims | ReutersA federal judge in Rhode Island signaled skepticism toward the Trump administration's attempt to tie federal transportation funding to state cooperation with immigration enforcement. During a hearing, Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell questioned whether U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had legal authority to impose immigration-related conditions on grants meant for infrastructure projects. McConnell, an Obama appointee, challenged the relevance of immigration enforcement to the Transportation Department's mission, drawing a parallel to whether the department could also withhold funds based on abortion laws.The case involves 20 Democratic-led states opposing the April 24 directive, which conditions billions in infrastructure grants on compliance with federal immigration law, including cooperation with ICE. The states argue the requirement is unconstitutional, vague, and attempts to coerce state governments into enforcing federal immigration policy without clear legislative authorization.Justice Department lawyers defended the policy as aligned with national safety concerns, but struggled under McConnell's probing. He noted that the administration's broad language and public stance on sanctuary jurisdictions could not be ignored and appeared to support the states' argument that the directive lacks clarity and statutory grounding.The judge is expected to issue a ruling by Friday, before the states' grant application deadline. This lawsuit is part of a broader legal and political battle as Trump pushes sanctuary cities and states to aid in mass deportations.US judge skeptical of Trump plan tying states' transportation funds to immigration | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

2025 marks the 160th year of Juneteenth, a powerful reminder of the day in 1865 when freedom finally reached the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.Juneteenth began on June 19, 1865, when Union forces arrived in Galveston, Texas, delivering General Order No. 3 which freed approximately 250,000 enslaved people. This historic moment occurred two and a half years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and over two months after the Civil War officially ended, making Texas the last Confederate state to receive news of emancipation.Galveston Unscripted What is Galveston Unscripted?Follow Galveston Unscripted on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! More history content on Visit Galveston!

Until 1971, Memorial Day was observed on May 30. That year, the holiday was moved to the last Monday in May. The original date was chosen by Major General John A. Logan, in his General Order No. 11, while he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR. He selected the date to ensure access to "the choicest flowers of springtime" across the country.

In this powerful solo episode, Rich Bennett reflects on the true meaning of Memorial Day, a day too often overshadowed by cookouts and beach trips. Tracing its roots from the Civil War to today, Rich shares moving historical insights, ways to meaningfully honor the fallen, and why remembrance is vital in preserving the freedoms we often take for granted. This heartfelt tribute is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand and respect the real significance of this national holiday. Guest: Rich Bennett Rich Bennett is a Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, and the host of the top-ranked podcast Conversations with Rich Bennett. With a commitment to real conversations and community impact, Rich brings both heart and insight to every episode. His experience in the military adds personal depth to this Memorial Day reflection. Main Topics: ·         The historical origins of Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day)·         The distinction between Memorial Day and Veterans Day·         The 1865 Charleston commemoration by freed slaves·         General John A. Logan and General Order No. 11·         Transition of Memorial Day into a national holiday·         Ways to meaningfully observe Memorial Day today·         The emotional weight and responsibility of remembrance·         Honoring Gold Star Families and the fallen  Resources mentioned: ·         Arlington National Cemetery·         General John A. Logan's General Order No. 11·         The 1971 National Holiday Act·         Gold Star Families (support organizations)·         National Moment of Remembrance (3 PM local time on Memorial Day)Send us a textPre-order your copy todaySupport the showRate & Review on Apple Podcasts Follow the Conversations with Rich Bennett podcast on Social Media:Facebook – Conversations with Rich Bennett Facebook Group (Join the conversation) – Conversations with Rich Bennett podcast group | FacebookTwitter – Conversations with Rich Bennett Instagram – @conversationswithrichbennettTikTok – CWRB (@conversationsrichbennett) | TikTok Sponsors, Affiliates, and ways we pay the bills:Hosted on BuzzsproutRocketbookSquadCast Contests & Giveaways Subscribe by Email

We commemorate the brave sacrifices of our fallen soldiers because they gave their last full measure of devotion for our country and liberty. Learn how Memorial Day started as a tribute to fallen Union soldiers in the Civil War.  It started through many local efforts and became a national, uniform celebration with the leadership of General Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic.Explore how over time, Memorial Day was the setting for brilliant speeches and commemorations, and changed to include all war dead during World War I.Review how more recently, a 1 minute silent Moment of Remembrance has been added to Memorial Day, which occurs at 3:00 pm local time.The future of our country and freedom rests with us to carry on their supreme sacrifices, and to failure to remember that could lead to our doom.Highlights include statistics about America's war dead, Pericles, Thucydides, Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, David Wills, Edward Everett, Patriot Week, Leah Warren, Arlington National Cemetary, Major General John Logan, the Grand Army of the Republic,  Logan's General Order No. 11, President James Garfield, Frederick Douglass, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Decoration Day, John McCrae, We Shall Not Sleep, a/k/a In Flanders Fields, Mania Michael, Ladies Home Journal, Armistice Day, veterans Day, Uniform Monday Holiday Act, National Moment of Remembrance Act, Carmella LaSpanda, President Bill Clinton, and many others.To learn more about America & Patriot Week, visit www.PatriotWeek.org. Our resources include videos, a TV series, blogs, lesson plans, and more.Read the entire Declaration of Independence here: https://patriotweek.org/2021/07/24/the-declaration-of-independence-september-11/Check out Judge Michael Warren's book America's Survival Guide, How to Stop America's Impending Suicide by Reclaiming Our First Principles and History at amazon, or other major on-line retailers.Join us!

Juneteenth, although an important historical date commemorating Gordon Granger's General Order No. 3, is like all other caricatures of black and American history. It segregates our society into races and classes rather than allowing for the cultural, racial, and historical mixing that is America. Throughout this special episode of TST we will explore the unauthorized, but historically documented, history of the United States through the Quaker anti-trafficking petition of 1688 to the usage of black caricatures in the 1800s and the terrorizing of Republican voters post Civil War, to the same tactics being employed today through the use of a fake ‘black subculture' and word magic.-FREE ARCHIVE & RSS: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-secret-teachingsTwitter: https://twitter.com/TST___RadioFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesecretteachingsWEBSITE (BOOKS, RESUBSCRIBE for early show access): http://thesecretteachings.infoPaypal: rdgable@yahoo.comCashApp: $rdgableBuy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tstradioSUBSCRIBE TO NETWORK: http://aftermath.mediaEMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / TSTRadio@protonmail.com

On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3 which informed the enslaved African Americans of their ...

Today is the Juneteenth holiday. It is something that began as a black cultural holiday in Texas, and grew to become a national African-American cultural holiday, and became a national holiday on June 17, 2021. A brief history of Juneteenth:  News of the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered to Galveston, Texas, by Union General Gordon Granger. He arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and issued General Order No. 3, an executive order by President Abraham Lincoln. Juneteenth celebrates the day when enslaved people in Texas were finally informed of their freedom, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that went into effect on January 1, 1863. This was also the beginning of what we call “watch night,” during which enslaved people were waiting and praying for the start of the new year 1863 which would signal the beginning of their freedom. Slave owners were not willing to release enslaved people because they were profiting off of their free labor. General order 3 was ignored and enslaved people were not informed, so the Union Army was dispatched to Texas to enforce the proclamation. It is difficult for us today to imagine the relief of mind to have the curse and brutality of slavery lifted. The executive order needed the force of congressional action to enshrine that freedom into the constitution. This came with the adoption of the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution.  We should not underestimate the positive effect of that action on our African-American ancestors and for generations to follow. To this day, we should look upon that occasion as a lifting of a burden leading to a certain level of peace of mind.  Many of the spiritual blessings we receive come from actions taken in world systems and our personal lives. For example, becoming debt-free brings great relief and peace of mind. Getting our children through school and college is another example of peace of mind. Things that we pray for God to do, are sometimes manifested in our circumstances. For a more complete understanding of Juneteenth and the history that preceded it, read this outstanding article by Dr. Jemar Tisby about the history of Juneteenth. 

Juneteenth commemorates the 19th day in June, 1865, when Union General Gordon Grainger announced General Order No.3, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas. Celebrations began immediately, but eventually took a back seat to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. With the advent of Black Lives Matter new emphasis has been placed on the holiday, which we celebrate on this week's Magazine. We'll hear music from Reggie Harris, Eric Bibb, Robert Finley, Our Native Daughters, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many more. Tune in for a celebration of Juneteenth … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian FolkwaysMichael J. Miles / “Mississippi Overture” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on RedEric Bibb / “Drinkin' Gourd” / Jericho Road / Stony PlainChampion Jack Dupree / “I'm Going to Write the Governor of Georgia” / Classic Protest Songs Smithsonian-FolkwaysThe Clara Ward Singers / “Twelve Gates to the City” / Meetin' Tonight / VanguardRobert Finley / “Sharecropper's Son” / Sharecropper's Son / Easy Eye SoundLurie Bell & the Bell Dynasty / “What My Momma Told Me” / Tribute to Carey Bell / DelnarkLeyla McCalla / “As I Grow Older-Dreamer” / Vari-Colored Songs / Smithsonian-FolkwaysAllison Russell / “Hy-Brasil” / Outside Child” / FantasyReggie Harris / “Standing in Freedom's Name” / On Solid Ground / Self-producedMichael J. Miles / “Mississippi Rising” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on RedOur Native Daughters / “Moon Meets the Sun” / Songs of Our Native Daughters / Smithsonian FolkwaysRhiannon Giddens / “I Shall Not Be Moved” / They're Calling Me Home / NonesuchSweet Honey in the Rock / “Oh, Sankofa” / #Love in Evolution / AppleseedEric Bibb / “This Land is Your Land” / Migration Blues / Stony PlainPete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

Dr Adam Koontz and Rev Willie Grills continue discussing Bleeding Kansas, talking about the use of guerilla warfare, Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, General Order No. 11, and the potential consequences of a modern national divorce. Related Books - Earle and Burke, Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri  Visit our website - A Brief History of Power Get the Family Bible Commentary by Rev. Dr. Adam Koontz Dr Koontz - Trinity Lutheran Church Pr. Willie Grills - Zion Lutheran Church Music thanks to Verny

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. The history of Juneteenth dates back to June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, which proclaimed the freedom of slaves in Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued by President Abraham Lincoln. The delay in the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas was primarily due to the minimal presence of Union troops in the region during the Civil War. As Union forces expanded their control and the war neared its end, General Granger's arrival in Galveston served as a significant moment, delivering the news of freedom to the enslaved population.   Juneteenth quickly became a time for African Americans to celebrate their newfound freedom. The celebrations initially took the form of church gatherings, parades, and community festivities. Over time, the observance of Juneteenth spread to other states and communities, driven by the migration of African Americans to different regions.   During the Reconstruction era, Juneteenth gained even greater significance as African Americans sought to assert their rights as free citizens. However, as Jim Crow laws were implemented and racial segregation persisted, Juneteenth celebrations faced challenges and, at times, were suppressed.   In the late 20th century, there was a resurgence of interest in Juneteenth, driven by the Civil Rights Movement and the push for recognition of African American history and achievements. Efforts to establish Juneteenth as an official holiday gained momentum, with Texas becoming the first state to recognize it as a state holiday in 1980. Since then, many other states have followed suit, and in 2021, Juneteenth was officially declared a federal holiday in the United States. Today, Juneteenth serves as a day of remembrance, reflection, and celebration of African American culture and history. It is an opportunity to honor the struggles and achievements of those who fought for freedom and equality, while also acknowledging the ongoing work towards racial justice and equality in the United States. For more information, visit the website or send an email.   email: wegotproblemspodcast@gmail.com Web: https://www.wegotproblemspodcast.com   Networking Group Join We Got Problems After Dark   Our Websites https://wegotproblemspodcast.com https://curtisgmartin.com https://rhondawritesofficial.com https://thetrashvegan.com   Follow us on Social Media:  @curtismartin247  Curtis G Martin @therhondalbrown Rhonda L Brown @the_trash_vegan_ Caliph Johnson Sr @thego2chic LaCheka Phillips  #curtisgmartin  #rhondalbrown  #caliphjohnsonsr #lachekaphillips #wegotproblemsafterdark #wegotproblemspodcast #therhondalbrown #the_trash_vegan_ #curtismartin247 #wegotproblems #wegotsolutions #CurtisGmartin #RhondaLBrown #CaliphJohnsonSr #author #entrepreneur 

Juneteenth is a holiday that celebrates and commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. We choose to reflect on the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, because, on June 19, 1865, United States General Gordon Granger issued his General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, informing Texans that all slaves are free. Juneteenth may feel like it is a mid-19th-century moment, but the end of slavery didn't just occur on one day or at one time. And it didn't just occur in the mid-19th century. The fight to end slavery was a long process that started during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Kyera Singleton, the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, has spent years researching the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the Royall Plantation and the significant contributions they made to ending slavery in Massachusetts. Kyera joins us to investigate the story of slavery and freedom within the first state in the United States to legally abolish slavery. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/360 Join Ben Franklin's World! Subscribe and help us bring history right to your ears! Sponsor Links Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Complementary Episodes Episode 083: Jared Hardesty, Unfreedom: Slavery in Colonial Boston Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound Episode 194: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, NHS  Episode 220: Margaret Newell, New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of Slavery Episode 304: Annette Gordon-Reed: On Juneteenth Episode 324: Andrea Mosterman, New Netherland and Slavery Episode 329: Mark Tabbert, Freemasonry in Early America Episode 351: Nicole Maskiell, Wealth and Slavery in New Netherland Listen! Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts Amazon Music Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App Helpful Links Join the Ben Franklin's World Facebook Group Ben Franklin's World Twitter: @BFWorldPodcast Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter

In Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3: “the people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” The day became known as Juneteenth, commemorating the actual end of slavery in the United States. Yet more than a century and a half later, Black people in Galveston are still fighting for the “absolute equality” promised to them in that order.The biggest threat today is gentrification, which began after Hurricane Ike in 2008 destroyed the city's overwhelmingly Black public housing. The situation was made worse recently by a short-term rental boom fueled by the pandemic. Since 2000, the Black population has plummeted by 38 percent.On this episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee travels to Galveston to speak with Sam Collins of the Juneteenth Legacy Project, June Pulliam, whose great-great grandparents moved to the island in 1865, and lawyer and activist Anthony P. Griffin, who is trying to preserve land for Black folks in this historic city.Follow and share the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, using the handle @intoamericapod.Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.com.For a transcript, please visit our homepage.For More: DC Votes YesJuneteenth is an opportunity for America to reckon with its racial wealth gapJuneteenth shouldn't be about Black people spending but about Black people getting paid

Recap Question: What Do You Mean...Free-ish? Slavery didn t end in 1865. It just evolved. It turned into decades of terrorism, violence, and lynching, said Bryan Stevenson, delivering the 2017 Tanner Lecture on Human Values. Bryan Stevenson lawyer, social justice activist, law professor, and founder of Equal Justice Initiative says the abolition of chattel slavery left the door open for slavery to evolve. The core issue with its evolution is the prevailing belief in white supremacy.Cornerstone Speech March 21, 1861, Savannah GAAlexander Stevens, VP of the Confederacy delivered the Cornerstone Speech: Defense of slavery. Perceived differences between the North and South. Racial rhetoric used to show the inferiority of Black people.The Corwin Agreement (aka Slavery Amendment)February 26, 1861, Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio introduces his own text for an amendment protecting slavery: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the 13th Amendment (1865)"In my view as a scholar of race and colonialism, Emancipation Days Juneteenth in Texas are not what many people think, because emancipation did not do what most of us think it did." Dr Kris Manjapra, Dept of History Tufts University General Order No. 3 - National ArchivesOn June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln s historic Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, which informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were now free. Granger commanded the Headquarters District of Texas, and his troops had arrived in Galveston the previous day. Fighting for freedom deniedFear is our biggest enemy - false evidence appearing real and real evidence appearing false. "The worst form of fear is the gloomy thoughts that create an eerie atmosphere inside one s mind." Poem Analysis Abolition AmendmentDecember 2, 2020: Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative William Lacy Clay (D-MO-1) propose constitutional amendment to close slavery loophole in 13th amendment.The 13th Amendment abolished most but not all slavery, permitting slavery or involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. The Abolition Amendment would finally finish the job started by the Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th Amendment and end the morally reprehensible practice of slavery and forced labor in America, and send a clear message: in this country, no person will be stripped of their basic humanity and forced to toil for someone else s profit.

Question: What Do You Mean...Free-ish?General Order No. 3 - National Archives The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. Early Juneteenth CelebrationsThe holiday celebrating Black "independence" could be seen spreading in its first years from one state to another as formerly enslaved people relocated across the country upon hearing of their long-awaited emancipation. There are many similarities between these early celebrations and celebrations of today. We celebrate our ancestor s struggles for freedom going back to the beginning of enslavement and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We celebrate the sacrifices and give thanks to all of those who lived and died, paving the way for future generations. So, it s a celebration!But then there's the social, legal, economic and political realities associated with Juneteenth, which calls for education through historical truth and personal narratives. Slavery didn t end in 1865. It just evolved. It turned into decades of terrorism, violence, and lynching, said Bryan Stevenson, delivering the 2017 Tanner Lecture on Human Values. Bryan Stevenson lawyer, social justice activist, law professor, and founder of Equal Justice Initiative says the abolition of chattel slavery left the door open for slavery to evolve. Free-ish The social, health and economic reality is that freedom expressed in relative or legalistic terms does not equate to true freedom and equity. When slavery ended Black Codes and Jim Crow took the helm, along with separate-but-equal ideology, redlining, and trappings of the myth of meritocracy. It's what Rich Villodas, Lead Pastor at New Life Fellowship Church in Brooklyn NY calls the-here-but-not-yet reality of racial justice. "It is possible to have freedom and even great success, but still be caught in an unjust, racist world. In the language of New Testament scholars, the kingdom is here, but not yet." Join the conversation on InflexionPoint Podcast

In 1862, General US Grant issued General Order No. 11, banishing Jews from large parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi; likely the most antisemitic official decree in the history of the United States Government.  How could this have happened?  Was Grant an Antisemite? Could something like this happen again?

Independence Day, or the 4th of July, is the annual celebration of nationhood in the United States that commemorates the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Juneteenth, Jubilee Day, the commemoration of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans marketing the anniversary of the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865 proclaiming freedom of enslaved people in Texas. We recognize this day as Black Independence Day. So... What to the Slave is the 4th of July?Frederick Douglas gave us his unabridged words of wisdom on July 5, 1852...

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Juneteenth marks the anniversary of the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas. Since June 19, 2022, just passed, I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter and how it affects me and how I see it affecting others also. #EP172 #PneuPneumaGodcast #NormanBrown #Juneteenth #CHH #Jesus #Cristiano #Dios #bible #God #MTR #prayer #christian #podcast #KevinSamuels Please, give us a 5-Star rating and leave an Inspirational comment, if you are an Apple Podcast listener. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite platform. Subscribe to the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMyW-pOoocsvMVjHDSWNeeg Follow @PneuPneuma on all social media Follow Norman @normtheprofessor on Instagram If you want to financially support this kingdom work: https://anchor.fm/pneu-pneuma/support or CashApp: $PneuPneuma To book Norman for events, conferences, interviews and more DM Norman on Instagram @normtheprofessor or email: pneu.pneuma.podcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pneu-pneuma/support

JUNETEENTH - A Celebration of Freedom.Juneteenth (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) is also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and Emancipation Day.It is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. It is now celebrated annually on the 19th of June throughout the United States.HISTORYDuring the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It became effective on January 1, 1863.This Proclamation declared that all enslaved persons in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were freed.More isolated geographically, planters and other slaveholders had migrated into Texas from eastern states to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them.Although most lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in both Galveston and Houston by 1860. By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas.Despite the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the western Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2.On Monday, June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived to Galveston, Texas, to enforce the emancipation of its slaves and oversee a peaceful transition of power.The Texas Historical Commission and Galveston Historical Foundation report that Granger's men marchedThroughout Galveston reading General Order No 3:              “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute...               ...equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes...              ...that between employer and hired labour. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not...              ...be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”It was from that moment that Juneteenth would be born.EARLY CELEBRATIONSFormerly enslaved people in Galveston celebrated after the announcement. The following year, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of "Jubilee Day."On January 2, 1866, a Galveston newspaper, reported on an Emancipation Celebration:“The colored people of Galveston celebrated their emancipation from slavery yesterday by a procession.Notwithstanding the storm some eight hundred or a thousand men, women and children took part in the demonstration.”Flake's Bulletin, 2 January 1866.Early celebrations were used as political rallies to give voting instructions to newly freed slaves. Early independence celebrations often occurred on January 1 or 4.OFFICIAL RECOGNITIONIn the late 1970s the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a “holiday of significance, particularly to the blacks of Texas", becoming the first state to establish Juneteenth as a state holiday.The bill passed through the Texas Legislature in 1979 and was officially made a state holiday on January 1, 1980.Recognition of Juneteenth varies across the United States. It is not officially recognized by the federal government, although the Senate unanimously passed......a simple resolution in 2018 in honour of the day, and legislation has been introduced in Congress to make it either a "national day of observance" or a full-scale federal holiday.The only three states yet to legally recognize Juneteenth as either a state or ceremonial holiday are Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota.In 2020, Juneteenth was formally recognized by New York City (as an annual official city holiday and public school holiday, starting in 2021)CELEBRATIONSThe holiday is considered the "longest-running African-American holiday" and has been called "America's second Independence Day".Juneteenth is usually celebrated on the third Saturday in June. It was common for former slaves and their descendants to make a pilgrimage to Galveston.Observance today is primarily in local celebrations. In many places Juneteenth has become a multicultural holiday, Including lectures and exhibitions on African-American culture.Traditions include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs and reading of works by noted African-American writers.Celebrations include picnics, rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, blues festivals and Miss Juneteenth contests.Historian Mitch Kachun considers that celebrations of the end of slavery have three goals: "to Celebrate, to Educate, and to Agitate."To learn more about black history visit www.blackfacts.com.

Juneteenth is annual holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States, its a mix of June and Nineteenth, Originating in Galveston, Texas, it is now celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, with increasing official recognition. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865 announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.Audio Onemichistory.com Please support our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=25697914Buy me a Coffeehttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/Countryboi2mSources:African Americans : a concise historyBy Hine, Darlene Clarkhttps://www.history.com/news/what-is-juneteenthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenthhttps://www.nytimes.com/article/juneteenth-day-celebration.htmlhttps://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Juneteenthhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/juneteenth-holiday-five-myths/2020/06/18/4c19fff8-b0e1-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html

Included in this episode: 1. How Climate Change and Air Pollution Affect Kids' Health 2. The Rock Star Poet Playing Concerts to Ukrainians Sheltering Underground From Russian Bombs 3. The Surprisingly Progressive Promises of General Order No. 3, Which Ended Slavery in Texas 4. Forget Physique. Mental Health Is the Newest, Hottest Fitness Goal .

The language of Order No. 3 also promised a lot that couldn't be delivered, advising freedmen to “remain quietly at their present homes” and “work for wages” without any way to guarantee either

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Juneteenth marks the anniversary of the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas.Read: The Historical Legacy of JuneteenthWatch: Companies Face Backlash For Selling Juneteenth Branded ProductsEducate your friends and family by sharing this podcast with them!Advertising Works! Would you like to reach the listeners of this podcast? For as little as $12/month Everett McConnaughey can get your brand mentioned to his listeners. Email us today to learn more!Support the show

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Juneteenth marks the anniversary of the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas. Originating in Galveston, the holiday has been celebrated annually on June 19 in various parts of the United States since the 1860s, often broadly celebrating African-American culture. The day was first recognized as a federal holiday in June 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.Early celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South and became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration out of the South carried their celebrations to other parts of the country. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, these celebrations were eclipsed by the nonviolent determination to achieve civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African American freedom and African-American arts. Beginning with Texas by proclamation in 1938, and by legislation in 1979, each U.S. state and the District of Columbia have formally recognized the holiday in some way. With its adoption in certain parts of Mexico, the holiday became an international holiday. Juneteenth is celebrated by the Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles who escaped from slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila, Mexico.Celebratory traditions often include public readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, singing traditional songs such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing", and the reading of works by noted African-American writers, such as Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou. Some Juneteenth celebrations also include rodeos, street fairs, cookouts, family reunions, park parties, historical reenactments, and Miss Juneteenth contests. In 2021, Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983.For more podcasts visit, www.steveryan.comSupport the show

(This conversation was originally broadcast on June 18, 2021) Tom's guest on this archived edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed. She is best-known for her study of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her latest book is a beautiful peroration on the meaning of the holiday known as Juneteenth, which marks the anniversary of a significant historical event: on June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. Juneteenth celebrations of this belated emancipation originated among African American communities in Texas, and now take place around the country. Gordon-Reed's book is at once an homage to her home state of Texas, and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we're young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding. Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record. Her book is called On Juneteenth.  Annette Gordon Reed joined Tom on Zoom from her home in New York. They spoke just a few days before President Biden signed a congressional bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Because this conversation was recorded earlier, we can't take any calls or comments. ____________________________________ Here's a list of some local public events happening this weekend in observance of Juneteenth: The historic Hosanna School Museum hosts the Annual Upper Bay Juneteenth Festival in Darlington on Saturday from 12-6pm. Hosanna School Museum was the first of three Freedmen's Bureau schoolhouses erected in Harford County.   The building was used as a school, community meeting place and church. In 1879, Harford County School Commissioners assumed operation of the school and Hosanna remained an active schoolhouse for African American children until 1946. Juneteenth Community Walk on Saturday, starting at 10:30am at the Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church. On Sunday:  Freedom Day Festival from11am-6pm at German Park and a Juneteenth Festival at the Dovecote Café in Reservoir Hill. Juneteenth Festival Sunday from 3-7pm at the Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center. The annual AFRAM Festival in Druid Hill Park on Saturday and Sunday. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Tune in on 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to the podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-677, questions@townsquaretalk.org or @townsquaretalk. Though the Juneteenth holiday was passed as a federal law in 2021 that derived from a lifelong dream of Fort Worth, Texas resident Opal Lee, many may not know Galveston, Texas is where Juneteenth was actually born. Juneteenth and General Order No. 3, read by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865 announcing that all slaves were free, is one of Galveston's most important historical moments. In Galveston and around the world, Juneteenth is observed with speeches and song, picnics, parades, and exhibits of African-American history and art. However, when it comes to having events at venues that were the previous grounds of slave plantations, some black people struggle with feeling offended, whereas others of the same race feel it's important to give truth to what happened in these spaces. And what about the pursuit of economic equality for African Americans and its relation to Juneteenth? With organizations like the Galveston Historical Foundation, being able to experience the live tour of their Ashton Villa "And Still We Rise" exhibit is a place where many will be surprised in knowing the bricks that the space was built with were made by slaves before June 19.  Then there's the history of Emancipation Park, a place that's said to be one of the most sacred spaces in the city of Houston. While live on location in the birthplace of Juneteenth, we take calls and give our listeners an opportunity to respond to history experts as they discuss why Juneteenth is a celebration of black history, black beauty, and community but also complexity.  A list of Juneteenth celebrations taking place this weekend and for the month of June can be found at: Visitgavelston.com Juneteenthhouston.org MillerOutdoorTheatre.com Guests: Tommie Boudreaux Chair, Galveston Historical Foundation African American Heritage Committee Co-author of African Americans of Galveston Barbara Krauthamer Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and Professor of History, University of Massachusetts-Amherst 2013 NAACP Image Award-winner for Outstanding Literary Work as co-author of Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery Marco Robinson, PhD Assistant Director, Prairie View A&M University Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice  Associate Professor of History, Prairie View A&M University Necole S. Irvin, JD, MPH Director, City of Houston Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the day's most important and pressing issues. Audio from today's show will be available after 5 p.m. CT. We also offer a free podcast here, on iTunes, and other apps.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19th 1865, when Union General Gordon Grainger announced General Order No.3 proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas. Celebrations eventually took a back seat to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. With the advent of Black Lives Matter new emphasis has been placed on the holiday which we feature on this week's program. We'll hear music from Reggie Harris, Eric Bibb, Robert Finley, Our Native Daughters, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many more. We celebrate Juneteenth … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian-FolkwaysMichael J. Miles / “Mississippi Overture” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on RedEric Bibb / “Drinkin' Gourd” / Jericho Road / Stony PlainChampion Jack Dupree / “I'm Going to Write the Governor of Georgia” / Classic Protest Songs Smithsonian-FolkwaysThe Clara Ward Singers / “Twelve Gates to the City” / Meetin' Tonight / VanguardRobert Finley / “Sharecropper's Son” / Sharecropper's Son / Easy Eye SoundLurie Bell & the Bell Dynasty / “What My Momma Told Me” / Tribute to Carey Bell / DelmarkLeyla McCalla / “As I Grow Older-Dreamer” / Vari-Colored Songs / Smithsonian-FolkwaysAllison Russell / “Hy-Brasil” / Outside Child” / FantasyReggie Harris / “Standing in Freedom's Name” / On Solid Ground / Self ProducedMichael J. Miles / “Mississippi Rising” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on RedOur Native Daughters / “Moon Meets the Sun” / Songs of Our Native Daughters / Smithsonian-FolkwaysRhiannon Giddens / “I Shall Not Be Moved” / They're Calling Me Home / NonesuchSweet Honey in the Rock / “Oh, Sankofa” / #Love in Evolution / AppleseedEric Bibb / “This Land is Your Land” / Migration Blues / Stony PlainPete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian-Folkways

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. It's a day of remembrance for those who have died serving in the US military.Memorial Day was borne out of the Civil War (which ended in 1865) and a desire to honor our dead. On the 5th of May in 1868, General John Logan who was the national commander of the Grand Army of the republic, officially proclaimed it in his General Order No. 11. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

This Week in a special Show Me Missourah we sat down with Judge Stephen Limbaugh and former Lt. Governor Peter Kinder for a chat about all of Missouri history. Judge Limbaugh hosted us at the Rush Hudson Limbaugh Federal Courthouse near the river in downtown Cape Girardeau. We held a brief Ron Richard Fan Club meeting, discussed the River Campus and learned that all three of us have prints of George Caleb Bingham's famous painting General Order No. 11 in our offices. We also discussed the editorial that then Senators Kinder and Ehlmann wrote about the official ending of the Civil War in Missouri. Catch up on the history of Missouri one county at a time on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Generally speaking, this is terrible.

(This conversation was originally broadcast on June 18, 2021) Tom's guest on this archived edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed. She is best-known for her study of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her latest book is a beautiful peroration on the meaning of the holiday known as Juneteenth, which marks the anniversary of a significant historical event: on June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. Juneteenth celebrations of this belated emancipation originated among African American communities in Texas, and now take place around the country. Gordon-Reed's book is at once an homage to her home state of Texas, and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we're young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding. Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record. Her book is called On Juneteenth.  Annette Gordon Reed joined Tom on Zoom from her home in New York. They spoke just a few days before President Biden signed a congressional act making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Because the conversation was recorded earlier, we can't take any calls or comments. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, TX, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S Grant in Appomattox, VA. Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday is the author and historian Annette Gordon Reed. She has written a beautiful peroration about the meaning of the holiday that marks the anniversary of that event. It is at once an homage to her home state of Texas, and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we're young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding as well. Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record. The book is called On Juneteenth. Annette Gordon Reed and Tom spoke about it on June 11th. Because the interview was pre-recorded, we couldn't take any calls or comments. Annette Gordon Reed joined Tom from her home in New York… See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

June was a month that wasn't without its momentous moments. From the Derick Chauvin trial sentencing to the first national celebration of Juneteenth, there were cultural events that provoked responses all around us. In a day and age when it's easy to adopt how we feel from a steady stream of social media and the news, we wanted to step away, hit pause from the hot takes, come together and reflect - how do we actually feel about these events personally? How should we feel about these events? Is there a right way? And when there isn't, we continue in our commitment at the table to be of one heart even when we aren't of one mind, loving deeply even when we disagree. Seated at the Table: David Godwin, Fred Michaux, Chris House, Justin White Mentions: Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth General Order #3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._3 Jemar Tisby: How To Fight Racism https://www.amazon.com/How-Fight-Racism-Courageous-Christianity/dp/0310104777/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HDVCCVZJ2GXY&dchild=1&keywords=jemar+tisby+how+to+fight+racism&qid=1626144783&sprefix=Jemal%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1 Esau McCaulley: Reading While Black https://www.amazon.com/gp/slredirect/picassoRedirect.html/ref=pa_sp_atf_aps_sr_pg1_1?ie=UTF8&adId=A03786162Z9DA34XDV3RU&url=%2FReading-While-Black-American-Interpretation%2Fdp%2F083085486X%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1_sspa%3Fcrid%3D3GIBQ2EU35EIN%26dchild%3D1%26keywords%3Desau%2Bmccaulley%26qid%3D1626144861%26sprefix%3DEsau%252Caps%252C183%26sr%3D8-1-spons%26psc%3D1&qualifier=1626144861&id=695839871255501&widgetName=sp_atf

In this special episode of Pass The Mic, Jemar reflects on Juneteenth after it became a national holiday and was officially commemorated nationwide. He talks about why Juneteenth should be a national holiday and the unintended consequences of taking a Black-centered holiday and making it mainstream. He also delves into the history (of course!) as he discusses the actual contents of General Order No. 3 which was read to enslaved Black people in Galveston, TX on June 19, 1865. Finally, Jemar discusses some reasons why Black and white people should commemorate and celebrate Juneteenth in different ways. Even though the holiday has passed, this episode helps shape the narrative of how we should acknowledge Juneteenth as a nation in future years. Links: Why Juneteenth Should Be a National Holiday The Unintended Consequences of Making Juneteenth a National Holiday Why Black and White People Should Commemorate Juneteenth Differently

In this special episode of Pass The Mic, Jemar reflects on Juneteenth after it became a national holiday and was officially commemorated nationwide. He talks about why Juneteenth should be a national holiday and the unintended consequences of taking a Black-centered holiday and making it mainstream. He also delves into the history (of course!) as he discusses the actual contents of General Order No. 3 which was read to enslaved Black people in Galveston, TX on June 19, 1865. Finally, Jemar discusses some reasons why Black and white people should commemorate and celebrate Juneteenth in different ways. Even though the holiday has passed, this episode helps shape the narrative of how we should acknowledge Juneteenth as a nation in future years.  Links:  Why Juneteenth Should Be a National Holiday The Unintended Consequences of Making Juneteenth a National Holiday Why Black and White People Should Commemorate Juneteenth Differently

Galveston native Sam Collins III had a vision to bring Texas history and the Juneteenth story to its home in a grand way. Enlisting the help of a team of artists, technology experts, and the Galveston community, the Juneteenth Legacy Project came to life at the very site where General Granger issued General Order No. 3. Learn about Galveston's newest civic asset and the need for more Texas history, not less, from Sam Collins III in this bonus episode of Wise About Texas.

I always refer to the brilliant Dinesh D'Souza, as India's Gift To America. One of his tweets went viral this past week.... “Democrats prefer #juneteenthday to the real occasion on which slavery was abolished—the date the 13th Amendment was passed permanently ending American slavery. This is an awkward day for Democrats because the vast majority of them—even in the North—opposed the 13th Amendment!” - Twitter, June 19, 2021, The Liberty Daily, by J.D. Rucker There are three days that would be far more historically accurate, and NOT just a false representation of the ending of slavery: The amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865. It was ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865 and proclaimed on December 18, 1965. Any of these three days are FAR MORE ACCURATE in the history of abolishing slavery and starting the diminishment of racism in America than “Juneteenth” which is the anniversary date of June 19, 1865. It was on that day that the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger was made, proclaiming and enforcing freedom of enslaved people in Texas, which was the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery. The fake administration made a real show of the JUNETEENTH DAY occasion, if for no other reason than to overshadow our upcoming national celebration of our emancipation from England on July 4, 1776. Democrats have successfully, confused the last few generations of 'people of color' about the history of slavery, with many believing that the Democrats were the heroes of emancipation, when in fact they were the enemies. It would be a great idea for you to watch the film - LINCOLN (starring Daniel Day Lewis) - just to see what lengths the GREAT EMANCIPATOR went through to end slavery legally. The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT do it. My great-grandmother (Lillian Harris Payne) was known for her annual Emancipation Day pageants in Richmond VA, held on the December or January dates, in the previously segregated colored section of Richmond known as Jackson Ward, complete with entertainment, a parade, speeches by former slaves, and food...and it was a big deal. The residents of the late 19th and early 20th century, loved Lincoln and Republicans, as much as Donald Trump is loved today. Of course, there were the losers of the war, the Democrats, carrying out their plan to murder this beloved President...and the rest is history. This is why the true history of the passing and ratification of the 13th Amendment, are hidden in this fake celebratory gesture, which the Left has used to distract Americans from the AZ and GA AUDITS, the BORDER Crisis, the deadly JABS, rising gas and food prices, and the increasing violence in communities of color, and attacks on innocent citizens, BY people of color. Distractions have worked well in the past for deep state cabal, but people, even a significant number of 'black' folks are realizing that the Left has always been the REAL enemies of freedom in America. Thank you for reminding us, Dinesh. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lillianperry/message

Buckle up and get ready to have a good time. We start with talking about MacKenzie Scott the American novelist and philanthropist.  She's up to her same old habits of donating money to help the world.  At this point she has become family to the show.  Next we pay tribute to Juneteenth. Juneteenth was recognized as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden (Money Bags Joe) signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.  Juneteenth's commemoration is on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming and enforcing freedom of enslaved people in Texas, which was the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery.Sometimes when you hear a song from your past that you haven't heard in a long time, that song takes you back to a special time in your life. This week in "Trav's R&B Corner" we take it back and get "Foolish" with one of the most infamous remix beats of all time.And once again we bring in our special guest Old Man for another edition of "Easy Money w/ Old Man." This week we start the conversation around budgeting tools and we have the "Stock of the Week."Finally get a word of encouragement and inspiration from this week's edition of "Drop a Gem."

An Excerpt From Be The Bridge Blog June 19th, 2020 “Happy Juneteenth, a special day on which we celebrate Black freedom and achievement… …Slavery persisted in the southern US after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. In remote corners of the Confederacy, news of slavery's end did not come until more than two months after Robert E. Lee's reluctant surrender in April 1865. The day General Order No. 3 was finally delivered to the people of Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, is the day slavery finally ended in the Confederacy. Juneteenth commemorates this announcement. It is important to note that slavery was not fully abolished until the passage of the 13th amendment on December 6. 1865. As we all know, the end of slavery did not mark the end of discrimination. Black people in America have had to overcome countless social injustices throughout history and continue to fight for equality today. Juneteenth is important not just for Black Americans but for all Americans…Juneteenth and the events leading up to freedom for all Americans must be understood and supported by all, so everyone can have the opportunity to live in a just society that does not discriminate on the basis of the color of your skin or any other differences. Juneteenth is also a celebration of the many achievements of the Black community and the richness of African American heritage. On Juneteenth, many families get together to eat, dance, and celebrate their culture. They may also take this time to honor the history of their ancestors whose stories stretch back thousands of years to African civilizations.” As a church, and more importantly as Christ-followers, we seek to fulfill the command that Jesus gave to his disciples at the last supper “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” This command follows the example of Jesus humbling himself in the form of a servant by washing his own disciples' feet and is followed by Jesus demonstrating the extent of his love by dying a humiliating and painful death for all humankind. Sometimes, in moments like these, we hear people criticize or attempt to politicize the conversation. For many of us, Juneteenth is something new we're still learning about. For some of us, it might be something we're learning about for the first time. For some of us, this might be a conversation that we're struggling with because we're not sure how it fits with what we were taught or have believed. But for others of us, this day of remembrance holds a special, or painful, or complicated reality. As Christ-followers and as fellow human beings let us all do our best to prioritize love above all else. We encourage you to do what is always good to do: To listen to the hearts and stories of others. To respect and love your neighbors, family, and friends. To celebrate with those who are celebrating and to mourn with those who are mourning. To pray and seek God's will for our country, our community, and our church. SHOW NOTE RESOURCES: BetheBridge.org "How to Fight Racism" on Right Now Media

Happy Jubilee Day! In this episode of the Better U Leadership podcast, Angela shares a few facts about the new Juneteenth National Independence Day law. Juneteenth (officially Juneteenth National Independence Day and historically known as Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating emancipation of enslaved African Americans. It is also often observed for celebrating African American culture. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been celebrated annually on June 19 in various parts of the United States since 1866. The day was recognized as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Juneteenth's commemoration is on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming and enforcing freedom of enslaved people in Texas, which was then the last state of the former Confederacy in which slavery was still being permitted by the state government. Visit angelaodom.com to register for the next round of the Women's 3-Hour Leadership Intensive. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angelamodom/message

On June 19, 1865, just after the end of the Civil War, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and read General Order No. 3 informing Texas slaves that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed two and a half years earlier by President Lincoln. June 19th has long been referred to as "Juneteenth" in the African-American community and is the oldest national commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Since 1979, Juneteenth has been an official Texas holiday. Last week, President Biden signed a new law making Juneteenth the 11th Federal Holiday, a commemoration that will now be celebrated all over the country. Take a dive into this uniquely American holiday with Linda Jann Lewis, a distinguished African American activist and leader in Texas who's family has celebrated Juneteenth for more than 100 years on the very plantation where her ancestors were enslaved. In a storied career in Texas politics, Linda served Texas governors from both parties, the famed Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, was the fist African American Elections Administrator in Texas, and, among other things, helped found KAZI, a listener-supported, community radio station in Austin, Texas. And, best of all, she's an amazing story teller and human being. Jump into the newest American holiday on this Special Juneteenth Episode of the American Shoreline Podcast! Only on ASPN.

On June 19, 1865, union general Gordon Granger landed in Galveston and issued some general orders. His General Order No. 3 informed the people of Texas that all the slaves in Texas were now free. Since then, "Juneteenth" has been celebrated in Texas as the anniversary of emancipation. Juneteenth became an official Texas state holiday in 1980. In 2021, the U.S. followed Texas' lead and now a fateful day in Texas history is a holiday for the entire nation. Learn the history behind the emancipation proclamation and General Order No. 3 from the author who literally wrote the book on Juneteenth in this episode of Wise About Texas.

Town Square with Ernie Manouse airs at 3 p.m. CT. Tune in on 88.7FM, listen online or subscribe to the podcast. Join the discussion at 888-486-9677, questions@townsquaretalk.org or @townsquaretalk. Juneteenth is the day on which we celebrate the emancipation of the enslaved in the United States. It commemorates June 19, 1865 – the date that General Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for slaves in Texas. In 1872, Black leaders raised $1,000 to purchase land in Houston, now known as Emancipation Park, to celebrate Juneteenth. In 1938, Texas governor James Allred proclaimed the date be set aside for the observance of Emancipation Day. In the late 1970s, the Texas Legislature declared Juneteenth a "holiday of significance,” becoming the first to establish it as a state holiday. On this year's Juneteenth, a new 5,000-square-foot mural will be dedicated in Galveston. Entitled “Absolute Equality,” the mural marks the spot where General Order No. 3 was issued by Maj. Gen. Granger. And, Juneteenth National Independence Day is now a federal holiday, signed into law yesterday by President Biden. Activist Opal Lee, known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, played an instrumental role in the holiday's journey to law, spending decades advocating for the date to be recognized nationally. To help us better understand the history of this holiday and the journey of African Americans in the state of Texas, we welcome to the program historian, author and native Texan Annette Gordon-Reed, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard.  Professor Gordon-Reed has won 16 book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 and the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2008 for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” Her current book is “On Juneteenth.” Here's How To Celebrate Juneteenth In The Houston Area Town Square with Ernie Manouse is a gathering space for the community to come together and discuss the day's most important and pressing issues. Audio from today's show will be available after 5 p.m. CT. We also offer a free podcast here, on iTunes, and other apps.

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, declaring that all slaves were free, two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia, ending the Civil War. Tom's guest today is the author and historian, Annette Gordon-Reed. She has written a beautiful peroration on the meaning of the holiday that marks the anniversary of that event. It is at once an homage to her home state of Texas and a wholly original and fascinating exploration of how history and legend and myth all shape what we learn when we're young, how our understanding evolves as we grow older, and how social dynamics inform the evolution of societal understanding as well. Professor Reed writes with erudition and grace, authority and humility, weaving a touching personal memoir into the stark reality of a harsh historical record. The book is called On Juneteenth. The author spoke about it with Tom on June 11th. Because our conversation was recorded earlier, we can't take any calls or comments. Annette Gordon-Reed joined us on our digital line from her home in New York. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Juneteenth is annual holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States, its a mix of June and Nineteenth, Originating in Galveston, Texas, it is now celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, with increasing official recognition. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865 announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.Audio Onemichistory.com Please support our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=25697914Buy me a Coffeehttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/Countryboi2mSources:African Americans : a concise historyBy Hine, Darlene Clarkhttps://www.history.com/news/what-is-juneteenthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenthhttps://www.nytimes.com/article/juneteenth-day-celebration.htmlhttps://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Juneteenthhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/juneteenth-holiday-five-myths/2020/06/18/4c19fff8-b0e1-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html

Juneteenth commemorates the day (June 19, 1865) when Union General Gordon Grainger announced General Order No.3 proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas. Celebrations of the date happened at the time, but eventually took a back seat to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. With the advent of Black Lives Matter, new emphasis has been placed on the holiday … and we’ll be celebrating this week as well. We'll share music from Reggie Harris, Eric Bibb, Robert Finley, Our Native Daughters, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many more. It’s Juneteenth ... this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine. Episode #21-24: Juneteenth Host: Tom Druckenmiller Artist/”Song”/CD/Label Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / SmithsonianFolkways Michael J. Miles / “Mississippi Overture” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on Red Eric Bibb / “Drinkin' Gourd” / Jericho Road / Stony Plain Champion Jack Dupree / “I'm Going to Write the Governor of Georgia” / Classic Protest Songs Smithsonian-Folkways The Clara Ward Singers / “Twelve Gates to the City” / Meetin' Tonight / Vanguard Robert Finley / “Sharecropper's Son” / Sharecropper's Son / Easy Eye Sound Lurie Bell & the Bell Dynasty / “What My Momma Told Me” / Tribute to Carey Bell / Delnark Leyla McCalla / “As I Grow Older-Dreamer” / Vari-Colored Songs / Smithsonian-Folkways Allison Russell / “Hy-Brasil” / Outside Child” / Fantasy Reggie Harris / “Standing in Freedom's Name” / On Solid Ground / Self Produced Michael J. Miles / “Mississippi Rising” / Mississippi River Suite / Right Turn on Red Our Native Daughters / “Moon Meets the Sun” / Songs of Our Native Daughters / Smithsonian-Folkways Rhiannon Giddens / “I Shall Not Be Moved” / They're Calling Me Home / Nonesuch Sweet Honey in the Rock / “Oh, Sankofa” / #Love in Evolution / Appleseed Eric Bibb / “This Land is Your Land” / Migration Blues / Stony Plain Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / SmithsonianFolkways

June 19 marks Juneteenth, a day of remembrance for the Black community, specifically recognizing Emancipation Day. And while HIStory tells us on June 19, 1865, General Order No. 3 was read in Galveston, Texas there is so much more to be revealed. Historian, conflict mediator and podcast creator Lettie Shumate helps us impact the much deeper lessons and legacy of the sacred day.

The heat knob cranks up under that frog.

American Jews served in the ranks of both the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War. Several major events stand out as milestones in American Jewish History during that time period. The first was the appointment of the first Jewish chaplain in the United States armed forces, through the lobbying efforts of Rev. Arnold Fischel, with Jacob Frankel receiving the first commission. Next came the infamous General Order No. 11, when General Ulysses S. Grant ordered and expulsion of "Jews as a class" from his military jurisdiction, due to their alleged involvement with illegal trade. Finally we have the story of Judah P. Benjamin. With Sephardic origins, he rose to prominence as a lawyer in New Orleans, then senator, and finally holding several cabinet positions for the Confederacy. Subscribe To Our Podcast on:   PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/   Follow us on Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites You can email Yehuda at yehuda@yehudageberer.com

台灣的主權在誰手上？ 光復節到底在慶祝什麼？ 從歷史的角度一步一步來看 光復節對台灣的意義吧！ 來我們的影片一起聊聊！

*Note: This episode contains historic descriptions of violence against African Americans by White Americans. Greetings, SOTAns! Thank you for embarking on this journey with us. This episode is a two-parter: first, Sarah and Jasa discuss the numerous street murals being created honoring George Floyd, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and encouraging policing reform. The University of St. Thomas Professors have created a Street Art Database which will document and celebrate the street art being created. In the second part, we take a break from art-related topics to discuss the history of Juneteenth. Sarah takes us through the first Juneteenth in Galveston, Texas, and explains what this day meant for former slaves and slaveowners in the final days of the American Civil War. Street Art Links: George Floyd & Anti-Racist Street Art Database George Floyd street art being preserved in gobal data base Juneteenth: For your information, not referenced during the podcast: What is Juneteenth? By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Juneteenth.com - World Wide Celebrations A proposal by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) would commemorate June 19 as the anniversary of emancipation. Calls To Make Juneteenth A Federal Holiday Gain Momentum (published on june 19) National Archives Locates Handwritten Juneteenth Order Links, in order of mention: Information on Major General Gordon Granger Image and description of General Order No. 3 Smithsonian article discussing the reaction to Juneteenth: Juneteenth: Our Other Independence Day Discussion of the links between the business of slavery and Wall Street: The hidden links between slavery and Wall Street Story of the woman who escaped her enslaver and was killed - JSTOR reference: FROM NORTH CAROLINA: Ill Feeling Between the Freedmen and White Soldiers” New York Times (1857-1922); Aug 2, 1865; Proquest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times pg. 1 A discussion of the Black Codes - Black Codes - history.com Statement from General Duval - Richmond Times, Richmond, VA, June 20, 1865 Legal history of Juneteenth in Texas - Texas remembers - Juneteenth 2020 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sota/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sota/support

Hello everyone, Welcome to a special episode of Ken Reads the Classics. Today we celebrate Juneteenth, also known as Liberation Day, Freedom Day, and Emancipation Day. In honor of this day, I thought I would give a brief history and then read the General Granger read on that momentous day in 1865. After Robert E. Lee surrendered to Loyal Union Forces, the United States of America sent Army General Gordon Granger to Texas with 2,000 troops to occupy that state. He arrived on Galveston Island on June 18th 1865 and on June 19th, He stood on the balcony of Galveston's Ashton Villa, then read "General Order No. 3", announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves. It reads as follows: The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.[16] There the order ends. I encourage you all to learn more about Juneteenth and our country's troubled history regarding slavery and racial injustice; so that we can all learn how to move forward and heals those wounds. God bless and enjoy your day. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ken-davis7/support

At the close of the Civil War, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and read General Order No. 3, informing Texas slaves that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed two and a half years earlier by President Lincoln. Juneteenth is the oldest national commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Since 1979, Juneteenth has been an official state Holiday in Texas but it has been widely celebrated by African Americans across the south since 1866. Take a dive into this unique American holiday with Linda Jann Lewis, a distinguished African American activist and leader in Texas who’s family has celebrated Juneteenth for more than 100 years on the very plantation where her ancestors were enslaved. In a storied career in Texas politics, Linda served Texas governors from both parties, the famed Lt. Governor Bob Bullock, was the fist African American Elections Administrator in Texas, and, among other things, helped found KAZI, a listener-supported, community radio station in Austin, Texas. And, best of all, she’s an amazing story teller and human being. Jump into an amazing holiday tradition many Americans have never encountered on this Special Juneteenth Edition of the American Shoreline Podcast! Only on ASPN.

This weeks episode includes Kurtie and Jada's biggest fears: bugs and Nazis.  They discuss entomological warfare and the Nazi's use of venereal diseases as a form of biological weaponry against the Allied Forces. They also own up to who was lying last week! Sources:  Entomological Warfare: Wikapedia, Entomology Today Nazi Germany & Venereal Disease Warfare: Bund Deutscher Maedel History. (2019). Bund Deutscher Maedel. Retrieved from bdnhistory.com: https://bdmhistory.com/ Czech, H. (2011). Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and the Control of Sexuality in World War II Vienna. East Central Europe , 64-77. DiNardo, R. L. (1996). The Dysfunctional Coalition: The Axis Powers and the eastern Front in World War II. The Journal of Military History, 711-730. Pershing, G. (1917, December 18). General Order No. 77. France, United States of America: United States Library of Congress. Roberts, M. L. (2013, May 31). Sex Overseas: "What Soldiers Do" Complicates WWII History. (N. Staff, Interviewer) Vox (Director). (2018). The World War II battle against STDs [Motion Picture].

Let's get this bread. Today's episode takes a deeper look at sex and sex work during the civil war. We're talking General Order No 28, sex boats, bread riots, and really weird ideas about masturbation.Get in touch with Quinn @quinnlarouxdrag or at quinnlarouxdrag@gmail.comPatreon is patreon.com/loosepodcastMusic for today’s episode provided through Epidemic Sound and include:"The Star Spangled Banner (Marching Band Traditional)" Epidemic Sound "The Joyous and the Sad" by Nico Dickens Sources used in today's episode's research include but are not limited to:Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality Judith GiesbergAn Evening with Venus: Prostitution during the American Civil War John GainesA History of American in Ten Strikes Eric LoomisStoryville, New Orleans Al Rose“(Mis)Remembering General Order No. 28”, Occupied Women Alciea P LongThe American Slave Coast Constance and Ned SubletteThe Great Southern Babylon Alicea P LongRevolt Against Chivalry Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

In 1862, Union General Ulysses S. Grant was faced with taking his Army to Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, controlling the recently conquered territory in Western Tennessee and Mississippi, and dealing with traders trying to sell cotton on the black market. In order to face the last problem, Grant issued General Order No. 11. General Order No. 11 expelled all Jews from the territory in Grant's military district, from Kentucky to Mississippi. This was done by Grant because some of the traders were Jewish, but it was a bizarre and hugely problematic decree. Not all illicit traders were Jews, and most Jews living in the area played no part in the black market. Grant's order sparked outrage throughout the American Jewish community and severe annoyance from his superiors. President Abraham Lincoln immediately commanded Grant, through General-in-Chief, to rescind General Order No. 11. Officially, the order was only in place for a month, as Grant did rescind the order. Yet General Order No. 11 would become one of Grant's lowest moments in the Civil War and a political millstone when he ran for President in 1868.

Listen to the The African History Network Show on Monday, June 19th, 2017 5pm EST as Michael Imhotep founder of The African History Network discusses the history of the Celebration of Juneteenth.  Juneteenth commemorates the day in Galveston, Texas when Union Troops arrived to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and deliver General Order No. 3 to free the Slaves even though the Civil War was officially over 2 weeks prior and the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered 2 year prior.  REGISTER TODAY: Next Class is Monday, June 19th, 7:00pm-9:00pm EST - REGISTER FOR THE LIVE ONLINE COURSE - "Ancient Kemet, The Moors & The Maafa: Understanding The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade What They Didn't Teach You In School” with Michael Imhotep, talk show host, researcher, lecturer and founder of The African History Network.   The classes are LIVE Online and each classes is RECORDED so you can view On Demand.  This course in only $40.  REGISTER HERE: https://theafricanhistorynetworkschool.learnworlds.com/public-course?courseid=section3fridaysunderstandingthetransatlanticslavetrade   The remaining Sessions are on Fridays 7pm-9pm, June23rd – July 28th, 2017.  As soon as you register you can watch BONUS CONTENT.  WATCH NOW!!! Baltimore/DC Area - Michael Imhotep will be in your area at Everlasting Life on June 25th, 1pm EST for a Screening and Disucssion of the film "Black Friday The Remix".  Vist www.AfricanHistoryNetwork.com

Tonight we celebrate Memorial Day and the legacy of the Irishman that led the cause to create it. General John A. Logan was a County Monaghan man who fought in the Mexican-American War, the Battle of Bull Run, and in the rotundas of the Illinois AND United States Senate. His proudest moment was issuing General Order No. 11, which established an annual day for the purpose of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of the comrades who died in defense of their country. Tune in as Tim and Mike pay tribute to those who have fallen with music from The Fureys, Bruce Springsteen, The Elders, and Kevin Flynn & The Avondale Ramblers. Thank you to all that have served and continue to serve in the Armed Forces. Memorial Day also means Irish Fest at Chicago Gaelic Park and the boys preview their 30th annual festival with songs from the bands you'll see this weekend including Chicago Reel, Screaming Orphans and The Fenians. Also featuring music from Rory Gallagher and The Gloaming (catch Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill this Saturday at the Old Town School of Folk Music.) Join us every Wednesday from 8PM to 9 PM on WSBC 1240 AM and check out the podcast at www.windycityirishradio.com

News: Why were we gone for so long? Read this for more info. We are now on a new web host, so hopefully, everything will be smooth sailing from here on out. Amidst the chaotic guerrilla warfare of Civil War Missouri, a small force of Union militia troops is tasked with carrying out General Order No. 11, the expulsion of all civilians from four counties on the Kansas-Missouri border. But each soldier has his own motivations, not all of them noble. When they encounter some unusual opposition, their commitment to their mission, their unit, and even their sanity will be tested. This is an early playtest version of this scenario, and also Ethan's first time running Trail of Cthulhu.

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds discuss Ulysses Grant's General Order No. 11 SOURCES TOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

I read these words in a post from a friend of mine on Facebook. It had an impact on me because at that moment I was thinking of how much I planned to enjoy this weekend with my family. However, I had not given one thought to what this holiday means. Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5th, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on May 30th 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. I enjoy many freedoms because of the price these fallen soldiers paid for this country. I can go to the church of my choice, pray and read my bible. I can write this blog and speak my mind. I can create an income and take care of my family and many more. When you have a chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the National Anthem, please say it and sing it loudly and proudly. When you pray before your meal today, don't forget to thank God for the men and women that gave their life to keep this country free. It's not just a three day weekend, it's much more. Pierce

James Lane was one of the most influential, and controversial, characters in Kansas during the territorial period. Originally a politician in Indiana, he moved to Kansas in 1855 and joined the free state cause. He was involved with the extral legal free state government in Topeka and issued General Order No. 1 to recruit troops that were called Volunteers for the Protection of the Ballot Box. This podcast also features plans to free political prisoners held in Lecompton and a pro slavery newspaper's description of a speeck by Lane along with excerpts from that speech.. Musical selections performed by The Free Staters (www.thefreestaters.com) and Curly Miller and Carole Anne Rose (http://theold78s.com/).