Podcasts about Supreme Commander

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.

Episode 428, including tracks from Macana, Supreme Commander, Dog Lips, Tiny Boats, The Zeros, Чете Чачак Бенд (Čete Čačak Bend), The Banner, Zombiecock, Cannibal Corpse, and Dead Defined. The episode is loaded with a bunch of new music shared with us, we cover a couple great albums, and wrap up the show with a death metal track and a modern hard rock track.

In the gripping saga of World War II, the Philippines became a pivotal battleground during the Japanese invasion in 1941. General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific, faced a harrowing challenge as Japanese forces launched a well-coordinated assault. The chaos broke loose as American troops found themselves scattered and vulnerable, desperately trying to mount a defense against the overwhelming might of the Imperial Japanese Army. Despite the efforts, MacArthur's strategic miscalculations played a crucial role in the downfall of American defenses. Air strikes devastated the initial lines of defense, crippling American air power and leaving ground troops exposed. The Japanese swiftly took advantage of this chaos, implementing their plans with astonishing efficiency. Sensing victory, they pushed forward relentlessly, leading to a tragic retreat of American and Filipino defenders to the Bataan Peninsula. As the defenders fled, the human toll of war became evident, showcasing the courage and resilience of those fighting against insurmountable odds. This battle transformed into a symbol of perseverance and sacrifice, marking a decisive moment in the Pacific theater. The story of the Filipino and American forces during this dark chapter resonates even today, reminding us of the cost of warfare and the indomitable spirit of those who stood up to fight for their homeland. Explore this captivating story of courage and determination as we delve into the events that shaped the outcome of the Philippines during World War II!

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when North Korean forces invaded South Korea, aiming to unify the peninsula under communist control. The conflict rapidly escalated, prompting a United Nations response led by the United States. When the war started, MacArthur, then Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, was overseeing the post-World War II occupation and reconstruction of Japan. In this episode, MacArthur Memorial historians Amanda Williams and Jim Zobel discuss MacArthur's initial response to the war. This episode also includes a bonus Q&A of listener questions that were recorded after the main program. YouTube Version: MacArthur's Initial Response to the Korean WarYouTube Q&A: MacArthur's Initial Response to the Korean War Q&AHave a comment about this episode? Send us a text message! (Note: we can only read the texts, we can't reply) Follow us on:Twitter: @MacArthur1880; @AEWilliamsClarkFacebook: @MacArthurMemorialwww.macarthurmemorial.org

Send us a textThe Daily Drop is here and this one is overflowing with fraud, firepower, and the federal fumble reel. Jared dives into the Pentagon's latest week of insanity: $10.8B in fraud? Check. Hypersonic missiles making a comeback? Check. A free Qatari plane that's somehow costing $400M to modify? Check. And that's before we even get to the Air Force's new anti-ship missile flex, transgender cadet policy chaos, and the absurd SpaceX-White House pissing match.Oh yeah—Space Force nostalgia? F-47 cockpit speculation? Missileer cancer rates? Welcome to another episode of “Who's Driving This Thing?” The answer is: no one. Absolutely no one.

Alan talks with historian Walter Borneman about his book MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific. They examine General Douglas MacArthur's early career, his leadership in the Philippines, and his strategic command from Australia. Borneman discusses MacArthur's evolving coordination with the Navy, his key role in island-hopping operations, and his push to reclaim the Philippines. They also explore MacArthur's late awareness of the atomic bomb, his post-war leadership as Supreme Commander in Japan, and his legacy as a pioneering military strategist and symbol of American resolve during World War II.     Guest Bio Walter Borneman is an award-winning historian and author with a passion for bringing pivotal moments in American history to life. He earned his history degree from Western State College of Colorado and a law degree from the University of Denver. Borneman is the author of several acclaimed books, including The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King and Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America.     Show Highlights (1:22) Why MacArthur assumed the role of Field Marshal in the army of the Philippines (7:36) The evolution of MacArthur's role in Australia and the Pacific Command (12:24) MacArthur's role in formulating and then implementing the island-hopping plan (15:07) Why Walter thinks the Battle of Leyte Gulf may have been the greatest victory ever won by the United States Navy (17:39) MacArthur's role in planning the invasion of the Japanese home islands (20:05) When he learned about the atomic bomb and his views on its use in the war (22:13) Why he was appointed the supreme commander of the Allied powers in Japan (25:22) How Walter Boneman would define MacArthur's legacy in World War II (27:20) What Walter is working on next     Links Referenced The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King: https://www.amazon.com/Admirals-Nimitz-Halsey-King-Five-Star-ebook/dp/B007ME5GYC Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America: https://www.amazon.com/Polk-Man-Transformed-Presidency-America-ebook/dp/B0026772GK/ MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific: https://www.amazon.com/MacArthur-War-World-II-Pacific-ebook/dp/B0151YQV20/ American POTUS: https://americanpotus.org/

That Dwight D. Eisenhower became Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, orchestrating the largest amphibious invasion in history on June 6, 1944, was far from inevitable.He came from the middle of nowhere — Abilene, Kansas — had never led men in battle, spent most of his career as a staff officer, and didn't make general until he was in his fifties.How, then, did he become the leader on whom the fate of the world would rest?Today, we trace the making of Ike with Michel Paradis, author of The Light of Battle. We talk about how Eisenhower's Midwestern upbringing shaped his character, and how his most important education happened outside the classroom. Michel shares how crucial mentors were in Ike's development, and how Eisenhower made the most of those relationships. We discuss the books that were most formative in shaping his thinking, including what he got from Nietzsche. We also get into some of the practices Eisenhower used to lead effectively, including how he budgeted his time to maintain his morale while under the pressure of planning D-Day and what he did the evening before the invasion to deal with the stress.Resources Related to the PodcastAoM Podcast #641: How Eisenhower Led — A Conversation with Ike's GranddaughterAoM series on Eisenhower's leadershipAoM Podcast #996: Remembering D-Day 80 Years LaterThe Line Man's Bible: A Football Textbook of Detailed Instruction by Ernest Graves.Sunday Firesides: You Never Know How Many Chapters Are Still to ComeFox ConnerThe Czar of Halfaday Creek by James B. HendryxConnect With Michel ParadisMichel on LinkedInMichel's faculty page

In this special live episode of Owl Have You Know, James Weston, the senior associate dean for degree programs and Harmon Whittington Professor of Finance, reflects on his 25 years at Rice University.Join James and host Maya Pomroy '22 as they explore his journey from the Federal Reserve to Rice Business, the evolution of the school over the past two and a half decades, and his vision for the future of the university. They also dive deep into his groundbreaking research on racial disparities in auto loan pricing — a study that uncovered significant biases against minority borrowers. Plus, get the inside scoop on his experience running a bar in Rice Village.Episode Guide:01:20 James Weston's Career Journey04:25 Early Career and Mentorship08:56 Teaching Philosophy and Student Relationships13:52 Research on Auto Loans and Discrimination18:58 Linking Mortgage and Experian Data20:14 Evidence of Discrimination in Auto Lending22:48 Challenges in Passing Auto Lending Regulations24:00 The Realities of Owning and Operating a Bar30:24 Transition to Administration at Rice Business33:47 Reflections on a Diverse CareerOwl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.Episode Quotes:How Dean James pursues scientific rigor34:50: [James Weston] I sort of view the thing that ties together all my papers as a foundational social scientist trying to measure things that are hard to measure. And so when I see things that I think have a lot of social import or a research question that I think has either a practical application or some large social question that I think needs answering, the fun for me is trying to figure out how to measure it and trying to come up with a clever way of identifying the research question in a way that's unambiguous and in a way that we can solidify and say, like, that's the answer. And I know it with as near scientific certainty as I can — you know, the existence of the Higgs boson particle.35:19: [Maya Pomroy] We can't get into that right now. Yeah. 35:33: [James Weston] But, but you know, but I'm saying, like, to treat it like a scientist.35:36: [Maya Pomroy] Yes.35:37: [James Weston] And study it like it's a real causal question. Yeah. And you attack it with the scientific method, and you attack it with the scrutiny and the scientific rigor that they use across campus.On pushing for transparency in auto lending23:20: My hope is that the Senate Banking Committee continues to take action on it, and we see more—just something similar to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, where auto dealers just have to report. They have a spreadsheet, and you just have to send it to the Fed the way every bank does with every mortgage application. And hopefully that transparency attenuates the discrimination the way it largely did in home mortgages. It took time. It was a 10-year process. It'll probably take that long on auto lending. And we're not the only voice in this choir. There's lots of other people now that are sort of jumping on the bandwagon.How Dean James views his new job role30:48: Moving into administration means, in my mind at least, it means I'm not working anymore. In the sense that I'm not executing the primary missions of the school, which are teaching and scholarship. And so I'm not teaching as much anymore, and I'm not doing as much scholarship anymore, which means I'd better be doing something to collect the paycheck. And the way I genuinely view it is that now I'm trying to enable the rest of my faculty to do better teaching and better scholarship. My role is as a service leader, which is how I view this job—as a tour of service, not a career pivot. I didn't take this job to then become dean someplace, to then become provost someplace, to then become Supreme Commander of University somewhere. But, like, it was someone else's turn to do this very important role, which is to coordinate all the programs, get the teaching schedules done, make sure I'm protecting junior faculty and their teaching loads, make sure I'm putting the right people into the right classes, making sure we're keeping track of it.Show Links: TranscriptThe Hidden Inequality in Auto-Lending | Rice Business WisdomGuest Profiles:James Weston | Rice University

Dungeon Siege ist einer dieser berühmten Klassiker aus der zweiten oder auch dritten Reihe, die in Genre-Rückblicken gerne einmal übersehen werden. Dabei hatte das Action-Rollenspiel von Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander) wirklich etwas zu bieten: hübsche (ja!) 3D-Umgebungen, eine erbarmungslos düstere Atmosphäre und einen Soundtrack, der bis heute kaum ein Knie still ruhen lässt. Dom Schott ist riesiger Freund des Spiels und wird nicht müde, in seinem Freundes- und Familienkreis immer wieder von Dungeon Siege zu erzählen. Und nun hat es auch Géraldine Hohmann erwischt: Sie wurde von Dom zum Reboot von "OK COOL schmökert" geschliffen, um mit ihm gemeinsam durch das Originalhandbuch zu blättern. Gemeinsam diskutieren sie über Fantasy-Illustrationen, Übersichtskarten, unscharfe Screenshots und lauschen dabei dem Main Thema, sowie einigen explodierenden Fieslingen (ja!!).

In this week's Tuesday episode of The Book Fix, Yajaira and Cheli dive into Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi, the fourth installment in the Shatter Me series. Picking up right where Ignite Me left off, this book throws listeners—and our hosts—straight into the chaos of Juliette Ferrars' new reality as Supreme Commander of Sector 45. Can her relationship with Aaron Warner survive this sudden change? Join the besties as they discuss whether or not they would recommend this book! Support the showOur Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thebookfix?utm_source=linktree_admin_sharebecome our Patron ♡ https://www.patreon.com/BookFixbuy us a book ♡ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thebookfixBusiness Inquiries: thebookfixpodcast@gmail.comfollow us on Tiktok! ♡ https://www.tiktok.com/@thebookfix

Are you watching this on Spotify? If not, enjoy this in video form NOW ON SPOTIFY! THEORY SABERS - https://www.theorysabers.com/ MERCH - https://www.swtheorymerch.com/ Order 65, a contingency plan within the Republic's legal framework, authorized the Senate or the Supreme Commander, which in this case being, Chancellor Palpatine, to be removed from power if deemed unfit or treasonous. If this happened during the events of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Order 65 could have drastically altered the galaxy's fate. By exposing Palpatine's manipulation and his secret identity as Darth Sidious, the Jedi could have united the Republic's forces, including the clone troopers, against him instead of being targeted by Order 66. This would have preserved the Jedi Order, potentially avoided the rise of the Empire, and allowed Anakin Skywalker to fulfill his role as the Chosen One without succumbing to the dark side. The survival of the Jedi would have meant a stronger, unified resistance against the Sith's influence, fundamentally changing the balance of power in the galaxy and preserving hope and peace for generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GMoney sits down with General Michael Flynn for a hard-hitting conversation about the evolving battlefield of fifth-generation warfare and why digital soldiers are more critical than ever. They dive into the rise of Bitcoin as a tool for financial sovereignty, the battle against central bank digital currencies, and how Trump's economic strategy is reshaping America's future. General Flynn shares insights on Trump's vision, the global power struggle over digital assets, and what patriots must do to secure their financial and personal freedom. If you're not paying attention to the digital revolution, you're already behind.  

Order 65, a contingency plan within the Republic's legal framework, authorized the Senate or the Supreme Commander, which in this case being, Chancellor Palpatine, to be removed from power if deemed unfit or treasonous. If this happened during the events of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Order 65 could have drastically altered the galaxy's fate. By exposing Palpatine's manipulation and his secret identity as Darth Sidious, the Jedi could have united the Republic's forces, including the clone troopers, against him instead of being targeted by Order 66. This would have preserved the Jedi Order, potentially avoided the rise of the Empire, and allowed Anakin Skywalker to fulfill his role as the Chosen One without succumbing to the dark side. The survival of the Jedi would have meant a stronger, unified resistance against the Sith's influence, fundamentally changing the balance of power in the galaxy and preserving hope and peace for generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think there was a time when people thought workers were demonstrating loyalty and nobility if they showed up for their job even if they felt sicker than a dog. More and more, people think you're not very smart if you do that! You may be one of those who drags yourself into work no matter how sick you are. You're there, all right, but so are your coughs, your sneezes, and your "cooties." Strangely, over the next few days, one co-worker after another comes down with symptoms that look suspiciously like what you brought to work with you. The poet was right, "no man is an island!" You're contagious! I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Effect You Have." The truth is we're all contagious even when we're healthy. It's not just physical germs we spread; we spread an attitude wherever we are! And while the process of people around you catching your attitude may be as invisible as the transmission of germs, the results are just as real. They can get "sick" from being around you, or they can actually feel better because they've been around you. General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in World War II, revealed an important understanding of the leadership that we all exercise when he said this: "Optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction." A husband infects his wife with whatever attitude he brings home - positive or negative. If you're wondering why she's acting in a way you don't like, maybe you should look in the mirror for the answer. A parent spreads their attitude to their children, a boss to his employees, a worker to his or her co-workers, a Christian leader to those who serve with him. A friend infects other friends with the health or the sickness of their attitude. In 1 Samuel 30, beginning with verse 6, our word for today from the Word of God, we can see a vivid picture - both positive and negative - of how the attitude contagion works. In this case, the sick attitude almost destroyed David's little band of soldiers. But one healthy attitude saved the day and it turned the tide of the battle. While David and his men have been gone, their bitter enemies, the Amalekites, have invaded their camp, captured their families, and plundered their camp. Verse 6 tells us that "David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters." You've got bitterness here, blaming, despair - those deadly viruses were spreading from one soldier to another because of the way they responded to this tragedy, to this defeat. "But," the Bible says, "David found strength in the Lord his God." He spread that strength to his men and he led them in a surprise attack that routed the Amalekites and took back everything the enemy had stolen. When you get your perspective on the situation from God rather than your feelings or the circumstances, you can turn the tide with a winning attitude. Which leads to the question of the day: "What kind of attitude are you spreading where you are?" Are you spreading joy or discouragement? Are you spreading confidence or fear? Is it encouragement or negativity? Are you leaving a trail of tenderness, or is it harshness? Stress or peace? Do you spread faith or do you spread unbelief? Do you spread prayer or do you spread worry? You are affecting the people you live with, the people you work with, the people you serve with. You are contagious, whether you realize it or not. Make their hearts lighter, not heavier. Give them reason to hope, reason to believe, not reason to despair. Those in whom the living Christ dwells have no excuse for spreading germs that make people feel sick in their heart and their soul!

Hey, what's up anime fans? It's your boy Raysean from the Raysean Gadson Anime Podcast, or R-Gap for short! In today's episode, we're bringing you a special treat with our guest, professional voice actor https://x.com/KingLowTier?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor. Get ready as we dive deep into the world of voice acting, exploring Mike's personal journey, achievements, and anime origin story. Plus, we'll be dropping some insider tips for anyone looking to break into the voice acting world. Mike is known for his roles in Cucuruz Doan, Supreme Commander Bred, Yuigarde, Sand Land, Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers, Spy x Family, and many more. If you're curious about the magic behind your favorite anime voices, then sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride! And don't forget to check out previous episodes and hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Let's get into it! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/raysean-gadson/support

Today, we are discussing our country's 34th President, Dwight Eisenhower.  A Texan by birth but raised in Kansas, Eisenhower graduated from West Point and during World War II served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and was promoted to 5-star General of the US Army. Twice elected President, Eisenhower notably led our country as we entered the Cold War. In what ways did Eisenhower's military experience shape his views on domestic and foreign policy?  What civil rights advancements were made during his tenure?  What was his overall sense of duty?  To help us in this discussion, we are pleased to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Spalding, Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation for this informative chat.

Last time we spoke about the fall of Saipan. General Smith's coordinated attacks on June 27th led to significant progress, with the 4th Marine Division notably advancing. The 27th Division encountered resistance, and casualties rose. By early July, Americans gained ground, pushing toward Marpi Point. Japanese resistance remained fierce, but American forces steadily advanced, capturing strategic positions. The assault on Petosukara was swiftly countered, but intense action unfolded in the Makunsha region. The 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines faced a fierce enemy thrust, with over 200 attackers killed. Facing defeat, General Saito ordered a suicidal assault, resulting in a chaotic and desperate charge. Despite heavy losses, American forces repelled the onslaught. The battle lasted until midday on July 7, with sporadic skirmishes continuing. Efforts to persuade cave occupants to surrender intensified, yet many civilians chose mass suicide. Saipan was declared secured after extensive casualties on both sides.  This episode is the battle of Noemfoor  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.  General MacArthur unleashed a new offensive, seeing General Patrick's troops successfully landed on Noemfoor with little opposition, securing a beachhead. While the 3rd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Regiment was being airdropped on July 4, Colonel Sandlin's 3rd Battalion continued eastward through scattered minefields toward Kornasoren Drome, meeting no resistance. Simultaneously, the 1st Battalion crossed the Kamiri River and occupied Kamiri village without encountering any opposition. Moving out of Kamiri, the American forces followed a southeastern road to a sizable Japanese garden area, where they faced resistance on Hill 201.  The Japanese garden area was about 600 yards long, east and west, and 350 yards across, north to south. The ground was devoid of large trees except for a few atop Hill 201, but thick, secondary jungle growth covered the eastern and southern slopes of the hill, while the rest of the garden area was overgrown with partially cultivated papaya, taro, and cassava, all averaging about eight feet in height. The trail from Kamiri village passed over the southern slope of Hill 201, and 300 yards away, near the eastern edge of the gardens, joined the main road from Kamiri Drome to Namber Drome, located about six miles to the south. Another trail ran along the eastern side of the hill, branching to the north and northwest at the northeastern corner of the low terrain feature. To counter this, a double envelopment tactic was initiated, with Company C seizing Hill 180 to the north while Company B pushed the Japanese southeast over Mission Hill, a lower terrain feature situated southeast of Hill 201. By 15:15, the battalion secured the ground on both flanks of Hill 201 and consolidated around the hilltop for the night, establishing a tight defensive perimeter. At 05:20 on July 5, the Japanese launched an attack along the southern and southeastern sides of the perimeter with mortar support. The American forces responded with a deadly barrage of mortar and artillery fire, driving the enemy back and neutralizing their machine-gun positions. Some Japanese managed to get through the mortar and artillery barrages and continued up the sides of the trail from the south through fire from Company D's machine guns. The enemy found cover behind a low, 150-yard-long log fence which led from the southeast toward the center of the 1st Battalion's defenses. While the fence afforded some protection, the attacking infantrymen were silhouetted as they tried to clamber over the top. The main body of the attacking force therefore kept down behind the fence, trying to crawl along it to the top of the hill. Advancing cautiously, the attackers encountered sustained machine-gun and rifle fire from the defenders atop the hill, as the fence did not extend beyond the outer defenses of the 1st Battalion. The assault quickly deteriorated into a sequence of small suicide charges carried out by groups of three to six Japanese soldiers. The 1st Battalion now sent patrols out over the battlefield. From prisoners it was determined that the attacking force had consisted of 350 to 400 men--the 10th and 12th Companies, 219th Infantry, reinforced by approximately 150 armed Formosan laborers. During the morning over 200 dead Japanese were counted around the 1st Battalion's perimeter, and the number of enemy dead found or enemy wounded captured on subsequent days along trails leading south from the hill indicated that virtually the entire original attacking force had been annihilated.    By 06:30, the skirmish had concluded, with over 200 Japanese casualties tallied. Following this engagement, operations on Noemfoor transitioned into a series of patrol activities as Allied forces extended their dominance over the island and rapidly expanded the airfield facilities. On the morning of July 6, Sandlin's 2nd Battalion executed an amphibious landing on the deserted Namber Drome following a brief naval bombardment. By July 10, intensive patrolling had only encountered small Japanese groups, leading Patrick to conclude that no significant organized enemy presence remained on Noemfoor. To eradicate the remaining opposition, the 503rd Parachute Regiment was dispatched to the island's southern sector while the 158th addressed the northern half. By the end of August, Sandlin's efforts had resulted in the death of 611 Japanese soldiers, the capture of 179, the loss of 6 American lives with 41 wounded, and the liberation of 209 slave laborers.  The Japanese had never brought the Melanesians of Noemfoor entirely under their control, for the natives had either offered a passive resistance or had faded into the interior to live off the land. A few were impressed into service by the Japanese, while others who were captured but still refused to cooperate were executed. The natives greeted the Allied landings with great enthusiasm and came out of hideaways in the hills carrying Dutch flags which they had concealed from the Japanese. Under the direction of the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration, the natives were gradually resettled in their old villages. Late in July the village chiefs gathered in formal council and officially declared war on the Japanese. Thereafter, native cooperation increased. Up to August 31 the natives had captured and brought to Allied outposts more than 50 Japanese and had killed another 50. One tale of horror concerns the Javanese on Noemfoor. According to information gathered by the NICA Detachment, over 3000 Indonesians were shipped to Noemfoor in late 1943, mostly from Soerabaja and other large cities on Java. The shipment included many women and children. The Japanese, without regard to age or sex, put the Javanese to work constructing roads and airfields almost entirely by hand. Little or no clothing, shoes, bedding, or shelter was provided, and the Javanese had to supplement their very inadequate allowance of rations by shifting for themselves. Driven by hunger, many attempted to steal Japanese rations but for their pains were beheaded or hung by their hands or feet until dead. Starvation and disease took a steadily increasing toll. The dead were periodically collected for mass burial, and survivors alleged that many of the sick were buried alive. It was considered probable that not more than 10 or 15 Javanese were killed accidentally by Allied forces. Yet only 403 of the 3000-odd brought from Java were found alive on Noemfoor by August 31.  Meanwhile, Colonel Jones pursued the remnants of Colonel Shimizu's Noemfoor Detachment to Hill 670 in the south. From July 13 to 16, both sides engaged in fierce combat for control of the hill, with the Japanese ultimately managing to evade capture. Contact was reestablished on July 23 near Inasi, but Shimizu eluded capture once more. The primary Japanese force was finally located on August 10 near Hill 380, prompting Jones' 1st and 3rd Battalions to converge in an attempt to trap the enemy. However, on August 15, Shimizu once again evaded capture, slipping away towards Pakriki. Although the Japanese forces were either captured or eliminated by August 17, Shimizu evaded capture or death and remained at large by the operation's conclusion. Jones' forces endured 57 fatalities and 302 injuries, but managed to neutralize over 1100 Japanese soldiers and apprehend approximately 560 individuals, while liberating an additional 194 enslaved laborers. This brings the total casualties for the Battle of Noemfoor to 1730 Japanese casualties, with 740 taken prisoner, and 63 American fatalities, 343 wounded, and 3 missing, alongside the liberation of 403 slave laborers. Transitioning to the developments on the Aitape front post-Operation Persecution, significant changes occurred under General Gill's command starting May 4. The defensive setup in the Aitape region was revamped, and Colonel Howe's 127th Regiment bolstered its eastern positions, with the Nyaparake Force extending patrols to the Danmap River. However, General Nakai's advance forces arrived in early May. Shortly after 2:00am on 14 May, after a short preparation by grenades, light mortars, and light machine guns, 100 to 200 Japanese of the 78th Infantry, 20th Division, attacked from the east against the coastal sector of the perimeter. This assault was broken up by rifle and automatic weapons fire and by lobbing mortar shells to the rear of the advancing enemy group. The Japanese disappeared into the jungle south of the narrow beach. For the next hour Captain Fulmer's mortars placed harassing fire into suspected enemy assembly points east of the small stream. Meanwhile, the eight-man outpost reported that many small parties of Japanese were moving up the beach within 300 yards of the main perimeter and then slipping southward into the jungle. Such maneuvers seemed to presage another attack. The second assault came about 0330, this time against the eastern and southeastern third of the defenses. The Japanese were again beaten back by small arms and mortar fire, but at 5:00am they made a final effort which covered the entire eastern half of the perimeter. This last attack was quickly broken up and the Japanese quieted down. About 7:30am on the 14th, elements of Company A, 127th Infantry, began moving into the forward perimeter to reinforce Captain Fulmer's beleaguered units. The 1st Platoon of Company C and the 81-mm. mortar section also moved forward in preparation for continuing the advance. General Martin took charge of the East Sector on the same day, relocating all troops except the Nyaparake Force to the west bank of the Driniumor River. The East Sector forces were supplied by a variety of methods. Units along the coast were supported directly by small boat from BLUE Beach or by native ration trains moving along the coastal track. Supplies to the Afua area went south from the coast along the Anamo-Afua trail or, later, over the inland track from the Tadji fields through Chinapelli and Palauru. Wheeled transport was impracticable except along short stretches of the coastal track. In early June, when the Japanese ambushed many ration parties which attempted to reach Afua, experiments were made with air supply from the Tadji strips. Breakage and loss were heavy at first, but air supply rapidly became more successful as pilots gained experience and ground troops located good dropping grounds. A dropping ground cleared on the west bank of the Driniumor about 2200 yards north of Afua soon became the principal source of supply for troops in the Afua area. Communications during operations east of the Driniumor were carried out principally by radio, but between units along the river and from the stream back to higher headquarters telephone became the principal means of communication. Keeping the telephone lines in service was a task to which much time and effort had to be devoted. The Japanese continually cut the lines, or American troops and heavy equipment accidentally broke the wires. The enemy often stationed riflemen to cover breaks in the line, thus making repair work dangerous. Usually, it was found less time consuming and less hazardous to string new wire than to attempt to find and repair breaks. As a result, miles of telephone wire soon lined the ground along the trails or was strung along the trees in the Driniumor River area and back to the Tadji perimeter. Despite this adjustment, Nakai escalated pressure, advancing beyond Yakamul by month's end. In response, Gill replaced the Nyaparake Force with the 1st Battalion, 126th Regiment, which swiftly recaptured Yakamul and Parakovio. Despite initial success, Nakai's forces launched a heavy counterattack in early June, reclaiming Yakamul by June 5.   In the meantime, additional Japanese units had been conducting exploratory missions inland against Afua since the beginning of the month. However, Howe's 1st Battalion ultimately succeeded in repelling them. This allowed Martin's forces to establish an outer defensive line along the Driniumor River. From there, they continued forward patrols toward the Japanese lines. While the 41st and 51st Divisions struggled to move personnel and supplies to the forward assembly area, Nakai efficiently organized a counter-reconnaissance screen along Niumen Creek to prevent East Sector troops from gathering intelligence about deployments farther east. On June 20, due to the increasingly dire situation in Western New Guinea, the 18th Army was suddenly transferred from 2nd Area Army control to the direct command of the Southern Army. Although General Terauchi's directive was to execute a "delaying action at strategic positions," General Adachi opted to adhere to his original plans for a westward offensive. He was determined to maximize the effectiveness of his forces while they still possessed fighting capability, aiming to divert as much enemy strength as possible away from the Western New Guinea battlefront. Sensing an imminent heavy enemy assault, Generals Krueger and MacArthur decided to reinforce Aitape with General Cunningham's 112th Cavalry Regiment, arriving on June 27, and Colonel Edward “Ted” Starr's 124th Regiment, expected to arrive in early July. They also expedited the shipment of the 43rd Division from its New Zealand staging area to Aitape, necessitating the establishment of Major-General Charles Hall's 11th Corps. Upon assuming command of the task force on June 29, Hall reorganized his forces and implemented several troop redeployments in preparation for the looming enemy attack. By June 30th, Adachi had completed concentrating his forces in the assembly area. Consequently, he swiftly initiated preparations for launching an attack against the Driniumor River line on July 10th. His strategy involved Colonel Nara Masahiko's 237th Regiment crossing the river and launching an assault westward towards Koronal Creek, and northwest to clear Anamo and other Paup villages. Meanwhile, the 78th and 80th Regiments were tasked with clearing the Afua area and advancing all the way to Chinapelli. Success in this endeavor would pave the way for Japanese units to advance towards the Tadji airstrips. Furthermore, a Coastal Attack Force was designated to carry out a diversionary maneuver along the coast, aiming to engage the enemy and constrain them with artillery fire. In early July, as the Japanese finalized their preparations, Hall and Martin made the decision to dispatch robust patrols east of the Driniumor to the Harech River. However, these patrols were only able to advance as far as Yakamul, where they encountered only the enemy's forward units. Consequently, on July 10th, Hall and Martin ordered the 1st Battalion, 128th Regiment, and the 2nd Squadron, 112th Cavalry to conduct a reconnaissance mission across the Driniumor. Subsequently, the infantry faced significant resistance as they pushed towards Yakamul, while the cavalry's progress was limited to about a mile due to the dense jungle terrain. Despite these efforts yielding disappointing results, a captured Japanese soldier disclosed that their attack was imminent that night. However, this critical piece of information was mistakenly disregarded by the American command, leaving Adachi and Nakai poised to launch their counteroffensive. Around midnight, the assault commenced with the 1st Battalion, 78th Regiment charging across the Driniumor River, facing Company G of the 128th Regiment along a narrow front.  The Japanese attacked in two or three screaming waves, broadening the front after the first assault by throwing in the rest of the 78th Infantry and possibly elements of the 80th Infantry. Japanese reconnaissance had been good--the attackers knew the locations of company and battalion command posts all along the American defenses but not quite good enough. The enemy did not know that Company G had been reinforced during the afternoon of 10 July nor, apparently, had he discovered that the company's front was protected by low barbed wire. The attacks of the 78th Infantry were thrown back with heavy losses. Machine gun and mortar fire from the 2d Battalion, 128th Infantry, accounted for many Japanese, numbers of whom were caught as they tried to cross the barbed wire in front of Company G. According to Japanese sources, the results of American artillery fire were even more disastrous. As soon as the enemy attack had begun, the 120th and 129th Field Artillery Battalions had started firing previously prepared concentrations along the bed and east bank of the Driniumor. The Japanese units in or near the impact areas suffered heavy casualties. The 1st Battalion. 78th Infantry, was quickly reduced from 400 to 30 men, principally as a result of the American artillery fire, which also destroyed large numbers of artillery weapons, machine guns, and mortars. Despite this, the Americans, skillfully backed by artillery support, ultimately repelled them with significant casualties. Following this initial repulse, Martin concluded that a reconnaissance in force was unnecessary and ordered the units involved to retreat behind the Driniumor River. Confusion among many Japanese units, arriving late, had delayed the commencement of the 80th Regiment's attack, which was directed at Company E and was similarly pushed back. But a second wave of attackers, probably comprising the 237th Infantry and heretofore uncommitted elements of the Right Flank Unit, began pouring across the Driniumor toward Company E at approximately 0200. The new attackers overran the company command post and surrounded most of the unit's widely separated strong points. Fighting continued in the company sector for a little while, but the unit could not long withstand the overwhelming enemy pressure. Company organization and communications broke down. Worse still, the troops began to run out of ammunition. A general withdrawal commenced. By 03:00, the Japanese had breached a gap approximately 1300 yards wide in the American lines, physically occupying that territory. Fortunately, the following hours remained relatively calm as the 78th and 80th Regiments regrouped to the south to resume the offensive. This lull enabled Martin to dispatch the 1st Battalion, 128th Regiment to counterattack along the Anamo-Afua trail, aiming to reinforce the 2nd Battalion's positions. Initially encountering no resistance for the first 1500 yards, the Americans were eventually halted by intense enemy fire at 10:30, compelling them to retreat back to Tiver. This fierce opposition convinced Martin that the enemy could advance directly westward with minimal hindrance towards the Tadji strips unless he abandoned the Driniumor River line. He decided to reorganize his forces along the secondary delaying position at the X-ray River-Koronal Creek line, preparing for further counterattacks against the Japanese. Accordingly, while Company F maintained their position along the coast, the 128th Regiment began to fall back towards the creek. Further south, Cunningham opted to withdraw his cavalrymen in two stages, successfully reaching X-ray by midnight. However, communication issues delayed Howe's 3rd Battalion, with most of the unit arriving at the river the following day. A small contingent had to engage in combat with Japanese forces and couldn't reach X-ray until July 13. Despite this, Krueger and Hall disagreed with the decision to abandon the Driniumor, promptly deploying the 124th Regiment for a potential counterattack. Martin, who was instructed to hold his position, was replaced by Gill, assuming direct command of the divided covering force, now split into North and South Forces. However, before the American counterattack could commence, Nara's infantry launched an assault towards Tiver and Koronal Creek on July 12. The 128th Regiment successfully repelled them after a fierce confrontation. Meanwhile, Adachi dispatched the main body of the 41st Division and the reserve 66th Regiment towards the Driniumor, augmenting pressure on the Paup coast. To the south, Nakai's units gathered across the river near Afua and Kwamrgnirk, preparing for a final northward push. Finally, at 07:30 on July 13, the American counteroffensive commenced as the 1st Battalion, 128th Regiment swiftly moved from Tiver to Chakila, only to be ambushed by Japanese artillery. Nevertheless, precise artillery counterfire silenced most of the enemy artillery, enabling the Americans to advance eastward toward the mouth of the Driniumor. Meanwhile, the 124th Regiment under Starr's command advanced southward along the Anamo-Afua trail, facing strong opposition from the 237th Regiment. Despite encountering resistance, they managed to reach the river, although still positioned considerably north of their designated centerline. Cunningham's South Force began its eastward movement from the X-ray River at 10:00, successfully overcoming enemy positions along several stream crossings to reach the Driniumor near Afua. Consequently, all original crossing points on the Driniumor fell to the Allied forces, isolating the 20th Division and the 237th Regiment several miles west of the river's bank. By nightfall, Nara had regrouped his 237th Regiment for another assault on the 2nd Battalion, 128th Regiment. Company E demonstrated its combat effectiveness by holding firm and repelling the Japanese forces, with the rest of the battalion successfully defending against subsequent small-scale attacks, marking the conclusion of Nara's offensive actions. The following morning, Gill's forces consolidated their defensive positions along the reformed river line, albeit with a 1500-yard gap remaining in the center. Yet this all for today with Noemfoor as we now need to head over to the India-Burma theater. The final phase was coming for the Battle of Imphal. By the start of July, the reopening of the Imphal–Kohima Road facilitated the resupply of the 4th Corps, enabling them to launch an offensive against the fatigued and under-resourced troops under General Mutaguchi's command. Additionally, three brigades from General Stopford's 33rd Corps advanced from the north, swiftly joining General Gracey's 20th Division in an endeavor to reopen the Ukhrul Road. Under intense pressure, General Yamauchi's battered 15th Division units hastily abandoned Tongou and Sokpao, leading to the 80th Brigade occupying Lamu by July 2. The next day, the ailing general, who had long fallen out of favor with Mutaguchi, was carried from the battlefield on a stretcher and later died in a hospital at Maymyo. Lieutenant-General Shibata Uichi replaced him and promptly prepared the 51st and 67th Regiments to retreat. To cover their withdrawal, the newly arrived and utterly exhausted 60th Regiment was tasked with attacking towards Lamu, while General Miyazaki's troops assembled behind Ukhrul. However, the 60th Regiment was so weakened that its attacks were easily repelled, and the 67th Regiment retreated in disorder, leaving the 51st encircled. On July 8, Colonel Omoto's troops fiercely broke through the encirclement in three columns, allowing Stopford's brigades to finally overcome Japanese resistance at Ukhrul and capture the town. This forced Shibata to regroup his forces along a new line from Lungshong through Sangshak to Sakok, ultimately enabling the British-Indian forces to reopen the Ukhrul Road by July 10. With both supply roads reopened, the arrival of Stopford's brigades from the north, and the Japanese forces nearly routed, General Slim decided it was time to go on the offensive. Slim's plan involved the 33rd Corps taking over the Shenam Saddle and the Tamu–Palel Road while the 4th Corps cleared the Japanese from the Silchar Track and the Tiddim Road. On the other hand, Mutaguchi was still planning a combined attack on the Palel area involving the 15th Division, remnants of the 31st Division, and some units from the 33rd Division. Although he issued an attack order, the divisions were too battered to comply. The overall situation of the 15th Army went from bad to worse and the only hope remaining was to rally the 31st at Humine, give the troops a few days rest and then, after a reorganization, to dispatch them to the northern flank of the Yamamoto Detachment to capture Palel. In early July the 31st Division was concentrated in the area east of Myothit but discipline had disintegrated to the point that the Division could scarcely be termed a combat force. The Torikai Unit was organized with the 138th Infantry Regiment (less one battalion); the 2d Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment and one artillery battalion to reinforce the Yamamoto Detachment. At the same time,the 15th Army ordered the 33rd Division to attack Palel from the south with the 214th Infantry Regiment. The newly formed Torikai' Unit, however, failed to join the Yamamoto Detachment and the order for the 33rd to attack Palel was never carried out. Consequently, on July 9, General Kawabe had no choice but to order preparations for a withdrawal to a line connecting the Zibyu Mountains, Mawlaik, Kalewa, and Gangaw. Mutaguchi intended to begin the retreat on July 16, directing the 15th Division towards Sittaung, the 31st Division to Thaungdut, and the 33rd Division to Tiddim, while the Yamamoto Detachment would hold the Shenam Saddle until July 24 and then retreat to the Kuntaung-Moreh line to cover the main Army's withdrawal from the Kabaw Valley.   On the southwest front, General Tanaka's forces had already started retreating from the Bishenpur area, leaving a small covering force at Ningthoukhong to prevent a pursuit by the 17th Division. As a result, General Cowan's brigades made limited progress against the stubborn rearguard, ultimately securing Ningthoukhong on July 16 after heavy bombardment, coinciding with Mutaguchi's general withdrawal. By the middle of July, Japanese resistance centered on Ningthoukhong Kha Khunou. A small hamlet about 300 meters wide and 500 meters long, it lay to the immediate south of Ningthoukhong. Despite probing attacks by the 48th Indian Brigade's infantry and artillery firing on their defenses, the Japanese held on. Finally, in the early hours of 16 July, this small space was subjected to what some describe as one of the heaviest artillery concentrations yet in the Burma Campaign; in the space of an hour, approximately 9,000 shells were fired on Ningthoukhong Kha Khunou. Fortunately for the Japanese, they had withdrawn from the village just before the shelling began. By the time it ended, the village had been completely flattened and was pockmarked with waterlogged craters. And so the last Japanese stronghold in the Imphal Valley was taken. The 63rd Indian Brigade also reached and occupied the Laimanai area around the same time. The 5th Indian Division, the other division in the reconstituted IV Corps, now took over and commenced the chase of the Japanese 33rd Division down the road towards Tiddim.  The 5th Division, now led by Major-General Geoffrey Evans, continued the pursuit while Stopford's brigades harassed the disordered retreat of the 15th and 31st Divisions. Despite their efforts, the 15th and 31st Divisions reached Thaungdut by early August, and the 33rd Division managed to assemble around Chikha by mid-August, under significant pressure and the serious threat of having their withdrawal route cut off. The 33rd Division distinguished itself by displaying almost superhuman fighting power and repeatedly launched counterattacks against the pursuing British-Indian 5th Division. The Yamamoto Detachment, however, had failed to cover the Yazagyo area and, in mid-August the 33rd Division found itself the vicinity of Chikha facing the serious threat of having its route of withdrawal cut by the enemy which was infiltrating into the Yazagyo area from Moreh and Shuganu through the Kabaw Valley. On the south-eastern approach to Imphal, the two armies continued to face each other on the Shenam Saddle. Yamamoto Force remained in place on these heights and the front line was still on Scraggy. It was in the second half of July that a final, concerted effort was made to evict Yamamoto Force and push it down the Tamu–Palel Road towards the India–Burma frontier. Led by the 23rd Indian Division , the operation involved five brigades in a three-pronged attack. The central thrust was by the 37th Indian Brigade on the Shenam Saddle, with the support of all available artillery and tanks; the 5th British Brigade was deployed behind it and readied to provide assistance. D-day was to be 24 July. The 1st Indian Brigade was sent through the hills on the right, to arrive behind the saddle. The two were to push the Japanese back on the road. It was hoped their withdrawal route would be cut by the 49th Indian Brigade, which would arrive on the road after looping in from the far left; the 268th Indian Brigade would be to its left, protecting its flank.    Before the Japanese could retreat, the 49th Brigade had cut off General Yamamoto's withdrawal route by looping in from the far left. However, Mutaguchi had sent Colonel Sato Genpachi's reserve 61st Regiment to Tamu, which quickly counterattacked and reopened the route. Consequently, Yamamoto withdrew to Moreh, allowing Roberts to swiftly capture Nippon Hill and Scraggy. Within two days, the 23rd Division advanced down the road, forcing the Yamamoto Detachment to retreat toward Mawlaik on July 30. This marked the end of the Battle of Imphal and Operation U-Go, the Japanese Army's largest land defeat. Estimates vary, but about 30,000 Japanese soldiers died and 23,000 were injured during the operation, including 6,000 killed at Kohima and 16,000 at Imphal. Additionally, the INA lost about 2,000 dead and 2,000 wounded. On the other hand, the British-Indians suffered 16,000 casualties, with over 12,000 at Imphal. Though Mutaguchi's plan was initially effective and nearly succeeded in capturing Imphal, he underestimated the enemy's ability to resist his troops and quickly bring reinforcements. Slim's overall strategy for Imphal succeeded, as the Japanese overextended themselves from the Chindwin River to the Imphal Valley, just as he had predicted. A crucial factor in the British-Indian success was the air support, which kept the 14th Army supplied despite the road to Kohima being cut off. Ultimately, in an attempt to thwart a potential British-Indian advance into Burma, Mutaguchi's 15th Army was utterly decimated by the failed attempt to capture Imphal. This failure allowed Slim to seize the moment and launch a rapid offensive into Burma, countering the Japanese U-Go plan. The Allies thus gained the upper hand, marking the beginning of the end for Japanese control over Burma. As a final note for this week by late July, Admiral Somerville executed Operation Crimson, a coordinated naval and air assault on Japanese airfields in Sabang, Lhoknga, and Kutaraja. Departing Trincomalee on July 22, Somerville's Task Force 62, comprising two carriers and four battleships, arrived off Sabang on the morning of July 25, ready to commence the bombardment. On 5th July 1944 the carriers Victorious and Indomitable arrived in Colombo. The former sailed with Illustrious on 22 July for Operation ‘Crimson', a bombardment of Sabang by the battleships over which the carrier-borne aircraft were to provide cover and take photographs of the damage. Illustrious embarked the same aircraft as before with Victorious for a total of thirty-nine Corsairs; together they comprised 47 Naval Fighter Wing commanded by Lieutenant Commander Turnbull. The force assembled for the operation was designated TF 62 and the carriers were supported by Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Renown, Richelieu, Nigeria, Kenya, Gambia, Ceylon, Cumberland, Phoebe, Tromp, Relentless, Rotherham, Racehorse, Raider, Roebuck, Rocket, Rapid, Quilliam, Quality and Quickmatch. The submarines Templar and Tantalus were deployed to ASR positions. The carriers operated only thirty-five miles north of Sabang, not far from the battleships, which approached their bombardment positions at 06:40. The initial launch was planned for thirty-three minutes before sunrise but this proved to be too early as the morning was exceptionally dark and the launch was delayed for five minutes. Even then it was too early and the form-up was clumsy and slow, delaying departure. The fighters were briefed to attack Sabang, Lho Nga and Kotaraja airfields but 1838 NAS made a bad landfall since maps lacked detail and no photographs were available. When the target airfields were found it was still too dark for accurate strafing but the enemy was alert and opened fire as soon as aircraft came within range. To aircrew accustomed to the excellent intelligence material by then available in the Home Fleet, this caused concern and it had to be accepted that it was difficult to obtain good targets without losing the element of surprise. At very low level on a dark morning, flying at 400 knots with flashes from antiaircraft gunfire all around, camouflaged aircraft in revetments were inconspicuous and the strafing runs were not a success. One Corsair was shot down but the pilot was rescued. Concurrently, the battleships targeted harbor facilities and military barracks at Sabang, while cruisers and destroyers shelled radar and wireless stations and engaged enemy shore batteries. After the main bombardment, the destroyers Tromp, Quality, Quickmatch, and Quilliam entered Sabang harbor, attacking Japanese positions and launching torpedoes, sustaining light damage from return fire. On the return journey, two enemy reconnaissance aircraft were intercepted and shot down by fighters. Additionally, ten Zeros attacked Somerville's convoy but were intercepted by 13 Corsairs, leading to two Zeros being shot down and another two damageFollowing this engagement, British pilots noted that the Japanese airmen were not as proficient as they had been in 1942.  Although Operation Crimson's outcomes were not spectacular, Somerville's final offensive was still deemed successful enough. Due to health concerns, he was subsequently transferred to diplomatic duties at Admiral Mountbatten's request. Currently, Admiral Mountbatten was moving toward a complete rearrangement of the higher officers in SEAC. From the time of his arrival in the Far East, he had had trouble with his three commanders in chief. When the Imphal crisis arose, Mountbatten was dissatisfied with General Giffard's conduct of operations, and when he later found Giffard taking what Mountbatten considered a highly negative approach toward an aggressive conduct of operations he resolved to ask for Giffard's relief. Mountbatten's relations with Admiral Somerville had been equally difficult. Somerville had refused to treat him as a Supreme Commander and in Mountbatten's opinion tried to make him simply the chairman of a commanders-in-chief committee. As for the RAF commander, Air Chief Marshal Peirse, Mountbatten was not seeking his relief because he did not wish to change all of his principal subordinates simultaneously. After his relief, Somerville was placed in charge of the British naval delegation in Washington DC in October 1944 where he managed—to the surprise of almost everyone—to get on very well with the notoriously abrasive and anti-British Admiral Ernest King, the United States' Chief of Naval Operations. 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. The Battle of Noemfoor was just getting started, seeing General Douglas MacArthur not giving the Japanese a moment to catch their breath. Meanwhile the battle for Imphal was finally coming to a bitter end as Mutaguchi's megalomaniac operation was clearly a disaster.

Spook joins us to talk about becoming a Marine pilot, Reuniting with Fig after 37 years, Flying the Hornet in the Marines and the Royal Australian Air Force. Find out why he chose the Marines over the Air Force and the Navy. Find out how he got his callsign. Learn that he has video proof that HE was the one to shoot down a drone tractor. Hear how he placed in a race he wasn't even in. Find out why he was grounded on his 1000th hour in the Hornet - and why he became the Supreme Commander of Marine Forces, Northern Australia. All this and more in a great week with another great aviator!

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his confidante spend the eve of D-Day wracked with nerves. The Supreme Commander writes a heartfelt letter of apology… to be released if the operation fails. And, from airfields in England, the first Allied planes take to the skies… A Noiser production, written by Jo Furniss. As featured on D-Day: The Tide Turns. A special thanks to Legasee for the use of their archive of personal recollections from the men and women who witnessed D-Day. To view the full interviews visit legasee.org.uk For ad-free listening, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you're on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his confidante spend the eve of D-Day wracked with nerves. The Supreme Commander writes a heartfelt letter of apology… to be released if the operation fails. And, from airfields in England, the first Allied planes take to the skies… A Noiser production, written by Jo Furniss. A special thanks to Legasee for the use of their archive of personal recollections from the men and women who witnessed D-Day. To view the full interviews visit legasee.org.uk For ad-free listening, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you're on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Monday, June 10th, A.D. 2024. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus $130,000 for funeral expenses for martyred missionary couple in Haiti More than $130,000 has been raised online for the funeral and related expenses of husband and wife missionaries who were murdered in Haiti, reports MyChristianDaily.com. Davy and Natalie Lloyd, who served with Missions in Haiti, were killed in a gang attack, as violence has engulfed the nation. One GoFundMe campaign has raised close to $57,000, while a second fundraising effort has raised over $76,000. However, while the generosity of Christians has been exemplary, MissouriNet reports that online scammers are taking advantage of people wanting to help the families. Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker, who is the father of Natalie, explained that con artists have been creating fake fundraising pages to try and steal donations meant to help bring his daughter's body and her husband's body back to the U.S. Israeli Defense Forces rescue four hostages from Gaza Four Israeli hostages were rescued 245 days into their captivity, reports The Jerusalem Post. Working with other law enforcement officials, the Israeli Defense Forces, rescued them from two separate nearby locations in central Gaza in a high-risk joint operation. They include Noa Argamani, age 25, Almog Meir, age 21, Andrey Kozlov, age 27, and Shlomi Ziv, age 40, all of whom were kidnapped by Hamas and brought to the Gaza Strip from the 'Nova' party. This is the third such successful operation to rescue hostages since the war started on October 7th. An uncertain number of Palestinian terrorists and civilians were killed during the operation. The Israeli Defense Forces implied that dozens of terrorists were killed, but left open the possibility that potentially some dozens of Palestinian civilians might have also been killed. Interestingly, the U.S. provided intelligence on the hostages before Israel's successful rescue operation. Biden's DOJ indicts doctor who exposed transgender child mutilation at TX hospital Here in America, Biden's so-called “Department of Justice” is at it again. This time it indicted a small-town surgeon who revealed that ghastly transgender surgeries were being secretly committed on minors at Texas Children's Hospital after the hospital had purportedly discontinued its transgender program, reports LifeSiteNews.com.    Dr. Eithan Haim identified himself earlier this year as the anonymous whistleblower who provided evidence of the ongoing so-called “sex-change procedures” for children as young as 11 to Manhattan Institute journalist Christopher Rufo last year. Dr. Haim said that U.S. marshals showed up at his home earlier this week, summoning him to court to face four felony counts of alleged HIPAA violations.    Haim, a 33-year-old general surgeon, has always maintained that no medical privacy laws were broken when he provided evidence of Texas Children's Hospital's continued transgender program to Rufo. He told the Daily Wire, “It's my responsibility as a doctor, as a physician, to expose this to the public. If I don't, then this abuse can continue. I knew that future generations, like my children, would never be able to forgive me if they knew I had the chance to do something and I decided to stay silent. It requires average, everyday doctors to stand up and speak out against things like this.” Luke 12:2-3 says, "God has determined that the secrets will be uncovered, the truth will come forth, and God's thought about every behavior and action will be vindicated." Voddie Baucham: Pervasive sexual sin sign of God's judgment Pastor Voddie Baucham warned that the pervasive sexual sins of the prevailing culture are signs of divine judgment, but that the Gospel still offers hope and that American Christians should plead with God for revival while preparing for persecution. Baucham, who is on leave in the U.S. from his position as Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia, preached from Romans 1 during an event last Saturday at Lamar Baptist Church outside Dallas. He cited some of the points he made in his new book entitled It's Not Like Being Black: How Sexual Activists Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement. Baucham noted the irony that he was making his remarks on the first day of pride month, which he referred to as "pride goes before destruction month." He noted that the Apostle Paul ultimately spends much of the first chapter of Romans explaining how the wrath of God manifests in the world by giving mankind over to sexual depravity and "a debased mind.” Romans 1:18-19, 26 says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. … Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” Baucham said, "We are living in a time, in an era when there are people who are desperately wicked, and in desperate need of repentance and faith, in desperate need of the Gospel.” In describing the evil culture in Romans 1, he said that the destruction starts with a denial of God and His authority, as well as a desire to suppress the truth, which he noted has long been readily apparent in modern culture. Baucham said that the consequence of such a worldview, first leads to general sexual immorality, which he explained first manifested in the Sexual Revolution and in the separation of sex from marital commitment and family. He also said contraceptives, abortion and the crisis of fatherlessness are connected to such an attitude. Baucham then explained that "dishonorable passions" are the next stage of divine judgment against a wicked culture, and suggested that the scale at which modern society is subject to them is historically unprecedented. … “Whenever we're pursuing one of God's good gifts outside of the boundaries wherein God gives that gift, it never brings us the satisfaction that we crave. And on top of that, it always brings us guilt and shame." Correction on Dwight D. Eisenhower's title In Friday's newscast, I incorrectly claimed that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Major General on D-Day. Actually, his title on June 6, 1944 was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. My apologies. 24 Worldview listeners gave $7,268 And finally, toward our goal of raising $28,550 by this weekend to help keep the newscast on the air, 24 Worldview listeners stepped up to the plate.  That's the most response we have had since Monday, June 7th. Our thanks to Daniel in Mexico City, Mexico who gave $5, Nathan in Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia who gave $25, Gjon and Lynne in Bridgewater, Massachusetts who gave $33, as well as Jeremy in Grants Pass, Oregon, Jeffrey in Forest Hill, Maryland, and Patricia in Portland, Oregon – each of whom gave $50. We're grateful to Jennifer in Coos Bay, Oregon, Timothy in Pine Plains, New York, and Logan, Eli and Quin in Mhlambanyatsi, Eswatini or Swaziland, Africa -- each of whom gave $100 We appreciate Bianca in Mhlambanyatsi, Eswatini pledged $10 per month for 12 months for a gift of $120, Tristan in Summerdale, Alabama who gave $140, Robin in Simsbury, Connecticut $150, Peter in Seaside, California and Julie in Marion, Indiana – both of whom gave $200, as well as an anonymous donor in Independence, Missouri who gave $280. We're grateful to God for Jared in Caldwell, Idaho who pledged $25 per month for 12 months for a gift of $300, Erica in Littleton, Colorado who gave $365, as well as Merlin in Middlebury, Indiana and James in Kennewick, Washington – both of whom gave $500. And we were moved by the sacrifice of Sarah in Madera, California who gave $600, William in Lees Summit, Missouri and Steven in Plainview, Texas – both of whom pledged $50 per month for 12 months for a gift of $600 each, Carl in San Antonio, Texas who gave $1,000, and Robert in Boerne, Texas who pledged $100 per month for 12 months for a gift of $1,200. Those 24 Worldview donors gave $7,268. Ready for our new grand total? Drum roll please. (sound effect of drum roll) $14,583 (audience cheering) So, we fell short of our goal by $13,967. By this Friday, June 14th, our midway point in our month-long fundraiser, we need to raise an additional $42,517 toward our final goal of $114,200 to fund the 6-person team that makes this newscast come to life. We're looking for 10 Worldview listeners to pledge $100 per month for 12 months for a gift of $1,200, 35 folks to pledge $50 per month for 12 months for a gift of $600, and 70 people to pledge $25 per month for 12 months for a gift of $300. It would be exciting to see 30 new donors step up to the plate today. Just go to TheWorldview.com, click on “Give,” select the dollar amount you'd like, and click on the recurring button if that's your wish. And, if you haven't written me yet, share in 2-4 sentences what you appreciate about The Worldview. Make sure to include your city and state and country if outside America. Send your thoughts to Adam@TheWorldview.com. Close And that's The Worldview on this Monday, June 10th in the year of our Lord 2024. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

The last year of the First World War was one of startling about turns in fortune. In the spring, making highly effective use of a different approach to artillery in combination with new tactics for infantry, the Germans broke through the British lines in France. It looked for a moment as though victory might be in their grasp. But clever tactics weren't enough once they were through the lines, since to turn the British around and drive them back to the sea needed something more: massive numbers of men. And they didn't have them. Not that the Germans learned the lesson. They kept trying, in offensive after offensive, against both the British and the French, at one point getting right back to the Marne and threatening Paris once again. But they were blocked each time. What was worst for them is that as they started to run out of men – and they lost 1.1 million in all those offensives – the Allies were getting huge reinforcements. The American Expeditionary Force was seriously increasing its numbers in France and, indeed, beginning to win some battles. Slowly the tables turned. By the autumn, far from seeming to be on the brink of victory, the Germans began to look defeated. And the other Central Powers were cracking too. Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary signed armistices with the Allies from late October into early November. Finally, the Germans too asked for it all to end. And on 11 November at 11:00 – eleven o'clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – they signed their own armistice. The guns, at last, fell silent. Illustration: Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in France at the end of World War I, in 1920. National Portrait Gallery x120172 Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

When Edmund's Scottish lands are given to the King's Supreme Commander, Douglas McAngus, he plots revenge.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur Tedder was General Eisenhower's Deputy as Supreme Commander for Operation Overlord during the Second World War. A quiet and thoughtful leader, Tedder understood the difference between war and warfare and carefully orchestrated his campaigns – including the transportation plan concerning D-Day – in an alliance context to great effect. Tedder's strategic leadership can be characterised as understated and thoughtful, underpinned by his ability to manage relationships with allies and experts to get the most from each. He also understood the importance of waging war economically in a way that exploited logistics capacity as a critical enabler for his own forces and as a means of weakening his enemies. Despite the Allied victory, after the Second World War he recognised the weaknesses that loomed. This week's guest, Air Marshal Edward Stringer, was the air component commander for NATO's operation in Libya in 2011, the Director of Operations in the UK Ministry of Defence and the UK liaison officer to the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. In his last role, he was Director General Joint Force Development. Since retirement, he has become an expert commentator and writer on defence, defence strategy and air power.

#NATO: "#RUSSIA: "General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato's deputy supreme commander from 2011 to 2014, said in a letter to The Times this week that it is time to “think the unthinkable” and consider bringing back conscription in order to deter Russia from all-out war. TIMES."  #Bestof2023: 3/4: #USNavy: "The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over." Jerry Hendrix, Atlantic Monthly. @SagamoreInstitute https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/ 1905 US Navy lef by Admiral Dewet for s reception at the TR White House.

#NATO: "#RUSSIA: "General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato's deputy supreme commander from 2011 to 2014, said in a letter to The Times this week that it is time to “think the unthinkable” and consider bringing back conscription in order to deter Russia from all-out war. TIMES."  #Bestof2023:  4/4: #USNavy: "The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over." Jerry Hendrix, Atlantic Monthly. @SagamoreInstitute https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/ May, 1942 Yorktown refit at Pearl Harbor after the cola Sea and tasked for Midway.

#NATO: "#RUSSIA: "General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato's deputy supreme commander from 2011 to 2014, said in a letter to The Times this week that it is time to “think the unthinkable” and consider bringing back conscription in order to deter Russia from all-out war. TIMES."  1/4: #USNavy: "The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over." Jerry Hendrix, Atlantic Monthly. @SagamoreInstitute https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/ 1939-1940 Finland vs Soviets Winter War

#NATO: "#RUSSIA: "General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato's deputy supreme commander from 2011 to 2014, said in a letter to The Times this week that it is time to “think the unthinkable” and consider bringing back conscription in order to deter Russia from all-out war. TIMES."  2/4: #USNavy: "The Age of American Naval Dominance Is Over." Jerry Hendrix, Atlantic Monthly. @SagamoreInstitute https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/us-navy-oceanic-trade-impact-russia-china/673090/ 1943 USS New Mexico

In the previous episode that took place in March of 1965, I mentioned that although we didn't know it, the western world was entering into the early stages of a turbulent upheaval that would eventually revolutionize human consciousness on a global level. As one of the seventy million American baby boomers who were busy growing up at the time, I was heading right into it, as well. In the chapter of “Wilt, Ike & Me” that was included in the episode, I had made mention of three critical factors that would become significant influences in shaping the upcoming changes – John F. Kennedy, Bob Dylan, and marijuana. Like the subterranean movements of massive Teutonic plates, the foundational reverberations from these powerful forces were about to unleash a major earthquake. As with the rest of us who lived through that era, I was radically changed by it, and I'm going to present some of the deeper impressions that it made on me. But before I do, there are a few things I would like to point out.  First, during that time I was exposed to a combination of events and influences that changed the trajectory of my entire life, and ultimately, personal growth became my primary focus. So, I tend to view things from that particular perspective. Of course, there are many other ways of looking at what happened back then and mine is only one of them.  I will also include some profound events that happened to me which opened my eyes to a larger vision of what human intelligence can become, which inspired me to reach for higher ground. I continue to be a work in progress, but so is everyone else who is still alive. Regardless of your hopes and dreams, if you want to move forward, you always have to start from where you are. And as any great card player will tell you – the trick to the game is in learning how to play the hand you're dealt.  Regarding the societal history of what happened, some of what I am about to discuss can be proven and some of it cannot. But presenting historical fact is not the purpose here. And besides, history isn't always what it's cracked up to be. According to George Santayana, the renowned American philosopher and educator, “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened…told by people who weren't there.” As with the content of all these podcasts, the information that follows will simply be presented for your consideration. My suggestion is that you just take it and see what it does for you.   This episode is going to focus on JFK. We'll get to Dylan and marijuana a little later. For now, we want to look at one essential aspect of JFK's presidency, particularly his emergence as a champion of world peace.    Let's start weaving this tapestry of time on January 17, 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his Farewell Speech to the country. Before he became president, Eisenhower was the quintessential military man. He had graduated West Point in 1915 and remained on active duty in the army for thirty-three consecutive years. A five-star general in WWII, he served as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, directing the allies to victory in that grueling six-year tragedy that claimed the lives of 15 million soldiers and 38 million civilians. So, it's three days before he's about to leave office, and the soldier/president is bidding farewell to the people of the republic that he had served for his entire life. And what does say to them? Well, at one point, he issued them a stern, now-famous warning. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he said.  “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.” If you wonder that he meant by all this, it can be summed up in one simple, but simply dreadful fact – warfare had become extremely profitable. Both the constant threat of war, as well as its execution, creates an enormous, constant, and ongoing cashflow, regularly generating massive profits. This makes it inherently dangerous, because of an inherently dangerous aspect of our current mentality – when it comes to being right or being rich, a lot of us will choose to take the money, regardless of the consequences. Our world is rife with examples of the unenlightened rationales that we use to justify our misguided actions, which are incredibly short-sighted to say the least.   In his speech, Eisenhower was the first one to coin the term, the “Military Industrial Complex,” which delineated the network of dependencies and relationships that exist between the government, the military, and powerful defense contractors. With his decades of military experience, he warned that we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. He said that it was the unwarranted influences by the complex that posed the potential risk, due to the disastrous rise of misplaced power that could come from it. In other words, policy could become driven by profit.   When it comes to gaining influence, nothing beats just plain buying it, which is a practice that human beings began perfecting almost as soon as soon as they created money. In modern times, money spent on lobbying congress is a reliable barometer for tracking influence sought.  In 2022, the defense industry spent over $125 million in lobbying and its affiliates contributed another $17.5 million to the reelection of certain members of congress. A total of $858 billion was spent on US defense that year. Now this is a number we readily accept today. It continues year in and year out. But in 1961, it was unthinkable. It reminds me of what Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein in “All the President's Men” about solving the mystery of Watergate, when he told them, “Just follow the money.” Three days after giving his farewell speech, Eisenhower, the oldest man ever elected president at age 70, passed the gavel to the youngest man ever elected – John F. Kennedy, at age 43. And in many deeply profound ways, the old was giving way to the new. We're going to jump ahead a little bit here. We're going to move forward 646 days, from inauguration day, Jan. 21, 1961, to October 27, 1962, which is considered by some to be the most significant day in human history which most people have never heard of.    Of course, John F. Kennedy is one of the most famous figures in all American history and he has been the topic of over 40,000 books, so I'm quite sure you've heard of him. But I'm also just as sure that you've probably never heard of someone named Vasily Arkhipov. But these were two of the key players on that fateful day.   As you may have guessed, it was at the very height of the incredibly dangerous Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had recently learned that Russia had installed a significant number of nuclear missiles in Cuba that were easily capable of inflicting severe damage on over half of the United States. The President had put in place a naval embargo, blocking all cargo into Cuba. Ominous threats between the two countries had been escalating and hostilities were rapidly building. Then, earlier on that October day, Russia had shot down a US spy plane, killing the pilot. In America, Kennedy's military staff was calling for an immediate counter attack. Meanwhile, the Russian commanders were demanding that Khrushchev take significant military action as well. Castro even wired Khrushchev calling for him to launch a nuclear missile targeted at Florida. In the extremely volatile situation, things had clearly gone from bad to worse. Meanwhile, four Russian submarines were secretly lurking in the waters near the blockade and unbeknownst to US intelligence, they were armed with nuclear torpedoes. At one point, the battery died aboard one of the Russian submarines, the B-59, and it lost all communication with the outside world, including with its command center. One of the major US destroyers in the area, the Charles B. Cecil, suddenly detected the sub and began dropping mini depth charges into the water to force it to come to the surface and identify itself. On top of all this, the sub had lost its air conditioning and was running low on oxygen. The crew had become extremely anxious and it was getting worse.  Believing that the war between the US and Russia had already begun, the captain started to prepare to launch one of their nuclear torpedoes. He would make a pre-emptive strike and blow the US destroyer out of the water. Fortunately, though, the Russian rules of engagement dictated that the decision to fire a nuclear weapon had to be unanimous among all three commanders of the ship. At 34 years old Vasily Arkhipov, the guy you never heard of, was second in command and he resolutely refused to endorse the action of launching the torpedo. Instead, he went against the captain, insisting that in a non-combative stance, the sub should rise to the surface and identify itself. An intense argument ensued for quite a while, but Arkhipov stood his ground and in accordance with the Russian rules, he blocked the launch. Finally, they decided to bring the B-59 to the surface. The two ships signaled each other of peaceful intentions. The Cecil stood down and the situation ended without further incident. Over the next few days, with a round of intense back-channel diplomacy between Kennedy and Khruschev the entire crisis was finally resolved. It may not sound like much now that sixty years of history have gone by, but many scholars consider that moment on October 27 to be the closest humanity has ever come to a full-scale nuclear war, with all the tragedy that could have ensued. If Arkhipov had complied with the captain's order and that Russian sub had sunk the American destroyer with a nuclear torpedo, all hell might have broken loose and we don't know what might have happened. We do know that Russia and America had major nuclear arsenals pointed at each other that were ready to launch at a moment's notice. And those weapons were about a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, which killed about 100,000 people. If things had gotten out of hand, which could have easily happened, it is quite possible that fifty million people could have been killed within an hour or so. More casualties that took place during the six years of World War Two, would have been caused in less than a day. Kennedy had been deeply moved by the entire episode. He headed the US position hands on, making all the key decisions from beginning to end and he knew how close we had come to a major, human-caused catastrophe. He may or may not have known that just one 34-year-old man, standing on his own, outside the chain of command, made a decision that saved millions of lives.  But Kennedy was a renowned student of history and had earlier passed around a book to his staff called “The Guns of August,” which told the story of how World War I took place due to a series of reckless mistakes coupled with poor diplomacy, and he fully understood what could have happened. He knew what was in his hands and he knew what he had to do.   We'll stop here for now, but sometime after this harrowing incident JFK began to transform into an active proponent for peace. As the tale continues in the next episode, we'll get into some fascinating theories about JFK's metamorphosis. And then we have Dylan, marijuana, LSD and the Beatles on the horizon. So, essentially, the story is just beginning… As always, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and let's get together in the next one.

RR The Wire 1730Z January 12, 2024PRECEDENCE: ROUTINE RRDTG: 173012Z JAN 24ICOD: 163012Z JAN 24CONTROLS: Public ReleaseQQQQBLUF: TEXAS SEIZES BORDER CROSSING. YEMEN VOWS RETALIATION FOR STRIKES. -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Middle East: Following major airstrikes within Yemen, Houthi forces have vowed to retaliate. A few hours after the American and British attacks, Yemeni forces conducted an attack on a commercial shipping vessel. The attack was unsuccessful as the missile fired at the vessel missed, splashing down within 500m of the ship.Around the region, an observable increase in rocket attacks originating from Hezbollah in Lebanon was noted last night, but no indicators of a major offensive effort are present yet.Europe: Panic buying is underway in Sweden following statements by government officials regarding the possibility of war. Defense Minister Bohlin stated that “there could be war in Sweden”. The Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces reinforced these statements, urging the public that “On an individual level, you have to prepare yourself mentally”. AC: Though these statements are not out of the ordinary considering events in Europe, hearing such blunt admissions by high-ranking officials has been shocking for many Swedes. There are no indicators that war will break out in Sweden imminently, but as tensions remain extremely high throughout the continent, general preparedness is a prudent goal for citizens to consider.-HomeFront-TX: Significant developments are underway at the southern border. The State of Texas has seized land surrounding the infamous Shelby Park in Eagle Pass. TX National Guard forces have deployed in positions so as to block federal CBP agents from accessing the border. The adjacent boat launch also used by CBP is also now off limits to federal agents.This move comes following months of federal agents cutting razor wire, removing barricades, and directly aiding and abetting illegal immigration. As a reminder, last week DHS officials confirmed that over 85% of all illegals encountered at the border are not currently being deported, but instead being released into the United States.Washington D.C. – Congress voices objection to not approving airstrikes in a nation the U.S. is not at war with. Questions also remain following Pentagon statements that SECDEF Austin allegedly approved the strikes from his hospital bed.Analyst Comments: Though tensions between agencies have been common at the southern US border for years, recent developments have shifted attitudes into more of an adversarial nature. As history has proven, the impacts that state vs. federal conflict can have are often underestimated before flashpoints occur. Likewise, the use of armed soldiers by both sides presents even more opportunities for substantial mistakes to be made.Following the strikes in Yemen, the main question remains: “What happens next?”. Yemeni forces will likely repair or replace damaged facilities and equipment over the next few weeks. Calling into question the philosophical nature of an air war, it is hard to argue that even substantial targeting within a nation will be totally successful. As such, Yemen will be quick to prove that the strikes did not remove all of their combat power, and will likely increase targeting of US Navy vessels in the region. Commercial shipping companies will likely be hesitant to resume operations as one airstrike is not likely to reduce Yemeni capabilities enough for ships to become confident in transiting the Red Sea. Especially considering the Houthis are now overly motivated to carry out strikes on commercial shipping, to reaffirm their military dominance in the region.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst: S2AEND REPORTNNNN

A round-up of the main headlines in Sweden on January 9th 2024. You can hear more reports on our homepage www.radiosweden.se, or in the app Sveriges Radio Play. Presenter: Sujay DuttProducer: Michael Walsh

Last time we spoke about the landing at Saidor and the drive against Sio. The Australians were still advancing across Shaggy Ridge when General MacArthur unleashed an amphibious assault against Saidor to cut off the Japanese escape and isolate Sio. Numerous features were seized up the large ridge and the Americans successfully amphibiously assaulted Saidor and seized their airfield. General Adachi placed the 51st and 20th divisions under the command of General Nakano, who was tasked with advancing to Gali to try and secure a new supply point. Meanwhile efforts were made to try and contain the new threat in Saidor while simultaneously holding back the Australians in the south. Over on new britain the airdrome was seized as Colonel Katayama launched a failed counter attack against the Marines. The Marines tossed back the attack and began their own advance further inland. This episode is Ledo Road Offensive 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 Americans had landed at Cape Gloucester, Saidor and were carrying out massive attacks against Rabaul. As we had seen previously, on November 5th, aided by bad weather, a surprise air raid was made by the USS Saratoga and Princeton, led by Rear-Admiral Frederick Sherman that inflicted heavy damage to 4 cruisers within the harbor; Maya's engine room was smashed by a bomb killing over 70 men; a 500 lb bomb hit Mogami; Takao took 2 500 lb bomb hits while 3 500 lb bombs narrowly missed Atago killing 23 seamen and caused severe damage to the ship's plating. 2 other cruisers and 3 destroyers also suffered light damage. Captain George Chandler flying a P-38 fighter pilot described how “There were B-24 bombers up high and B-25 bombers attacking right down on the deck dropping ‘frag' bombs on the airplanes along the runways … we did our best work at high altitude, but we also took part in combat a thousand feet off the ground.” The devastation caused Admiral Miniechi Koga to withdraw his forces to Truk, thus ending the IJN threat to Bougainville. A Japanese naval officer would later admit that they had given up on Bougainville mainly because of “the serious damage received by several Second Fleet cruisers at Rabaul by carrier attack …” The successful  raid against Rabaul left Halsey ecstatic. “It is real music to me and opens the stops for a funeral dirge for Tojo's Rabaul.” On November 8th, reinforcements led by Rear-admiral Alfred Montgomery task force 38, with the new fleet carriers USS Bunker Hill, Essex and Independence. With the added carrier strength on November 11th, a follow up air raid was made seeing the IJN cruiser Agano torpedoed and badly damaged, while 35 Japanese aircraft out of 120 launched in a counter attack against the carrier force were shot down. Montgomery would not lose a single ship. Admiral Koga's decision to send carrier pilots to bolster Rabaul had quite literally blown up in his face. Koga's air fleet had lost 43 of its 82 Zeros, 38 of its 34 Vals, 34 of its 40 Kates and 6 Judy spotter planes. Over 86 of his 192 experienced pilots and crew had perished, and he had only inflicted minimal damage to Nimitz fleet, it was a disaster. Yet the fantastical reports from Japanese pilots kept pouring in, claiming the air battles over Bougainville were infact won by the IJN air forces. Newspapers in Japan reported victories that added up to the destruction of 5 American battleships, 10 carriers, 19 cruisers and 7 destroyers. The reality was the destruction of 2 cruisers, the USS Birmingham and Denver. By mid november Vice Admiral Kusaka was finding it difficult to sustain attacks against allied convoys feeding supplies to Empress Augusta Bay. On November 12th, Rabaul only had 113 Zero's of which only 59 were operational. Crews were suffering from malaria and other diseases, no one was granted rest as they were limited in personnel and under constant attack. The quality of ground crews and pilots was deteriorating every week.  From November 12 through December 16, the daytime skies over the Gazelle Peninsula remained relatively quiet, as the US carrier forces had departed to support operations in the Central Pacific. AirSols received a new commander on the November 20th, Major General Ralph Mitchell who continued to support operations in Bougainville and General Kenney's Fifth Air Force was supporting preparations for the landings in western New Britain. The lull gave Admiral Kusaka a brief opportunity to recuperate as replacements began to arrive from the Marshalls and Truk. The Imperial Japanese Navy would take six months to replenish its carrier pilots with less well-trained and inexperienced replacements. In the meantime the carrier fleet itself, Japan's most expensive and precious strategic asset, was forced to remain idle in Truk as Nimitz began his island hop through the Central Pacific Meanwhile the Torokina airfield had become crude but operational. The Seabees had created a single 4750 foot by 200 foot strip. It lacked taxiways, hardstands and buildings, but by December 10th it could launch aircraft. Soon the Seabees would carve 2 additional landing trips in the jungle 3 miles further inland. The first would be a mile long, the second 8000 feet or so for bombers. Unlike the Japanese airfields on the Gazelle Peninsula which would take more than a year to complete, both of these American airfields took a month. You often hear, especially from marine veterans of the pacific, praise for the Seabees, such a colossal advantage in logistics paved the way to victory. A massive fighter sweep was launched on December 17 consisting of 32 Corsairs, 24 F6Fs, and 24 RNZAF Kittyhawks from airfields at New Georgia and Vella Lavella who rendezvoused at Torokina, topped off their fuel tanks, and hit  Rabaul. The strike was led by Major Greg “Pappy” Boyington, the commanding officer of Marine Fighter Squadron 214, better known by its nickname, the "Black Sheep Squadron". The three types of aircraft had different flying characteristics and different cruising speeds. The Kittyhawks, slowest of the bunch, took off first. The plan was for them to come in at 15,000ft, and lure out the Japanese. Next came the Hellcats, flying above the Kittyhawks. And the last were the Corsairs, who flew top cover. It was a long flight over open water, calculated to make the pilot of a single-engine aircraft nervous. If the engine failed it was a long swim home. They were intercepted by 35 Zeros, with the Kittyhawks getting the first jump on them. After the Kittyhawks made their first pass, shooting down a Japanese fighter, the advantage switched over to the more agile  Zeros. The Kittyhawk squadron leader's plane was fatally damaged and a second Kittyhawk went down after colliding with a Zero. Remarkably, both pilots survived. Meanwhile the Hellcats and Corsairs, at high altitudes, were coming up empty. The Corsairs circled Lakunai field finding no targets. Pilot Boyington exchanged insults with an English-speaking Japanese officer over the radio, but despite his challenges found no targets in the air. When all aircraft returned to base, the score was even. Two Kittyhawks and two Zeros were lost; one each due to the collision and one shot down by both sides. It was a rather disappointing fighter sweep, but would become just one of many against Rabual over the course of the next 3 weeks. The next raid came two days later seeing 48 B-24s launched, but 32 were forced turned back. The remaining 16 bombers escorted by 51 were intercepted by 94 Japanese fighters, yet they also suffered from the bad weather. Less than half made contact with the enemy. In the resulting fight, 5 Zeros were shot down and 10 allied aircraft were lost, but only two were shot down. The other eight were due to a mid-air collision and landing mishaps, all near home. The weather persisted to be so bad, it was only on the 23rd another sortie could be launched. B-24s escorted by Corsairs and Hellcats bombed Lakunai. Radar gave the Japanese some early warning and nearly 100 Zeros were scrambled. 60 made contact with the bombers after they hit Lakunai. No bombers were lost, but 2 Corsairs were shot down in the ensuing dogfights. Yet the Americans had a twist, they followed up the raid with a fighter sweep of 48 Corsairs. They arrived 15 minutes after the bombers left, surprising the airborne Japanese fighters, most of whom lacked radios. 6 Zeros were shot down, several others damaged and only 2 Corsairs lost.  2 days later, another fighter sweep preceded by bombers was launched claiming 18 aircraft kills, but it was probably closer to 5. In comparison the Japanese pilots would claim 55 kills, a number greater than the american force sent. On the 27 another sweep was launched against Cape Gloucester downing 7 Japanese aircraft for one American. 28 Corsairs returned the next day but this time the Japanese held the advantage, sandwiching the Marines between 2 large groups of Zeros. 3 Corsairs were shot down, but so were 3 Zeros, with 2 others badly damaged. On 30th 36 Liberators escorted by 20 Hellcats and 20 Corsairs, bombed Rabaul. 1 B-24 was lost on the raid, hit by antiaircraft fire. No air combat occurred. On New Years day 15 B-24s and 68 escorting fighters met heavy fighter opposition. 40 Zeros had been sent to Rabaul from Truk, manned by veteran pilots. 1 B-24 was shot down, and two others badly damaged. On January 2 48 US fighters raided and on the 3rd another 44. The two sweeps took out a handful of fighters. The last sweep was on the 5th seeing another 2 zeros downed. Meanwhile back on December 24th, Admiral Sherman's task force 37 raided Kavieng. The operation had two purposes, 1) was to distract attention from the landings at Cape Gloucester and 2) to interdict sea traffic between Truk and Rabaul. The 5000-ton naval transport Tenyru Maru was sunk and several other ships were damaged. After this task force 37 made several raids against Kavieng through January 4th. They managed to shoot down 10 Japanese fighters, damaged IJN cruiser Noshiro and destroyers Fumizuki and Satsuki. On Janaury 6th, the bomber strip at Piva became operational, thus Rabaul was now within range of allied light and medium bombers, basically it was pounding time.   On January 7th, 16 Avengers and 24 Dauntless raided Tobera airfield. From medium altitudes the Avengers dropped 2000lb pounds smashing the paved runways. The Japanese managed to shoot down 3 fighters and one dauntless, but Tobera was temporarily not operational. It was the first time any Rabaul airbase was neutralized from bomb damage. This would be followed up on the 11th by a low level attack against Vunakanau by B-25's, damaging 8 parked aircraft. Then on the 14th, Simpson Harbor was attacked by 16 Avengers , 36 Dauntless and fighter escorts. The Japanese tossed 84 fighters but the allies held such a tight formation it was difficult to get at the bombers. 2 bombers were lost before reaching Lakunai; 1 to a mid-air collision and 1 to antiaircraft fire. When the Allied aircraft finally arrived, clouds shielded Lakunai so the bombers switched to targeting the ships in Simpson Harbor. The Avengers carried 2,000lb bombs, limiting their effectiveness. Regardless, they landed hits on the 15,400-ton-displacement oiler Naruto, and thus ended its goal of becoming the Hokage. . . sorry folks could not resist that one. The destroyer Matsukaze was also damaged alongside 5 other vessels.    AirSols came back to hit simpson harbor and blanche bay 3 days later sinking  the Komaki Maru, Kosei Maru, Yamayuri Maru, Hakkai Maru and Iwate Maru. To take down the combined 30,000 tons of shipping AirSols lost 8 P-38s, 1 Hellcat, 1 F4U, 1 Avenger, and 1 Dauntless. The rest of January saw so many raids, sometimes 2-3 on the same day, thus I can't spend the entire podcast listing their actions, but the losses were brutal. For the Americans they would lose 23 aircraft between January 23rd-30th, for the Japanese it was around 37. By the end of the month, Rabaul was being bled dry of planes, thus the rest was withdrawn to Truk with around 40 pilots. To make up for the withdrawal, Admiral Koga brought over the air groups of carriers Junyo, Hiyo and Ryuho on the 25th adding 62 zeros, 18 vals and 18 kates to Admiral Kusakas dwindling forces. Does that not sound like performing the exact same action that saw such devastating losses in late december to early january? Yes, yes it does.    Moving over to New Britain, General Shepherd had just smashed the Japanese positions along Suicide Creek. While seizing Suicide Creek some Americans captured a Japanese dispatch saying “It is essential that we conceal the intention that we are maintaining positions on Aogiri Ridge. Concerning the occupation of this position, it is necessary that Aogiri Yama is maintained.” While making arrangements for the Japanese assault against Target Hill one, Lieutenant Abe had occasion sent field dispatches to Warrant Officer Kiyoshi Yamaguchi, one of his platoon leaders. The dispatch mentioned command post locations, hour of attack, and other orders. Yamaguchi, with that seemingly incredible indifference to basic security which the Japanese so often demonstrated, simply stuck the dispatch in his pocket and carried it with him to the assault. Marines found it on his body the following morning, thereby gaining their first inkling of the existence of a terrain feature which appeared as such on none of their maps but upon which the Japanese appeared to place great importance, for reasons not yet clear. Aoigiri Ridge was not in the American maps and it was currently held by the 2nd battalion, 53rd regiment and 2nd battalion, 141st regiment. Behind the ridge was a wide trail leading to Magairapua, connecting Matsuda's HQ with Borgen Bay. The trail was heavily used and concealed extremely well from American aircraft. Back over at the American lines, by January 5th, the 3rd battalion, 7th marines had pulled back into the reserve, allowing the weapons company, 7th marines to occupy the extreme left along the shore to prepare for Shepherds offensive against Hill 150. The new formation launched their attack at 11am on the 6th. Tanks surged forward to smash a roadblock held by the 2nd battalion, 141st regiment on the left trail. Artillery was deployed on a nearby hill hitting the Japanese lines as A company tried to break through but was quickly pinned down by the roadblock. The tanks eventually burst through the roadblock sending the Japanese packing.   The americans advanced through the increasingly swampy terrain, facing weaker resistance. B company crossed a small stream and stormed Hill 150 during the afternoon, securing it. Further right, C company and the 3rd battalion, 5th marines were surprised to be held up by extremely heavy fire from the until then unknown feature, Aogiri ridge. The men had no other choice than to pull back to a safe distance to dig in as they reported back the presence of the heavily fortified position. The Japanese would unleash carnage upon the men for 2 days whenever they tried to press forward. On the 7th the commanding officer of the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines, was wounded and replaced by Lt Colonel Lewis Walt. The next day, Walk's men were cautiously inching forward under heavy enemy fire through dense jungle, when they first encountered the ground rising in steepness. At this point Walt realized the feature had to be Aogiri Ridge.    On the 9th, the assault battalions resumed their attacks, this time with heavy artillery support against Aogiri ridge. Walt was reinforced with Companies K and L from the 7th marines, but the advance was extremely slow and painful. Two Japanese bunkers were knocked out with white phosphorus grenades, but that ended the limited gains. Walt personally began pushing a 37mm gun excruciating foot by foot up Aogiri ridge, firing a volley of canisters every few feet. Somehow he managed to get the gun up the steep slope into a decent position to sweep the ridge, allowing the gain of a foothold on the crest of Aogiri. The loss of the ridge was a huge threat to Matsuda and Katayama's positions, so the latter decided to throw his reserves in a desperate but ferocious counterattack.   At 1:15am on the 10th, Katayama sent his recently arrived 3rd battalion to attack the reverse slope. However the Marines held firm and would end up repelling 5 consecutive banzai charges with a fury and persistence unparalleled in the campaign. On the 4th try a Japanese major and two company officers succeeded in knifing through the Marine cordon almost to Colonel Walt's fox hole, 50 yards behind the front line. At that instant one of two short rounds in a 60-round artillery barrage burst in a tall tree almost directly overhead, and the major died there, sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. The 5th charge was blunted by artillery and the Japanese finally cut their losses and pulled back. The Japanese had suffered immense casualties, seeing all 3 of their battalions depleted, forcing Katayama to pull off Aogiri ridge that very night. The morning of the 10th saw Walk's men securing the feature and then discovering the vital Magairapua trail. The marines went to work mopping up the area until January 12th, whereupon Shepherd planned to seize Hill 660. The feature was guarded by the 6th company, 141st regiment supported by a number of guns of the 30th machine cannon company. The fresh 3rd battalion, 7th marines, led by lt colonel Henry Buse Jr were to perform the main assault, with the 1st battalion extending the perimeter behind them. To help the effort, the weapons company,7th marines of Captain Buckley would begin constructing a roadblock between the eastern base of Hill 660 to the shore of Borgen Bay, hoping to cut off the defenders escape route.   At 08:00am on the 13th, after artillery, mortars and the 5th Air Force performed a bombardment of the area, the last Marine offensive commenced. A intricate system of small arms and automatic weapon positions going up the summit unleashed fire upon the marines, quickly pinning down I company. L Company attempted swinging to the right, but were also pinned down. Engineers worked a light tank forward far enough to place fire across a gorge demolishing the more troublesome enemy weapons. By late afternoon, together with artillery supporting fire, the pinned-down companies were rescued and withdrawn for the night. Meanwhile the Weapons company worked with their bulldozer, by 1030 they had skirted the eastern base of the hill and set up an all-around perimeter. There they dug in clearing fields of fire for about 60 yards to both north and south, placing their half-tracks and tanks in supporting positions. The only opposition they encountered during the advance was by two Japanese machine guns and emplaced near the summit of the hill. With all said and done they successfully cut off the Japanese line of retreat.  On the morning of the 14th, the 3rd battalion resumed their assault, with their leading companies advancing to the right working their way up. One unit nearly got atop the crest before coming under fire from heavy machine guns. They got to a position where they could bring 60mm mortars to bear, and went to work neutralizing the machine gun positions before a final surge carried them across the summit. The Japanese fled down the crest heading east, coming straight into the line of fire of the Weapons company below. The result was a terrible rout, seeing many escape to the safety of the swamps to the hills southeast. By the end of the 14th, the marines had seized Hill 660 and were performing mop up operations through the following day. At 5:30am on the 16th, Katayama ordered the 6th and 11th companies, 141st regiment to counter attack Hill 660. Soon the marines were face to face with a large banzai charge, seeing the fighting getting up close and personal. But small arms, rifles, 60mm mortars and 81mm artillery broke the Japanese. Over 110 Japanese bodies would be found after the fight. This ended Shepherds offensive, as the remnants of Colonel Sumiya's forces began to arrive to the Borgen Bay area. Over the next few days, the exhausted 7th marines were relieved by the 5th marines and 2nd battalion, 1st marines who had recently been recalled after completing their mission at Green Beach.  After suffering the defeated in Borgen Bay, General Sakai decided to order the 1st battalion, 54th regiment to reinforce Talasea and for Matsuda to launch a last ditch effort, a suicidal one at that, to obliterate the enemy. But the men were in no condition for such an offensive, thus Katayama elected to postpone it for now. Since every man was needed for the defense of Borgen Bay, Colonel Sato took the remainder of his commander and departed Rooke Island to join the main body. Now that Hill 660 was secured, the Americans began a new method of patrolling; this time their patrols would specifically seek out and destroy what was presumed to be exhausted Japanese units, before the division would attack the defensive line at Borgen Bay-Itni river. Yet that is it for new Britian, as we are going to be traveling over to the CBI theater. Between November 22 to December the 1st, two conference were held between the Allied leaders. The first was the Cairo or “sextant” conference on November 22-26th, between President FDR, Sir Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek. The second was held in Tehran on November 28-December 1st between FDR, Churchill and Joseph Stalin. You might be asking, why did they all not meet up together. The crux of it was the Soviet-Japanese neutrality Pact and to a lesser extent, though probably not in Chiang Kai-Shek's mind, Stalin was aiding the CCP. Because the Soviets had not declared war on the Japanese, it would not look to good if they met with the leader of China, likewise Chiang Kai-shek was not too forthcoming to meet with Stalin. The easy fix was to just have two different conferences. Overall the conferences did not really touch too much upon the Pacific war. But Stalin did promise to declare war on Japan within ninety days after the end of the European War. In return he demanded military and logistical concessions in Manchuria, maintenance of Outer Mongolia under Soviet control as well as sovereignty over the Kuril Islands that stretched from north of Japan to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. When Chiang Kai-shek heard about this he had suspicious and noted “The influence of this conference on China will be great. I hope Roosevelt isn't plotting with Churchill and Stalin against me.” Soon his suspicion would turn to anger when he discovered there were secret protocols relating to Manchuria.  Stalin had made some assurances to Mao Zedong that once the Soviets were in the war against Japan, they would have forces to bear down into China to help tip the scale for the CCP against the NRA. Yet after the war, it would seem promises made by Joseph Stalin were not always kept.  Another important aspect of the conferences was the British decision to cancel Operation Buccaneer, the invasion of the Andaman Islands, because Admiral Mountbatten's landing crafts were required for landings in southern france. The Joint chiefs of staff were livid at this, because it came at the same time the Japanese were reinforcing Burma. FDR overruled them and agreed to the British decision and this in turn greatly pissed off Chiang Kai-Shek. Yet at the same time, the Cairo declaration had lifted up the morale for the Chinese army and people to continue their war against the Japanese. The declarations made by the Tehran conference implied publicly that the CBI theater was all but abandoned to the mercy of Japan's air and land forces. Thus it would be no coincidence the Japanese thought it ripe to launch an all-out offensive against China.  In the meantime, the rather aggressive Admiral Mountbatten was trying to salvage what he could of the situation. To try and please Chiang Kai-Shek, he proposed Operation Pigstick. The operation was something Mountbatten had wargamed a bit, it was to be a landing on the southern Mayu peninsula aimed at hitting Akyab. He began assigning landing craft for the amphibious operation, only to be immediately slapped down by Alanbrooke and told to return 3 fast tank landing crafts that were direly needed for operations against Italy. Mountbatten hoped to retain 2 slower tank landing craft, but Cunningham requested them. Pigstick was to be 2 divisions plus 2 brigades who would be used in a southward advance down the peninsula and 1 division in an amphibious assault aimed at surrounding and destroying not less than 20,000 Japanese. An additional landing similar to PIGSTICK, could perhaps be launched in the Ramree-Cheduba area, could take staging areas that would put 15 Corps within reach of Rangoon. Speaking of Ramree, if any of you have heard this kind of myth about over 1000 Japanese being eaten by crocodiles on that island, over on my personal channel the pacific war channel I did a full investigation into the so called “ramree island massacre” story. A little sad about its performance not going to lie. Dramatically improved my lackluster animation skills for it, came out really well and I did a silly impersonation at the beginning, anyways check it out its a fun one! Alongside Pigstick, Mountbatten changed the Tarzan operation into Operation Gripfast, calling for an offensive on north and central Burma with an airborne landing at Indaw to sever the Japanese line of communications to Myitkyina. But now Chiang Kai-Shek was very wary of anything British, so he rejected the plans on December 19th. Alongside pissing off Chiang Kai-Shek, his estranged wife, Joseph Stilwell was also again angry with the British, particularly Mountbatten. At one point Mountbatten proposed moving certain American units into the Hukawng valley to help the offensive there and Stillwell burst out ‘I should like it placed on record that I am responsible for the training of all American forces in this theatre and I am the person to decide when they are adequately trained and can move forward.' Mountbatten replied: ‘I accept that in principle, but would remind you that these troops are being trained under British officers. I am responsible for operations and will decide when units move into the fighting lines. In other words, general, I should like to place on record that I am Supreme Commander out here and what I say goes.' Stilwell took it good-humouredly and laughed. ‘We none of us dispute that,'”. That day Stilwell wrote a letter to his wife, referring scathingly to Mountbatten as ‘the glamour boy. He doesn't wear well and I begin to wonder if he knows his stuff. Enormous staff, endless walla-walla but damn little fighting . . . And of course the Peanut is unchanged. The jungle is a refuge from them both.' The men would all share some screaming matches against another, until Stilwell would shock everyone by exclaiming “I am prepared to come under General Slim's operational control until I get to Kamaing.” It was a truly bizarre idea, Mountbatten asked how such a thing would work, and both Slim and Stilwell asked to discuss the matter amongst themselves. The two men would agree on tactical essentials such as getting more Chinese divisions for the Ledo force and to use the Chindits to assist in hitting Myitkyina. Slim and Stilwell shook hands and Stilwell said to him ‘I would fight under a corporal as long as he would let me fight.' Slim would later reflecte ‘In practice this illogical command set-up worked surprisingly well. My method with Stilwell was based on what I had learnt of him in the Retreat – to send him the minimum of written instructions, but, whenever I wanted anything, to fly over and discuss it with him, alone. Stilwell, talking things over quietly with no one else present, was a much easier and more likeable person than Vinegar Joe with an audience. Alone, I never found him unreasonable or obstructive. I think I told him to do something he did not approve of on only two or three occasions, and on each he conformed, I will not say willingly, but with good grace.' In the end Operation Pigstick never became a reality, because the landing crafts were needed for the Italian campaign and thus the hope of meeting Chiang Kai-sheks continued demand for an amphibious operation was gone. It was almost like the British never intended to go through with such a thing in the first place, woops that is just my opinion. Meanwhile the British-Indian command elected to start a new operation in Arakan. The brutal hard-won lessons of 1st Arakan battle had been absorbed in India Command, with senior British officers determined to avoid similar mistakes. The new operation was the subject of meticulous reconnaissance, planning, and rehearsals. A series of lectures, war games, models of the grounds and syndicate discussions were held for commanders, staff and regimental officers whom carefully considered countering Japanese offensive tactics and assaulting prepared defensive positions like those witnessed at Donbaik. A carefully planned programme of continuous, progressive and intensive training was put in hand for all corps and divisional fighting, support and administrative troops to practice necessary skills, including using brigade boxes, aerial resupply and the infiltration and envelop- ment of enemy positions. This comprehensive training programme culminated in intensive rehearsals and combined arms training with artillery, tanks and close support aircraft carried out near Lohardaga, over ground resembling Arakan, simulating attacks on mock Japanese defensive positions on jungle-clad hills. General Auchinleck assigned the 15th corps, reconstituted at Ranchi with the 3 best trained divisions available: Major-General Harold Briggs' 5th Indian Division; Major-General Frank Messervy's 7th Indian Division and Major-General Christopher Woolner's 81st West African Division.The 26th Indian Division formed the corps reserve. Command of the 15th corps would be given to Lt General Philip Christison. The plan called for the 5th and 7th Indian divisions to advance along the summit of the Mayu range towards Maungdaw and Buthidaung while the 5th and 6th west african brigades would provide flanking protection. On November 1st, the 2 Indian divisions began their advance and by mid november would make contact with a Japanese outpost.As the 7th Indian division advanced astride the Kalapanzin River they ran into stiff resistance. Efforts to dislodge Japanese defenders near Awlanbyin and Letwedet, showcased the formidable difficulties that attacking Japanese defensive bunker positions presented. Most were built on razor-back ridges, through which were burrowed fire positions, affording a limited approach, while the reverse slopes protected troops from view and bombardment. With the precipitous Goppe Pass initially only suitable for porters, pack transport and pack artillery, 7th Indian Division quickly devised other methods to overcome enemy defenses, since normal stereotyped, set-piece attacks stood little chance of success without supporting field artillery. Aircraft proved an ineffective substitute, moreover, with dive-bombing having only a transitory effect since the broken terrain and dense jungle absorbed blast leaving defenses and morale largely intact unless a lucky direct hit was made. The Indian forces began to infiltrate and bypass the well-entrenched Japanese defenses, giving the impression they would soon unleash a frontal attack upon them at any moment. General Messervy's would say of the action  “'We will undoubtedly have a Neapolitan sandwich of British - Japs - British, but it will be one made by ourselves, and with the initiative in our hands it will soon be transformed to British - British - Jap.” They were gaining ground and with it valuable combat experience. On the night of November 30th, the 15th Indian Corps commenced large-scale operations to drive in the Japanese outpost line astride the Mayu Range. A series of brisk skirmishes were fought by 33rd Indian Infantry Brigade on the jungle-cloaked ridges south of Awlanbyin quickly evicting small determined parties of Japanese infantry from carefully prepared platoon and company defensive localities. This was by no means an easy task since most heavily camouflaged positions were built atop steep hillsides overlooking paddy fields that provided an open field of five and difficult going for advancing troops. Earlier directions about infiltration paid off in practice. An attack on Awlanbyin west redoubt from the rear through thick jungle achieved complete surprise. Although a neighboring Japanese position initially held out, its garrison withdrew on 2nd December after being cut off. The 33rd Brigade columns  crossed the Ngakyedauk Chaung and occupied the area from Ngakyedauk village to the ridge about 1.5 miles north-west of Sinohbyin village. By December3rd, they extended the area of operation to the hills overlooking Maungyithaung and Sinohbyin. The 89th Brigade, meanwhile, pushed forward down Tatmin Chaung and established forward positions on the hills south of the chaung, one mile west of Tatmingyaungywa. By mid-month, 7th Indian Division had reached the main enemy positions covering the Tunnels and Buthidaung, and the opening of the Ngakyedauk Pass to wheeled traffic in late December considerably eased resupply and allowed the divisional artillery to join the formation. However, both the Indian divisions were under orders not to get engaged in serious fighting with the Japanese, so the advance stopped there. It is also important to note, in November 1943,  Spitfires were deployed in Bengal for the first time. The 615th and 617th squadrons were based in Chittagong to protect the vital port and also to cover the Arakan. Within one month, the Spitfires destroyed four Japanese photographic reconnaissance aircraft. Previously, the Dinah's range, speed and height had enabled them to fly with impunity over the Allied forward bases and the Hurricanes were unable to catch them. The Japanese reacted by sending out fighter sweeps in order to test the Spitfires and whittle down Spitfire strength. However, by the end of December, the Japanese lost 22 aircraft, another 33 were damaged, and the Allied loss was only 13 aircraft. The greatest air battle occurred on the last day of 1943. On that day, No. 136 Squadron destroyed 12 and damaged 11 when a mixed force of Japanese fighters and bombers attempted to attack the light naval force along the Arakan Coast. The Japanese carried out one strategic attack when on 5 December 1943, 60 bombers and fighters, including some naval aircraft, in two waves bombed Calcutta. The Japanese lost two aircraft and another five were damaged. The three and a half squadrons of Hurricane fighters, including half a squadron of night fighters which were defending the area lost five aircraft and another six were damaged.  To the west the 5th Indian Division had also encountered stiffening resistance from Japanese outposts as it advanced southwards along the coastal plain towards Maungdaw, through the foothills further north and along the spine of the jungle-clad Mayu Mountains. They soon discovered that overcoming Japanese bunker defenses presented particular difficulties. As the division would report "The great difficulty in attacking Jap "hill top" positions lies in the concealment of the actual bunker or weapon pit' one brigade commander later wrote, and in the practical impossibility of deploying attacking troops in thick jungle, particularly where the approach runs along the top of a razor backed ridge.' In each case, patrols infiltrated between these localities isolated them from supplies and reinforcements with the result that Japanese normally gave up ground without a contest. A newsletter prepared by the HQ of 5th Indian Division reported: 'The only way to deal with the Jap def positions is by INFILTRATION. Recent experience has shown that the Jap has produced nothing new in def tactics... It is almost physically impossible in hilly and thick country to have every post covered by another, the posts can be eliminated piece- meal by infiltration tactics.' After the outline of the main Japanese defenses became apparent this approach was also increasingly applied at brigade level. At the end of December 1943, the 5th Indian Division held the area from the sea to the crest of the Mayu Peninsula and the 7th Indian Division moved into the Kalapanzin Valley. By the end of the month they reached Maungdaw. The advancing 5th Indian Division discovered that frontal assaults could not be completely avoided, however, when Japanese troops were determined to stay put. During this advance, the 161st Brigade moved to the high ground to the northeast of Bakkagona about five miles to the north of Razabil. On 30th December, 161st Indian Infantry Brigade assaulted Point 124, but the 4/7th Rajputs were held up by dense jungle and heavy mortar and machine fire and suffered heavy casualties. For six days assaults continued with the forward infantry regularly reaching the Japanese defenses before being driven off by showers of hand grenades and supporting machine-gun from every other enemy defensive position within range. Only after a 'policy of strangulation, starvation, and attrition was adopted', did its defenders withdraw. The 5th Indian Division immediately began probing the main Razabil defenses, while its 123rd Indian Infantry Brigade patrolled the western foothills of the Mayu Range and northern side of Razabil, particularly two hill positions dubbed Wrencat and Wrenkitten. To do so an indirect approach was again advocated by Major-General Harold Briggs in note on tactical policy issued on 4th January, stressing the importance of patrolling to identify positions held by the Japanese and infiltration to seize vital ground in their flanks or rear that would either provoke Japanese counterattacks or force a withdrawal. Meanwhile Stilwell arrived to Shingbwiyang on December 21st and assumed command of the Chinese forces in India. To relive the trapped battalion of the 112th regiment at Yupbang Ga, Stilwell and General Sun planned to send the entire 114th regiment to break the Japanese center at Yupang Ga to rescue the 112th, then hook north to envelope the northern fragment of the Japanese defensive line. On December 24th, they unleashed artillery and launched the infantry into the Japanese lines. The 114th regiment managed to envelop the Japanese right flank by the afternoon and soon a breakthrough emerged allowing for them to make contact with the 112th. Sun's men then surrounded the Japanese pocket during the night and would wipe them out the next morning. And thus the Chinese had gained their first victory at Yupbang Ha, though the Japanese still held the river crossing, so Stilwell began plans for another assault set after Christmas. On December 28th, Sun ordered 3 battalions to attack the north, while the 1st battalion, 112th regiment would sweep to the right, getting behind the 3 Japanese outer strongpoints. The chinese forces rapidly broke the Japanese outer defenses creating a breach while the 1st battalion, 114th regiment broke through the river defensive line. The Japanese tossed a large counterattack, but it would be repelled by the night time. Now Yupbang Ga was in allied hands as the surviving Japanese companies split into smaller groups trying to hold out for many days. With the fall of Yupbang Ga, the Japanese were forced to withdraw from Sharaw Ga as well, so elements of the 2rd battalion, 113th Regiment were be able to seize it by December 30. In the meantime, as the 22nd Division's 65th Regiment had been sent towards the Taro Plain to try and secure the southern flank, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 114th Regiment had been sent south to cross the Tanai Hka at the Kantau ford in an effort to cut off the enemy withdrawal line. By the end of 1943, with the loss of 315 killed and 429 wounded, Sun's 38th Division had gained complete control of the Tarung Hka.  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. Things were deteriorating for the Japanese on New Britain as American Marines were seizing features and gradually pushing them into Borgan Bay. Within the CBI theater a ton of drama amongst the high commanders was surprisingly not resulting in disaster, as operations in Burma were kicking off with great results. Perhaps Burma could be saved.

At a summit in Brussels European leaders announced they will open accession talks with Kiev as well as Moldova, whilst Georgia has been awarded candidate status. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky called the decision "a victory" for his country and the whole of Europe.Vivienne Nunis discusses this and more business news from around the world with journalist Mehmal Sarfraz, Co-founder of the Current PK and Alison Van Diggelen, Host of Fresh Dialogues based in Silicon Valley.(Picture: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and U.S. Army General Christopher G. Cavoli (2-L), Commander of the US Forces for Europe and Supreme Commander of the NATO Forces in Europe (SACEUR), during Zelensky's visit to the headquarters of the U.S. Army Command in Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany, 14 December 2023. Credit: UKRAINE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Check out Volcanica Coffee's over 150 different coffees at https://lmg.gg/volcanica and use code LINUS15 for 15% off! Check out GOG at: https://lmg.gg/GOG Get $5 off your Magic Spoon order with code WAN at https://lmg.gg/magicspoon Timestamps (Courtesy of NoKi1119) Note: Timing may be off due to sponsor change: 0:00 Chapters. 0:55 Intro. 1:20 Topic #1: NVIDIA releases DLSS 3.5. 2:02 NVIDIA's claims, "AI is the future of gaming." 3:44 Linus on native res gaming, DLSS implementation, Luke on possible issues. 8:52 Linus on using AI to game dev, data processing. 15:02 Game dev, graphical fidelity, Luke's "story." 20:41 Stream dies, spliced VOD. 20:43 Topic #2: Microsoft's Nintendo acquisition plans leaked. 21:57 How rumors spread, LTT food & LinusCatTips 22:58 Documents leaks planned projects for Xbox. 25:11 ZeniMax's planned games, Luke on Tomb Raider. 28:52 Microsoft's interest to acquire companies, Luke on companies that fell off. 30:51 Nintendo Switch's power, lack of roadmap, "it's Tomb Raider, who cares?!" 36:00 Luke on Microsoft's roadmap presentation, "pyramid scheme." 39:02 Lack of themed Xbox, Linus's & Luke's experience, Luke's TV, Confused Dan. 45:53 Merch Messages #1 ft. Not-so-smart Linus. 1:01:17 Topic #3: Microsoft's Copilot AI companion. 1:04:02 M365 Copilot's release date, OpenAI's DALL-E 3, new Surface devices. 1:08:44 Trying out Copilot, failing miserably. 1:17:13 Viewer logs in using Steam's QR, crew baffled & impressed. 1:18:35 Luke's prompt suggestions, Linus's drawing, Luke on Copilot's preview. 1:35:55 Linus vents about Microsoft's search ft. Sleep Country. 1:38:01 Topic #4: House LAN center update. 1:41:09 Linus on rack ports, custom terminated cables, pool watercooling. 1:45:20 Planned LTT videos, thermal camera, heat exchanger & transfer. 1:59:08 Server-heated fireplace, Linus on existing tubes & hot water pipes. 2:05:10 Sponsors 2:09:07 LTTStore's new onesie ft. Linus & Luke wearing it. 2:10:20 Merch Messages #2. 2:10:24 Logistics team's reaction to the M&P truck ft. G4 cube, Z Fold 3 repair. 2:32:48 How did Luke get the Starfield Constellation Edition Smartwatch? 2:34:39 Would the badminton center include rental rackets? 2:36:29 RAM in Intel & AMD chips? ft. Luke's phone, old hardware, CD movies, RF-blocking paint. 2:51:28 Topic #5: LTX2024 is not happening. 2:54:17 Whale LAN, potential to improve Whale LAN. 2:59:33 Whaler_99, OG LTT forums mod, officially hired as LMG's IT guy. 3:01:55 LMG employees' comments on M&P's owner & video production. 3:04:12 Best parts that didn't make it into the video? ft. Linus is a fainter. 3:11:26 Topic #6: Asus's ROG Ally base model. 3:11:44 Topic #7: New YouTube policy allows channels to change YT name only. 3:13:06 Topic #8: Unity swaps their install fees change with a new plan. 3:14:25 Merch Messages #3 ft. WAN Show After Dark. 3:15:03 What's the itch factor on the LTT merino T-shirt? ft. Onesie photos. 3:16:44 Tech projects wanting to stay independent despite purchase offers? 3:18:42 Precision screwdriver showcase. 3:18:24 5M face shield Canadian Government formal order story. 3:19:09 Tech in its early days that would become the norm for schools? 3:20:29 Would LTT x Noctua screwdriver be available through Noctua in Europe? 3:20:58 Opinions on tech leaks & its impact on purchases? 3:22:18 What was the best product in a game bundle you got? 3:24:34 Cancelled video project you wished to release and why did you cancel it? 3:25:49 What is Linus's opinion on Ben & Jerry's ice cream. 3:26:47 Favorite LTTStore merch you've ever done? 3:28:46 Opinions on Supreme Commander 2? 3:29:05 Anything felt different since the week break? Any noticeable improvements? 3:33:50 Tech tips on cooling without a pool? 3:35:50 Tell a story about a time you felt like a Sims character. 3:36:52 Thoughts on the GR Corolla & the intelligent manual transmission? 3:37:41 Thoughts on selling 3D printed LTT screwdriver case? 3:39:20 Outro.

A conflict started out of compromise. Fueled by the ego of a World War 2 hero. Douglas MacArthur was made the Supreme Commander of the UN forces sent to help repel the North Korean push to take the entire peninsula. 5 years removed from a victory in Japan, MacArthur was able to push the North back above the 38th parallel. It was against the advice of President Truman to continue the fight up into North Korean territory. What happened after that caused a lot of troops to return home in body bags. Listen in as we talk you through the forgotten war. We are getting Historically High on the Korean War

Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the third of seven sons of David and Ida Eisenhower. Not long after Dwight's birth, the family moved to Abilene, Kansas where he grew up. Dwight later attended West Point Military Academy, graduating in 1915 and soon after met Mamie Doud, who would become the love of his life. The two would be married for over fifty years. Eisenhower rose to fame during World War II as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, leading the successful D-Day invasion that played a significant role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. In 1952, he was elected the 34th President of the United States. Eisenhower's presidency focused on improving the nation's infrastructure and was also marked by efforts to contain the spread of communism during the Cold War while maintaining peace and stability on the international stage. One of his initiatives, was the creation of the People to People International program, which he established in 1956 to improve understanding and friendship between citizens of different countries through educational, cultural and humanitarian activities. In this episode of Your History Your Story, we will be speaking with Mary Jean Eisenhower, youngest grandchild of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower. Mary Jean will share her memories of playing as a child in the White House, spending personal moments with her grandparents and meeting World leaders such as French President, Charles de Gaulle and Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. Mary Jean will also tell how an encounter with Khrushchev's son, Sergei in the 1990's moved her to change careers in order to develop and expand People to People International, the program established by her grandfather. Music: "With Loved Ones" Jay Man Photo(s): Courtesy of Mary Jean Eisenhower To Support Your History Your Story: Please consider becoming a Patron or making a one time donation via PayPal. - THANK YOU!!! YHYS Patreon: CLICK HERE YHYS PayPal: CLICK HERE YHYS: Social Links: CLICK HERE YHYS: Please join our mailing list!: CLICK HERE To learn more about the Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival led by Nicholas Inman in Marshfield, MO. : https://www.cherryblossomfestival.com #yhys #yourhistoryyourstory #history #storytelling #podcast #njpodcast #youhaveastorytoo #DwightEisenhower #MaryJeanEisenhower, #presidential

For the once-great Ming, the 1630s... suck. Manchus are battering down the creaky northern defenses, foreign silver has dried up, the treasuries are empty, famine, plague and locust swarms are ripping through the populace, and bandit warlords are causing a ruckus in the west... with an increasing eye on the capital itself. Time Period Covered: ca. 1638-1644 CE Major Historical Figures: Great Ming: The Chongzhen Emperor (Zhu Youjian) [r. 1627-1644] Xiong Wencan, Supreme Commander of Bandit Pacification [d. 1639] General Yang Sichang [d. 1641] General Sun Chuanting [d. 1643] General Wu Sangui [1616-1678] Great Qing: Hong Taiji [1592-1643] Prince Abatai [1589-1646] Prince Dorgon [1612-1650] Rebels/Bandits: Li Zicheng, "The Dashing King" [1606-1645] Zhang Xiangzhong, "The Yellow Tiger" [1606-1647] Major Sources Cited: Atwell, William. "The T'ai-ch'ang, T'ian-ch'i, and Ch'ung-chen reigns" in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I. Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hebrews 11:13-16

Hebrews 11:13-16

Una persona que dejo su marca en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, llego a ese momento después de una serie de caminos y decisiones. Dwight Eisenhower podría haber tenido mil vidas distintas y haber estado en miles de lugares distintos, pero todo se dio para que en un momento y un lugar, el épico Día D, le tocara a él la responsabilidad. Esta es la historia de cómo el camino de un chico de Kansas termine en Mr Supreme Commander, la cara más famosa de los militares americanos, su general más grande y uno de los pocos que logro junto a Washington y Grant alcanzar la presidencia. Fuentes: Libros y artículos Cómo se hace un líder: Dwight D. Eisenhower Coronel (R) Robert C. Carroll, Ejército de EUA Military Reviews. 2009 Irish, Kerry, "Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines: There Must Be a Day of Reckoning" . Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics. 26. 2010 Carlo D'Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier's Lift (New York: Henry Holt, 2002) E. K. G. Sixsmith, Eisenhower as Military Commander (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1973 A Companion To Dwight D. Eisenhower . Edited by Chester J. Pach. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2017 Sitios web: Wikipedia Video: Dwight D. Eisenhower - General of the US ArmyThe Big Picture – Army Pictorial service Eisenhower – The Presidents – PBS 1993 Dwight D. Eisenhower: Mr. Supreme Allied Commander Goes to Washington Biographics - Youtube Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

When ordered to evacuate the Philippines in the early days of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur made a promise to his troops and to the Filipino people, “I shall return.” Some two years later, MacArthur kept that promise by striding back onto Philippine soil as the victorious Supreme Commander of the forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, declaring “I have returned.” Famous returns are as old as history itself. Yet, the most significant of all returns is yet to occur—the return of Jesus Christ to this world. And, like MacArthur did for those he cared about, Jesus has assured us that, in fact, He will return some day.   WAYS TO LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE:

On this special episode from the Halifax International Security Forum, Olga Stefanishnya, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, discusses what her country needs to prevail against Russian aggression; Latvia's National Security Adviser Jānis Kažociņš on how to think about the threat from Russia and the reality that whoever succeeds Vladimir Putin may well be worse and more dangerous; Supreme Commander of Sweden's Armed Forces Gen. Micael Bydén on preparing his country for NATO membership; and Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian discusses the brutality of Iran's regime as it cracks down on antigovernment demonstrations with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian.

The Dirty Knobs Podcast with Hollywood Mike Miranda, JV James Vicente and EC Eric Carter talk to The Supreme Commander of BMX, Stomping' Stu Thomsen! 

Hello Passengers! Thanks for listening! Become a First Class Passenger! Get all of the bonuses, support the show and Save The Music Foundation! www.patreon.com/accidentaldads   Units 731 is a hardcore metal band formed in Pittsburgh, PA, in 2005. The band combines death metal, hardcore, and slam to create a heavy and chaotic sound for which Pittsburgh bands are notable. Influences include Dying Fetus, All Out War, Irate, and Built Upon Frustration. Ok, wait… wrong notes. Um… ok, here it is. The Unit 731 we're here to talk about is short for Manshu Detachment 731. It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that participated in lethal human experimentation and the production of biological weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. Unit 731 was based in the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Manchukuo's government was dissolved in 1945 after the surrender of Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. The territories claimed by Manchukuo were first seized in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 and then formally transferred to the Chinese administration in the following year.  For those of you wondering, "what in the Jim Henson hell is a puppet state," well, according to Wikipedia, a puppet state "is a state that is legally recognized as independent but, in fact, completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders. Puppet states have nominal sovereignty, but a foreign power effectively exercises control through financial interests and economic or military support. The United States also had some puppet states during the Cold War: Cuba (United States), (before 1959) Guatemala (United States), (until 1991) South Korea A.K.A. United States Army Military Government in Korea (United States), (Until 1948) The Republic of Vietnam A.K.A. South Vietnam (United States), (Until 1975) Japan A.K.A. Allied Occupation of Japan (United States), (Until 1952) Some of the most infamous war crimes committed by the Japanese military forces were caused by this Unit. Internally dehumanized and referred to as "logs," humans were regularly used in Unit 731 testing.    Some atrocious experiments included: disease injections, controlled dehydration, hypobaric chamber experiments, biological weapons testing, vivisection, amputation, and weapons testing. Babies, children, and pregnant women were among the victims. Although the victims were from various countries, the majority were Chinese. Additionally, Unit 731 created biological weapons employed in regions of China, including Chinese cities and towns, water supplies, and farms, that were not held by Japanese soldiers.    Up to 500,000 people are thought to have been murdered by Unit 731 and its related activities. It was called "The Kwantung Army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department." Unit 731 was first established by the Kenpeitai military police of the Empire of Japan. General Shiro Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army, took control and oversaw the unit until the war's conclusion. Ishii and his crew used the facility, constructed in 1935 to replace the Zhongma Fortress, to increase their capabilities.    Up to the end of the war in 1945, the Japanese government generously supported the initiative. Facilities for the manufacturing, testing, deployment and storage of biological weapons were controlled by Unit 731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. While researchers from Unit 731 detained by Soviet troops were convicted in the Khabarovsk war crime trials in December 1949, those seized by American forces were secretly granted immunity in exchange for the information obtained during their human experimentation.    As if we needed more bullshit to make us question the tactics of the U.S. government, The U.S. quelled the talk of the human experiments and paid the accused of doing it an actual salary. So then, similar to what they did with German researchers during Operation Paperclip, the Americans siphoned and took their knowledge of and expertise with bioweapons for use in their own program for biological warfare. Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because biological weapons were banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon.    This begs the question, does this type of government appropriation, paying off and hiring those guilty of explicit acts on humans to use their knowledge to create our own versions of what they committed, considered an act "for the greater good?" Does allowing these turds' immunity to extract their heinous experience worth it?   Japan's occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion. Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese advantage of separating the research station from their island but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects. They viewed the Chinese as no-cost research subjects and hoped they could use this advantage to lead the world in biological warfare. Most research subjects were Chinese, but many were of different nationalities.    Sound familiar? Maybe a precursor to what a bunch of mind fucked Nazis attempted AND SUCCEEDED IN DOING to so many Jews and Jewish sympathizers?    In 1932, Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, chief medical officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and protégé of Army Minister Sadao Araki, was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory (AEPRL). Ishii organized a secret research group, the "Tōgō Unit," for chemical and biological experimentation in Manchuria. Ishii proposed the creation of a Japanese biological and chemical research unit in 1930, after a two-year study trip abroad, because Western powers were developing their own programs. Colonel Chikahiko Koizumi, who eventually served as Japan's Health Minister from 1941 to 1945, was one of Ishii's most fierce supporters inside the Army. In 1915, during World War I, Koizumi and other Imperial Japanese Army officers were inspired by the Germans' successful use of chlorine gas at the Second Battle of Ypres (EEPRUH), in which the Allies suffered 5,000 fatalities and 15,000 injuries as a result of the chemical attack. As a result, they joined a covert poison gas research committee. As a result, unit Togo was started in the Zhongma Fortress, a prison/experimentation camp in Beiyinhe, a hamlet on the South Manchuria Railway 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Harbin.    To start the tests on those in good health, prisoners were often well-fed on a diet of rice or wheat, meat, fish, and perhaps even wine. The inmates were then starved of food and drink and had their blood drained over many days. Finally, it was noted that their health was declining. Shocker.  Some were vivisected as well. For those who don't watch or listen to disturbing documentaries, vivisection is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structures. Others had been purposefully exposed to the plague bacterium and other pathogens. Ishii had to close down Zhongma Fortress due to a jailbreak in the fall of 1934 that jeopardized the facility's secret and an explosion in 1935 that was thought to be sabotage. Then he was given permission to relocate to Pingfang, which is 24 km (15 mi) south of Harbin, to set up a new, much larger facility.  Emperor Hirohito signed a decree in 1936 approving the unit's growth and its incorporation as the Epidemic Prevention Department into the Kwantung Army. It had bases at Hsinking and was split into the "Ishii Unit" and "Wakamatsu Unit." The units were collectively referred to as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army" from August 1940 onward. Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China and wrote in his memoir that he watched films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans." The decree also mandated the construction of a chemical warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Technical Testing Department, and a biological warfare development unit, the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention Workshop (later known as Manchuria Unit 100). (subsequently referred to as Manchuria Unit 516).    Sister chemical and biological warfare organizations known as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Units were established in significant Chinese towns during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Unit 1855 in Beijing, Unit Ei 1644 in Nanjing, Unit 8604 in Guangzhou, and Unit 9420 in Singapore were among the detachments. Ishii's network, which at its height in 1939 had control over 10,000 people, was made up of all these organizations. In addition, Japanese medical practitioners and academics were drawn to Unit 731 by the opportunity to perform human experiments, which was highly unusual, and the Army's robust financial support.   Experiments   Human subjects were used in studies for a specific project with the codename Maruta. Test subjects were selected from the local populace and were referred to as "logs," as in the phrase "How many logs fell?" Since the facility's official cover story to local authorities was that it was a timber mill, the personnel first used the word as a joke. The initiative was internally known as "Holzklotz," which is German, meaning log, according to a junior uniformed civilian employee of the Imperial Japanese Army working in Unit 731. Nothing like dehumanizing the poor people you're experimenting on.   Another similarity was the cremation of the "sacrificed" participants' corpses. Additionally, Unit 731 researchers published some findings in peer-reviewed publications while posing as non-human primates termed "Manchurian monkeys" or "long-tailed monkeys" to do the research.   According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris:   "The Togo Unit employed gruesome tactics to secure specimens of select body organs. If Ishii or one of his co-workers wished to do research on the human brain, then they would order the guards to find them a useful sample. A prisoner would be taken from his cell. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. His brain would be extracted off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal."   Nakagawa Yonezo, professor emeritus at Osaka University, studied at Kyoto University during the war. While there, he watched footage of human experiments and executions from Unit 731. He later testified about the "playfulness of the experimenters:"   'Some of the experiments had nothing to do with advancing the capability of germ warfare, or of medicine. There is such a thing as professional curiosity: 'What would happen if we did such and such?' What medical purpose was served by performing and studying beheadings? None at all. That was just playing around. Professional people, too, like to play.""   Prisoners were injected with diseases disguised as vaccinations to study their effects. For example, to analyze the results of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied. Prisoners were also repeatedly subjected to rape by guards.   Vivisection Thousands of people held in prisoner of war camps were subjected to vivisection (You all know what that is now. Organizations against animal experimentation generally use the phrase as a derogatory catch-all term for experiments on living animals, whereas practicing scientists seldom ever do. Live organ harvesting and other forms of human vivisection, as we also know, have been used as torture.), which was frequently done without anesthetic and was typically fatal. Okawa Fukumatsu, a former member of Unit 731, said in a video interview that he had vivisected a pregnant woman. Prisoners were infected with numerous illnesses before having their bodies vivisected. Invasive surgery was conducted on inmates to remove organs and learn how the condition affects the human body.   Inmates' limbs were severed so researchers could monitor blood loss. Sometimes the victims' corpses' severed limbs were reattached to their opposite sides. In addition, some convicts had surgical procedures to remove their stomachs and reconnect their esophagus to their intestines. Others had parts of their organs removed, including the brain, the liver, and the lungs. According to Imperial Japanese Army physician Ken Yuasa, at least 1,000 Japanese soldiers participated in vivisection on humans in mainland China, suggesting that the practice was commonly done outside Unit 731.   Biological warfare   Throughout World War II, Unit 731 and its related units—including Unit 1644 and Unit 100—were engaged in the study, production, and experimental use of epidemic-producing biowarfare weapons in attacks against the Chinese population (both military and civilian). For example, in 1940 and 1941, low-flying aircraft carried plague-carrying fleas over Chinese towns, notably coastal Ningbo and Changde, in the Hunan Province. These fleas were produced in the labs of Unit 731 and Unit 1644.   With bubonic plague epidemics, these flea bombs claimed tens of thousands of lives. During an expedition to Nanjing, typhoid and paratyphoid virus were dispersed into water supplies across the city's wells, marshes, and residences and infused into snacks served to inhabitants. Soon after, epidemics spread to the joy of many scientists, who concluded that paratyphoid fever was "the most effective" of the diseases.   At least 12 large-scale bioweapon field tests were conducted, and biological weapons were used to target 11 Chinese cities. According to reports, a 1941 raid on Changde resulted in some 10,000 biological injuries and 1,700 deaths among poorly equipped Japanese soldiers, most of which died of cholera. In addition, Japanese researchers conducted experiments on inmates suffering from cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, and other illnesses. The defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb, which were used to spread the bubonic plague, were developed as a result of this study. Ishii presented the concept of designing some of these bombs using porcelain shells in 1938.   These bombs allowed Japanese forces to launch biological strikes, infecting crops, water supplies, and other places with cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and other deadly illnesses via fleas. Researchers would study the victims dying during biological bomb trials while protected by protective suits. Aircraft would deliver contaminated food and clothes into parts of China that were not under Japanese control. Additionally, innocent people received candies and food that had been tainted.   On several targets, bombs containing plague fleas, contaminated clothes, and infected goods were dropped upon the unsuspecting citizens. As a result, at least 400,000 Chinese citizens were killed due to cholera, anthrax, and plague. Also tested on Chinese citizens was tularemia, Also known as rabbit fever or deer fly fever, which typically attacks the skin, eyes, lymph nodes, and lungs.   Chiang Kai-shek dispatched military and international medical specialists delegation to document the evidence and treat the sick in November 1941 in response to pressure from various stories of the biowarfare assaults. However, the Allied Powers did not respond to a report on the Japanese deployment of plague-infected fleas on Changde until Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a public warning in 1943 denouncing the attacks. The announcement was made publicly available the following year.   Obviously, this is ridiculous and inhumane, but it couldn't be used on us here in the U.S. of "Don't Tread On Me" A, right?   Well, hold on to your stars and stripes because during the final months of World War II, codenamed "Cherry Blossoms at Night," Unit 731 planned to use kamikaze pilots to infest San Diego, California, with the plague. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier. So yep, if the United States had not dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there could have been a man-made plague set upon the west coast.   Weapons testing Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and positions. Flamethrowers were also tested on people. Victims were also tied to stakes and used as targets to test pathogen-releasing bombs, chemical weapons, shrapnel bombs with varying amounts of fragments, explosive bombs, and bayonets and knives.   To determine the best course of treatment for varying degrees of shrapnel wounds sustained on the field by Japanese Soldiers, Chinese prisoners were exposed to direct bomb blasts. They were strapped, unprotected, to wooden planks staked into the ground at increasing distances around a bomb that was then detonated. After that, it was surgery for most and autopsies for the rest.   This info was taken from the documentary — Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria   Other experiments   In other diplorable tests, subjects were deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death. They would then be placed into low-pressure chambers until their eyes popped from the sockets. Next, victims were tested to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival. Next, they were hung upside down until death; crushed with heavy objects; electrocuted; dehydrated with hot fans, placed into centrifuges, and spun until they died. People were also injected with animal blood, notably horse blood; exposed to lethal doses of X-rays; subjected to various chemical weapons inside gas chambers; injected with seawater; and burned or buried alive.   The Unit also looked at the characteristics of several other poisons and chemical agents. Prisoners were subjected to substances like tetrodotoxin (the venom of pufferfish or fugu), heroin, Korean bindweed, bactal, and castor-oil seeds, to mention a few (ricin). In addition, according to former Unit 731 vivisectionist Okawa Fukumatsu, large volumes of blood were removed from some detainees to research the consequences of blood loss. At least half a liter of blood was taken in one instance at intervals of two to three days.    The human body only contains 5 liters.   As we mentioned, dehydration experiments were performed on the victims. These tests aimed to determine the amount of water in an individual's body and how long one could survive with little to no water intake. Victims were also starved before these tests began. The deteriorating physical states of these victims were documented by staff at periodic intervals.   "It was said that a small number of these poor men, women, and children who became marutas were also mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. They sweated themselves to death under the heat of several hot dry fans. At death, the corpses would only weigh ≈1/5 normal bodyweight."   — Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, (2019)   Unit 731 also performed transfusion experiments with different blood types. For example, unit member Naeo Ikeda wrote:   In my experience, when 100 cc A type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, whose pulse was 87 per minute and temperature was 35.4 degrees C, 30 minutes later, their temperature rose to 38.6 degrees with slight trepidation. Sixty minutes later, their pulse was 106 per minute, and the temperature was 39.4 degrees. The temperature was 37.7 degrees two hours later, and the subject recovered three hours later. When 120 cc of AB-type blood was transfused to an O-type subject, an hour after the subject described malaise and psychroesthesia (feeling cold) in both legs. When 100 cc of A.B. type blood was transfused to a B-type subject, there seemed to be no side effects.   Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) pp. 38–39 Unit 731 tested a slew of chemical agents on prisoners and had a building dedicated to gas experiments. Some of the agents tested were mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, white phosphorus, adamsite, and phosgene gas. To put things in horrific perspective, the mortality rate from mustard gas was only 2-3%. Still, those who suffered chemical burns and respiratory problems had prolonged hospitalizations and, if they recovered, were thought to be at higher risk of developing cancers during later life. The toxic effects of lewisite are rapid onset and result from acute exposures. The vesicant properties of lewisite result from direct skin contact; it has been estimated that as little as 2 ml to an adult human (equivalent to 37.6 mg/kg) can be fatal within several hours. Airborne release of cyanide gas, in the form of hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride, would be expected to be lethal to 50% of those exposed (LCt50) at levels of 2,500-5,000 mg•min/m^3 and 11,000 mg•min/m^3, respectively. When ingested as sodium or potassium cyanide, the lethal dose is 100-200 mg. According to a medical report prepared during the hostilities by the ministry of health, "[w]hite phosphorus can cause serious injury and death when it comes into contact with the skin, is inhaled or is swallowed." The report states that burns on less than 10 percent of the body can be fatal because of liver, kidneys, and heart damage. Adamsite (D.M.) is a vomiting compound used as a riot-control agent (military designation, D.M.). It is released as an aerosol. Adverse health effects from exposure to adamsite (D.M.) are generally self-limited and do not require specific therapy. Most adverse health effects resolve within 30 minutes. Exposure to large concentrations of adamsite (D.M.), or exposure to adamsite (D.M.) within an enclosed space or under adverse weather conditions, may result in more severe adverse health effects, serious illness, or death.  Phosgene is highly toxic by acute (short-term) inhalation exposure. Severe respiratory effects, including pulmonary edema, pulmonary emphysema, and death, have been reported in humans. Severe ocular irritation and dermal burns may result following eye or skin exposure. It is estimated that as many as 85% of the 91,000 gas deaths in WWI were a result of phosgene or the related agent, diphosgene A former army major and technician gave the following testimony anonymously (at the time of the interview, this man was a professor emeritus at a national university): "In 1943, I attended a poison gas test held at the Unit 731 test facilities. A glass-walled chamber about three meters square [97 sq ft] and two meters [6.6 ft] high was used. Inside of it, a Chinese man was blindfolded, with his hands tied around a post behind him. The gas was adamsite (sneezing gas), and as the gas filled the chamber the man went into violent coughing convulsions and began to suffer excruciating pain. More than ten doctors and technicians were present. After I had watched for about ten minutes, I could not stand it any more, and left the area. I understand that other types of gasses were also tested there."   Taken from— Hal Gold, Japan's Infamous Unit 731, p. 349 (2019)   Super gross. Takeo Wano, a former medical employee of Unit 731, claimed to have observed a Western man being pickled in formaldehyde after being chopped in half vertically. Because so many Russians were residing in the neighborhood at the time, Wano suspected that the man was Russian. Additionally, Unit 100 experimented with poisonous gas. The captives were housed in mobile gas chambers that resembled phone booths. Others donned military uniforms, while others were made to wear various sorts of gas masks, and other people wore nothing at all. It's been said that some of the tests are "psychopathically cruel, with no possible military purpose." One experiment, for instance, measured how long it took for three-day-old newborns to freeze to death. Jesus christ. Additionally, Unit 731 conducted field tests of chemical weapons on detainees. An unknown researcher at the Kamo Unit (Unit 731) wrote a paper that details a significant (mustard gas) experiment on humans from September 7–10, 1940. Twenty participants were split into three groups and put in observation gazebos, trenches, and fighting emplacements. One group received up to 1,800 field cannon rounds of mustard gas for 25 minutes while wearing Chinese underpants, without a cap or a mask. Another set had shoes and a summer military outfit; three wore masks, while the others did not.   They also were exposed to as many as 1,800 rounds of mustard gas. A third group was clothed in summer military uniform, three with masks and two without masks, and were exposed to as many as 4,800 rounds. Then their general symptoms and damage to the skin, eye, respiratory organs, and digestive organs were observed at 4 hours, 24 hours, and 2, 3, and 5 days after the shots.  Holy shit. Then the psychopaths injected the blister fluid from one subject into another, and analyses of blood and soil were also performed. Finally, five subjects were forced to drink a water solution of mustard and lewisite gas, with or without decontamination. The report describes the conditions of every subject precisely without mentioning what happened to them in the long run. The following is an excerpt of one of these reports:   "Number 376, dugout of the first area:   September 7, 1940, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Looks with hollow eyes. Weeping redness of the skin of the upper part of the body. Eyelids edematous (uh-dim-uh-tose)(Swollen with fluid), swollen. Epiphora. (excessive watering), Hyperemic conjunctivae (ocular redness).   September 8, 1940, 6 am: Neck, breast, upper abdomen, and scrotum weeping, reddened, swollen. Covered with millet-seed-size to bean-size blisters. Eyelids and conjunctivae hyperemic and edematous. Had difficulties opening the eyes. September 8, 6 pm: Tired and exhausted. Feels sick. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Mucous and bloody erosions across the shoulder girdle. Abundant mucus nose secretions. Abdominal pain. Mucous and bloody diarrhea. Proteinuria (excess protein in urinal, possibly meaning kidney damage).   September 9, 1940, 7 am: Tired and exhausted. Weakness of all four extremities.   Low morale. Body temperature 37 degrees Celsius. Skin of the face still weeping.   Taken from— "Man, Medicine, and the State: The Human Body as an Object of Government Sponsored Medical Research in the 20th Century" (2006) p. 187 Frostbite testing   Hisato Yoshimura, an Army engineer, carried out tests by forcing captives to stand outside, putting various limbs into water at multiple temperatures, and letting the limb freeze. Yoshimura would then use a small stick to whack the victims' frozen limbs while "producing a sound similar to that which a board emits when it is struck." The damaged region was then treated with different methods, such as dousing it in water or exposing it to the heat of a fire once the ice had been chipped away.   The sadistic fuck, Yoshimura, was described to the members of the Unit as a "scientific devil" and a "cold-blooded animal" because of the strictness with which he would carry out his evil experiments. In an interview from the 1980s, Unit 731 member Naoji Uezono revealed a super uncool and nightmare-inducing incident when Yoshimura had "Researchers placed two nude males in an area that was 40–50 degrees below zero and documented the entire process until the individuals passed away. [The victims] were in such pain that they were tearing at each other's flesh with their nails ". In a 1950 essay for the Journal Of Japanese Physiology, Yoshimura revealed his lack of regret for torturing 20 kids and a three-day-old baby in tests that subjected them to ice water and ice temperatures below zero.   Although this article drew criticism, Yoshimura denied any guilt when contacted by a reporter from the Mainichi Shimbun. Yoshimura developed a "resistance index of frostbite" based on the mean temperature of 5 to 30 minutes after immersion in freezing water, the temperature of the first rise after immersion, and the time until the temperature rises after immersion. In several separate experiments, it was then determined how these parameters depend on the time of day a victim's body part was immersed in freezing water, the surrounding temperature and humidity during immersion, and how the victim had been treated before the immersion. Variables like ("after keeping awake for a night", "after hunger for 24 hours", "after hunger for 48 hours", "immediately after heavy meal", "immediately after hot meal", "immediately after muscular exercise", "immediately after cold bath", "immediately after hot bath"), what type of food the victim had been fed over the five days preceding the immersions concerning dietary nutrient intake ("high protein (of animal nature)", "high protein (of vegetable nature)", "low protein intake", and "standard diet"), and salt intake (45 g NaCl per day, 15 g NaCl per day, no salt).   Oh, science....   Then there's syphilis.   For those that may not know, syphilis is a chronic bacterial disease contracted chiefly by infection during sexual intercourse but also congenitally by infection of a developing fetus. The first sign of syphilis is a small, brownish dot on the infected person's left hand. How many of you looked? You dirty birds!  Actually, the first stage of syphilis involves a painless sore on the genitals, rectum, or mouth. After the initial sore heals, the second stage is characterized by a rash. Then, there are no symptoms until the final stage, which may occur years later. This final stage can result in damage to the brain, nerves, eyes, or heart. Syphilis is treated with penicillin. Sexual partners should also be treated. Unit members orchestrated forced sex acts between infected and noninfected prisoners to transmit syphilis, as the testimony of a prison guard on the subject of devising a method for transmission of syphilis between patients shows:   "Infection of venereal disease by injection was abandoned, and the researchers started forcing the prisoners into sexual acts with each other. Four or five unit members, dressed in white laboratory clothing completely covering the body with only eyes and mouth visible, rest covered, handled the tests. A male and female, one infected with syphilis, would be brought together in a cell and forced into sex with each other. It was made clear that anyone resisting would be shot."   These unfortunate victims were infected and then vivisected at various stages of infection to view the interior and exterior organs as the disease developed. Despite being forcefully infected, many guards testified that the female victims were the viruses' hosts. Guards used the term "jam-filled buns" to refer to the syphilis-infected female detainees' genitalia.   And THAT is so gross on just about every level.   Inside the confines of Unit 731, several syphilis-infected children grew up. "One was a Chinese mother carrying a baby, one was a White Russian woman with a daughter of four or five years of age, and the final was a White Russian woman with a kid of around six or seven," recounted a Youth Corps member who was sent to train at Unit 731. Similar tests were performed on these women's offspring, focusing on how prolonged infection times influenced the success of therapies.   Just when you thought this shit was bad enough, the rape and forced pregnancies came.   For use in experiments, nonpregnant female convicts were made to get pregnant. The declared justification for the torture was the possible danger of infections, notably syphilis, being transmitted vertically (from mother to kid). In addition, their interests included maternal reproductive organ injury and fetal survival. There have been no reports of any Unit 731 survivors, including children, even though "a considerable number of newborns were born in captivity." Female captives' offspring are said to have either been aborted or murdered after birth.   While male prisoners were often used in single studies so that the results of the experimentation on them would not be clouded by other variables, women were sometimes used in bacteriological or physiological experiments, sex experiments, and as the victims of sex crimes. The testimony of a unit member that served as a guard graphically demonstrated this violent and disturbing reality:   "One of the former researchers I located told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another unit member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her; the other member took the keys and opened another cell. There was a Chinese woman in there who had been used in a frostbite experiment. She had several fingers missing and her bones were black, with gangrene set in. He was about to rape her anyway, then he saw that her sex organ was festering, with pus oozing to the surface. He gave up the idea, left and locked the door, then later went on to his experimental work."   What in the actual fuck.   Prisoners and victims   An "International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare" was convened in Changde, China, the scene of the plague flea bombardment, as mentioned earlier, in 2002. There, it was calculated that around 580,000 people had been killed by the Imperial Japanese Army's germ warfare and other human experimentation. According to American historian Sheldon H. Harris, more than 200,000 people perished. In addition, 1,700 Japanese soldiers in Zhejiang during the Zhejiang-Jiangxi war were killed by their own biological weapons while attempting to release the biological agent, showing major distribution problems in addition to the Chinese deaths. Additionally, according to Harris, animals infected with the plague were released close to the war's conclusion, leading to plague outbreaks that, between 1946 and 1948, killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin region.   Those chosen as test subjects included common criminals, captured bandits, anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, homeless people, and people with mental disabilities, including infants, men, elderly people, and pregnant women, in addition to those detained by the Kenpeitai military police for alleged "suspicious activities." About 300 researchers worked at Unit 731, including medical professionals and bacteriologists. However, many people have become numb to carrying out harsh tests due to their experience with animal experimentation.   Without considering victims from other medical research facilities like Unit 100, at least 3,000 men, women, and children: 117—of which at least 600 each year were given by the Kenpeitai—were subjected to Unit 731 experimentation at the Pingfang camp alone. Although the literature generally accepts the number of 3,000 internal casualties, former Unit member Okawa Fukumatsu challenged it in a video interview. He claimed that the Unit had at least 10,000 internal experiments victims and that he had personally vivisected thousands of them.   S. Wells said that Chinese people made up most of the casualties, with smaller proportions of Russian, Mongolian, and Korean people. A few European, American, Indian, Australian, and New Zealander prisoners of war may have also been among them. According to a Yokusan Sonendan paramilitary political youth branch member who worked for Unit 731, Americans, British, and French were present, in addition to Chinese, Russians, and Koreans. According to Sheldon H. Harris' research, the victims were primarily political dissidents, communist sympathizers, common criminals, low-income residents, and those with mental disabilities. According to estimates by author Seiichi Morimura, about 70% of the Pingfang camp's fatalities (both military and civilian) were Chinese, while roughly 30% were Russian.   Nobody who went inside Unit 731 survived. Let me repeat that: "Nobody that went inside Unit 731 survived".  At night, prisoners were usually brought into Unit 731 in black cars with no windows but only a ventilation hole. One of the drivers would exit the vehicle at the main gates and head to the guardroom to report to the guard. The "Special Team" in the inner jail, which was led by Shiro Ishii's brother, would then get a call from that guard. The convicts would then be taken to the inner prisons via an underground tunnel excavated beneath the center building's exterior.   Building 8 was one of the jails housing men and women while building 7 held just women. Once inside the inner jail, technicians would take blood and feces samples from the inmates, assess their kidney function, and gather other physical information. Prisoners found healthy and suitable for research were given a three-digit number instead of their names, which they kept until they passed away. Every time a prisoner passed away following the tests they had undergone, a clerk from the 1st Division crossed their names off of an index card and took their shackles to be worn by newly arrived captives.   At least one "friendly" social interaction between inmates and Unit 731 employees has been documented. Two female convicts were engaged by technician Naokata Ishibashi. One prisoner was a Chinese woman, age 21, while the other was a Soviet woman, age 19. Ishibashi discovered that she was from Ukraine after asking where she was from. The two inmates urged Ishibashi to acquire a mirror since they claimed to have not seen their own faces since being taken prisoner. Through a gap in the cell door, Ishibashi managed to covertly get a mirror to them. As long as they were healthy enough, prisoners were regularly employed for experimentation. Once a prisoner had been admitted to the Unit, they had a two-month life expectancy on average. Many female convicts gave birth there, and some inmates remained alive in the unit for nearly a year. The jail cells each featured a squat toilet and wood floors. The prison's exterior walls and the cells' outer walls were separated by space, allowing the guards to pass behind the cells. There was a little window in each cell door. When shown the inner jail, Chief of the Personnel Division of the Kwantung Army Headquarters, Tamura Tadashi, stated that he glanced inside the cells and observed live individuals in chains, some of whom moved around, while others lay on the bare floor and were in a very ill and helpless condition.   Yoshio Shinozuka, a former Unit 731 Youth Corps member, testified that it was difficult to look through these prison doors because of their tiny windows. Cast iron doors and a high level of security made up the inner jail. No one was allowed admission without specific authorization, a picture I.D. pass, and the entry/exit timings were recorded. These two inner-prison structures were the "special team's" workspaces. This group wore white overalls, army caps, rubber boots, and carried guns.   A former member of the Special Team (who insisted on anonymity) recalled in 1995 his first vivisection conducted at the Unit:   "He didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."   — Anonymous, The New York Times (March 17 1995)   According to some reports, it was standard procedure at the Unit for doctors to place a piece of cloth (or a portion of medical gauze) inside a prisoner's lips before starting vivisection to muffle any screams.   Even though the jail was pretty secure, there was at least one effort to break out... That failed. According to Corporal Kikuchi Norimitsu's testimony, a fellow unit member informed him that a prisoner had been taken "jumped out of the cell and ran down the corridor, grabbed the keys, and opened the iron doors and some of the cells" after "having shown violence and had struck the experimenter with a door handle." Only the bravest of the inmates were able to jump free, though. These brave ones were killed ". Seiichi Morimura goes into further depth about this attempt at escapology in his book The Devil's Feast.   Two male Russian prisoners were being held in handcuffs in a cell. One of them was lying flat on the ground and acting like he was sick. One of the staff members noticed and decided to go inside the cell. The Russian on the ground, suddenly sprang up and overpowered the guard. The two Russians yelled, unlocked their shackles, grabbed the keys, and opened a few more cells. Other Russian and Chinese prisoners were freaking out, up and down the halls while shouting and screaming. Finally, one Russian yelled at the members of Unit 731, pleading with them to shoot him rather than use him as a test subject.   This Russian was gunned down and murdered. One employee who saw the attempted escape remembered what happened: "In comparison to the "marutas," who had both freedom and weapons, we were all spiritually lost. We knew in our hearts at the moment that justice was not on our side ". Even if the prisoners had been able to leave the quadrangle, a vigorously defended facility staffed with guards, they would have had to traverse a dry moat lined with electric wire and a three-meter-high brick wall to get to the complex's outside.   Even members of Unit 731 weren't free from being subjects of experiments. Yoshio Tamura, an assistant in the Special Team, recalled that Yoshio Sudō, an employee of the first Division at Unit 731, became infected with bubonic plague due to the production of plague bacteria. The Special Team was then ordered to vivisect Sudō. About this Tamura said:   "Sudō had, a few days previously, been interested in talking about women, but now he was thin as a rake, with many purple spots over his body. A large area of scratches on his chest were bleeding. He painfully cried and breathed with difficulty. I sanitised his whole body with disinfectant. Whenever he moved, a rope around his neck tightened. After Sudō's body was carefully checked [by the surgeon], I handed a scalpel to [the surgeon] who, reversely gripping the scalpel, touched Sudō's stomach skin and sliced downward. Sudō shouted "brute!" and died with this last word."   Taken from— Criminal History of Unit 731 of the Japanese Military, pp. 118–119 (1991)   Additionally, Unit 731 Youth Corps member Yoshio Shinozuka testified that his friend, junior assistant Mitsuo Hirakawa, was vivisected due to being accidentally infected with the plague.   Surrender and immunity Operations and experiments continued until the end of the war. Ishii had wanted to use biological weapons in the Pacific War since May 1944, but he was repeatedly told to fuck off.   With the coming of the Red Army in August 1945, the unit had to abandon its work in a hurry. Ministries in Tokyo ordered the destruction of all incriminating materials, including those in Pingfang. Potential witnesses, such as the 300 remaining prisoners, were either gassed or fed poison while the 600 Chinese and Manchurian laborers were all frigging shot. Ishii ordered every group member to disappear and "take the secret to the grave." Potassium cyanide vials were issued for use in case the remaining personnel was captured.   Skeleton crews of Ishii's Japanese troops blew up the compound in the war's final days to destroy any evidence of their activities. Still, many were sturdy enough to remain somewhat intact.   Among the individuals in Japan after its 1945 surrender was Lieutenant Colonel Murray Sanders, whose name doesn't really sound Japanese and who arrived in Yokohama via the American ship Sturgess in September 1945. Sanders was a highly regarded microbiologist and a member of America's military center for biological weapons. Sanders' duty was to investigate Japanese biological warfare activity, and B.O.Y. was there a shit ton! At the time of his arrival in Japan, he had no knowledge of what Unit 731 was. Until he finally threatened the Japanese with bringing the Soviets into the picture, little information about their biological warfare was being shared with the Americans. The Japanese wanted to avoid prosecution under the Soviet legal system, so the morning after he made his threat, Sanders received a manuscript describing Japan's involvement in biological warfare. Sanders took this information to General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers responsible for rebuilding Japan during the Allied occupation. As a result, MacArthur struck a deal with Japanese informants: he secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731, including their leader, in exchange for providing America, but not the other wartime allies, with their research on biological warfare and data from human experimentation. Yessiree, bob! You heard that correctly! American occupation authorities monitored the activities of former unit members, including going through and messing with their mail. The Americans believed the research data was valuable and didn't want other nations, especially those guys with the sickle, you know... the Soviet Union, to get their red hands on the data for biological weapons.   The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal heard only one reference to Japanese experiments with "poisonous serums" on Chinese civilians. This took place in August 1946 and was instigated by David Sutton, assistant to the Chinese prosecutor. The Japanese defense counsel argued that the claim was vague and uncorroborated, and it was dismissed by the tribunal president, Sir William Webb, for lack of evidence! The subject was not pursued further by Sutton, who was probably unaware of Unit 731's activities and allegedly a fucking idiot. His reference to it at the trial is believed to have been "accidental."   While German physicians were brought to trial and had their crimes publicized, the U.S. concealed information about Japanese biological warfare experiments and secured immunity for the monsters. I mean perpetrators.  Critics argue that racism led to the double standard in the American postwar responses to the experiments conducted on different nationalities. For example, whereas the perpetrators of Unit 731 were exempt from prosecution, the U.S. held a tribunal in Yokohama in 1948 that indicted nine Japanese physician professors and medical students for conducting vivisection upon captured American pilots; two professors were sentenced to death and others to 15–20 years' imprisonment. So, it's one thing to do it to THOUSANDS OF CHINESE AND RUSSIANS, but HOW DARE you do that to one of us! The fuck?   Although publicly silent on the issue at the Tokyo Trials, the Soviet Union pursued the case and prosecuted 12 top military leaders and scientists from Unit 731 and its affiliated biological-war prisons Unit 1644 in Nanjing and Unit 100 in Changchun in the Khabarovsk war crimes trials. Among those accused of war crimes, including germ warfare, was General Otozō Yamada, commander-in-chief of the million-man Kwantung Army occupying Manchuria.   The trial of the Japanese monsters was held in Khabarovsk in December 1949; a lengthy partial transcript of trial proceedings was published in different languages the following year by the Moscow foreign languages press, including an English-language edition. The lead prosecuting attorney at the Khabarovsk trial was Lev Smirnov, one of the top Soviet prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials. The Japanese doctors and army commanders who had perpetrated the Unit 731 experiments received sentences from the Khabarovsk court ranging from 2 to 25 years in a Siberian labor camp. The United States refused to acknowledge the trials, branding them communist propaganda. The sentences doled out to the Japanese perpetrators were unusually lenient by Soviet standards. All but two of the defendants returned to Japan by the 1950s (with one prisoner dying in prison and the other committing suicide inside his cell). In addition to the accusations of propaganda, the U.S. also asserted that the trials were to only serve as a distraction from the Soviet treatment of several hundred thousand Japanese prisoners of war; meanwhile, the USSR asserted that the U.S. had given the Japanese diplomatic leniency in exchange for information regarding their human experimentation. The accusations of both the U.S. and the USSR were true. It is believed that the Japanese had also given information to the Soviets regarding their biological experimentation for judicial leniency. This was evidenced by the Soviet Union building a biological weapons facility in Sverdlovsk using documentation captured from Unit 731 in Manchuria.   Official silence during the American occupation of Japan As we, unfortunately, mentioned earlier, during the United States occupation of Japan, the members of Unit 731 and the members of other experimental units were set free. However, on May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington to inform it that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii, can probably be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'war crimes' evidence."   One graduate of Unit 1644, Masami Kitaoka, continued to perform experiments on unwilling Japanese subjects from 1947 to 1956. While working for Japan's National Institute of Health Sciences, he completed his experiments. He infected prisoners with rickettsia and infected mentally-ill patients with typhus. As the unit's chief, Shiro Ishii was granted immunity from prosecution for war crimes by the American occupation authorities because he had provided human experimentation research materials to them. However, from 1948 to 1958, less than five percent of the documents were transferred onto microfilm and stored in the U.S. National Archives before they were shipped back to Japan.   Post-occupation Japanese media coverage and debate Japanese discussions of Unit 731's activity began in the 1950s after the American occupation of Japan ended. In 1952, human experiments carried out in Nagoya City Pediatric Hospital, which resulted in one death, were publicly tied to former members of Unit 731. Later in that decade, journalists suspected that the murders attributed by the government to Sadamichi Hirasawa were actually carried out by members of Unit 731. In 1958, Japanese author Shūsaku Endō published The Sea and Poison about human experimentation in Fukuoka, which is thought to have been based on an actual incident.   The author Seiichi Morimura published The Devil's Gluttony in 1981, followed by The Devil's Gluttony: A Sequel in 1983. These books purported to reveal the "true" operations of Unit 731 but falsely attributed unrelated photos to the Unit, which raised questions about their accuracy.   Also, in 1981, the first direct testimony of human vivisection in China was given by Ken Yuasa. Since then, much more in-depth testimony has been given in Japan. For example, the 2001 documentary Japanese Devils primarily consists of interviews with fourteen Unit 731 staff members taken prisoner by China and later released.   Significance in postwar research on bio-warfare and medicine Japanese Biological Warfare operations were by far the largest during WWII, and "possibly with more people and resources than the B.W. producing nations of France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the Soviet Union combined, between the world wars. Although the dissemination methods of delivering plague-infected fleas by aircraft were crude, the method, among others, allowed the Japanese to "conduct the most extensive employment of biological weapons during WWII." However, the amount of effort devoted to B.W. was not matched by its results. Ultimately, inadequate scientific and engineering foundations limited the effectiveness of the Japanese program. Harris speculates that U.S. scientists generally wanted to acquire it due to the concept of forbidden fruit, believing that lawful and ethical prohibitions could affect the outcomes of their research.   Unit 731 presents a particular problem since, unlike Nazi human experimentation, which the United States publicly condemned, the activities of Unit 731 are known to the general public only from the testimonies of willing former unit members.   Japanese history textbooks usually reference Unit 731 but do not detail allegations following there strict principles. However, Saburō Ienaga's New History of Japan included a detailed description based on officers' testimony. The Ministry for Education attempted to remove this passage from his textbook before it was taught in public schools because the testimony was insufficient. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in 1997 that the testimony was sufficient and that requiring it to be removed was an illegal violation of freedom of speech.   In 1997, international lawyer Kōnen Tsuchiya filed a class action suit against the Japanese government, demanding reparations for the actions of Unit 731, using evidence filed by Professor Makoto Ueda of Rikkyo University. All levels of the Japanese court system found the suit baseless. No findings of fact were made about the existence of human experimentation, but the court's ruling was that reparations are determined by international treaties, not national courts.   In August 2002, the Tokyo district court ruled that Japan had engaged in biological warfare for the first time. Presiding judge Koji Iwata ruled that Unit 731, on the orders of the Imperial Japanese Army headquarters, used bacteriological weapons on Chinese civilians between 1940 and 1942, spreading diseases, including plague and typhoid, in the cities of Quzhou, Ningbo, and Changde. However, he rejected victims' compensation claims because they had already been settled by international peace treaties.   In October 2003, a Japan's House of Representatives member filed an inquiry. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi responded that the Japanese government did not then possess any records related to Unit 731 but recognized the gravity of the matter and would publicize any records located in the future. As a result, in April 2018, the National Archives of Japan released the names of 3,607 members of Unit 731 in response to a request by Professor Katsuo Nishiyama of the Shiga University of Medical Science.   After World War II, the Office of Special Investigations created a watchlist of suspected Axis collaborators and persecutors who were banned from entering the United States. While they have added over 60,000 names to the watchlist, they have only been able to identify under 100 Japanese participants. In a 1998 correspondence letter between the D.O.J. and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Eli Rosenbaum, director of O.S.I., stated that this was due to two factors:   While most documents captured by the U.S. in Europe were microfilmed before being returned to their respective governments, the Department of Defense decided to not microfilm its vast collection of records before returning them to the Japanese government.   The Japanese government has also failed to grant the O.S.I. meaningful access to these and related records after the war. In contrast, European countries, on the other hand, have been largely cooperative, the cumulative effect of which is that information on identifying these individuals is, in effect, impossible to recover.   Top Movies about war crimes   https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&genres=war&genres=Crime   All info comes from the inter webs. Blame them.    Damn, this was a gross episode.   Are you actually reading this? That's awesome! How's it going? Life good?   

We welcome our first pseudonymous guest to the clubhouse to discuss what it's like making a game to carry the banner (and serve the community) of a previous title. Designing a Spiritual Successor Game DesignGamingProductionSanctuary Shattered Sun: Real Time StrategySupreme Commander - WikipediaInterview With Special Bread! - Sanctuary, YouTubePac-Man Championship Edition is an electrifying reinvention of a classic and fi… - Richard Stanton, GamesRadarChris Taylor lets us know what he thinks about Sanctuary - Sanctuary, YouTubeDmitry Samartsev, aka Special BreadGuest

Shamster, Paula Davidson, and Supreme Commander and Dear Leader of the People's Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Podregation Chase sit down to sign off for a while. JOIN THE DISCORD https://discord.gg/qwVrhzXH Shama: https://linktr.ee/shama4realz PD: http://bit.ly/pdbach Chase: https://linktr.ee/chasebridges --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/churchstories/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/churchstories/support

Last time we spoke, the death of Nurhaci led to the rise of his grandson Hung Taiji. The Sea King Mao Wenlong was finally caught lying about his military achievements and even secretly negotiating with the Jin. Mao's rival Yuan Chonghuan took little time to get rid of Mao, thus riding himself of the man stealing his limelight. Unfortunately it was not long when Yuan would fall victim to a sneaky ploy of Hung Taiji and was executed under the false pretense that he was a turncoat like Mao. Hung managed to gain some very valuable Ming defectors and upgraded his military with new cannons and naval units. Then Hung proclaimed his people to be the Manchu under a brand new Qing dynasty as he conquered all of Korea. With the Koreans now giving him tribute, he soon turned his gaze towards the Ming, with some new toys in hand.   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, 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 the history of Asia? 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 where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. This episode is The Rebellion of Li Zicheng In early 1634, one man, Chen Qiyu, was instilled with an incredible amount of power. He was made Supreme commander of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Huguang and Sichuan. The Ming Court had realized the required authority necessary to coordinate operations against the wandering bandit menace. Droughts, famine, even cannibalism was seen all over, driving peasants to swell the ranks of bandits who soon became rebel armies. So many officials in numerous provinces complained they lacked the resources necessary to feed their troops, distribute relief or quell rebellions. In turn when they would fail, they would be dismissed, leading to a further shortage of competent men to manage the terrible situation. In the area between Shaanxi and Henan, over 200,000 rebels began taking smaller towns and killing local officials. The rebels would routinely attack smaller towns, usually in groups of 10,000 and perform atrocities against officials. They would avoid any open battles with Ming forces, always on the move. Then all the prominent rebel leaders got together for a meeting, which would be a rather dramatic turning point. The overarching leader amongst them was Li Zicheng who would make many key decisions for them all. They decided to divide their forces and strike out simultaneously in all directions. The most successful of these groups would be the Rebel leaders Zhang Xianzhong and Gao Yingxiang who hit Nan Zhili. Enroute to their target, their troops carried around banners declaring themselves followers of the True Primal Dragon Emperor and thus they were identifying themselves as something more than just mere bandits. They marched through Henan on their way into Nan Zhili, looting the town of Fengyang. There they killed over 4000 Ming officials and civilians performing some heinous atrocities, some stating they even ripped fetuses out of pregnant women. They razed everything to the ground and looted the place for days. Once they were done, Gao headed west and Zhang went east to attack Luzhou. Defending Luzhou was commander Wu Dapo who deployed peasants and troops to defend the town. He set up cannons atop walls and stockpiled large logs to be thrown at the rebels. Then as the bandits got close, his forces opened fire killing around a 1000 of them.Yet such local competent commanders were increasingly becoming rare and the Emperor continuously resorted to dispatching eunuchs wherever he could to resolve matters. These eunuchs of course were not military men and many had ulterior motives. The bandits were moving further south freaking out the Ming Court and Emperor. Drastic measures were enforced such as rushing 43,000 troops from other theaters, such as from the northeast where the Qing could strike at any moment. In the wake of the absolute disaster at Fengyang, Hong Chengchou was given the task to crush the rebels within 6 months time and the emperor followed this up by pledging almost 1 million taels worth of supplies for the task. Despite all these major efforts, Hong had far too few troops, too much ground to cover and far little time.    The rebels roamed freely, prompting one official in Henan to state “the villages are bereft of people, white bones fill the wilderness and at night the crying of ghosts can be heard everywhere”. Rice inflation was so high, it is alleged people were buying human flesh of the deceased in markets. The rebel groups were demonstrating more and more tactical awareness. They began burning crops in certain areas to deny food supplies to pursuing Ming forces. Gao Yinxiang besieged Guangzhou with a force of possibly 70,000 and used many heavy cannons. Gao followed this up by attacking Taozhou, dangerously close to the secondary capital of the Ming, Nanjing. His forces would crush a Ming army in Song and Henan before he returned to Shaanxi in 1636. The rebels and Ming officials would go back and forth with countless battles and one Ming official realized the rebellions now needed to be quelled as a first priority. The Minister of War Yang Sichang stated the rebels were a “disease of the heart” and that the capital region must be protected from the spreading poison of the rebels. The frontier war with the Manchu he deemed to be like the arms of a person, not necessary for survival, but the heart was. Yang saw the greatest danger being in Shaanxi, Henan, Huguang and Jiangbei. He thought the empire required a bold new strategy to restore state control of the central plains. Once this was achieved, then they could turn their attention towards the Manchu threat. Yang's plan was to become known as “shi ian zhi wang” the Ten-sided net. Like most grand proposals during this time, it looked amazing on paper and would be a catastrophic failure.   By 1637 the scope of the rebellions had expanded greatly and the center of its activity was shifting from south and east closer to the capital and the agricultural heartland of the Ming dynasty. Thus Yang proscribed the construction of more defenses along the frontier, hoping to bolster everything aside from troops. He wanted to keep around just 50,000 troops outside the Great Wall, thinking it would be a sufficient deterrent against the Manchu. The idea was, if the 50,000 were attacked by Manchu invaders, they could buy enough time for reinforcements to come. In the meantime they could even open up peace talks with the Manchu simply to buy more time for what he really wanted to do, quell the rebellions once and force all. There was quite an uproar in the Ming Court over the idea of opening peace talks with the Manchu, but it would begrudgingly be done. Some others in the court advised opening up trade markets with their Mongol allies to procure horses, hoping to drive a wedge between the Manchu and their Mongol allies. Ming intelligence at the time suggested the Mongolia frontier situation was a hot spot not just between the Ming and Manchu, but also between the Manchu and certain Mongol groups. The idea as stated by one official was “to use barbarians to control barbarians”.   Yang believed given adequate supplies, how many times have I stated that one at this point, given adequate supplies the soldiers could be fed and would fight, and in turn would be able to depend on the populace accordingly. Once the populace felt safe, they would direct their allegiance to the Ming government and be less inclined to join rebel groups. Then with the populace, they could form militias and finally cut off, isolate and stave out the rebel groups. Yang then prescribed punishment and even execution for Ming officials who were derelict in their duties. This was the “ten-sided net” strategy. Yang said Shaanxi, Henan, Huguang and Jiangbei would have 4 lines of defense, each with a pacification commissioner assigned. At Yansui, Shaanxi, Shandong, Jiangnan, Jiangxi and Sichuan would be 6 auxiliary lines of defense, each also assigned pacification commissioners. Those commissioners would be directing both defensive and offensive operations. Through their efforts they would gradually close in around rebel positions until all were trapped, then killed or captured. Defense was the primary function of it all. Once the net closed in on the rebels, the Ming would employ “clearing the fields and strengthening the walls” as a general strategy. Thus with heavily defended cities and no supplies available to them, the rebels would eventually be forced to surrender. 2 supreme commanders, the Zongli and Zongdu would smash the enemy wherever possible, while the rest of the officials would act more locally. The Zongli and Zongdu's troops would be elite troops with better mobility. Yang estimated they would need 10,000 troops in key defensive posts and around 30,000 for each supreme commander. In total they would require 120,000 troops, of which 36,000 would be mounted. Overall, the problem should be resolved in a matter of just 6 months, sure. Now to equip and supply all these troops it was estimated to cost 2.8 million taels. How were they going to pay for all this, taxes taxes taxes. Yang argued they could increase the land tax by about 12 ounces of grain to bring in an extra 1.9 million taels and get another 400,000 via special taxes on surplus lands. 200,000 from postal revenues and the rest perhaps by raising the sales tax a bit. There was a ton of debate in the Court over all this, but Yang got his way. The plan was a go though it certainly had its critics. One major critic against Yang and his plan was Sun Chuanting, the Grand coordinator of Shaanxi. Sun argued countless problems with the ten-sided net plan. First he argued the funds and manpower for it were highly unrealistic “how can the state raise an extra 2.8 million tales when they've already spent more than 1 million taels in extra revenues”. Sun re-iterated this argument asking where the troops would even come from and how the hell would he manage to do all this in just 6 months. Sun also stated the seasons when this would take place were not the same seasons the bandits usually were at large. There was also the issue of terrain, the rebels could still flee to mountains and forests, which large Ming armies would lose them in. Sun said many more troops would actually be required for this plan and those officials appointed needed to not only be competent, but also very knowledgeable at the local levels. Sun characterized the plan to be more of an “empty net strategy”. But like most critics, hell the majority of our politicians today to boot, Sun had no alternative plan. I am sure any of you in the audience can already see one of the largest issues with this plan, that of taxation. The peasants are rebelling because there is no food or funds in their regions, so the plan is to further tax them to stop them from rebelling? This issue did not go unnoticed, the Emperor stated himself “leadership and money needs to come from the gentry, not the masses. Suppressing the bandits requires a big campaign which requires lots of troops. The money can't come from the people, but should come from the treasury, but the treasury is empty”.  Xiong Wencan, a man who gained a reputation for quelling rebels was appointed as one of the supreme commanders, alongside Hong Chengchou. Out in the field, Xiong and Hong managed to achieve many victories against the rebels,  Hong even managed to defeat Li Zicheng, one of the biggest rebel leaders at large. But these victories did not amount to peace for the populace. Many of the pacifications armies would loot and rape as they drove the rebels into the mountains. As is expected, Ming commanders would not venture deep into mountains, fearing rebel ambushes. Ming forces won numerous battles, claiming the lives of thousands of rebels, but were never able to eliminate the enemy entirely from any given region. At one point, the rebel leader Zhang Xianzhong was defeated in battle and had to surrender. This prompted some Ming officials to discuss the idea of using Zhang Xianzhong to kill other rebel leaders. Most officials deemed the idea completely insane and it was soon disregarded. While the discussions were going on  however, Xiong Wencan allegedly gave Zhang 20,000 men to help maintain local order. This eye opening moment prompted Yang Sichang to become more more personally involved in the campaign, not liking how his subordinates were simply doing things on their own and some not even following direct orders. Yang also vowed to the emperor it would all be done by the winter of 1638. Yang then berated field commanders to obey the authority of the Ming officials. Winter of 1638 came with no significant results, and Yang asked the emperor to replace him, but was refused. This prompted Yang to make a list of officials who he deemed deserved punishment for lack of action during the campaign, one of the most notable was Hong Chengchou who seemed to be making no ground. Many officials were punished, except for Hong who the emperor personally liked and protected.    There were many unforeseen problems, such as local officials hiding resources and bribing the tax agents who came looking for funds. Natural disasters plagued China as well. Locust plagues hit and caused more famines in Henan, Suzhou and Shandong forcing more and more peasants to scrounge for food and many Earthquakes hit Sichuan. More and more the strong joined the rebels and the weak starved to death. Yang himself seemed to not even be following the ten-sided net strategy anymore by 1638. Yang began to prioritize certain regions over others, rather than keeping the net closing overall and when the Emperor questioned him, Yang would argue it was too difficult to coordinate the officials. As I mentioned many of the sub commanders and other officials were beginning to not heed orders and it was becoming a noticeable problem. And of course Yang gave the old, lack of troops, lack of supplies speech. All in all, rebels were certainly being killed or captured and many of their leaders were falling, its not like the Ming were not making headway. Yang was even beginning to feel some confidence that the plan was working and proposed grabbing another million taels for the plan and famine relief. Then disaster would strike.   As I previously mentioned, part of the plan was to open up peace talks with the Qing, to bide more time to finish off the rebels. In 1638, the Ming were not looking so good and the Manchu's were coming off multiple war victories making them not too willing to talk about peace. Some in the Ming Court thought they should negotiate making Hung Tiaji a tributary prince, Yang Sichang pushed for this heavily. Yuan Chongzhen held a meeting with many officials over the state of the frontier defenses. They lacked firepower and many competent commanders were busy with the rebels. In the end as a result of the circumstances the Emperor ruled in favor of offering to make Hung Taiji a tributary prince. Meanwhile Qing nobles such as Dorgon, Kong, Geng and Shang began raiding Ming territroy outside the great wall. Then Dorgon had a lucky encounter at a large redoubt near the Great Wall and annihilated the force in it and proceeded across the border and approached the Yellow River. Zu Dashou alerted the capital and demanded relief forces to rush over. The Ming Court debated on what action to take, Yang Sichang advocated for negotiations, while others urged for battle. One commander Lu Xiangsheng argued with Yang “If you discard war but talk of negotiations,you nourish disaster and bring disgrace to the country. Who doesn't know this? What's the point of my receiving the double-edged sword from the emperor if I don't exert myself in battle”. Yang's rebuttal to this was to sneakily transfer troops from Lu Xiangsheng to another commander named Gao Qiqian, leaving Lu with only 20,000 men. The Emperor for his part was outraged by the Qing threat to his capital yet again and yelled at Yang in front of the Court. It seemed the Emperor was most angry about the idea that those around him thought he personally believed peace talks were the best choice of action, as he did not think they were. The Emperor then ordered Lu Xiangsheng to pursue the enemy and for Gao Qiqian to defend Shanhaiguan. The Emperor sent 40,000 taels to Lu as a reward and stated “Peace talks were the idea of the outer court officials. The Emperor personally favors wars”.    The Qing attacked Gaoyang, where the now 76 year old and retired Sun Chenzong was. He, alongside his whole family participated in the defense of the city. The city fell after 3 days, poor Chenzong and 19 of his family members perished. Lu Xiangsheng pushed for a counter attack, but Gao Qiqian argued they would be better to take up defensive positions. Lu's forces were fighting the enemy at Baoding, but had no rations left. Lu pleaded with his men to continue fighting “you and I have all received the blessings of the state. In this calamity we may not avoid death, but there is no calamity in which we might not attain life!”. His men resolved to fight on to delay the enemy, praying for relief forces to come. Gao's forces were only 15 miles away when they received a plea from Lu to come help, Gao did not reply. Lu's force was surrounded near the Gaoshui bridge outside Jiazhuang, they then engaged the enemy. The battle lasted 6 hours with cannons, guns and arrows flying off. Lu's sub commanders pleaded to try and break out of the encirclement, but Lu demanded they all make a last stand. Lu would die from 4 arrows and 3 sword blows, allegedly after taking 10 men with him. The Qing took Changping, Jizhou, Pinggu and reached the outskirts of Jinan by January of 1639. Jinan city would fall and be razed to the ground, and the Ming Prince Zhang Bingwen would die from arrow fire in street fighting as the defenders fled. Dorgon then raided some territory around Tianjin before heading back east. By the time any significant Ming relief forces came to bear down on the Qing they were already making a withdrawal. The Qing raids had lasted 5 months, they hit 53 cities of which they captured 8. They fought 57 battles defeating 33 Ming divisions and captured an incredible 473,000 Ming, 4000 taels of gold and nearly a million taels of silver. Over 100 Ming officers were killed and sadly 150,000 civilians. The Ming Court responded first with the execution of 32 officials deemed to have allowed the situation to get out of hand. Yang Sichang was impeached, but managed to avoid execution. Competent commanders who were quelling the rebels were transferred to the northeast to prepare new defenses against future Qing attacks leaving the northwest to fester with more rebellions.    A little while back I mentioned the talk of using the surrendered rebel leader Zhang Xianzhong to help kill other rebel leaders. Well this whole time he was in Gucheng training a so-called militia and making promises to the Ming that he would help pacify all of Huguang. He had erected customs houses on the Han river to collect transit taxes, under the guise they were to help defend Gucheng. He was also bribing officials and local administrators left right and center, effectively having them firmly in his hands. Meanwhile Xiong Wencan was still performing offensive operations against the rebels, while the Ming Court in late 1638 falsely believed the rebels were largely quelled. Then Zhang Xinazhong, to the surprise of no one, began rebelling with that so-called militia group he had been training. It should come to no surprise, Zhang's efforts the whole time were in preparation for future rebelling. He had  extorted money through the transit tax schemes and used the funds to reinforce the walls of the town where he settled his garrison. On top of bribing so many officials to turn an blind eye to his actions, upon re-commencing with the rebellion, he sent a release of records of all the corrupt officials who dealt with him and made it public, leading to more and more executions. Zhang's force joined up with another rebel leader's force namd Luo Rucai and they soon began to attack Fangxian which fought them for over a week before its gates were opened. The rebels plundered Fangxian and then casually moved into the mountains near the Shaanxi border. The man who had captured Zhang in the first place, Xiong Wencan was berated for all of this of course. Xiong sent Zuo Liangyu to pursue the rebels, but Zuo's force would be ambushed in the mountains, taking 10,000 casualties and having to retreat. It was one of the greatest rebel victories, they had not only killed a large number of Ming soldiers, his force also got their hands on a ton of war supplies and Zuo's official seals of authority.    The disgraced and severely deranked Yang Sichang demanded to be allowed to deal with the problem and was reappointed minister of war, Grand secretary, Supreme Commander of Bandit pacification and bestowed the double edged sword of authority in 1639, wow talk about the kitchen sink of appointments. The Emperor agreed to give Yang 5 million taels to wipe the rebels out once and for all and pretty much gave Yang carte blanche for how to operate. Apparently the Emperor even personally served Yang wine at a later banquet and gave him a handwritten poem, what a fall and rise moment. Xiong was impeached of course for his incompetence and even being accused of taking bribes from Zhang Xianzhong. Yang had a 6 step plan now to stop the spread of the rebels. First, taxes would be used to raise local troops with military farms established to feed them. Second, town walls would be improved, Third mercenaries would be hired to help train local militias. Fourth all cities would have firearms mounted on their walls. Fifth the government needed to improve famine relief efforts. And sixth they needed river forces to stop rebel boats and advocated for bringing troops from neighboring regions to help encircle the rebels. As you can imagine, the funding for all of this came from what else, new taxes. Surprisingly, Zuo Liangyu was appointed Bandit Pacifying General despite his enormous defeat to Zhang. Zuo from the offset would also believe he was being held back by Yang, who kept him in a defensive position and denying him any opportunity to get revenge upon Zhang.    Despite the efforts, the rebels remained on the rise, now Luo Rucai and Zhang Xianzhong commanded a force of 100,000 by the fall of 1639. Yang decided to surround Zhang's stronghold of Gucheng, as Chongzhen berated him demanding to know how long this would all take. Throughout 1639-1640 the Ming seemed to be piling up victories over the rebels and even Zhang Xianzhong had fled into Sichuan being pursued by a very angry Zuo Liangyu. Yang ordered Zuo to stop pursuing him, but Zuo ignored the order and managed to encircle Zhang near Mount Manao. There he made a major victory, inflicting 3500 casualties, captured several commanders and also Zhang's wives and concubines. Zuo seemingly exonerated himself, but Zhang managed to escape further west into Sichuan, not to mention Yang was not too happy he disobeyed orders. Yang, as was typical of Ming officials, sought to limit those he saw as a rising rival such as Zuo. So Yang recommended another general, He Renlong to be invested with Zuo's title, which would prove to be a serious mistake. Yang's recommendation fell dead, and now he had alienated both Zuo and He. Zuo then turned to pursue Zhang who was beginning a rampage throughout Sichuan. Many Ming soldiers began deserting at this time, prompting Yang to more desperate acts, such as recruiting Shaolin monks at the Temple in Henan. Soon all of Sichuan was in trouble as tons of cities were taken by rebels or simply abandoned. Famines forced peasants to cannibalism and thus many joined the rebels, soon Yang yet again asked to be relieved of his post, but the emperor responded by sending 200,000 taels for famine relief instead.    Because of Yang's strategy to coordinate regional defenses, many local communities were left largely to fend for themselves against the wandering rebels. Zhang and Luo's combined forces struck several cities in Sichuan. Yang was pushed to relocate his HQ to Chongqing where he could be closer to the fighting. He then began to place a bounty on Zhang's head and announced clemency for other rebels if they brought him Zhang's head. To make matters worse, the Ming court increasingly became frustrated with Yang's inability to achieve results with his numerous disputes with his subordinates whom all were rallying against him, stating he was incompetent and should be replaced. To all of this Zhng Xianzhong wrote a poem mocking Yang “Before we had coordinator Shao Who often came forth and danced with me Then came the armies who would not fight But followed me around But now we have good commander Yang Who graciously leaves me a three day road!”. The rebels took Luzhou in December of 1640 and fled at the first sight of Ming troops trying to encircle them. Yang was desperate and ordered all his commanders to assemble at Yunyang and to mount one more campaign to crush the rebels once and for all. Yet by this point many of the commanders were simply ignoring Yang's orders. For example Zuo Liangyu headed east trying to stop rebels from escaping into Shaanxi and He Renglong had gone west doing a similar operation. Yang was lashing out at the commanders arguing with so much terrain to cover it was now better to go on the offense than defense, but all the commanders ignored him. Then Yang's fears were realized when Zhang Xianzhong managed to capture Ming Prince Xiang at Xiangyang. Zhang's men had plundered some seals of office from Ming forces and used them to get into the town. Now Zhang occupied the prince's seat in his palace. Zhang allegedly poured the prince some wine at the palace and demanded of  Xiang “I wish to have the head of Yang Sichang, but he is far away in Laikou, so now I'll have to borrow the prince's head in his stead. This will cause Sichang to suffer the full penalty of the law for having lost his princely fief. Now the prince should use all his strength to finish his wine”. Zhang then tied prince Xiang to the palace wall and lit him and his concubines on fire. Zhang then distributed some 150,000 taels from the prince's treasury to the people, but it should be noted his men also performed horrible atrocities upon the people as well. They cut several hands, feet, ears and noses from random civilians when they captured towns in the area. Now the rebel army moved east taking even more towns, even Guangzhou.    Upon hearing the news Yang was livid with the commanders, who all defended themselves stating they were guarding against raids from Li Zicheng's rebel army from the north. To add insult to injury, Li Zichengs forces did strike from the north hitting Luoyang and managed to capture the extraordinary fat Prince Fu and his grandson. By contemporary accounts, its estimated Prine Fu may have been over 400 pounds and was quite reviled by the local populace. Prince Fu kowtowed before Li, begging for his life. Li of course killed him and then distributed a lot of his wealth to the people of Luoyang stating to them “the prince and the wealthy stripped away the flesh of the people and had no regard for the life or death of the common folk. I've killed him on your behalf”. Allegedly, Li and his sub commanders then stripped flesh from Prince Fu and consumed it with wine as a cruel pun. For taking Luoyang, Li became the foremost rebel leader and the term “dashing Prince” began to be associated with him. Luo Rucai similarly held the title “generalissimo chosen by heaven to pacify the people”.    Yang fell into despair believing all was lost, now he sent a letter to the emperor asking for his own execution. Yang eventually stopped eating and died in march of 1641. Zhang Xianzhong would later capture Yang's ancestral home of Wuling and dig up his grave and desecrate Yang's corpse. Yang's demise truly illustrates the many problems of the late Ming politics and Military situation. All too often, sweeping authority was bestowed on civil officials who lacked military experience. The ten-sided net strategy was doomed from the beginning. The main problem with it was that of resource allocation. If perhaps the Manchu threat had been contained in the northeast, then maybe Yang ould have mustered the forces and resources necessary to beat the rebels. But the entire time there was a fight over resources between the Manchu problem or the Rebel problem, and many in the Court did not know which one was the largest threat. The numerous natural disasters that led to wide scale famines did not help at all and were only made worse by Yang's lack of military experience. While the Ming forces pretty much always bested the Rebels during battle, the rebels enjoyed superior mobility and easily disappeared when needed.   For the remainder of 1641 the Ming tried to fight off the rebels in central China. Ding Qirui replaced Yang Sichang and Fu Zonglong was appointed Vice Minister of War and Supreme commander of Shaanxi. Li Zicheng had risen to be the most powerful rebel leader with Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai beneath him, but all held significant reputations and status. As a result of all the battles to destroy the rebels, now the rebels had earned significant battle experience, technological expertise and a ton of weapons. The Ming were losing their technological edge in war against the rebels.   After the Qing raid into Shandong, the Qing launched a probe attack on Songshan in March of 1639. A Qing force of 30,000 approached Songshan and were met with 37 heavy cannon fire which repulsed the invaders quite quickly. Hung realized the Ming were not yet ready to abandon their defenses outside the Great Wall so easily. Plans for defending the Liaodong region continued, but at this point Ming officials feared to advance any plan for war in fear of failing and being punished for it. It goes without saying the Emperor's temper was pretty high at this point and one was likely to be executed or atleast lose significant status for such ventures if they did not pan out. As the war against the rebels intensified in western and central China, the Qing began to make more noise in Liaodong. Ningyuan remained a thorn in Hung Taiji's side, alongside Songshan and Jinzhou for over a decade now. Since early 1640, the Qing began setting up military farms in preparation for future attacks on Ming territory. The Joseon dynasty was now also helping the war effort by sending food supplies by ship to Xiaolinghe and Dalinghe. Many war plans were brought to Hung by his commanders, and eventually one would be approved. The plan was to capture Songshan and Jinzhou which were thought to be the key to take Shanhaiguan. The war planners argued that previous raids had failed against Shonghan and Jinzhou because the Ming held Shanhai-son jin corridor, but if that was severed, the Qing could consolidate all Liaodong and then hit China proper. Now the Ming were not sitting by idle, they saw the Qing build up and knew a massive invasion was incoming. The Ming also rightfully deduced an attack would be made on Songshan and Jinzhou so both were heavily fortified and prepared for sieges.   The Qing first made their attack on Jinzhou in may of 1640. The Qing began to dig trenches around the city preparing for a very long siege. By March of 1641, Zu Dashous sent a messenger outside the walls of Jinzhou stating to the Qing forces “we've got enough food to last 2-3 years. It will be a long siege; will you be able to hold out that long to outlast us?”. The Qing replied “we aren't lifting the siege, whether it lasts 2-3 or even 4-5 years. How are you going to keep getting food?”. The back and forth talk seemed to unsettle the Ming's Mongol allies at Jinzhou who began to negotiate with the Qing separately. This drove Zu to panic somewhat and go out and strike up a battle with the Qing, but was beaten back into the city. The Qing began to hack their way through the first layers of the city defenses as the Ming continuously sent relief forces from Xingshan, but all were being ambushed and defeated. Then in April of 1641, the Qing assaulted the outpost of Chayeshan. The Qing bombarded it with large cannons and arquebuses. The soldiers and a small force of monks there fought back as best they could using spears, boulders and incendiaries. Soon the Qing overwhelmed the outpost with firepower and razed it to the ground. Then in May of 1641 the Ming engaged a Qing force just outside Xingshan led by Wu Sangui. Wu's force was outmaneuvered despite having a lot of cavalry and encircled by the Qing commanders Dodo and Jirgalang. The Ming lost a few thousand men and several commanders fled, only to then get caught up in another engagement around Liangmashan just a few miles from Jinzhou. At Liangmashan the Ming dug in and tried to bait a force of 3000 Qing into a fight, but the Qing did not take the bait. More fighting occurred outside various outposts and the Ming kept driving off Qing raiders who in turn would just wait until night time to hit walls with siege ladders. Songshan resisted a 37 day long siege under heavy Qing fire, until a Ming relief force arrived. The Qing were camped a few miles due east of Songshan and had to fend off multiple Ming strikes against them. It seemed all the outposts and major walled cities were managing to hold off the Qing. The Qing strategy of bombarding them and trying to draw them out into decisive battles in the field was not working. It seemed the Ming still enjoyed the edge when it came to firepower, but Ming scouts were sending concerning reports that the Qing were busy building a ton of weapon carts and ships at Shenyang. It was clear that a purely defensive war would not be enough. The Ming commanders began to analyze the situation and they discussed the importance of trying to force a decisive battle that might allow them to retake Liaodong. They believed if they could dictate the place and style of combat then they might stand a chance. The Ming also began to get reports that Korean ships were transporting Qing soldiers in the Bohai Gulf which raised the concern the Qing might sever their sea supply lines. This all accumulated into a major war planning session in april of 1641. The Ming commanders held a conference at Ningyuan and decided they needed to break the Qing encirclement of Songshan and Jinzhou. Wu Sangui would lead an initial attack followed up by Zu Dashou from Jinzhou. They ended up clashing with a Qing cavalry force of about 8000, sending the Qing fleeing with their superior cannons. The battle was embarrassing for the Qing, and the commander of the force, Jirgalang was replaced by Hung's brother Dorgon from that point on. It was also around this time the rebels armies had captured and killed the 2 Ming princes and Yang Sichang suicide. All the northeast outposts and cities were demanding further relief forces and supplies, but the Ming court decided to focus on the increasing rebel problem and thus the northeast would just have to rely on what had on hand.   In the summer of 1641, Hung renewed the efforts against Jinzhou and Songshan. The Qing erected their siege weapons, dug moats and trenches around the cities to thwart any relief or supply efforts and dispatched mobile forces to hit anyone outside walls. Chongzhen did not want to send any significant force against the Qing, believing by autumn the Qing would become weakened through attrition. The Emperor did not agree with this plan however and sent the Minister of War Chen Xinjia and Zhang Ruoqi to goad Chongzhen into action. Chen began attacking Chongzhen for what he argued was his lack of faith in the Ming forces. The same factionalism that had plagued the Ming for decades was soon going to force a catastrophe.    Meanwhile, since the death of Yang Sichang, the rebel leader Li Zicheng's ambitions were growing each day. He was now recognized as a charismatic leader and quite the military genius. The way in which he dealt with Prince Fu had gained him a lot of notoriety with the populace since he was handing out money and food. Li then gained the attention of some gentry, one notable one was named Li Yan. Li Yan joined Li and advised him “you must take capturing the hearts of all the people under heaven as the root. If you don't kill people, then you'll win their hearts”. This seems to have had a profound effect on Li as he began to do just that. Li also began a program of making popular slogans for his rebel movement, one went like this “Kill your oxen and sheep. And prepare your wine and spirits.Open your gates and welcome the Dashing Prince. When the Dashing Prince comes. You won't be paying taxes”. A man after my own heart and wallet, if I must say. Shortly after Li Zicheng began changing how his force rebelled, more gentry joined him such as Niu Jinxing and a midget sorcerer named Song Xiance. Yes a Midget sorcerer. Song Xiance was a native of Guide in Henan. He walked with a limp because of a bad right foot and was known by locals as Son the Child. His reputation as a sorcerer came from the fact he went around telling fortunes and casting divinations, which was something seen throughout Chinese history for midgets. Well one of these fortunes he told was that of Li Zicheng who he predicted would have his 18th grandson assuming the imperial throne and that his name would also be Li. So as Li Zicheng enjoyed popular support and expanded his movement, other rebel leaders continued to rampage throughout western and central China. Widespread famine and more people resorting to cannibalism swelled the rebel armies ranks. The situation dramatically changed in august of 1641 when Luo Rucai broke off from Zhang Xianzhong and joined up with Li Zicheng in Henan. Alongside Luo other smaller rebel leaders also joined Li and Li took this newfound force to attack Xincai along the Henan - Nan Zhili border. The commander at Xincai was Fu Zonlong who managed to beat back the rebels with cannons, but the rebel hoards kept coming. Fu then sent word to He Renlong and Li Quoqi asking the 2 commanders for help, but both complained it was not possible to cut through the rebel lines to get to Xincai. Li began to step up the siege and Fu's defenders were soon running low on food. It is alleged, Fu's forces were forced to eat the corpses of slain rebels. When the gunpowder ran out Fu had no other choice but to attack the rebels. Fu led 6000 men out at night to attack the rebels and managed to kill an estimated 1000 rebels before breaking out of the encirclement. They fled for their lives being chased by rebel forces and Fu was eventually captured. The rebels then tried to use Fu to open the gates of Xincai. When he was marched in front of the gate he screamed out “I am the commander of Shaanxi and though I have fallen into rebel hands and there are rebels on all sides of me, I will never serve you. I am a high official. If you wish to kill me, then kill me. How can I not sacrifice my life rather than help you bandits deceive those in the city?”. With all of that said, the rebels beat him to the ground, cut off his nose and Fu would die from his wounds, Xincai would soon after.   Zuo Liangyu would attack Li and Luo's force, driving them in the direction of Henan. From there the rebels would target Nanyang in November of 1641. Nanyang was defended by Meng Ruhu who died trying to defend the city. When Nanyang fell, Li burnt down the residence of Prince Tang furthering his personal war against the Ming monarchy. After this Li began to occupy towns in southwestern Henan much to the dismay of the Ming Court. The Ming Court appointed Sun Chuanting straight out of jail, to be the new Supreme Commander of the 3 Frontiers. By the way I have not made much mention of it, but so many officials were jailed for failing their jobs, only to later be reappointed to that same job or another job and taken out of jail, it really was chaotic.    At this time the Ming official Wang Qiaonian decided to attack Xiangcheng in central Henan which had recently fallen to rebels. Wang led 10,000 well trained troops to take the city and found it relatively undefended, little did he know the rebels had moved on early. Unfortunately, once the rebels heard of Wang taking Xiangcheng they soon returned and surrounded the city. Wang along with many of his men would be killed in street fighting over the city. Zhang Xianzhong made an assault on Shucheng in southwestern Nan Zhili in march of 1642 which fell quite easily after a 3 day siege. Zhang changed the city's name to Desheng meaning “attained victory”. Over the next few months, Li Zicheng and Luo Rucai continued to raise hell in Henan, he rebel forces were rotting the Ming Dynasty to its core.   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.  The Ming dynasty was like a roast beef rotting from the inside while being carved up from the outside. Droughts, famines and terrible administration led so many starving and wartorn peasants to join rebel groups and now Li Zicheng emerged the largest rebel leader amongst others who now held entire armies at their command. Yang Sichang began the disastrous “ten sided net plan” which resulted in many victories over the rebels, but at terrible costs. The more the Ming allocated resources towards quelling the rebels in the northwest and center of China, the weaker their northeastern frontier became, ripe for the plucking for Hung Taiji. Now Hung focused his attention on long term sieges of major Ming held fortresses outside the Great Walls, but once those fell he could attack China proper.   

Try Vultr today with an exclusive 30-day $100 code for signing up at https://getvultr.com/LTT Use code LTT at MechanicalKeyboards at https://geni.us/RecNBTI Save up to $130 during Secretlab's Spring Sale at https://lmg.gg/SecretLabWAN Timestamps: (Courtesy of NoKi1119) 0:00 Chapters 1:24 Intro 1:52 Topic #1 - Linus struggles with smartify-ing his house 4:10 Light switches, issues & costs 6:30 Presence detection, efficiency, money savings 7:50 Switches didn't work, default behavior, motion sensors 10:02 Luke on "bedroom motion," Linus's options 10:45 Issues with home assistant, firmware & updates 13:15 Navigating through JASCO's site 16:26 Linus contacts JASCO, firmware discussion 19:44 Linus asks for fanart of the executive 21:36 Video on JASCO, home hubs software 25:00 Luke tells developers to quit, Linus's frustration 36:33 Linus discussing potential options with 100 switches 42:54 Linus recommends watching the videos 44:22 LTTStore headphone shirt, new promo 47:02 Merch Messages #1 47:08 Inspirations from trip to Intel fab 50:55 Supreme Commander races 51:13 Password managers, self-hosting, authenticating 1:01:50 Sponsor - VULTR 1:03:08 Sponsor - Mechanical Keyboards 1:04:20 Sponsor - Secret Lab 1:05:43 Topic #2 - Kotaku V.S. Xbox Game Pass tweet 1:07:06 Elden Ring seamless co-op overhaul mod 1:10:28 Game pass is very profitable, game library burnout 1:12:36 Neither Linus nor Luke have game pass 1:14:12 Topic #3 - AMD Ryzen 7000 launching by fall 1:15:58 Topic #4 - iFixit selling Steam Deck parts 1:18:00 Topic #5 - Twitter fined $150M for misusing 2FA data 1:22:00 Merch Messages #2 1:22:38 Advise on tech educating, Linus orders an Uber 1:25:02 White desk pads 1:27:12 Xbox gold controller & diamond button PC 1:28:18 LTTStore Backpack update 1:30:39 Firewalla gold ft. muted Luke 1:31:16 Good multiple bay NAS brand 1:31:41 Situations where the right to repair should NOT include third parties 1:33:15 Product they wished they reviewed when it was relevant 1:35:40 Game pass & cloud future pricing speculations 1:36:40 Major exploit on Chrome & Firefox 1:37:12 Convincing that 24-Inch is worth the investment 1:38:57 Outro