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  • #16
    Originally posted by desertswo View Post
    I take it you've never steamed in Tokyo-wan.

    Literary license...

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    • #17
      Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
      Literary license...
      I know. Just yanking your chain. Thing is though, people think of bays as being a sort of enclosed, sheltered area, like San Diego. Tokyo Bay covers nearly 400 square miles. There was plenty of room for all the ships present and then some.

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      • #18
        This I found under a web page titled "10 Things You Didn't Know about the Japanese Surrender": Number 3 answers the above question of the number of ships. Number 4 missed a detail of the Airplane formation. The first formation was (if I recall) 426 airplanes equaling the number of planes the Japanese launched at Pearl Harbor.

        1. Although the formal surrender of Japan did not occur until September 2, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, the occupation of that nation began five days earlier when a team of 150 American personnel arrived at Atsugi airfield on August 28. They were originally supposed to arrive on August 25 but a Japanese delegation in Manila informed the Americans that several more day were needed to ensure that military resistors to the surrender could be disarmed. They were correct since a few days before the Americans arrived, Japanese pilots took off from Atsugi airfield and dropped leaflets on Tokyo and other cities urging resistance by the civilians. Fortunately those pilots were gone, along with any resistance, by the time the Americans arrived at Atsugi.



        2. The surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2 was carefully planned...except for one small but very important detail. The fancy British mahony table brought aboard the Missouri for the surrender was too small for the two large documents that had to be signed. In desperation, an ordinary table from the crew’s mess was drafted as a replacement. It was covered by a green coffee-stained tablecloth from a wardroom. After the 2 surrender documents were signed on the table, it was returned to the mess and was being set for lunch until the ship’s captain and others realized it was an historical object and removed for posterity.



        3. There were 280 allied warships in Tokyo Bay when the surrender took place but no aircraft carriers. They were out at sea as a reserve force just in case the Japanese changed their minds.



        4. There was a thick cover of low dark clouds over Tokyo Bay during the 20 minute surrender ceremony. Unfortunately, 2000 planes were scheduled to fly over the bay the moment the ceremony finished. However, at the last moment the clouds suddenly parted, as if in a Hollywood movie production, and the sun burst through allowing all aboard the U.S.S. Missouri to view the mightiest display of air power ever seen.



        5. When Emperor Hirohito announced over the radio the acceptance of the allied terms of surrender on August 15 (Tokyo time), very few Japanese listening to him understood what he was saying because he was using formal formal court language not used by the general populace. It wasn’t until the radio announcers followed up by describing what he said that the public understood what he meant.



        6. After Emperor Hirohito made his surrender announcement, the Japanese public ran through a gamut of emotions...anger, despair, sadness, and relief. However, one Japanese person had a very different thought on his mind...how to make money off the surrender. He was Ogawa Kikumatsu, a book editor. Ogawa was on a business trip when the surrender was announced on the radio. He immediately returned to Tokyo by train and while traveling he began thinking of how to take advantage of the impending occupation.. By the time he reached Tokyo, he had his idea...to publish a guide booklet of Japanese phrases translated into English with the aid of phonetics. It took less than three days for Ogawa and his team to prepare the 32 page booklet and it was published exactly a month after the surrender. Its first run of 300,000 copies sold out immediately and by the end of 1945, 3.5 million copies had been sold. Here are some sample English phrases from the booklet followed by the phonetics that the Japanese used:



        Thank you!
        Thank you, awfully!
        How do you do?



        San kyu!
        San kyu, ofuri!
        Hau dei dou?



        7. One of the biggest concerns of the Japanese government after the announcement by Hirohito on August 15 was to find “comfort girls” who would serve as a buffer to protect the chastity of the majority of the Japanese women from the occupation troops. Government funds were used to set up the “Recreation and Amusement Association” for this purpose. Ironically most Japanese prostitutes resisted recruitment since they believed wartime propaganda cartoons portraying Americans as having oversized sex organs and they didn’t want to risk bodily injury. Therefore, other women had to be recruited into the “buffer zone.”



        8. The women of the Recreation and Amusement Association were known as Okichis after a woman named Okichi who was assigned to be the consort of the first American consul to Japan, Townsend Harris, in 1856 to keep him from hitting on other Japanese women. You can see Okichi portrayed in a 1958 movie, “The Barbarian and the Geisha,” starring Eiko Ando as Okichi and John Wayne as Townsend Harris. However, there is no record of consul Harris ever saying, “Hit the sack, pilgrim!”



        9. Soupy Sales was almost torpedoed by the Japanese after the surrender... Although most Japanese surrendered peacefully following the surrender, some of them didn’t know about the surrender due to poor communications. The U.S.S. Randall, an attack transport, was on its way back to the states just after the surrender when a Japanese submarine was detected following it. One of the sailors aboard who performed a White Fang comedy act over the ship’s PA system, Seaman Milton Supman (Soupy Sales) worried that the Japanese submarine captain hadn’t heard about the surrender. Or perhaps the Japanese captain just didn’t like Soupy’s shtick. No torpedoes were fired nor was Soupy Sales harmed during that incident.



        10. For a long time after the Japanese surrender, many imperial troops had not heard about it and took years to surrender. The last holdout was Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda who was discovered to be still holding out on Lubang island in the Phillipines in 1974. Although he was known to be a holdout he eluded searchers until he was found by a Japanese college dropout, Norio Suzuki, who was on a mission to travel the world in a search for Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman in that order. In 1986, Suzuki died in the Himalayas attempting to find the Abominable Snowman. It is unknown whether Suzuki ever found a panda but perhaps he was unable to travel to the San Diego Zoo to see them.
        Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

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        • #19
          Interesting shot from Port forward of USS Missouri showing how raty the paint job really was at the time of the signing in Tokyo Bay. As crewmembers have told us, the Missouri only had a fresh paint job on the Starboard side due to lack of paint available including paint obtained from the Iowa. The side the surrender ceremony was signed on and the press photographed.

          [Photo] USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, 2 Sep 1945, photo 1 of 2 | World War II Database
          Last edited by Dreadnought; 10 Sep 13,, 13:58.
          Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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          • #20
            Dread,

            Interesting. I know my dad said his ship (The Cabot CVL-28) was pretty beat up as well.

            But he said the worst looking ships, from the perspective of being worn, were a few RN/RCN escorts he saw in Boston Harbor in late 1943. They looked just totally beat to crap. Tough men who sailed them!
            “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
            Mark Twain

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            • #21
              Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
              Dread,

              Interesting. I know my dad said his ship (The Cabot CVL-28) was pretty beat up as well.

              But he said the worst looking ships, from the perspective of being worn, were a few RN/RCN escorts he saw in Boston Harbor in late 1943. They looked just totally beat to crap. Tough men who sailed them!
              The North Atlantic is a special kind of hell.

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                Dread,

                Interesting. I know my dad said his ship (The Cabot CVL-28) was pretty beat up as well.

                But he said the worst looking ships, from the perspective of being worn, were a few RN/RCN escorts he saw in Boston Harbor in late 1943. They looked just totally beat to crap. Tough men who sailed them!
                My pop told me that during his stop in Pearl that some of the RN "death ships" were in port and he told me that you could smell them clear across the Harbor where they made them moore before damage repairs were made. His ship (Liberty ships) had stopped for fuel and mail service.
                Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

                Comment

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