The Leper Spy by Ben Montgomery

Author:Ben Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2017-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

Gen. Douglas MacArthur during formal surrender ceremonies on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Behind General MacArthur are Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright and Lt. Gen. A. E. Percival. National Archives and Records Administration

MacArthur then addressed the American people by radio. The Japanese diplomats in the gun room of the destroyer on its way back to port heard the address as well. MacArthur’s wife, Jean, also listened from Manila.

“Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death—the seas bear only commerce. Men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. I speak for the unnamed brave millions homeward bound to take up the challenge of that future which they did so much to salvage from the brink of disaster.”

He spoke of the energy of the Japanese and of his desire for the empire, with the right guidance, to expand upward instead of outward. He pointed to the Philippines as an example.

“In the Philippines, America has evolved a model for this new free world of Asia,” he said. “In the Philippines, America has demonstrated that peoples of the East and peoples of the West may walk side by side in mutual respect and with mutual benefit. The history of our sovereignty there has now the full confidence of the East.”

There remained the matter of accepting the surrender of Japanese outliers in the Philippines, and MacArthur put Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Styer, commander of US forces in the western Pacific, in charge. The next day, Styer and Wainwright flew to Manila. What was left of the Japanese armed forces continued to fight until many of them heard the emperor’s surrender by radio and turned themselves in. The largest group of holdouts on Luzon, some forty thousand sick and wounded soldiers, were loosely organized around Kiangan, northeast of Baguio, an area that had come to be known as Yamashita’s Pocket. Yamashita was still commanding troops as he awaited word of the official surrender signing in Tokyo. Once that was confirmed, Yamashita, wearing a patched uniform and his ancestor’s seven-hundred-year-old sword, turned himself in to an American delegation and was flown to Baguio to meet Styer and Wainwright.

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