MOUNTBATTEN
When we arrived in Saigon the Supreme Commander Japanese Forces in South East Asia was Field Marshall Count Terauchi. He was based in Saigon. The Allied Supreme Commander South East Asia Command was Lord Louis Mountbatten who was in Singapore. Mountbatten called all Japanese Commanders in South East Asia to go to Singapore for the surrender ceremony. Terauchi informed Mountbatten that he had difficulty in walking and standing due to a recent stroke. Therefore he would not be able to travel to Singapore.
Mountbatten sent a Royal Navy Surgeon to examine Terauchi and as a result agreed to go to Saigon to take Terauchi's surrender.
Mountbatten arrived at Tan Son Nhut Airport on 29th November 1945. As he climbed down out of his aircraft, a Douglas DC3 that was used as his flying HQ along with another DC3 fitted out as a flying communications unit, he was met by a Guard of Honour of which I was a member. After being greeted by General Gracey and the other Staff Officers, Mountbatten called all the troops to gather round as he wanted to speak to us. The statement he made was eventually to have great significance, yet search as I may I can find no reference to that statement in any of the biographies written about him. This is not a verbatim report of what he said as I did not take notes. Nevertheless it is a true record of the substance of what Lord Louis Mountbatten said on Tan Son Nhut Airport on that day.
He wanted to make it clear that as far as he was concerned we should not "believe the stories we read in the press that the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had brought about the end of the war and the Japanese surrender". "I can tell you that as Supreme Commander South East Asia Command when I issued the demand to the Japanese C-in-C to surrender the reply was that they would gladly issue the order to surrender if I (Lord Louis Mountbatten) would tell them where their troops were." They were in such a ghastly state that they had no idea of the disposition of the troops. In fact it has been reported that the Burma Area Army had received no supplies or reinforcements since December 1944. The Japanese 18th Army in New Guinea had no supplies since April 1944. Some units were reduced to cannibalism.
The importance of that statement by Mountbatten cannot, in my opinion, be over-emphasised. Taken along with the mass of evidence that there is, that the dropping of "that awful thing", to quote General Eisenhower, was not necessary to bring the war against Japan to an end.
It is abundantly clear to me that the Atom Bomb was used in order to be able to say to the Soviet Union, "Thus far and no further". It was used as a political weapon to show the world that the Americans were taking over as the "World's policeman".
If those who read this wish to verify the above statement as to the reason for the dropping of those two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would suggest they obtain a copy of the book by an American historian, Gar Alperovitz, titled Atomic Diplomacy.
Another diversion from life in Saigon was when I was able to go to Hong Kong for a week's leave. Two of us flew from Saigon to Hong Kong in a Dakota, arriving a couple of days after a typhoon had hit the city. The airport is Kai Tak and is situated on the coast of Kowloon in what is called the New Territories. As we approached the runway we could see some of the damage caused by the typhoon. Two or three aircraft had been blown over, one in the water, but fortunately not much other damage.
Hong Kong was fascinating. We stayed in a hostel run by the YMCA in Kowloon. Hong Kong is an island and was occupied by the British in 1842 after the Opium War of 1839/42 when the British forced the Chinese to import opium from India. Kowloon, which is a peninsula separated from Hong Kong Island by a harbour, was added in 1860 and a further extension of the British occupation took place in 1898 with the addition of the New Territories. At the time of writing Hong Kong is preparing for the return of the territory to Chinese rule in 1997.
My visit to Hong Kong was too short; there was so much of interest that it would have taken weeks to cover everything.
One of the most important places of interest was the Victoria Peak, known locally as "The Peak", that rises to a height of 1,823ft and is reached by a funicular railway. During the Japanese occupation of the island, Allied prisoners of war were used to build a monument at the top of the Peak. The only way to describe the view from the top is spectacular.
To get from Kowloon to Hong Kong there was a ferry service which I believe is still in operation as well as an underground railway that has been built so that they no longer are at the "mercy" of the ferry workers. When we arrived the ferry workers were on strike, I have no idea what the reason was but as workers do not strike unless there is good cause, I am sure it would be about wages and/or working conditions. So we had to rely on the navy to get us ashore. The strike was settled the next day and services were back to normal so we were able to go back and forth on the ferryboat which was very similar to the type of boat used to cross the River Mersey.
On returning to Saigon I was told that I was being sent to do some repair work on an aircraft that had made an emergency landing on a small island off the coast of Burma, now known as the Union of Myanmar.
The aircraft I was to work on was a Dakota DC3 that had some damage to its tailplane. The work involved patching a hole that had been torn in the fabric. The work did not take very long but I spent about two weeks on the island waiting for a lift to take me back to Saigon. Two weeks of swimming, walking around the island and eating the local delicacy, curried goat. It was whilst waiting on the island that I received news that I was being repatriated. It is impossible to describe how I felt at the news that at last I was going home, after nearly three years away, at last I was to see my daughter and my wife. I went from the island to Rangoon where I was to board the boat that would take me on that long-awaited journey home. Rangoon, dominated by the gilded dome of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda built in the 18th century. There was a saying used by the troops waiting to go home that the finest sight in the world was the Shwe Dagon Pagoda seen from the back end of a boat leaving Rangoon harbour. Truly a magnificent example of a building devoted to the worship of the Buddha. It is now nearly 50 years since I was in Rangoon and visited that impressive building. I remember going inside and being awe-struck by the interior but memory fades over the years and one is left with vague images of a massive hall dominated by the statue of the Buddha. Packed with believers paying homage to the Deity.