← The History Podcast
The History Podcast
The Second Map: 2. The Secrets in the Safe
00:43:51
The other story of the Second World War.
Loading summary
Transcript141 lines
- [00:00]
A
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tanzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts. You're about to listen to the history podcast. The second map episodes of this series will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the uk, the whole series is available right now, first on BBC Sounds.
- [01:01]
B
I woke up one morning to be informed that the front line, we were now 20 miles in front of it, sharing a large tract of country with Japanese who were advancing towards us. We hadn't the foggiest idea where they were.
- [01:13]
A
Ursula Graham Bauer Wasn't your normal 28 year old from North London.
- [01:18]
B
It was only myself and 150 Nagas armed with muzzleloaders who were supposed to be watching the tracks for agents filtering through.
- [01:29]
A
The Nagas are a tribal group. During World War II, Ursula had been living with them in the Indian jungle, close to the border of Burma, now Myanmar.
- [01:40]
B
Thick jungle, arches of bamboo of every possible color. I've never seen so many greens.
- [01:48]
A
Japanese forces had swept through the British territories of southeast Asia in 1942, taking some of their most prized and valuable colonies like Singapore, Malaya, now Malaysia and Burma. And the British were concerned that India could be next. It was now 1944. Ursula suddenly found herself on the front line and it looked like Britain's fears of a Japanese invasion were coming true.
- [02:17]
B
We did know that they were advancing, but had no idea was anything so close.
- [02:23]
A
Ursula and the Nagas had already been gathering intelligence for the British army on the enemy across the border. This wasn't what Ursula was meant to be doing in India. She was a budding anthropologist, untrained for military action, but now caught up in the war with the enemy fast approaching. She wasn't afraid of using a gun if she had to.
- [02:45]
B
And I sent the cable saying, going forward to look for the enemy, kindly send rifles and ammunition Soonest.
- [02:55]
A
The British army received the cable. How could they refuse?
- [02:59]
B
When I got back to find boxes of rifles lying on the floor of my hut and boxes of grenades and 150 pounds of gunpowder, well, I never thought that a box of Grenades could look beautiful. But it did.
- [03:17]
A
The actions of the Naga people and Ursula Graham Bauer, the first woman to lead a combat unit in World War II, were instrumental in repelling the Japanese forces who entered British India in March 1944. But their extraordinary role isn't widely known. In fact, Ursula and the Nagas were assisting a part of the British army that was known as the Forgotten Army. Even at the time, those hundreds of thousands of men would go on to fight at some of the most pivotal battles of the Second World War, halting Japan's steady advance through Britain's Asian Empire. These places where they were fighting weren't easy for schoolboy Peter Knight to find on the map in his living room back in England.
- [04:06]
B
We didn't openly say it, but there was a feeling, that's not our war. The here and now was us being bombed. That was our war.
- [04:18]
A
That made sense. Peter was following the Second World War on his maps, one of Europe and another of Southeast Asia. The second map, his terraced house, had been damaged after a German bomb landed in the middle of it one night. That war against the Nazis was literally close to home. The for Peter and much of the British public, the other war where Ursula and the Nagas were felt like another world.
- [04:45]
B
It was such a long way away. It didn't mean much to us at all. I wonder sometimes if they ever changed that attitude. It was always them out there.
- [04:57]
A
Them out there. Is that why we don't remember the war against Japan like we do our fight against the Nazis? Yet the war on the Asian front in places that were once part of the British Empire touched so many families, British and former colonial subjects. In this series, we hear from some of those, like Ursula and the forgotten army she fought with, who were there part of a faraway war. Ordinary people in extraordinary times who are part of our war story too. In this series, we explore why we don't remember it better. I'm Kavita Puri. You're listening to the History podcast and from BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, this is the second map. Episode two, the Secrets in the Safe.
- [06:08]
B
I was part of the 14th army and I'm proud to declare it.
- [06:12]
A
Yava Abbas is 104 and is still proud to say he was part of the 14th army, also known as the Forgotten Army. It had been put together in 1943 after the humiliating British defeats on the Asian front in places like Singapore, Malaya and Burma, when Japan had taken parts of the British Empire. The 14th Army's goal, to win them back. This is you as a Young man, how old are you here?
- [06:42]
B
I'm 24, I think.
- [06:45]
A
80 years on. Yava has old school charm and and is wearing a velvet smoking jacket when we meet at his home in London. Every now and then he takes out a comb to smooth his hair so he looks just right. He's showing me a framed photograph of himself and smiles nostalgically as he looks at it. And you're wearing your army uniform?
- [07:07]
B
That's right, Captain's uniform. Three pips. One, two, three.
- [07:11]
A
And when you look at that picture and you see your 24 year old self, what do you think?
- [07:17]
B
Not bad. Good looking man. I think I was very proud, like myself in uniform.
- [07:24]
A
Captain Yava Abbas was born in British India and joined the 14th army in late 1943.
- [07:32]
B
Well, I'm the same age as my fellow army officer, the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, who died recently in a blaze of glory. We both served on the same front at the same time with the same 14th Indian Army. The forgotten one?
- [07:49]
A
Yes, that's Sir Tom, the one who raised millions for the NHS during the pandemic. The vast majority of the 14th army was made up of Indian soldiers like Yava, as well as those from other parts of the British Empire, including Africa. Yava Abbas had been in the 11th Sikh Regiment before the creation of this new fighting force.
- [08:14]
B
As a 22 year old, I was expecting to be sent to a fighting battalion. Instead, I found myself in a version of Dad's army, in the company of white middle aged men as my fellow officers who were biding their time and still considered India to be a crown colony on which they'd have continuing control for the foreseeable future.
- [08:40]
A
Frustrated, Java signed up to the new 14th Army. Its aim was to learn lessons from recent defeats and win back lost British territory. It was completely different from his former regiment. What was it like to be in the 14th Army?
- [08:57]
B
It was wonderful camaraderie because there were British and Indians intermixing with each other so that that intensifies the camaraderie.
- [09:07]
A
And in early 1944, he and his fellow soldiers, who'd spent months training for jungle warfare, were about to face their biggest challenge yet.
- [09:20]
B
A unit had been formed in 14th army for Scouting and intelligence using tribal scouts. I was called in to help.
- [09:30]
A
Going through the testimonies of the 14th army soldiers, there are so many examples of bravery, but the story of Ursula Graham Bauer is the stuff of movies. We found this interview Ursula gave to Cambridge University in 1985 when she was 71. She died three years later in it she talks about living with the Naga people on the border of India and Burma and her unusual life where she learnt their language and danced and cooked with them. After the British lost Burma to Japan, she was asked to mobilise the Nagas to monitor what the Japanese forces were doing over the border. She became known as the Jungle Queen.
- [10:12]
B
We backed onto a railway. There were trails going across to Imphal, and it was perfectly easy for agents to slip up from the railway across the hills and gather intelligence.
- [10:25]
A
Japanese troops advanced from Burma over the border towards Koima and Imphal in the east of India. It would become one of the defining battles of the Second World War. The British army authorized weapons and grenades to be given to Ursula and the tribal people.
- [10:41]
B
The Nagas were completely loyal to the British and there were. I don't know how many deeds of heroism men gave their lives in the Naga country.
- [10:51]
A
Japanese forces underestimated the Nagas, too.
- [10:55]
B
Nipped off to a local village, got into native dress, found the Japanese hq, went in with many flattering words about how pleased they were to see the Japanese, to liberate them from the brutal British and all the rest of it, and could they please have a job.
- [11:13]
A
These two men were taken on as water carriers and sweepers at Japanese hq.
- [11:19]
B
The Japanese never suspected that these were.
- [11:21]
A
Trained soldiers, but they knew what they were doing. They were after intelligence and were looking for the safe. It took them 10 days to find it and then open it. They had no idea what it would contain, but they'd struck gold.
- [11:39]
B
They then carefully burgled it when nobody was looking one night, swept up all the papers in it and made for the nearest of our troops that they could find and handed over their haul.
- [11:53]
A
They gave it to the General of the 14th Army.
- [11:56]
B
He couldn't believe his eyes, because included in this was the Japanese battle plan for the advance on Kohima.
- [12:05]
A
The plans proved critical for the general's battle strategy. The stakes were high. If Japan could take the vital Indian towns of Koima and nearby Imphal, its troops could cut off the Allied supply line to China and be primed to progress even deeper into India.
- [12:24]
B
And he was able to forestall it. He said that was what turned the tide.
- [12:30]
A
Peter Johnston is a military historian and narrative director at the Imperial War Museum. There are Japanese boots on the ground.
- [12:38]
B
In the invasion of India and they fight at Imphal and Kahima in two.
- [12:43]
A
Of the most significant battles Britain ever fights, not just in the Second World.
- [12:47]
B
War context, but really ever.
- [12:49]
A
The fighting at Koima and Imphar was intense at times. Hand to hand and culminated in one infamous battle on an actual tennis court on the grounds of a bungalow of a colonial official. On one side of the tennis court, you have the British. On the other side, you've got the Japanese. And if they sweep across this bit of land, they take the whole hill, and if they do that, it's lost, because the British hold it with absolute desperation and enormous courage, represented by everybody who fights there. India was the jewel in the British Imperial crown. The width of that tennis court is pretty much what preserves the British Empire. If you look at photographs of the tennis court from after the battle, it looks apocalyptic. The trees in the jungle have been stripped of their leaves from nearby. Explosions for the 14th army and other regiments fighting alongside them, repelling the Japanese forces at Koima and Impha was a huge victory. Now it was Japan in retreat back to Burma. This failed invasion had cost it the lives of around 50,000 of its men. We don't often hear from Japanese military officials, but in the BBC archives we found an interview that had never been broadcast with Renya Mutaguchi, the Japanese field commander at the time. It was recorded in the 1960s for a documentary, but ended up on the cutting room floor. So we headed to the border between.
- [14:22]
B
Burma and India, where the roads were.
- [14:24]
A
Extremely steep and the. The mountains were extremely steep, reaching 10,000ft. Renier remembers that the British command didn't seem that surprised, though he didn't know they'd already read some of the Japanese battle plans. The British commander was not shocked by the attack and despite being unprepared, they skillfully retreated as a whole and persistently counterattacked the Japanese forces. The British counterattack was so fierce that they made a break in our defense. So that's one reason why the operation.
- [15:03]
B
In Imphal went so poorly.
- [15:06]
A
The British had learned from their mistakes. Forces were now better trained and defences were stronger. Up until that point, we had thought.
- [15:18]
B
That the jungle would be an obstacle for the British, but it wasn't. In the end.
- [15:26]
A
Finally, the British had a victory against Japan. But if you look at the newspapers from the time, this wasn't across the front pages. The battles of Imphal and coima ended in July 1944, after the D Day landings in Normandy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, European stories dominated, not these other heroic ones of the 14th Army. Even while it was fighting, there was an idea that they were on the other side of the world. They were very far away from home. All the newsreels they saw were very much about what was taking place in the uk. The propaganda The Ministry of Information is producing particularly that's going into cinemas and stuff is about the European theatre and what's being seen there. Incredibly, at the time the, the most senior military officials in Southeast Asia Command already refer to the 14th army as the forgotten army. Mountbatten himself sort of makes light of this and almost plays on this. He addresses the men of the army and he says, I've heard you refer to yourselves as the forgotten army. Well, I want you to know no one even knows you're here and it's a big joke. But there's some truth in it.
- [16:34]
B
I think there is some truth in it that 80% of that army is not white British. The vast majority of it's drawn famously.
- [16:40]
A
From the Indian army, but from East Africa, from West Africa, from other allies as well. And that becomes incredibly powerful I think, in how you carry that memory forward and where people talk about it. Perhaps it didn't feel that British, but it was. Every member of the army was part of Britain and its empire. A forgotten army in what would become known as the forgotten war. In faraway places, victories in Coima and Imphar would lead the way for the British advance in Burma. But in popular memory these battles are still not as well known as others. In the Second World War. The monsoon rains ended in late 1944. The air turned from humid to sticky. Burma had been fought over by two empires for over two years now. The British, buoyed by their recent successes, planned a large scale offensive to take Burma back. Captain Gyan Singh was part of the Burma campaign. He was from the 15th Punjab Regiment and had fought at Koima. He died in 1996.
- [18:00]
B
He joined the army. He was very, very young. He looked even 14, 15 when I look at the picture.
- [18:07]
A
Captain Gyan's son is Charanjeet. I meet him in London and he tells me about one day in Burma when his father came face to face with the enemy.
- [18:16]
B
There was a road. Enemy Japanese soldiers had their foxholes dig into the one side of the road and our army was in the open.
- [18:26]
A
Which meant the British were completely exposed.
- [18:31]
B
And every time they lifted their body or their head they were shot. Most of his section got killed at that time. So one point he thought that's it.
- [18:42]
A
But Charanjeet's father didn't give up.
- [18:44]
B
He grabbed hold of all the hand grenades he could and in one hand he had a machine gun and he started throwing the hand grenades towards the foxholes and he destroyed that anti tank gun and killed 20 enemy soldiers.
- [19:03]
A
This bravery would go on to earn Captain Gyan Singh a Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration for valor. Because the campaign in Burma isn't widely known, neither are stories like these. But forgetting isn't only collective, but personal too.
- [19:27]
B
The only time I knew little bit more about that scene, when I met his company commander, Major Raj Fowler, and Colonel Conroy.
- [19:39]
A
So you're saying that you knew about what your dad did, his heroism, because of these two British officers. It wasn't your dad that told you, it was them that told you.
- [19:50]
B
My dad never ever told me about any of that action. Never.
- [19:57]
A
Captain Gyeong Singh came to Britain for the first time in 1946 to be awarded his Victoria Cross by King George VI. He was invited to stay with one of his commanding officers, Major Fowler. Gyan didn't speak English, so they communicated together in Hindi. He'd come back every two years for a Victoria Cross reunion for the rest of his life, each time staying with Major Fowler at his home. They became lifelong friends.
- [20:30]
B
I never had that open conversation with him. He was a military man. He was a sergeant major in the house. We were scared of him. We were very well disciplined by him. We didn't have the courage to talk to him or ask him about things. We never had that wish.
- [20:47]
A
Do you wish you had?
- [20:49]
B
Yes. Today, whenever anybody mention about my dad, I get emotional now. Yeah, I really get. I said, I think, wish I had a, you know, more time with him or even I had time with him. Wish I had more conversation. I wish he's here and I can grab hold of him and, you know, and just say to him, dad, I love you, or whatever.
- [21:20]
A
Captain Singh never gave an interview and didn't even like talking about that time with his army colleagues. But the man who was so uncomfortable speaking about the war is remembered permanently. At a memorial near Hyde park, his name is inscribed along with the other winners of the Victoria Cross. But Charanjeet thinks while his father has been recognized for his heroism in public memory, the war against Japan, like the Burma campaign, isn't generally known.
- [21:51]
B
It's always about the Europe. They always talk about the Second World War in Europe. That's what I'm saying. They never talked about that part of the world. They should be talking about it.
- [22:03]
A
Remembrance, especially in war, where national myths and heroes are made, is always selective and never straightforward.
- [22:12]
B
Those forgotten soldiers, forgotten souls, you know, they should have given more credit what they went through.
- [22:25]
A
While people like Gyan Singh were facing the Japanese on the battlefield in Burma, other forgotten souls were in Japanese prison camps struggling to survive. This is History's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. If we think of the other war, we may know the story of the soldiers held captive by Japanese forces. Their experience was immortalized in the film the Bridge on the River Kwai, where they were forced to construct a bridge for the Thailand Burma Railway. But we rarely hear of the civilians who were interned.
- [23:34]
B
I've got here a recipe book.
- [23:38]
A
So this is. It looks like a pad, but it's very tattered and torn. Now I'm with Margie Caldecott at her Chichester home. Her conservatory is full of items belonging to her mother, Sheila Brown, who we heard from in the last episode. She'd lived in Singapore all her life. When it fell to Japan in 1942, she tried to escape, but was captured. For the rest of the war, Sheila was held in prison camps. And on the front page, look at this. Goodness. Lobster, prawn, crab, shrimp. So it's an index of all these amazing recipes.
- [24:20]
B
She even wrote an index.
- [24:24]
A
The recipe book gives a real sense of the hidden world of how starving captives like Sheila managed to find the will to live. She wrote these imaginary recipes in tiny handwriting on loose pages.
- [24:38]
B
A pound of butter, a pound of semolina, 20 egg yolks. So many pounds, you can't see that because the paper's torn of sugar. I mean, extraordinary.
- [24:51]
A
It's a funny thing, though, isn't it, that you're starving and yet you're writing these elaborate recipes.
- [24:57]
B
Well, they had tea parties and coffee parties, and tea was any leaf with water added, and coffee was rice that was burnt and you added boiling water to it so it looked like coffee, so you drank it as coffee. When you're starving, you imagine food, rather.
- [25:17]
A
Than eating is both extraordinary and really sad. The irony is that Sheila had never cooked a thing in Singapore. She'd only ever had servants. Her voice has been preserved on cassette tapes that her daughter Margie has kept and which have never been broadcast before.
- [25:43]
B
I remember right at the beginning, we had one little bowl of rice a day with either half a teaspoonful of salt or half a teaspoonful of sugar.
- [25:51]
A
Conditions were terrible. Not only Small amounts of food, but they frequently caught malaria and dysentery and lived in fear of their captors.
- [26:02]
B
They were quite dreadful the way they would slap people and make us stand for a long time, be counted in the sun, and we were kept short of drugs and things for sickness.
- [26:17]
A
Life could change in a moment. A new guard with new rules, an early morning call to pack and make a dangerous journey to a new camp. One day, Sheila and a group of women received a sinister request.
- [26:31]
B
The Japanese threatened us with no food unless we opened up one of the houses to act as a club for the Japanese officers.
- [26:41]
A
Most likely concerned the younger women might be forced to have sex with the soldiers, the older women took steps to protect them.
- [26:49]
B
Well, when the Japanese came around to see if there were young people around, I would be locked in the bathroom.
- [26:55]
A
Some of the older women went along.
- [26:58]
B
They made themselves look as ghastly as they could, and they got some heavy shoes from somewhere and off they all went. And the Japanese officers arrived, all little men, all polished up in their uniform, and they said, what would you like to drink? And could they dance? Yes, they'd love to dance. So when they got dancing, they bivted them around and trodden their feet and fairly gave them a rough time. And that was the end of the club. Fortunately, nothing more was heard of it.
- [27:32]
A
We know rape was a weapon of war used by Japanese forces in the countries they occupied. But having been through all of Sheila's tapes, she doesn't directly address the risks she and the other women faced. There's no suggestion on them that this happened to Sheila or the other women in the camps. What's striking about Sheila's tapes is that the small acts of defiance and the will for survival went beyond the Japanese officers club. They did things I never would have expected. It's a glimpse into their refusal to let their spirits be held captive. In fact, Sheila and the other women in the camp went so far as to start a vocal orchestra.
- [28:30]
B
First concert we performed in the shelter in the middle of the camp. We had to sit down. We weren't strong enough to stand.
- [28:41]
A
The Japanese guards didn't like gatherings, so stayed outside to watch. Soon they were listening.
- [28:49]
B
Apparently, it was very moving. And to me, I just suddenly thought, gosh, look, there's anything that is free are our notes, which are going up and out of camp. If only people at home know what we were doing, they just wouldn't believe it.
- [29:07]
A
The arrangements of traditional choral music made by the women in the camps jotted down on precious scraps of Paper or memorized by heart have been performed since the war from time to time, like by this American choir in the 1980s to honor the women like Sheila. Peter Knight, like much of the British public, knew little about conditions for the POWs, let alone civilian internees like Schiele. He had been following the war back in England and charting where the Allies were on his map of Europe and his second map of the Asian front. And the conflict he thought was far away was about to impact his life.
- [30:04]
B
This is the BBC Home Service, Mandalay.
- [30:08]
A
There hadn't been a huge amount of coverage from the Asian front, but things began to change as the British made more gains in Burma.
- [30:17]
B
I think we heard about them because there was a certain amount of good news that they were hitting the Japanese where it hurt them. That's the sort of thing we like to hear on the radio.
- [30:30]
A
And there was one battle in particular that was heard in living rooms across.
- [30:34]
B
Britain for the first time. A major feature program has been made at the battlefront itself.
- [30:40]
A
We've been searching archives around the world, but in our own BBC collection found an extraordinary documentary, apparently the first one from a front line. And it's not Europe, significantly, it's from Mandalay during the Burma campaign in early.
- [30:56]
B
1945, with the cooperation of officers and men of the 14th army, the Battle.
- [31:01]
A
Of Mandalay was pivotal in the Burma campaign. If the Allies retook this city, the road to the capital, Rangoon, would be open to them. Captain Yava Abbas was there too. He was a Cameraman in the 14th army and filmed the Battle of Mandalay.
- [31:18]
B
He.
- [31:19]
A
His footage would be shared with the Allies for broadcast.
- [31:22]
B
I saw these tanks getting ready, and after the crew had gone in, I just climbed up on the top of the trunk, and they didn't realize as they started off and I started filming the tank behind it, saw it, and the turret opened and hello, down you go.
- [31:44]
A
He tells me with a chuckle that he was reckless for trying to get a better shot by climbing onto the tank in the midst of gunfire.
- [31:52]
B
It was a stupid thing to do, but you do when you're young. That's the kind of thing to do, I suppose.
- [31:58]
A
The BBC radio documentary maker, along with Java, who was filming for newsreels and propaganda, reported directly from the battle.
- [32:07]
B
Everything depended on the capture of Fort Dufferin, which lies north of the city. The fort is over a mile square, and along its four sides there runs a formidable wall of dark red brick about 30ft high. Then, surrounding the wall, there's a moat. During the afternoon of March 9, Men of the Frontier Force regiment with tank and artillery Support got within 100 yards of it. There was no hand to hand fighting because they were up on the fort and the battle was gun battle, really big guns and bombs from the air and kept on pounding them, pounding them, pounding them. They're attacking Mandalay Fort now. You can probably hear the noise, the shelling, mortaring, our own tanks shooting. Then there's a lot of noise going on and not quite sure which of the firing is the enemy firing. I can see some of our infantry running around the tank.
- [33:11]
A
This kept on for days.
- [33:14]
B
The commanders 14th army decided to take a pause and prepare for the assault. And that one day's pause, overnight they were gone. We entered the fort without a fight. I think the moment's come now between.
- [33:30]
A
Yama doesn't remember any Japanese troops surrendering. He only saw their dead bodies. It was clear to him some had killed themselves rather than be captured. He filmed the British flag being raised over the fort. The general in charge was there too.
- [33:50]
B
The 14th army has taken Mandalay. The Union Jack flies once more over the great fort of Duffrin. Some time ago, Kipling wrote a very fine poem on the road to Mandalay. Well, I'm not interested in the road to Mandalay. What I'm interested in is the roads from Mandalay. Let's get going along.
- [34:14]
A
I found Java's black and white footage in the Imperial War Museum and you get a real sense of the battle up close and the drama of it all. And for Peter back in England, who was hearing the radio broadcasts, it had a seismic effect. Do you remember listening to the bulletins when you realised the Allies are fighting back?
- [34:39]
B
I couldn't get in the Navy fast enough. I was 17 when I joined up.
- [34:48]
A
Peter was no longer an observer to the war. On the second map in his living room at home, he was now about to be an active part of it. By the time Manderley fell in March 1945, it was clear the war in Europe was in its final stages. Warsaw and Krakow had been liberated and the Allies were crossing the Rhine river in Germany. Peter knew he wouldn't be part of a European war. It would be the one on the other side of the world.
- [35:19]
B
There was no doubt in our minds at the time that we were going to go have to fight the Japanese. I was destined for the Pacific.
- [35:28]
A
And how did you feel about that?
- [35:30]
B
Well, it was just one of those things where you're in the Navy and they tell you to go so and so. You just pack your gear and you Go. No arguments. I certainly didn't relish the idea of going out to the Far east, but it just had to be done. You were in no position to argue with anybody over it.
- [35:57]
A
While the British and their allies had been fighting in Burma, the Americans were taking on the Imperial Japanese forces on a different front. And by the time Peter joined the Navy, the US was attacking Japan on its own soil from the air. On the night of the 9th to the 10th of March alone, an estimated 100,000 civilians died from firebombing in Tokyo and over a million people were made homeless. It's widely considered the single most destructive air raid in history.
- [36:34]
B
As the iron ring of Allied sea power closes round Japan, big American naval units carry the fight ever nearer to the home islands of Nippon.
- [36:42]
A
At the same time, Japanese islands in the Pacific became the scenes of brutal warfare as the US made its way towards the mainland. You might have heard of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two islands to the south of the Japanese mainland that later featured in Hollywood films. These islands would be vital posts for any future Japanese land invasion.
- [37:07]
B
Still another American invasion in the Pacific. The objective is Okinawa, one of the ring of island Fortresses protecting Japan 300 miles away.
- [37:16]
A
Peter was listening to all of this. As well as the Japanese fight back.
- [37:22]
B
The Japanese were using what they called kamikaze pilots. These were young Japanese men flying an aircraft that was loaded with explosives and they would fly it straight into their target. They're sacrificing their own life to get this bomb where it's going to do the most damage. And British ships were hit. You couldn't do anything about them.
- [37:52]
A
Peter was nervous, but so too were some of the young kamikaze pilots. If we do remember the war against Japan, we almost never hear about the war from the other side. At the Imperial War Museum in their World War II galleries, there's a black and white image I always go to. It's of a young man called Ryoji Uehara. He's in a leather bomber jacket. He's got his flying goggles on his head. He looks so young, with his whole life ahead of him. He doesn't seem like the enemy. I've always wondered about him. Roji was a student at a university in Tokyo, and initially students were exempt from military service up until about 1943, when they were mobilized. Vicky Hawkins unearthed Ryoji's story while working as one of the curators at the Imperial War Museum. He was studying economics when he was pulled into the war. His final mission was during the Battle of okinawa. He was 22, he was a kamikaze pilot and he was essentially sent on a suicide mission to crash his small plane into a ship at Okinawa. He knew the date of his mission, May 11, 1945. Imagine knowing the day you're going to die. The day before he died, he wrote a letter. It wasn't necessarily a letter to somebody, it was more of a sort of final words that he wanted to say. A pilot in our Special Aerial Attack Forces, as a friend of mine has said, nothing more than a piece of the machine, simply just an iron filament tucked inside a magnet itself, designed to be sucked into an enemy aircraft carrier. The whole business would appear to be unthinkable and would seem to have no.
- [39:51]
B
Appeal whatsoever except to someone with a suicidal disposition. So then, we who are nothing more.
- [40:00]
A
Than pieces of machinery, only wish, ask.
- [40:04]
B
And hope for one thing, that all.
- [40:07]
A
The Japanese people might combine to make our beloved country the greatest nation possible. It's incredibly contradictory, isn't it, that he recognises he's a cog in a machine, but he still feels honour. Absolutely. And he goes on to say, when I am in a plane, perhaps I am nothing more than just a piece of the machine, but as soon as I am on the ground again, I find that I am a complete human after all. This young man who felt so human, didn't have a choice. If he didn't fly that plane, he would have been shot. It wasn't easy for Vicki to track down the family. When she did, she had to persuade them to use his story and final letter. It's one of the reasons why we don't hear much from the other side in their own words, as the victor, so to speak. Britain asking for the story of an enemy, of a loser of the war. But there was obviously quite a lot of tension in terms of, well, how do you feel about that now? And how are you going to sensitively display the story of someone who, yes, did do something awful? So much of how we remember history is who is telling it. Ryoji died on his mission. Okinawa fell to the Americans in June 1945. On the other side of the world, Peter Knight was in training to be sent over to the Asian front. He wasn't sure if it would be to Burma or to support the Americans in the Pacific, perhaps in a future invasion of Japan.
- [41:48]
B
I never met a Japanese and most of us didn't want to, but we'd met Germans, yes, we knew who we were fighting, but the Japanese people didn't matter to us how many Japanese died, didn't matter in the least.
- [42:08]
A
The memory of war is always complicated, and that's especially the case when it's far away and the immediate threat are the bombs falling at home. The horrors of war can be too painful to speak of, and sometimes they don't fit neatly into the war story we tell ourselves. Next time the war is over in Europe, but not for those fighting Japan. And 80 years on, in homes across Britain, families are making discoveries. Memory is never static, each generation asking new questions about the past. I haven't seen that before. No, never been mentioned before. It's a battered old suitcase that's obviously seen many years of service and traveling around the world. Do you want to open it? I'd love to open it. That's next. The Second Map is a BBC long form audio production for the History podcast. It was presented by me, Kavita Puri. The series producer was Ellie House. Script editor was Ant Edeen. The mix and sound design was by James Beard. The series editor was Matt Willis. The production coordinators were Sabine Sherrick and Maria Ogundelli. Original music was composed by Felix Taylor. The archive curator was Tariq Hussain. And the commissioners were Dan Clark and John Zylke. Listen to the next episode of the Second Map right now on BBC Sounds. We hope you enjoyed this series from the History podcast. If you haven't already, listen to previous series including Invisible Hands with with David Dimbleby and Half Life. If you want to be notified as soon as a new series drops, make sure you're subscribed to the History podcast on BBC Sounds. Hi, I'm India Rackerson and I want to tell you a story. It's the story of you in our series child from BBC Radio 4. I'm going to be exploring how a fetus develops and is influenced by the world from the very get go Then then in the middle of the series, we take a deep look at the mechanics and politics of birth, turning a light on our struggling maternity services and exploring how the impact of birth on a mother affects us all. Then we're going to look at the incredible feat of human growth and learning in the first 12 months of life. Whatever shape the journey takes, this is a story that helps us know our world, listen and be ABC Sounds. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the first World War.
- [45:18]
B
You know, he would look at these.
- [45:19]
A
Men and he would say, don't worry sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us. When I'm done with you, join me, Alex Von Tunsley, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes, wherever you get your podcasts.