FORMAL SURRENDER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25937, 1 September 1945, Page 7

FORMAL SURRENDER

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE IN BATTERED CONDITION NEW YORK, Aug. 30. Fifteen Japanese officers in shabby unifoi'ms and 15 interpreters, standing stiffly at attention before three battered half-tracks and a single baby tank, waited at the centre of Yokosuka to surrender the base. They and the Japanese pressmen uneasily greeted American officers, and were tightlipped when asked about the prisoner-of-war camps. They answered every question with “ I do not know.” The Americans were stern and businesslike. They did not shake hands and did not salute.

The marines' commander, Brigadiergeneral William Clement, who escaped from Bataan shortly before its fall, was annoyed at the Japanese officers’ failure to bring their swords as requested for yielding as a surrender token. He ordered the base admiral to proceed to the dock, where the Natato was moored, to receive Rearadmiral Carney. When the latter went ashore, Viceadmiral Michitara Ozuka handed over a plain white envelope bearing formal notice of the surrender of the base—the first surrender of any major Japanese military installation. Then the admirals boarded Japanese cars and drove to naval headquarters, where the formal signing of the documents and the transfer of the base were completed. Amid rubble and the gaunt frames of useless shops and hangars, the Japanese surrendered Yokosuka naval and air station, to the Fourth Marines today, says the Associated Press correspondent. Captain Kobayasi, the commandant who greeted Lieutenant-colonel George Tell when the marines arrived, said hi* command now comprised 101 officers and men. 83 torpedoes, and 910 bombs. Ruefully explaining the station’s battered condition, Kobayasi said it was bombed nightly since the Americans took Iwo Jima. Many wooden buildings were fire-bombed, and others had to be torn down because they were too close together and the fire hazard was too great. A Japanese interpreter said countless navy and army personnel, including himself, retired last week and donned civilian clothing in order to go home. “We are civilians, and glad the war is over. We have been fighting 12 years since Manchuria. Our diet has been mostly sweet potatoes. There has been a great shortage of rice and little meat. Naval personnel have fared slightly better.” The interpreter credited Russia's entry into the war and the atomic bomb with ending the war, and added: “ Civilians now worry more about food than the Empire's loss. I expect to see great unrest, due to hunger, but I do not think there will be any looting of food stores. The atomic bomb was terrible.” he concluded.

The correspondent says the base is a sorry sight, with buildings in disrepair, i unpainted, and windowless. Cranes and other equipment are heavily rusted, roads rutted and unpaved, and housing for personnel decrepit.