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40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended

Khalid Elhassan January 3, 2019 25 min

Hiroo Onoda - Ishinosuke Uwano — Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for nearly three decades after WWII had ended. Observer

39. The Vastness of Japan’s Conquered Empire Created Communications Difficulties

Japan’s surrender might have been announced in August of 1945 and formally concluded early the following month, but ensuring that all Japanese units and military personnel got word of that surrender was a problem. At its height, Japan’s WWII empire had stretched across thousands of miles. Across that vastness, Japanese military personnel were scattered from the borders of India in the west, to the central Pacific in the east, and from Manchuria and the Aleutian Islands off Alaska in the north, to New Guinea and the edge of Australia in the south.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.