The 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender

Today is the maiden show of my good friend, Michael Acebedo Lopez, on MyTV channel 30 dubbed "Open Mike" where he has as his first guest no less than Sen. Grace Poe. This will be shown on MyTV channel 30 at 7:00 tonight. Kudos to Mike Lopez. We planned this show since January this year and finally, it is now a go. I expect Open Mike to be one of the most successful TV Talk shows in Cebu. More power, Mike!

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Today Cebu celebrates a very little known historical fact that is not celebrated in Cebu province because it was never written in our history books. So allow me to inform our readers once again that today is the 70th anniversary of the formal surrender of the Japanese occupation troops in Cebu. I read this account in my book, "Orchids in the Mud: A Personal Account by Veterans of the 132nd Infantry Regiment from 1941-1945" edited by Robert C. Muehrcke. The 132nd Infantry Regiment was also known as the Americal Division as it was formed in New Caledonia.

Little do our fellow Cebuanos know that while Japan officially surrendered to the United States on Aug. 10, 1945 when Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Premier Hideki Tojo accepted the joint declaration of unconditional surrender issued in Potsdam on July 26, 1944. However it was only on Aug. 15th that Emperor Hirohito made the historic broadcast of his message to the Japanese people on Japan's surrender.

But in Cebu, the Americal Division was still fighting the Japanese 13 days after the official surrender of Japan. So exactly 70 years ago at 10 a.m. in Barangay Ilihan, Tabogon in northern Cebu, the Japanese Imperial Forces led by Gen. Katoaka, together with Gen. Fukue, Admiral Harada, and two other Japanese generals and along with 2,667 Japanese soldiers (including Japanese women nurses from the Japanese field hospitals), stood on a grassy knoll where each Japanese officer surrendered his samurai to the regimental commanders of the Americal Division. Surrender was a humiliating act for Japanese soldiers.

After Gen. Kataoka surrendered his samurai to Gen. William H. Arnold, he barked orders to the Japanese troops in Ilihan who then stacked their weapons, mortars, grenades, and ammunition in one big pile. The Japanese troops were immediately boarded on six-by-six trucks for the 50-mile journey from Ilihan to the port of Cebu City.

In the next two days, an additional 7,200 Japanese troops surrendered in Ilihan, bringing the total number of Japanese troops who surrendered to the Americal Division in Cebu to 9,867. They were all transported back to Cebu City and loaded into waiting troopships for the trip back to Japan. American intelligence reports said there were only 12,000 Japanese troops in Cebu. But the Cebuano guerrilla force led by Col. James Cushing reportedly killed some 8,000 Japanese in the entire war.

The Americans never expected so many Japanese soldiers to surrender in Cebu. They did not have the logistics to incarcerate or even feed them in Cebu. Hence, they brought the Japanese soldiers on their way to Tokyo. At least the Japanese soldiers did not have to suffer a death march, the way many American and Filipino soldiers suffered.

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I have a letter from Lapu-Lapu City mayoralty candidate Efrain "Jun" Pelaez about the article we wrote last Monday about the bad traffic in Lapu-Lapu City. Since his letter is quite long, I will only print some excerpts.

"Dear Bobit, Thank you for mentioning the traffic situation in Lapu-Lapu City in your column of August 24, 2015. To bring you up to speed, this is what our Mayor Paz Radaza said in her State of the City Address just two weeks ago on the subject: "With rapid urbanization, traffic congestion is bound to happen. I will not allow it to dampen our city growth. We have to continue to find innovative solutions to address it. I am working closely with the Department of Public Works and Highway of for the installation of traffic signal lights along major streets."

After over five years in the driver's seat, our mayor is telling us she is finally working closely with DPWH to install traffic lights in our city. What has she been doing all this time? Our lone traffic light at the corner of Airport Road and M.L. Quezon Avenue beside Mactan Marina Mall has not been repaired in the last five years under her watch. If she cannot even repair one traffic light, which I am sure you as a former traffic czar and CITOM chief of Cebu City could have fixed in a few days, she has no business remaining in City Hall or running for re-election. Her SOCA's of the last five years are replete with promises, perfumed pronouncements and motherhood statements --- full of sound and fury that resulted in nothing.  Just another public relations job with the help of her energetic speech writers, PR consultants, and spin doctors."

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected] or [email protected]. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.