Drawing on an essay by Sukehironari Hirakawa, this article examines Japan’s airborne operations at Palembang and Menado, the fate of naval officer Toyoaki Horiuchi, and the elements of retaliation and public spectacle shared by postwar military tribunals and the Tokyo Trial. It also considers how wartime anti-Japanese propaganda was used during the Allied occupation to instill a sense of moral guilt in the Japanese people.

June 20, 2020
My elder sister and I went to Kyoritsu Hall in Kanda to hear a report on the operation.
The soldier was an entertaining speaker, and he made the packed audience laugh by saying things such as, “When I landed, I very nearly ended up sitting astride a water buffalo.”
There were still many sections of this month’s issue of Seiron that I had not yet read.
This morning, I was reading the long-running series by Sukehironari Hirakawa.
It is a lengthy essay.
In it, I came across a passage that made me think, “This is precisely what China is like today.”
Among the notes that Hirakawa compiled and published at the end, there was also a passage proving that my own view had struck the heart of the matter.
In this article, I will introduce excerpts from those passages, together with sections that every Japanese citizen should know.
Hirakawa’s essay is essential reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people throughout the world.
The Divine Soldiers of the Sky
Soon after the Japanese Army’s airborne unit made a surprise landing at Palembang on the island of Sumatra, and the Japanese Navy’s airborne unit made a surprise landing at Menado on the island of Celebes, my elder sister and I went to Kyoritsu Hall in Kanda to hear a report on the operation.
The soldier was an entertaining speaker, and he made the packed audience laugh by saying things such as, “When I landed, I very nearly ended up sitting astride a water buffalo.”
The purpose of the surprise airborne landing at Palembang was to secure its oil-refining facilities without damaging them.
Note 4
Captain Toyoaki Horiuchi of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the commander at Menado, was also loved by the local people.
After the war, however, he was sentenced to death by firing squad by a Dutch military court.
Following the men under his command who had died in battle in Menado, he set out upon “a journey to the land of the dead, leaving behind the fragrance of white chrysanthemums.”
The white chrysanthemums referred to in his death poem were parachutes.
If the military trials held throughout the southern regions contained elements of retaliation and public example, it was only natural that a trial arising from the same motives should be staged in Tokyo itself as a kind of spectacle, or show.
Although it was not explicitly stated in the Potsdam Declaration accepted by Japan, the Allied powers, led by the United States, appeared to regard it as only natural that the Japanese military officers and politicians who had conceived and carried out the Greater East Asia War should be punished.
The anti-Japanese sentiment inflamed by wartime propaganda against the enemy would not allow the Japanese leaders who had launched the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor to escape condemnation.
The Allied forces, led by the United States military, occupied Japan and sought to make the Japanese people believe that Japan, the country that had started the war, had also committed a morally evil act.
To be continued.