Japan’s Emperor Hirohito ordered his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast on August 15 1945. After the deaths of some 70 million people, the second world war had finally come to an end.
Reflections on the anniversary of the conflict’s end often turn, understandably, to the cataclysmic atomic bombings of Hiroshimi and Nagasaki that precipitated the emperor’s decision.
But to research a strikingly different – and little-known – story from the final stages of the war in the Pacific, we recently travelled to the remote Japanese island of Aka, where a scarcely believable truce between US and Japanese soldiers took place 80 years ago. In the shadow of one of the war’s fiercest battles, enemy combatants stopped fighting to negotiate, exchange souvenirs, eat – and even pray together.
