15 Aug 1945, Chronology of Events Related to Stanley Civilian Internment Camp

Olaf Pederson dies after a major operation for an illness caused by malnutrition. He's the only Norwegian to die in Stanley.

American planes attack Japanese patrol boats and the Japanese respond with 'fierce rifle fire' from the camp. It seems that yesterday morning's peace rumours were ungrounded. Tomorrow Franklin Gimson will go to Kadowaki to protest that the firing has put the internees in danger. Kadowaki blames the Americans for breaking international law, but Gimson gets the impression he's embarrassed by the affair.

Kiyoshi Watanabe, newly re-employed as an interpreter by the Japanese administration after being abused and dismissed by Colonel Tokunaga, already knows about the destruction of Hiroshima, where his wife Mitsuko and two children were living. Today he hears the Emperor's surrender broadcast on the radio, and weeps.

​The Emperor's speech is broadcast at noon Tokyo time and marks the end of WWII. Rebellious army officers had spent the night trying to find and destroy the recording to prevent the surrender. At a camp close to Nagasaki 16 American flyers are murdered by diehard elements and there are tense scenes all over the former Japanese empire - New Zealander James Bertram, one of the defenders of Hong Kong drafted to Japan, notes that 'For another forty eight hours it was touch and go around Tokyo, and on the night of the sixteenth a group of drunk NCOs will make an unsuccesful attempt to break into the barracks of Omori camp where the American B-29 crews were being held segregated.

Nevertheless, most members of the armed forces accept the Imperial Rescript and lay down their arms.

In the evening George Wright-Nooth hears rumours that the peace has been signed. It comes, by way of his fellow policeman Lance Searle, and because it's attributed to Father Bernard Meyer, who they regard as a rumour-monger, neither of them believe it. But later that night one of the guards, worried about his own fate, comes round and confirms the story.

 Sources:

Pederson:  J. Krogh-Moe, 'A Brief Report of Stanley Internment Camp From A Norwegian Point of View', in Hong Kong PRO, HKRS163 1-104  

Air raid: Gimson Diary, p. 168 (recto), Weston House (Oxford)

Watanabe: Liam Nolan, Small Man of Nanataki, 1966, 146

Bertram: James Bertram, Beneath the Shadow, 1947, 210

Wright-Nooth: George Wright- Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, 1994, 244

Note:

According to John Luff (The Hidden Years, 1967, 224) Kiyoshi Watanabe took the news of the surrender to an unnamed camp. This isn't mentioned in Liam Nolan's biography, which moves straight to his internment alongside the other Japanese in Hong Kong.

Note: The June dating is a mistake, and I suspect the correct spelling is Olav Pedersen.