Japan's surrender was not a simple on/off switch

[Onkel Neal]

I found this very interesting. Of course, the ceasefire was not a universal and guaranteed result of Hirohito's capitulation. I can imagine many US servicemen expecting a "trick". I bet those were tense times.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-t-happen.html

Seventy years ago today the recorded voice of Emperor Hirohito announced the acceptance of the Allied terms for Japan’s surrender. While that capitulation wasn’t official until the well-known ceremony held aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, people around the world assumed that World War II was over. Then, three days after Hirohito’s tremulous announcement and Japan’s acceptance of a ceasefire, Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione—a 20-year-old aerial gunner in the U.S. Army Air Forces—bled to death in a bullet-riddled B-32 Dominator bomber in the clear, bright skies above Tokyo. The young man from Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has the dubious distinction of being the last U.S. service member to die in combat in World War II. Though tragic, his passing would be little more than an historical footnote were it not for the fact that his death came perilously close to prolonging a conflict most Americans believed was already over.