Death of Subhas Chandra Bose
Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose died on 18 August 1945 from third-degree burns sustained after the bomber in which he was being transported as a guest of Lieutenant General Tsunamasa Shidei of the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army crashed upon take off from the airport in Taihoku, Japanese Formosa, now Taipei, Taiwan. The chief pilot, copilot, and General Shidei were instantly killed.
Bose, who had become soaked in gasoline before exiting the burning bomber, was transported to the Nanmon Military Hospital south of Taihoku, where his extensive upper-body burns were treated for six hours by the chief-surgeon Dr Taneyoshi Yoshimi, two other doctors, Dr Tsuruta and Dr Ishii, and half a dozen technical staff and nurses. Bose went into a coma and died between 9 pm and 10 pm Taihoku time. Bose's chief-of-staff, Colonel Habib ur Rahman, who had travelled with him, and who lay nearby with severe burns, recovered. Ten years later he testified at an inquiry commission on Bose's death, the burn marks on his arms conspicuously visible. General Shidei's descendants commemorate his death every year at the Renkōji Temple in Tokyo, where Bose's ashes are also deposited.
Many among Subhas Chandra Bose's supporters, especially in the Bengal Presidency, refused at the time and have refused since to believe either the fact or the circumstances of his death. Conspiracy theories appeared within hours of his death and have persisted since then, keeping alive various martial myths about Bose.
Death
Last months with the Indian National Army
During the last week of April 1945, Subhas Chandra Bose along with his senior Indian National Army officers, several hundred enlisted INA men, and nearly a hundred women from the INA's Rani of Jhansi Regiment left Rangoon by road for Moulmein in Burma. Accompanied by Lieutenant General Saburo Isoda, the head of the Japanese-INA liaison organization Hikari Kikan, their Japanese military convoy was able to reach the right bank of the Sittang river, albeit slowly. However, very few vehicles were able to cross the river because of American strafing runs. Bose and his party walked the remaining to Moulmein over the next week. Moulmein then was the terminus of the Death Railway, constructed from 1940 to 1943 by British, Australian, and Dutch prisoners of war, linking Burma to Siam. At Moulmein, Bose's group was also joined by 500 men from the X-regiment, INA's first guerrilla regiment, who arrived from a different location in Lower Burma.A year and a half earlier, 16,000 INA men and 100 women had entered Burma from Malaya. Now, less than one tenth that number left the country, arriving in Bangkok during the first week of May. The remaining nine tenths were either killed in action, died from malnutrition or injuries after the battles of Imphal and Kohima. Others were captured by the British, turned themselves in, or simply disappeared. Bose stayed in Bangkok for a month, where soon after his arrival he heard the news of Germany's surrender on May8. Bose spent the next two months between June and July 1945 in Singapore, and in both places attempted to raise funds for billeting his soldiers or rehabilitating them if they chose to return to civilian life, which most of the women did. In his nightly radio broadcasts, Bose spoke with increasing virulence against Gandhi, who had been released from jail in 1944, and was engaged in talks with British administrators, envoys and Muslim League leaders. Some senior INA officers began to feel frustrated or disillusioned with Bose and to prepare quietly for the arrival of the British and its consequences.
During the first two weeks of August 1945, events began to unfold rapidly. With the British threatening to invade Malaya and with daily American aerial bombings, Bose's presence in Singapore became riskier by the day. His chief of staff J. R. Bhonsle suggested that he prepare to leave Singapore. On 3August 1945, Bose received a cable from General Isoda advising him to urgently evacuate to Saigon in Japanese-controlled French Indochina. On 10August, Bose learnt that the Soviet Union had entered the war and invaded Manchuria. At the same time he heard about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Finally, on 16August, after being informed of the unconditional surrender of Japan, Bose decided to leave for Saigon along with a handful of his aides.
Last days and journeys
Reliable strands of historical narrative about Bose's last days are united up to this point. However, they separate briefly for the period between 16 August, when Bose received news of Japan's surrender in Singapore, and shortly after noon on 17 August, when Bose and his party arrived at Saigon airport from Saigon city to board a plane.In one version, Bose flew out from Singapore to Saigon, stopping briefly in Bangkok, on the 16th. Soon after arriving in Saigon, he visited Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, head of the Japanese forces in Southeast Asia, and requested him to arrange a flight to the Soviet Union. Although until the day before, the Soviet Union had been a belligerent of Japan, it was also seen, at least by Bose, as increasingly anti-British, and, consequently, a possible base of his future operations against the British Raj. Terauchi, in turn, cabled Japan's Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo for permission, which was quickly denied. In the words of historian Joyce Chapman Lebra, the IGHQ felt that it "would be unfair of Bose to write off Japan and go over to Soviet Union after receiving so much help from Japan. Terauchi added in talking with Bose that it would be unreasonable for him to take a step which was opposed by the Japanese." Privately, however, Terauchi still felt sympathy for Bose—one that had been formed during their two-year-long association. He somehow managed to arrange room for Bose on a flight leaving Saigon on the morning of 17 August 1945 bound for Tokyo, but stopping en route in Dairen, Manchuria—which was still Japanese-occupied, but toward which the Soviet army was fast approaching—where Bose was to have disembarked and to have awaited his fate at the hand of the Soviets.
In another version, Bose left Singapore with his party on the 16th and stopped en route in Bangkok, surprising INA officer in-charge there, J. R. Bhonsle, who quickly made arrangements for Bose's overnight stay. Word of Bose's arrival, however, got out, and soon local members of the Indian Independence League, the INA, and the Thai Indian business community turned up at the hotel. According to historian Peter Ward Fay, Bose "sat up half the night holding court—and in the morning flew on to Saigon, this time accompanied by General Isoda..." Arriving in Saigon, late in the morning, there was little time to visit Field Marshal Terauchi, who was in Dalat in the Central Highlands of French Indo-China, an hour away by plane. Consequently, Isoda himself, without consulting with higher ups, arranged room for Bose on a flight leaving around noon.
In the third sketchier version, Bose left Singapore on the 17th. According to historian Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, "On 17 August he issued a final order of the day, dissolving the INA with the words, 'The roads to Delhi are many and Delhi still remains our goal.' He then flew out to China via French Indo-China. If all else failed he wanted to become a prisoner of the Soviets: 'They are the only ones who will resist the British. My fate is with them'."
File:Ki-21 97juubaku b.jpg|thumb|right|180px|The Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine heavy bomber that Subhas Chandra Bose and Habibur Rahman boarded at Saigon airport around 2 pm on 17 August 1945.
Around noon on 17 August, the strands again reunite. At Saigon airport, a Mitsubishi Ki-21 heavy bomber, of the type code named Sally by the Allies, was waiting for Bose and his party. In addition to Bose, the INA group comprised Colonel Habibur Rahman, his secretary; S. A. Ayer, a member of his cabinet; Major Abid Hasan, his old associate who had made the hazardous submarine journey from Germany to Sumatra in 1943; and three others. To their dismay, they learned upon arrival that there was room for only one INA passenger. Bose complained, and the beleaguered General Isoda gave in and hurriedly arranged for a second seat. Bose chose Habibur Rahman to accompany him. It was understood that the others in the INA party would follow him on later flights. There was further delay at Saigon airport. According to historian Joyce Chapman Lebra, "a gift of treasure contributed by local Indians was presented to Bose as he was about to board the plane. The two heavy strong-boxes added overweight to the plane's full load." Sometime between noon and 2 PM, the twin-engine plane took off with 12 or 13 people aboard: a crew of three or four, a group of Japanese army and air force officers, including Lieutenant-General Tsunamasa Shidei, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Japanese Kwantung Army, which although fast retreating in Manchuria still held the Manchurian peninsula, and Bose and Rahman. Bose was sitting a little to the rear of the portside wing; the bomber, under normal circumstances, carried a crew of five.
That these flights were possible a few days after Japan's surrender was the result of a lack of clarity about what had occurred. Although Japan had unconditionally surrendered, when Emperor Hirohito had made his announcement over the radio, he had used formal Japanese, not entirely intelligible to ordinary people and, instead of using the word "surrender", had mentioned only "abiding by the terms of the Potsdam Declaration." Consequently, many people, especially in Japanese-occupied territories, were unsure if anything had significantly changed, allowing a window of a few days for the Japanese air force to continue flying. Although the Japanese and Bose were tight lipped about the destination of the bomber, it was widely assumed by Bose's staff left behind in Saigon that the plane was bound for Dairen on the Manchurian peninsula, which, as stated above, was still under Japanese control. Bose had been talking for over a year about the importance of making contact with the communists, both Russian and Chinese. In 1944, he had asked a minister in his cabinet, Anand Mohan Sahay to travel to Tokyo for the purposes of making contact with the Soviet ambassador, Jacob Malik. However, after consulting the Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, Sahay decided against it. In May 1945, Sahay had again written to Shigemitsu requesting him to contact Soviet authorities on behalf of Bose; again the reply had been in the negative. Bose had been continually querying General Isoda for over a year about the Japanese army's readiness in Manchuria. After the war, the Japanese confirmed to the British investigators and later Indian commissions of inquiry, that plane was indeed bound for Dairen, and that fellow passenger General Shidea of the Kwantung Army, was to have disembarked with Bose in Dairen and to have served as the main liaison and negotiator for Bose's transfer into Soviet controlled territory in Manchuria.
The plane had flown north. By the time it was near the northern coast of French Indo-China, darkness had begun to close in, and the pilot decided to make an unscheduled stop in Tourane. The passengers stayed overnight at a hotel, and the crew, worried that the plane was overloaded, shed some 500 pounds of equipment and luggage, and also refueled the plane. Before dawn the next morning, the group flew out again, this time east to Taihoku, Formosa, which was a scheduled stop, arriving there around noon on 18 August 1945. During the two-hour stop in Taihoku, the plane was again refueled, while the passengers ate lunch. The chief pilot and the ground engineer, and Major Kono, seemed concerned about the portside engine, and, once all the passengers were on board, the engine was tested by repeatedly throttling up and down. The concerns allayed, the plane finally took off, in different accounts, as early as 2 pm, and as late as 2:30 pm, watched by ground engineers.