What were excess death rates in the three months after Japan's 1945 surrender in the area that had been Japanese occupied, compared with excess death rates in the three months prior to Hiroshima?
The atomic bomb, and the end of the war, saved millions of Asian lives, some say. At the same time, from a reading of "In the Ruins of Empire" by Ron Spector, it appears that throughout the Japanese occupied territories, a lot of killing and dying continued unabated as different groups immediately fought for control of national destinies. Did the rate of excess mortality fall sharply throughout all regions of Asia in the 3 months after VJ Day compared to the 3 months before VJ Day?
If the overall trend in violence was downward, did this trend specifically apply to places like the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Malaya, Burma, Philippines, Korea and China, or were one or more of those areas exceptions?
in another thread Don Philippson provides a figure for the daily death rate in China before V-J Day:
"3. Casualties continued throughout the stalemate after the
capture of Okinawa:
-- About 25 USN warships sunk every month, mainly by
kamikaze attack.
-- About 5,000 Chinese civilian deaths every day in
occupied China. "
Anybody know if or how daily civilian deaths every day went down in China after V-J Day?
On the one hand, Japanese offensive operations, especially air operations, stopped, and the Chinese did not need to continue their Hunan offensive. Additionally, at least in some specific places, the end of the naval war and related blockades probably made food more available in the days after Japanese surrender. Eventually, Soviet operations in Manchuria stopped too. So this must have saved some lives.
On the other hand, you had the beginnings of the Chinese Civil War and many mutual retribution killings, although this was interrupted by some ceasefires. Also, the economic dislocation and immiseration of many Chinese would not have gone away overnight. Some robbery, looting, rapine by the Soviets in Manchuria was fatal for the victims as well.
I suspect that in Korea, civilian death probably increased after VJ Day, sure, bombings stopped and the heavy campaigning in the northeast stopped, but Koreans got to more easily compete, to the death, in politics after Japanese authority was eliminated.