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.[1][a][2][b] 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 Truruta 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 Bengal, refused at the time and have refused since to believe either the fact or the circumstances of his death.[3][c][4][d][5][e] Conspiracy theories appeared within hours of his death and have persisted since then,[6][f] keeping alive various martial myths about Bose.[7][g]
Legends of Bose's survival[edit]
Immediate post-war legends[edit]
Subhas Chandra Bose's exploits had become legendary long before his physical death in August 1945.[30][h] From the time he had escaped house arrest in Calcutta in 1940, rumours had been rife in India about whether or not he was alive, and if the latter, where he was and what he was doing.[30] His appearance in faraway Germany in 1941 created a sense of mystery about his activities. With Congress leaders in jail in the wake of the Quit India Resolution in August 1942 and the Indian public starved for political news, Bose's radio broadcasts from Berlin charting radical plans for India's liberation during a time when the star of Germany was still rising and that of Britain was at its lowest, made him an object of adulation among many in India and southeast Asia.[31] During his two years in Germany, according to historian Romain Hayes, "If Bose gradually obtained respect in Berlin, in Tokyo he earned fervent admiration and was seen very much as an 'Indian samurai'."[32] Thus it was that when Bose appeared in Southeast Asia in July 1943, brought mysteriously on German and Japanese submarines, he was already a figure of mythical size and reach.[31]
After Bose's death, Bose's other lieutenants, who were to have accompanied him to Manchuria, but were left behind in Saigon, never saw a body.[33] There were no photographs taken of the injured or deceased Bose, neither was a death certificate issued.[33] According to historian Leonard A. Gordon,
Inquiries[edit]
Figgess Report 1946[edit]
Confronted with rumours about Bose, which had begun to spread within days of his death, the Supreme Allied Command, South-east Asia, under Mountbatten, tasked Colonel (later Sir) John Figgess, an intelligence officer, with investigating Bose's death.[33] Figgess's report, submitted on 25 July 1946, however, was confidential, being work done in Indian Political Intelligence (IPI), a partially secret branch of the Government of India.[33] Figgess was interviewed in the 1980s by Leonard A. Gordon and confirmed writing the report.[33] In 1997, the British Government made most of the IPI files available for public viewing in the India Office Records of the British Library.[33] However, the Figgess report was not among them. A photocopy of the Figess report was soon anonymously donated for public viewing to the British Library in the European manuscripts collection, as Eur. MSS. c 785.[45] Good candidates for the donor, according to Leonard Gordon, are Figgess himself, who had died in 1997, or more likely another British intelligence officer in wartime India, Hugh Toye, the author of a book (Toye 1959).[45]
The crucial paragraph in the Figgess report (by Colonel John Figgess, Indian Political Intelligence, 25 July 1946,) is:[45]