I follow a page on FB, World War II - Day by Day, and they have been posting a lot of Japanese surrender ceremonies at different island garrisons and bases. Just how many were there? Who surrendered where, and to who?
The method and manner of surrender of Japanese Forces varied wildly, and many Japanese who surrendered, especially in SE Asia (re: Indonesia) had not in fact even seen an Allied soldier since their initial conquests in 1942. This is a direct result of the habit of making the divisions that took part in the initial conquests part of the military governance of said regions.
The surrenders, especially on the Asian mainland, generally went off smoothly and in an almost ripple-like effect following official Japanese surrender. However, Japanese anti-colonials actions during the war, war weariness and sheer distance to their now-liberated colonies allowed for quite a bit of significant political activity to occur in between Japanese surrenders and the re-establishment of true law and order.
Bill Yenne describes the End at length for many units and their commanders. In the Philippines, several days after Hirohito's address to the nation, General Yamashita was coaxed to surrender...
A few days later, an American aircraft dropped a message from Major General W.H. Gill of the 32nd Infantry Division, inviting Yamashita to surrender. Ordering his troops to “disarm according to American orders,” Tomoyuki Yamashita walked out of the mountains on September 2 and gave himself up to the Americans. Taken to Gill’s command post at Baguio, he signed papers formally surrendering the 14th Area Army.
At the time he surrendered, Yamashita was not an isolated recluse hiding in a cave in the mountains. There were still more than 100,000 uncaptured Japanese troops in the Philippines, and around half of these were under Yamashita’s direct command...
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Bill Yenne addresses the issue of far-flung paces not associated with Slim's Burma campaign, the Soviet Invasions of Manchuria or the American island hopping campaigns, I will quote him at length:
However, as the sun rose over postwar Asia, the once invincible IJA still held its positions across much of what it had conquered across Asia. No Allied army had recaptured Beijing, Hankow, or Shanghai. The United States had recaptured most of the Philippines, although those 100,000 Japanese troops had yet to be rounded up, but the soil of Taiwan had felt the boots of no invading army since the Japanese arrived in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War.
On the Southern Road, the Allies had recaptured Rangoon in May 1945, and Borneo in July. Elsewhere, nothing had changed since the days in 1942, when the IJA had been invincible.
Across the vast territory of Southeast Asia, IJA troops were still patrolling the streets and jungle tracks on September 2 and on September
The actual surrender of these forces was often rather surreal. As you most likely know, sweeping military operations had been planned for the Invasion of Japan and the re-taking of land East of Burma by the Allies, but the nukes and surrender had made these moot. Instead of waves of Assault battalions landing on Malayan beaches, then, British Military administrators instead arrived with a skeleton crew. For places like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, it was as simple as arriving, accepting the Commanding General's surrender, and assimilating the administrative apparatuses already in place. Stop-gap measures until a garrison could be delivered to restore proper rule to these surrendered places. In extraordinary circumstances, the newly surrendered Japanese forces were expected to continue their patrols now under Allied control, much like how select Gendarmie units aided with law and order well after surrender in Germany.
The ramifications of these massive surrenders would have far reaching political consequences. You must understand that we're talking about cases where 100k+ troops would surrender, but barely a fraction of those would arrive to take over. In what is now Vietnam, the shattered French government could not dispatch the necessary troops immediately to restore law and order. Shortly after the Japanese vacated as per their surrender, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. In Malaysia what was once a native resistance movement did not disarm with the Japanese surrender, and in the early 1950s formed the backbone of what would be a communist insurrection.
In many other cases, the surrendering Japanese did not wait for the Allies to arrive with their military government before vacating or disarming. They often also allowed anti-colonial forces/militas to fill the vacuum as they disarmed. Yenne uses the Dutch Indies as an example, and parallels to the French in Vietnam are easy to draw:
In the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch expected to do as the British were doing in Malaya, and as the French were doing in Indochina. However, as in these other places, matters were complicated by local aspirations. Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta had declared the independence of Indonesia on August 17, two days after Hirohito had called for a ceasefire.
The Japanese, who had undertaken an exhaustive effort to eradicate Dutch influence in the Indies, initially allowed their administrators to be replaced by Indonesians rather than waiting for the Dutch to arrive. Declaring themselves as president and vice president of Indonesia, Sukarno and Hatta moved quickly to install their own people in municipal governments at every level, especially in Java and Sumatra.
The Dutch may have intended to pick up where they had left off before the war, but with or without the inconvenience of the declared independence, it was a daunting logistical and administrative challenge. The Netherlands were exhausted by more than four years of German occupation, and facing critical food shortages at home, and were unable to send an army of administrators and bureaucrats to the Indies.
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Source: Yenne, Bill. The Imperial Japanese Army: The Invincible Years 1941-42
The aforementioned page, for those curious: https://www.facebook.com/worldwar2daybyday?fref=ts