How does one implement a truly asynchronous java thread

Question

I have a function that needs to perfom two operations, one which finishes fast and one which takes a long time to run. I want to be able to delegate the long running operation to a thread and I dont care when the thread finishes, but the threads needs to complete. I implemented this as shown below , but, my secondoperation never gets done as the function exits after the start() call. How I can ensure that the function returns but the second operation thread finishes its execution as well and is not dependent on the parent thread ?

public void someFunction(String data)
{
   smallOperation()
   SecondOperation a = new SecondOperation();
   Thread th = new Thread(a);
   th.Start();
}

class SecondOperation implements Runnable
{
  public void run(){
  // doSomething long running
 }
} 

Answer 1

public void someFunction(final String data) {
    shortOperation(data);
    new Thread(new Runnable() {
        public void run(){
            longOperation(data);
        }
    }).start();
}

If someFunction is called, the JVM will run the longOperation if

1. the thread running it is not marked as a daemon (in the above code it is not)
2. the longOperation() does not throw an exception and
3. no calls to System.exit() is made in longOperation()