By the late summer of 1944, there was no question that the war had turned irretrievably against Japan. Although most Japanese leaders were unwilling to accept this fact, they could find little reason for optimism. The Japanese were still in the ascendency in China, but this hardly made up for the disastrous erosion of their position in the Central and Southwest Pacific and even Burma. Far worse disasters lay ahead. The Americans soon embarked on a series of new operations that left Japan on the brink of total collapse.
THE RETURN TO THE PHILIPPINES
MacArthur, after securing his series of bases along New Guinea's northern coast, focused his attention on the reconquest of the Philippines. He had originally planned to invade Mindanao in the southern part of the archipelago before moving northward toward the principal island of Luzon. But in September, Halsey executed a carrier strike against the Philippines that indicated that Japanese air power in the islands might be weaker than expected. Halsey now urged that American forces bypass Mindanao and instead capture Leyte on the eastern edge of the central Philippines. MacArthur and Nimitz both agreed, but the Pacific Fleet commander also insisted on a preliminary attack against the Palau Islands, which he desired as an advance base to support the Leyte landing. The Palaus lay 500 miles to the southeast of Mindanao. The decision to attack the Palaus proved to be a mistake.
On September 15, when the 1st Marine Division went ashore on the island of Peleliu, which contained the main airfield in the Palaus, they soon discovered that American planners had greatly underestimated the difficulties involved. Instead of the quick victory that had been expected, the battle became a nightmare. The northern portion of the island consisted of a series of jagged coral ridges separated by precipitous gorges. These ridges were full of interconnecting caves that the Japanese had reinforced with concrete. They were virtually impervious to preliminary shelling and bombing. Even with the help of army reinforcements, the marines were not able to root out the last Japanese from this labyrinth of caves until November 26. In addition to the horrendous terrain, the heat was unbearable, with temperatures soaring as high as 115 degrees. Despite 6,000 American casualties, possession of Peleliu did not contribute significantly to the success of the Leyte operation.
Ten days prior to the invasion of Leyte, Halsey led his 3rd Fleet in a series of carrier raids against Luzon and Formosa as well as the Ryukyu Islands, which stretched 600 miles from Japan toward Formosa. The 3rd Fleet was actually the 5th Fleet under different command. During the summer of 1944, Nimitz adopted the practice of alternating the fleet's commanders and staffs. When Admiral Spruance was in charge, it was the 5th Fleet, and Halsey and his staff planned their next operation. When Halsey took over, it became the 3rd Fleet, and Spruance and his staff prepared their next campaign. Likewise Admiral Mitscher's carrier task force operated as Task Force 58 when with the 5th Fleet and as Task Force 38 when with the 3rd Fleet. This procedure enabled Nimitz to get the most action out of the fleet.
Halsey's raids met a determined response from both land-based aircraft and Admiral Ozawa's carrier planes. But once again the Japanese fared badly, losing over 500 planes to only 79 for the Americans. Nevertheless, inexperienced Japanese pilots who survived the battle believed that they had actually sunk large numbers of U.S. ships and reported a great victory. In reality, they had damaged only two cruisers and a carrier. Although Japanese naval leaders later discovered that the pilots' claims were wildly inflated, they neglected to inform the army high command, which continued to believe that much of the U.S. Fleet lay at the bottom of the Pacific. This decision emboldened army leaders to change their strategy for meeting the invasion of the Philippines. They had planned to mass most of their troops in defense of Luzon. Now they decided that they could make a major stand on Leyte.
The Americans assembled an impressive force for the invasion of Leyte. Admiral Thomas Kinkaid commanded the 7th Fleet, which was responsible for transporting and protecting the actual assault force, General George Krueger's 6th Army. Halsey's 3rd Fleet provided the covering naval force, now 17 carriers strong. Kinkaid had led forces in the Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal actions as well as in the Aleutians. Krueger was born in Germany and moved to America with his parents as a boy. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, he had commanded troops in the New Britain and New Guinea campaigns.
On October 20, Krueger's forces landed at three points along the coast of Leyte Gulf, the body of water bordering the island on the east. They encountered little opposition and by nightfall had secured a substantial beachhead. Early in the afternoon of the first day, MacArthur and a small party waded ashore in knee-deep water after their landing craft ran aground a short distance from the beach. This scene provided photographers with one of the most famous pictures of the war. Soon afterward, MacArthur made a brief statement over a radio transmitter in which he announced, "People of the Philippines, I have returned!"
THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF
But the real drama took place during the following days, not on Leyte itself but in the surrounding waters - the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval struggle of all time. Despite its mauling in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese navy still hoped to destroy the Pacific Fleet in the decisive battle it had been seeking since the start of the war. To accomplish this, Admiral Toyoda devised a master plan that provided for the entire Combined Fleet to converge on the Philippines.
Admiral Ozawa's Northern Force moved south from Japan as a decoy to lure Halsey's 3rd Fleet away from Leyte. Although it included Japan's four surviving carriers, they had a combined strength of only 110 aircraft. At the same time, two Japanese task forces rushed northward from the Singapore area, made their way through the congested waters of the Philippines, and headed for Leyte Gulf from two directions. Their mission: to destroy the American transports and supporting warships. One of them, Admiral Takeo Kurita's powerful Force A, contained the superbattleships Yamato and Yusashi as well as three other battleships, 12 cruisers, and 15 destroyers. It was to penetrate San Bernardino Strait, which separated Luzon from Samar, an island just to the northeast of Leyte. At the same time, Admiral Shoji Nishimura'sForce C, including two battleships, a heavy cruiser, and four destroyers, would steam through Surigao Strait to the south of Leyte. Admiral Kiyohide Shima's Second Striking Force, consisting of three cruisers and four destroyers, was to push south from Japanese waters to assist Nishimura. Toyoda's plan was bold and imaginative but was also highly complex, required exceptionally precise timing, and exposed the Japanese fleet to great danger, especially in view of its lack of carrier-based planes. The forces converging on Leyte Gulf had to depend completely on land-based aircraft, which proved quite unreliable.
On October 23, two U.S. submarines sighted Kurita's force and alerted Halsey. They also sank two heavy cruisers and disabled a third. Kurita continued into the Sibuyan Sea to the south of Luzon, where planes from Mitscher's task force attacked Musashi the next day. The huge ship suffered no fewer than 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits, which finally sent it to the bottom. Three other battleships sustained damage, but to the north U.S. light carrier Princeton was sunk by a dive bomber from Luzon. After this rude reception, Kurita turned back to the west, and his maneuver convinced Halsey that he was giving up the struggle. But after dark, Kurita moved once again toward San Bernardino Strait.
U.S. carrier aircraft spotted Force C the same day, and Admiral Jesse Oldendorf set out to intercept it with six older battleships, including five survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack, as well as eight cruisers and a large destroyer force. A night engagement followed in which Oldendorf arrayed his cruisers and battleships across the entrance to Surigao Strait while his destroyers and PT boats penetrated into the narrow body of water. The smaller craft made skillful use of their torpedos, destroying the battleship Fuso and three destroyers and slightly damaging Admiral Nishimura's flagship, the battleship Yamashiro. Despite this disaster, Nishimura proceeded with his remaining three vessels in column formation. Oldendorf's waiting line of cruisers and battleships finished off Yamashiro and crippled both the cruiser Mogami and a destroyer. Soon afterward, Shima's force ventured into the strait, but when it encountered the blazing wreckage of several of Nishimura's ships, Shima wisely retreated.
Meanwhile, Halsey, assuming that he had nothing to fear from Kurita's Force A, abruptly shifted his 3rd Fleet northward to intercept Ozawa's carriers. He did not even bother to leave a covering force at San Bernardino Strait and failed to bring this to the attention of Admiral Kinkaid, the 7th Fleet commander. Kinkaid, assuming that Halsey had left his Task Force 34, which included six new battleships, as a rear guard, took no further action. As a result, only Admiral Clifton Sprague's weak force of five small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts lay between Kurita and Leyte Gulf.
When Kurita emerged from San Bernardino Strait on the morning of October 25, he proceeded southward and discovered Sprague's ships off Samar. The little escort carriers were too slow to outrun Kurita's formidable armada but moved away as quickly as possible while launching air strikes against the pursuing enemy. Kurita mistakenly thought that he had fallen upon the big U.S. carriers and dashed forward to destroy them. He moved too fast. His ships became separated, and the engagement became a confused melee, reducing the tremendous striking power of his superior force. Torpedo attacks by Sprague's destroyers as well as planes from Admiral Felix Stumpf's escort carrier group, which lay to the south, also helped to disrupt the Japanese. Although Kurita's ships sank the escort carrier Gambier Bay and two destroyers, three Japanese cruisers also went to the bottom. Nevertheless, Kurita continued to enjoy an overwhelming advantage in firepower and seemed on the verge of annihilating the Americans. But instead of moving in for the kill, he hesitated, apparently fearing intervention from Mitscher's task force, and finally decided to withdraw through San Bernardino Strait.
Contrary to Kurita's fears, Mitscher was still far to the north with Halsey, who refused to divert any ships to the south for some time after receiving news of the threat to Sprague's forces. He was determined to destroy Ozawa's carriers, and success eventually awarded his persistence. Mitscher's planes sank all four, including Zuikaku, the last survivor of the Pearl Harbor striking force, as well as five other ships. Halsey was about to overtake the rest of Ozawa's ships when he received a query from Admiral Nimitz, who was concerned about the looming disaster in Leyte Gulf, "Where is Task Force 34?" Halsey angrily diverted his six battleships and a carrier group to intercept Kurita's squadron, but the Japanese had already fled.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf had dealt a death blow to Japan's naval power. Four carriers, three battleships, six heavy and four light cruisers, and nine destroyers littered the ocean's floor - 26 Japanese ships lost to only six American. The Japanese had also lost 500 planes. But, ironically, Toyoda's master plan had almost worked. If Kurita had continued his assault on Sprague's escort carriers, he almost certainly would have destroyed them as well as the transports and supply ships. Halsey had blundered by not leaving a force to guard San Bernardino Strait. He had been fortunate that Kurita had placed discretion ahead of valor.
Shortly before the end of the three-day struggle, the Japanese introduced a new weapon, one that soon became terribly familiar to American sailors - the kamikaze. A suicide unit composed of pilots who deliberately crashed their bomb-laden planes into American ships, the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps owed its existence to the disastrous decline of Japan's airpower. Kamikaze, meaning "divine wind," referred to the typhoons that had destroyed the fleet of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, saving Japan from invasion in the thirteenth century. Admiral Takijiro Onishi, who commanded the 1st Air Fleet, believed that kamikaze attacks were the only way to inflict meaningful damage on U.S. ships and morale. Such assaults posed special defensive problems. Such assaults posed special defensive problems. It was extremely difficult to stop a crash dive completely. Even if crippled, a kamikaze plane might still hit its target. Although the first suicide attack damaged an Australian cruiser on October 21, the main assault came four days later against the hard-pressed U.S. escort carriers. It caught the Americans by surprise, sinking the escort carrier St. Lo and damaging four others.
PROGRESS ON LAND
While the opposing fleets fought their desperate battle, American troops on Leyte soon encountered stronger opposition. General Yamashita, who gained the nickname "Tiger of Malaya" as a result of his brilliant conquest of that British colony, now commanded Japanese forces in the Philippines. He had favored massing his troops on Luzon for an all-out struggle there. But his superior, Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, the commander for all of Southeast Asia, insisted that Yamashita shift as many men as possible to Leyte. This delayed the American advance but did not save Leyte.
The XXIV Corps drove south from the beachhead and then swung inland, reaching the western coast on November 1. Almost simultaneously, the X Corps swept through Leyte Valley to the northern coast. The two forces were now in position to converge on Ormoc, the chief enemy base on the western coast. But General Krueger paused to consolidate his position in the north before thrusting into the mountains protecting Ormoc. This delay enabled the Japanese commander, General Sasaki Suzuki, to establish a strong defense in the rugged heights. Incessant rains also hampered the American advance. But on December 7, the third anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, the 77th Division executed a surprise landing south of Ormoc and seized the town three days later. Although this maneuver really decided Leyte's fate, Japanese units held out in various parts of the island until as late as May 1945. On December 15, MacArthur sent troops ashore on lightly held Mindoro, just to the south of Luzon. They made rapid progress, and engineers immediately began to construct airfields from which U.S. planes could support an operation against Luzon itself.
MacArthur chose Lingayen Gulf, the site of the major Japanese landing in 1941, as his invasion target on Luzon. General Yamashita's hopes for an all-out struggle in defense of the island perished when Terauchi ordered him to divert so many troops to Leyte. Yamashita accordingly withdrew most of his remaining forces to the mountainous interior to fight a delaying action and did not contest the landings at Lingayen Gulf, which took place on January 9, 1945. But kamikaze planes sank the escort carrier Ommaney Bay and damaged another as well as two battleships and five cruisers. These attacks were especially hard on American morale because the great Leyte Gulf victory had seemingly ended the enemy's ability to interfere with amphibious operations. Americans also found it difficult to comprehend the mentality that motivated suicide attacks. In reality, not all kamikaze pilots were willing volunteers. Many of them joined only after experiencing intense pressure from their superiors.
After Krueger's 6th Army had consolidated its beachhead, the I Corps pushed slowly north and east in mountainous terrain against the strongest concentration of Yamashita's forces. The XIV Corps had an easier task driving southward through open country. It reached Clark Field on January 23 but did not secure the base until over a week later. Soon afterward, two motorized "flying columns" of the 1st Cavalry Division dashed for Manila and penetrated the city's suburbs on February 3. As U.S. forces moved into Manila, they occupied three prisoner of war camps and liberated 8,500 Americans. Many of the prisoners were on the verge of starvation and suffered from malaria, dysentery, and other diseases. In late January and early February, elements of General Robert Eichelberger's 8th Army landed without resistance to the north of Bataan Peninsula. Eichelberger was serving as commandant of West Point when the war began. He took over the task of capturing Buna in December 1942 and commanded troops in many of the subsequent operations along the New Guinea coast.
In contrast to the relatively easy thrust to Manila, the actual conquest of the capital became a long, arduous struggle. Yamashita had ordered his troops to abandon the capital, but Admiral Sanji Iwabachi, who commanded the naval forces there, refused to comply. Instead, navy and army units resisted savagely. Manila experienced widespread devastation, and its population suffered horribly. Almost 100,000 civilians died, including many who fell victim to Japanese atrocities reminiscent of the rape of Nanking. The last fighting did not end until March 3.
Meanwhile, the Americans who had landed north of Bataan moved quickly southward. All of Bataan was under their control by late February. The Japanese attempted to hold Corregidor in an effort to block access to Manila Bay, but the Americans surprised them with a combined amphibious and airborne assault on February 16 and captured most of the island within ten days. Now MacArthur's forces confronted the task of eliminating Yamashita's strongholds in the mountainous interior of Luzon. This necessitated another slow, bloody campaign, which continued with diminishing intensity until the end of the war.
THE AGONIZING FIGHT FOR IWO JIMA
Even before MacArthur's forces had taken Manila, Nimitz had launched another invasion in the Central Pacific. This time the objective was the small island of Iwo Jima in the Volcano group of the Bonin Islands. The Bonins stretched from near Japan to within 300 miles of Saipan. The name "Volcano" was apt. All of the islands were of volcanic origin and were, to say the least, uninviting. Iwo Jima, which means "Sulfur Island," was no exception. Various writers have described Iwo, when seen from the air, as resembling a pork chop. Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot dormant volcano, dominated the island's narrow southern end. The wider northern half consisted of a plateau that rose as high as 350 feet and contained a series of jagged volcanic ridges. Both uplands possessed innumerable caves. The Japanese had reinforced them with concrete, adding a large number of bunkers and blockhouses. They had fortified these positions with big naval guns, mortars, and machine guns. An intricate network of tunnels connected the caves and fortresses as well as underground quarters for the troops.
Between the two upland areas lay a connecting stretch of lower-lying terrain that contained two airfields and the island's only beaches. These were no ordinary beaches. Instead of sand, they consisted of volcanic ash, so soft that men sank into it up to their ankles. This made walking difficult and running almost impossible. Just beyond the beaches, a series of volcanic terraces rose abruptly to a height of 15 feet. The combination of the soft ash and these steep obstacles created a serious problem for amphibious vehicles and tanks attempting to move inland. In addition, the Japanese had ringed the beaches with bunkers, blockhouses, and pillboxes. The island, less than 5 miles long and 2 1/2 miles across at its widest point, also abounded with bubbling sulfur pits, which created a pervasive acrid smell. As one observer later remarked it was "like hell with the fire out."
American leaders coveted this dismal volcanic outcrop because it lay only 660 miles from Tokyo. Its capture would eliminate attacks by Japanese fighter planes operating from the island against B-29s en route from the Marianas to raid Japanese cities. American fighters could then use the same bases to provide escort for the Superfortresses. Iwo also had potential as an advance base for the bombers themselves. Finally, the airfields would provide a useful haven for crippled aircraft unable to make it back to their bases in the Marianas. The Joint Chiefs of Staff set the original invasion date for January 2, but the slow conquest of Leyte delayed the assault until February 19.
Months of bombing did little to soften up Iwo's defenses. But the postponement of the invasion enabled the Japanese to reinforce their garrison until it reached a total of 21,000 men. American leaders knew that the island was well defended, but they were not aware of how strong it really was. Three days of shelling by Spruance's 5th Fleet failed to eliminate the island's well-protected defenses, although the barrage did knock out many of the installations around the beaches.
General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the highly capable and realistic Japanese commander, had no intention of contesting the landing. He had learned from earlier defeats that such tactics did not work against an enemy that possessed naval and air supremacy. He preferred to wait until the Americans had landed and then rake the beaches with fire. Thus, when General Harry Schmidt's V Marine Amphibious Corps went ashore on February 19, it initially encountered much greater difficulty from the soft volcanic ash and steep terraces than from the Japanese. But the marines, virtually unprotected on the exposed beaches, soon came under murderous fire, and their casualties mounted alarmingly as they inched forward. Nevertheless, by nightfall, the 5th Division had fought its way across the narrowest part of the island, isolating Mount Suribachi. Kuribayashi had not started his barrage soon enough. Too many troops, tanks, and other equipment had landed. All he could do now was to exact as heavy a price as possible.
Despite ferocious opposition, Schmidt's troops clawed their way slowly up the slopes of Mount Suribachi, and a patrol reached the summit on February 23. Soon afterward, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal happened to be present as four marines hoisted an American flag and hastily snapped what became the most famous picture of the war.
The capture of Mount Suribachi lifted the spirits of the Americans, but the campaign had barely begun. With about half the island under their control, the marines now confronted the grim task of conquering the rugged terrain of the northern plateau with its myriad of fortified caves. Kuribayashi realized that suicide charges would be much more costly to his own troops than to the Americans. He was determined to avoid the temptation and insisted that his forces defend the island from their concealed positions. This proved highly effective in slowing the American advance.
Again, as on Biak and Peleliu, flamethrowers and TNT proved the surest weapons against these powerful defenses. Some Japanese soldiers volunteered to be human booby traps, strapping explosives to their bodies and lying in the paths of unsuspecting flamethrowing tanks. The bloody struggle continued for weeks as the marines cleared all but two pockets on the extreme northern part of the island. Then, with all hope gone, the remnants of the Japanese garrison did resort to a series of suicide attacks. Fighting ended on March 23.
As Admiral Nimitz observed, "uncommon valor was a common virtue" on Iwo Jima. Thirty percent of the marines who saw action on the island became casualties. Almost 6,000 died and over 17,000 suffered wounds. No fewer than 27 marines received medals of honor, 13 of them posthumously. Virtually the entire Japanese garrison perished, including General Kuribayashi. Iwo may not have been worth the price. It proved less effective as a B-29 base than American leaders had expected, and since the air force shifted to night bombing raids against Japan, fighter support was not really necessary. Iwo's primary value came to be a base where many crippled B-29s found safety.
THE COSTLY STRUGGLE FOR OKINAWA
Iwo Jima was one of two enemy island bastions that Admiral Nimitz planned to take during the first half of 1945. The other was Okinawa, which lay in the center of the Ryukyu Islands, only 350 miles from Kyushu, the southernmost of the major Japanese home islands. Sixty-seven miles long and varying in width from 2 to 18 miles, Okinawa contained airfields as well as two excellent anchorages and would provide an ideal base for an invasion of Japan.
The island was beyond the range of American land-based planes but relatively close to enemy airfields on Kyushu, Formosa, and the other Ryukyus. This meant that Spruance's 5th Fleet would be vulnerable to attack by Japanese planes. In an attempt to eliminate this threat, aircraft from Mitscher's carriers as well as a newly arrived British task force raided these bases prior to the invasion. But despite their efforts, the Japanese still had 700 planes available when the assault on Okinawa began on Easter Sunday, April 1.
Admiral Turner was in charge of the overall expeditionary force, while General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. commanded the 10th Army, which made the actual landing. Buckner, the son of a Confederate army general, had previously led U.S. troops in the Aleutians. His force of 180,000 men included both army and marine units. The 5th Fleet provided the heaviest preinvasion bombardment of the Pacific war, but Japanese defenses survived almost unscathed. Nevertheless, the landings on the southwestern side of the island went extremely well against only token opposition. Marine forces reached the east coast the next day, cutting the island in two.
Things had gone so well on Okinawa during the first week that Admiral Turner radioed Nimitz, "I may be crazy but it looks like the Japanese have quit the war, at least in this sector." To which, the far less optimistic commander of the Pacific Fleet replied sarcastically, "Delete all after 'crazy.'" There was good reason for the lack of resistance. General Mitsuru Ushijima, the clever and determined Japanese commander, planned to employ the same strategy that Kuribayashi had used on Iwo Jima. He realized that he could neither prevent the landing nor defend all of Okinawa. Instead, he chose to abandon the northern three-fourths of the island and make his stand in the southern portion, which contained the two main towns, Naha and Shuri. The entire area abounded with limestone cliffs and ridges honeycombed with caves and pillboxes connected by tunnels and bristling with the strongest Japanese artillery concentration of the war. The garrison numbered 120,000 men, the largest that U.S. forces encountered during the entire Pacific conflict.
On April 9, army troops collided with Ushijima's powerful defensive line to the north of Naha and Shuri. Six weeks of desperate fighting followed before the Americans forced the enemy back to the last ring of defenses. During the next ten days, they made slow progress as 12 inches of rain drenched the island, but on May 31, Ushijima withdrew for a final stand in the cave-studded ridges and ravines of extreme southern Okinawa. Another month of bloodshed lay ahead before the Americans overcame the last remnants of Japanese resistance. Again, U.S. forces paid a heavy price for Okinawa - over 12,000 killed and 36,000 wounded as well as the largest number of "combat fatigue" cases in the Pacific war. As usual, most of the defenders lost their lives, but for the first time, several thousand Japanese soldiers actually surrendered. Both commanders were among the dead. Ushijima committed suicide; Buckner fell victim to a shell burst that sent a piece of coral ripping into his chest. The campaign claimed still another prominent American when Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle fell victim to a Japanese machine gun bullet on the neighboring island of Ie Shima. Both GIs and Home Front mourned his passing.
While this ordeal unfolded in Okinawa, the Japanese subjected the 5th Fleet and offshore shipping to the war's most sustained and destructive kamikaze assault. Spruance arrayed large members of destroyers in an outlying arc around the island to detect Japanese planes on radar and alert the carriers and other units of their approach. The gallant crews of these "radar pickets" bore the brunt of the attacks. The Japanese timed the start of the kamikaze offensive to coincide with a sortie by elements of their surface fleet. On April 6, the superbattleship Yamato left Japanese home waters accompanied by a light cruiser and eight destroyers. They had only enough fuel for the voyage to Okinawa. Yamato was to attack the 5th Fleet and then beach itself on the shore on the shore, where its 18-inch guns would support the island's garrison. It was a suicide mission and did not get far. U.S. submarines soon spotted the fleet and alerted Mitscher's task force. Three hundred planes repeatedly attacked the Japanese ships to the southeast of Kyushu, sinking Yamato, the cruiser, and four destroyer.
Despite the failure of this final sortie of the Japanese navy, kamikaze and conventional air attacks continued for weeks. In all, they sank 34 ships and damaged over 350. Among those that sustained damaged were the veteran carrier Enterprise, four other flattops, and ten battleships.
THE PACIFIC SUBMARINE WAR
Although American leaders considered the conquest of Okinawa as only a preliminary to the projected invasion of the Japanese home islands, it turned out to be the last major amphibious operation of the war. But another campaign had virtually drawn to a close as well. This was a submarine offensive against Japanese merchant shipping. Although it received few headlines, it ultimately made as great a contribution to victory as the exploits of the land forces and the surface fleet. But almost two years passed after Pearl Harbor before it produced any important results.
For some time, Americans continued to think primarily in terms of submarine attacks on Japanese warships rather than on merchantmen and were slow to change their focus. As a result, during 1942 and 1943, Japanese merchant traffic between Southeast Asia and the home islands encountered relatively little difficulty. Defective torpedoes also contributed to the American dilemma. It gradually became apparent that these weapons suffered from both inaccurate depth control and faulty firing mechanisms. Technicians solved the depth problem in August 1942, but they did not remedy the last of the firing-pin shortcomings until 13 months later.
Ultra reports on the movements of Japanese merchantmen and tankers gradually persuaded naval leaders that these ships would be easy prey for submarines. Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, commander of the Pacific Fleet's submarine force, adopted "wolf pack" tactics, which proved highly effective. In addition, much improved submarines became available in large numbers by late 1943. The Japanese also failed to provide adequate escort vessels to protect their convoys. Japan's naval leaders had underestimated the potential of submarine attacks, and the poor showing of the Americans in 1942 and much of 1943 had done little to rouse them into action.
Sinkings by submarines increased during the second half of 1943, and by the end of 1944, half of Japan's merchant fleet lay at the bottom of the sea. Submarine attacks had virtually cut off the home islands from the natural resources of Southeast Asia. The interdiction of oil supplies was particularly disastrous for Japan's surviving air and naval units. When the war ended in August 1945, only 1.8 million tons of Japanese merchant shipping remained afloat, out of a total of 9.4 million used during the conflict. Submarines had accounted for 60 percent of the sinkings. They had achieved what German U-boats had failed to accomplish in their campaign against Britain.
The Japanese never made a concerted effort to cut American supply lines by submarine attacks, even though the links between the United States and the fighting areas of the Pacific were perilously long. Thus, America's massive industrial and logistic achievements continued to provide the basis for victory without any real challenge in the sea lanes. This was due in part to the Japanese view that submarines should be used primarily against warships. But it was also partly the result of the growing practice of diverting large numbers of submarines to transport supplies to bypassed garrisons in the Pacific.
FIRE FROM THE SKY
Disaster also afflicted Japan from the air. Although it did not develop as soon as on the land and sea, when it finally struck, it did so with a savage fury. The agent of destruction was the B-29 Superfortress, which was much heavier and faster than the B-17 and carried a far greater bombload. When B-29s became available for combat in early 1944, American forces were still far away from the Marianas, and the bombers could only operate from bases in China as part of General Kenneth Wolfe's 20th Bomber Command. But Wolfe encountered many problems. His bases were totally dependent on air supply via "the Hump" and had to compete with Stilwell's ground forces and Chennault's 14th Air Force for the rather meager supplies that made it to China. Persistent mechanical defects also kept many of the B-29s grounded.
Wolfe was not able to launch a raid against Japan until June 14, 1944, when over 60 B-29s struck the huge iron and steel complex at Yawata. They delivered their attack from high altitude, according to the prevailing doctrine of precision bombing, but the assault was far from precise and inflicted little damage. It did result in large headlines in American newspapers, which made leaders and the public alike eager for additional raids against the home islands. But due to his many troubles, Wolfe was slow to comply, and this led General "Hap" Arnold to replace him with General Curtis Lemay, a veteran of the strategic bombing offensive against Germany.
At age 39, Lemay was the youngest major general in the U.S. Army Air Force. He believed fiercely in the potential of high-level precision bombing. But all efforts to translate his faith into reality met with disappointment. B-29s continued to do little serious damage to Japanese industry. Strong winds and heavy cloud cover made precision bombing extremely difficult. In January 1945, Lemay assumed leadership of the 21st Bomber Command in the Marianas but continued to encounter the same disappointing results.
Reluctantly, the general concluded that he must change his approach. He decided to use incendiary bombs against enemy cities that contained many dwellings of flimsy wooden construction. The Japanese also housed much of their industry in small workshops in these highly inflammable residential areas. By this time, a particularly nasty type of incendiary was available. It contained napalm, a jellied form of petroleum that exploded upon impact and spread like a torrent, engulfing all before it. To provide greater accuracy, Lemay sharply reduced bombing altitude, and he stripped the B-29s of their machine guns to increase speed. Since the raids would take place at night, he believed that the faster-moving planes had little to fear from Japanese antiaircraft fire. The bomber crews did not share his confidence.
On March 9, 1945, over 300 B-29s dropped huge quantities of incendiaries on Tokyo from altitudes as low as 4,900 feet. Exploding napalm ignited rivers of fire, and strong winds whipped them into a vast inferno that destroyed 16 square miles of the city and incinerated almost 85,000 persons. The temperature of the holocaust reached an incredible 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. An enormous incandescent glow illuminated the sky while human beings burst spontaneously into flame, metal melted, and canals boiled furiously. This was the largest inferno ever ignited by a single bombing attack. More than 80,000 people perished and over 40,000 were injured. The tremendous heat created such air turbulence that some bombers had difficulty maintaining control and were sucked into the fires. But over all, B-29 losses were light. More firebombing raids followed in rapid succession. Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, and many other cities fell victim to the same type of horror. Over all, firebombing raids took an estimated 240,000 to 300,000 Japanese lives. Ostensibly, these raids aimed at destroying Japanese industry, and, to be sure, they did knock out an ample portion, but they were clearly terror raids, designed to weaken Japanese morale. Although the United States had been hesitant to resort to firebombing against German cities, it abandoned its reservations when it came to raining down fiery death on urban areas of Japan. In the wake of these raids, millions fled the cities, seeking refuge in the countryside. The flight of so many people hampered Japanese industrial production still more.
BOTH SIDES WOO THE SOVIETS
By the spring of 1945, Japan's economy was in shambles, and at least some Japanese leaders realized that the country could not continue the war for long. Lack of raw materials had cut steel output to less than 100,000 tons per month. Production of aircraft had declined disastrously, and planes that did come into service were starved for fuel. Similar shortages also immobilized the remnants of the navy and verged on paralyzing the entire transportation system. Food stocks dwindled alarmingly.
Although Japanese Premier Koiso publicly supported a vigorous war effort, he secretly opened diplomatic contacts with the Soviet Union, hoping to secure a negotiated peace. But Stalin was not interested in acting as a mediator, and Koiso's government could not survive the multitude of disasters that befell Japan. In early April, Baron Kantaro Suzuki, a 78-year-old retired admiral and hero of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, became premier. Suzuki apparently favored an end to the war, but many army and navy leaders still thought only in terms of fighting to the bitter end.
In the face of such opposition, the pursuit of peace was a tricky business. Like Koiso, Suzuki openly stated his support for the war, but behind the scenes his foreign minister, Shigenori Togo, looked for a way to end the conflict. Togo favored negotiations with the United States, but Suzuki insisted on reviving Koiso's indirect approach through the USSR despite the Soviet refusal to renew its nonaggression pact with Japan at virtually the same time that Suzuki became premier. Again, Stalin declined to cooperate.
The United States and Britain had long sought Soviet participation in the war against Japan once the Allies had defeated Germany. Soviet intervention in Manchuria would make it difficult for the Japanese to shift forces from there to help defend the home islands. Stalin had given his promise to enter the East Asian conflict at the Tehran conference in November 1943 and had outlined the concessions he expected in return. He presented more specific demands, which Roosevelt and Churchill accepted, at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. These included acquisition of the southern half of Sakhalin, a large island just to the north of Japan, as well as the Kuriles, a chain of much smaller islands stretching northeastward from Japan to the Soviet Union's Kamchatka Peninsula. He also asked for a lease on Port Arthur and special rights in the nearby port of Dairen on the Manchurian coast. Russia had controlled all of these territories, except the Kuriles, until Japan seized them in the Russo-Japanese War. Finally, Stalin insisted on joint Soviet-Chinese administration of the Manchurian railroads. Since the war, critics have attacked this agreement as a betrayal of China and a boon to Soviet expansionism. No doubt it was. But realistically, there was no question that Stalin was in a position to enforce his will on the areas involved, regardless of whether the United States and Britain concurred.
ADVENT OF A NEW AGE: THE ATOMIC BOMB
Ironically, the need for Soviet intervention may have become academic on the morning of July 16, 1945, when the United States detonated the first atomic bomb in the White Sands desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The ensuing explosion created a huge fireball and a cloud of smoke that rose to more than eight miles into the sky. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the team of scientists that had been largely responsible for developing the bomb, watched the dawn of the atomic age with both fascination and horror. It reminded him of a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, the great Sanskrit poem of India: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, Shatterer of Worlds."
The dramatic spectacle marked the culmination of developments in physics that had begun early in the twentieth century and led to revolutionary progress in the late 1930s. Scientists discovered that splitting the nucleus of the uranium atom would produce enormous energy and release particles that would in turn trigger a change reaction in other atoms, creating an even greater amount of energy. They also recognized that it was theoretically possible to harness this vast energy in a bomb of appalling power, but that the technical problems and expense involved would be prodigious.
German physicists were particularly active in this process of discovery, and some of them fled the tyranny of Hitler's regime. Fearing that Nazi Germany would produce an atomic bomb, they brought the matter to Roosevelt's attention in 1939. The president appointed a committee of scientists to study the problem, and in 1940, he and Churchill agreed to pool Anglo-American resources in this endeavor. But it was not until after America's entry into the war that a special unit of army engineers, headed by General Leslie Groves, assumed the devilishly difficult task of creating an atomic bomb. This top-secret undertaking was code-named the Manhattan Project. Groves worked closely with Oppenheimer's team, which also contained British scientists, at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The obstacles were staggering, but by the summer of 1945, the bomb was ready.
President Truman, who had succeeded to the presidency after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, received the news of the successful test while he was in Germany, conferring with Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. This was the last of the Allied summit meetings, and, indeed, before it ended, only Stalin remained of the wartime Big Three. Churchill departed for home ten days after the conference began to await the results of Britain's first parliamentary election since 1935. He never returned. Instead, Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour party, which won an unexpected landslide victory, took his place at prime minister and at Potsdam.
Roosevelt and Churchill had never informed Stalin of the Manhattan Project, and Truman was not prepared to do so now. He had watched with growing concern as the Soviets tightened their control over Eastern Europe. However, Truman did casually mention to Stalin that the United States had "a weapon of unusual destructive force." The Russian leader blandly indicated his satisfaction but did not press for details. In reality, he was already quite knowledgeable about the bomb. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist who had fled his homeland to become a British subject and later a member of Oppenheimer's scientific team, had supplied Soviet agents with extensive information on the project.
Stalin also belatedly informed Truman of the peace overtures that the Japanese had been making. But this came as no surprise to the president because Magic intercepts of Japanese diplomatic messages had kept him abreast of their efforts to obtain peace. It was quite clear that the combination of submarine and air attacks as well as Japanese defeats in the Pacific had weakened Tokyo's resolve to continue the war, but the intercepts also indicated determination to resist. This stiffened American opposition to a negotiated peace, and on July 26, the Allies issued a joint declaration calling on Japan to accept "unconditional surrender" or face "prompt and utter destruction."
The Japanese reply to this appeal was vague, but Truman and his advisors interpreted it as a rejection and decided to go ahead with plans to drop an atomic bomb on a major Japanese city. They compiled a list of urban centers that had escaped firebombing and, thus, would provide a dramatic demonstration of the bomb's terrible power. The leading candidate was Hiroshima, a city of 340,000 located on the southeastern coast of Honshu, Japan's principal island.
With Colonel Paul Tibbets, Jr., at the controls, a B-29, named Enola Gay after the pilot's mother, took off from Tinian early on the morning of August 6, carrying a 9,000-pound nuclear bomb with the destructive power of 20,000 tons of TNT. The weather over Hiroshima was ideal as Enola Gay approached. Shortly before 8:15 AM, an ungainly object hurtled out of its bomb bay doors. When it reached a point 660 yards from the ground, a blinding flash illuminated the sky, and a split second later, a gigantic fireball burst over the stricken city. Shock waves of unbelievable force followed, leveling almost everything in their path. The unearthly sight inspired copilot Robert Lewis to enter a terse, "My God!" in his log book. A tower of purple, orange, gray, and black smoke churned upward, topped by a cloud in the shape of a mushroom. It ultimately reached an altitude of 55,000 feet. Below, 60 percent of Hiroshima had virtually disappeared. Perhaps as many as 100,000 persons died instantly and as many more perished in the following days, weeks, and years from injuries and the effects of radiation.
FORCING JAPAN'S SURRENDER
Later on that fateful day, Truman warned the Japanese that unless they surrendered, more cities would experience the same horror. The Suzuki government reacted to the disaster by stepping up its unrealistic efforts to persuade the Soviet Union to help arrange peace. Stalin's response was a declaration of war on August 8, three months after Germany's surrender, as promised at Yalta. He had been massing 1.5 million men along the Manchurian border for months. The once formidable Kwantung Army, which defended Manchuria, had seen much of its strength siphoned off to bolster the defense of Japan and other fronts. Three Soviet armies under Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky knifed swiftly into Manchuria from both east and west.
Secretary of War Stimson was troubled by the horror of the Hiroshima cataclysm and urged Truman to make a peace overture to Japan. But the president was determined to stand on the Potsdam Declaration, and since the Japanese had not agreed to surrender, they would experience the horror of a second atomic bomb. This time the target was Nagasaki, a city of 250,000 on Kyushu's western coast. Although the second bomb was more powerful than the first, it produced less spectacular results. The explosion on August 9 flattened Nagasaki's center and killed 35,000 people, but the surrounding hills limited the area affected.
The combination of the two atomic bombs and the Soviet Union's entry into the war convinced many Japanese leaders that they had no choice but to surrender. In fact, the Supreme War Council, which had overall responsibility for directing the military effort, was debating acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration even before the second bomb struck Nagasaki. But the six-member council remained split, despite learning of the second A-bomb. Three members led by Premier Suzuki would accept, but the other three, led by General Korechika Anami, the war minister, voiced intense opposition. Emperor Hirohito broke precedent and the deadlock the day after the Nagasaki disaster by personally requesting that the council and cabinet consent to the declaration with the sole proviso that the emperor should retain his position. On August 10, the government relayed its acceptance on this basis.
Some American leaders still opposed the retention of the emperor, especially James F. Byrnes, who had recently become secretary of state. To Byrnes and others, the emperor symbolized the hated militaristic clique that dominated Japan. But Stimson realized how greatly the Japanese revered their emperor and believed that granting this concession was the only way to assure peace and avoid massive American casualties in an invasion of Japan. On August 11, the leaders reached a compromise that allowed the Japanese to keep their emperor but subjected his authority to an Allied supreme commander of occupation forces. The drama was not yet over, however. Japanese military leaders still opposed surrender, and the supreme council debated the matter for three days. Once again, Hirohito, encouraged by his closest advisor Marquis Koichi Kido, decided the issue. He tearfully urged acceptance of surrender and asked that the cabinet prepare a message to this effect that he would record for broadcast to the nation the next day. The cabinet members, almost overcome by emotion, agreed.
A group of young fanatical army officers made one last attempt to prevent surrender. They broke into the imperial palace grounds, seeking to destroy the recording of the emperor's message, and hoped to coerce the government into continuing the war. It was a final act of gekokujo. But this time there was too little support from higher officers. The coup failed. Although not involved in the coup, Anami chose to commit suicide rather than accept surrender. Admiral Onishi, who had been stockpiling kamikaze planes and fuel for one last all-out effort to prevent an American invasion, also took his own life as did many others. They remained faithful to the Bushido code of death before dishonor.
In his radio broadcast on August 15, the first time his people had ever heard his voice, Hirohito declared that he feared the "obliteration of the Japanese nation" by the "new and most cruel bomb," making it necessary to end the war.
When the announcement of Japan's surrender reached the United States, one of the most spontaneous celebrations in history erupted. Men, women, and children rushed into the streets and headed, as if by prior agreement, for the center of every town and city in America. They milled around in elated excitement for hours. The war was over. The mood in Japan was quite different - a combination of shock, shame, and relief. As the emperor had said in his address to the people, it was necessary to endure "the unendurable" and bear "the unbearable."
To the American people, August 14 was V-J Day, the moment of victory over Japan. But officially the war did not end until September 2, when the Japanese formally signed the document of surrender aboard the huge U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. General MacArthur, whom Truman had appointed Allied supreme commander, presided. During the ceremonies, he spoke these words, which reflected the feelings of everyone present as well as millions of people around the world:
"It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past - a world founded upon faith and understanding - a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish - for freedom, tolerance and justice."
POSTMORTEM: WAS ATOMIC FORCE NECESSARY?
The question of whether it was necessary to use the atomic bomb to force Japan's surrender has remained probably the most controversial issue of World War II. Truman and other American leaders contended that they resorted to the bomb to shorten the war and save American lives. They also insisted that both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were necessary to convince the Japanese that further resistance was suicidal. From their perspective, dropping the second bomb might foster the mistaken belief among Japan's leaders that America had the bomb in mass production. These arguments formed the basis for the traditional interpretation of this question, which many historians still accept.
In later years, however, revisionist historians have charged that the bomb was not needed to end the war and that Japan could not have resisted for long. They contend that the United States not only should have paid more attention to Tokyo's peace overtures but should have taken the initiative by guaranteeing the emperor's throne. At the very least, they feel that Washington should have warned the Japanese of the bomb's existence and staged a demonstration of its destructiveness. Some also contend that U.S. leaders used the bomb not to force Japan's surrender but to impress the Soviets with America's awesome new power and to persuade Stalin to moderate his policies in Europe.
Some of these revisionist arguments are persuasive. There is strong evidence that Japan could not have long avoided surrender. The submarine blockade and the firebombing attacks had sharply reduced the country's ability to make war and had caused great suffering. Indeed, total casualties from the incendiary raids were far greater than those inflicted by the atomic attacks. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey after the war stated flatly that Japan could not have continued the struggle beyond the end of 1945, even without the use of the bomb.
It is also true that the United States made no effort to capitalize on Japanese overtures or to take any diplomatic initiative to secure peace. Truman and his advisors questioned the seriousness of the Japanese feelers to the Soviets. A direct approach to Washington might have had more impact. American leaders also doubted that the tentative peace initiatives really represented the position of the Japanese military. Indeed, there was good reason for this lack of conviction, because many of the enemy's top army leaders opposed acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, and only the emperor's personal intervention settled the matter. Finally, the Japanese had consistently fought to the bitter end in the Pacific and American leaders expected even greater fanaticism and bloodshed in defense of the sacred home islands.
It is difficult to accept the contention that Truman and his advisers used the bomb to impress the Soviet Union rather than to end the war. Certainly, by the summer of 1945, they were concerned about the USSR's dominant position in Eastern Europe, but there is no indication that they intended to challenge it at that point. Perhaps American leaders hoped that the weapon's awesome power might help restrain Moscow's actions regarding the remainder of Europe, but this is not clear. However unnecessary the bomb may have been in forcing the Japanese surrender, it does not appear that the leaders in Washington were convinced of this. They probably believed sincerely that their action would save American lives. Planning for the invasion of the Japanese home islands called for landings on Kyushu (Operation Olympic) in November 1945, followed by an assault on Honshu (Operation Coronet) in March 1946. The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that American casualties would be over a quarter of a million. They projected this from the fanatical resistance on Okinawa, where 35 percent of U.S. forces became casualties. The medical staff of General Krueger's 6th Army, scheduled to implement Olympic, was preparing for 490,000 casualties, including 147,500 killed in action. Japanese casualties would simply be astronomical.
Probably it is best to consider the decision to drop the bomb in the context of the steadily escalating vindictiveness and brutality that marked the Allied war effort. This was the case not only against the Japanese but against the Germans as well. Once the British resorted to area bombing of Germany's cities, it was only a step to the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden. Even the Americans, despite their protests against such an approach, had joined in area bombing of German cities by 1945. Hatred for the Japanese was even more pronounced. Neither the American people nor their leaders could forget the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, or the fanatical Japanese resistance on island after island. U.S. leaders also became increasingly dedicated to the cause of unconditional surrender, which they believed would prevent a resurgence of Japanese militarism. When conventional strategic bombing of Japanese cities failed, it was but another step to area bombing with incendiaries. It is by no means certain that inflicting death by napalm was more humane than incinerating with nuclear bombs. The decisions to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki would seem to have been the last logical elements in the growing crescendo of hatred and destructiveness - undoubtedly terrible, perhaps morally indefensible, but, unfortunately and tragically, understandable.