The Final Storm

by Jeff Shaara

  “Never mind, Captain. You must follow the orders you have been given.”

  “Sir, permit me to inquire …”

  “About what?” The captain hesitated, and Ushijima looked at him, knew he had been a good student, had a serious mind for military studies. “I assure you, Captain, General Cho is nowhere close. Ask what you wish.”

  “Sir, I have heard that the Imperial Air Force will arrive here at any time. The reports say that the enemy fleet will be forced to abandon their ground troops by sailing away, and if they do not, their ships will be destroyed. My men … the others in our battery are greatly pleased to hear that. I was wondering if you could reveal when this might happen. I do not wish to expend ammunition if it is not called for. We shall require every shell if the ground troops approach our field of fire.”

  Ushijima appreciated the man’s logic, but the question was infuriating.

  “Captain, you have heard no reports. What you have heard is rumors. The Imperial Air Force, along with the Imperial Navy, has been assuring me for many days now that the enemy fleet is to be utterly destroyed by vast waves of our finest planes and a mighty armada of our finest warships. They have not yet provided me with a timetable for such a wonderful scene of destruction.”

  The man bowed.

  “I understand, sir. It is not my place to know such details. I should not have asked about matters beyond my responsibility. Please forgive my impudence, sir.”

  Ushijima absorbed the man’s words, thought, he believes it still. Perhaps they all believe it. And perhaps that is a good thing, good for morale. I wish I believed it.

  THIRTY-SECOND ARMY HEADQUARTERS

  BENEATH SHURI CASTLE, OKINAWA

  APRIL 6, 1945

  It was his favorite lookout, the wide opening of his primary cave, safe from enemy fire only at night. During the day the opening that dug straight into the mountainside was covered by the thick mat of camouflage, designed to look exactly like the brush that surrounded it. Despite the shattering carpet of explosives the Americans had draped across the area, the opening had seemed to escape detection by the American spotters completely.

  The sun was just beginning to set, the western sky a blaze of pink and orange, the reflection on the ocean broken by the shadows of the American ships. He held a teacup, heard nothing from the security guards standing in rows behind him, lining both sides of the corridor.

  “When this is over, I should look forward to sharing moments like this with all of you. You have been loyal and efficient. Perhaps if I am allowed to return to teaching, some of you would consider attending the Imperial Military Academy. It would require the recommendation of someone in … authority.” He turned, saw the surprised faces. “I suppose I qualify.”

  The lieutenant closest to him bowed deeply, said, “Thank you, sir. From all of us. We shall leave this place with the enemy’s blood on our swords. I would be honored to learn the art of war at your hand.”

  “Your loyalty is appreciated. All of you.”

  Ushijima said nothing more, knew very well he would never see the academy again.

  The day had been rainy, but the storms had cleared now, remnants of clouds to the south. He knew that the poor weather had been to his advantage, the rains deepening the mud that would slow any advance by the Americans. For his own men, the rains provided much-needed fresh water, which was lacking in most of the caves. With the setting sun, his work details waited near the mouths of the many caves, preparing for darkness, when they could retrieve the tubs and empty the cisterns. They had learned long ago that there were few wells anywhere near the mountains, but the army had its needs, and on Okinawa the wells were on flatter ground. Thus, whether the farmers offered up the water on their own, the soldiers knew where the wells were found. But carrying the precious water to the caves was a long and treacherous job by night, and nearly impossible by day. The American fighters had continued their patrols, and so far the thunderstorms had been too brief to ground the fighters for long. Each time the thunderstorms subsided, they had come again, a swarm of blue bees rising up from the distant aircraft carriers. Once it was dark the soldiers could emerge from underground once more, not to do the actual work, but to supervise the legions of laborers. They were Okinawans mostly, along with the Koreans and Chinese that had been brought over to assist in Colonel Yahara’s enormous construction projects. Any hope of building a pipeline had long been dismissed, Yahara as certain as his commander that the American bombs would destroy it in short order. So the laborers hauled the water in buckets. Ushijima had warned his officers not to brutalize the Okinawan farmers, that their work in the fields was essential to providing food for his own troops. He knew the order had been disobeyed, suspected that General Cho had overseen some of the occupation of the farmhouses for officers who remained out beyond the caves. Reports were many that Okinawan homes had been established as comfort stations for the officers, local women and their daughters hidden away with one purpose, to serve the needs of his men. He had known of such things in China, and everywhere the army had been, most of the High Command blithely looking away, as though such activities were completely acceptable, so long as the women were not Japanese. Ushijima had forbidden this behavior around his own headquarters, knew that the women he saw daily in his offices were performing valuable work. Others, mostly Okinawan, were serving the army as nurses, a service that could only grow more crucial as the days passed. I cannot stand guard over everything this army does, he thought, no matter how stupid. The best officers are those who are educated, and in this army there are too many who have risen to the ranks because we have no choice but to put them there. Too many good men are gone, and the luxury of choosing one’s own subordinates has long passed. The field officers who worship men like Cho have learned only the ways of the training camps, conscripts taught to be soldiers by sergeants who exercise the authority of the whip and the fist. The soldiers perform their duties because they are afraid not to. It has become the way of this army, and that is stupid as well.

  He missed teaching at the military academy, missed the brightest minds, those so privileged to attend, some of those, like the artillery captain, officers under his command. He had tried to convince himself that he had made the army much more professional, more efficient, more skilled, but the illusion had been shattered too many times by what he had seen in China. The brutality and savagery of his own men had been horrific and unstoppable, even the officers participating in the worst acts of inhumanity imaginable. He thought of Cho, all the man’s talk about victories. How can you claim to have achieved such honorable victory when you destroy a nation in the process? What have you won? You exterminate an entire race of people, just because you can … and so you congratulate yourself on your glorious conquest. None of that was in the lessons I learned, the lessons I taught my cadets. And yet men like Cho don’t give it a second thought.

  He sipped the tea, the taste suddenly unpleasant. Behind him his servant seemed to read him, was close now, a hand holding a small tray. He set the cup down, never looked at the girl, caught a smell of her, some fragrance. He pushed that from his mind, heard her shuffle away, thought of Cho again. There had been talk all through his headquarters of the parties, that despite Ushijima’s orders, Cho had made it a practice to abuse many of the women who worked in the offices. The noise had been kept far away from Ushijima’s quarters, and he felt paralyzed to press the matter, would not wander down through the labyrinth of caves seeking out the dirty secrets of his officers. He knew that Cho had a loyal following, and those men would accept Ushijima’s authority as long as it did not interfere too much in Cho’s own world. A knife in the back, he thought, or a pistol shot to the temple. It would happen in my room, in the still of the night, one of the guards perhaps, tempted by glorious promises, a special place in the Yasukuni Shrine. The killer would most likely take his own life right beside me. He felt disgust, Cho’s bleating cheers a sickening reminder of the worst of the army. They sent that jackal here to get
him away from … someone else, someone with more political influence than I have. It is the system. All that talk of Bushido, all the glorious history of the samurai. What we are is men, mortal and flawed, and we serve our emperor because it is what we are taught, and there can be no other way.

  The sun was sinking low, the bright colors fading. He stared out toward the city of Naha, could not quite see the airfield there, the primary field on the island not yet captured by the Americans. More stupidity, he thought. It is just like this on every place we have added to the vast reaches of our empire. Let us create airfields, countless airfields. No matter that our air force refuses to use them, or perhaps our strength is so depleted that we have more airfields than usable fighters. Ah, but we must take pride in them. And the enemy admires them as well. So, we shall make the Americans happy by offering them such wonderful temptation, so many fine airfields on every island, every outpost, our smiling invitation for the Americans to come, to see our airfields, and should they wish, to take them for themselves. And we shall be powerless to stop them.

  He heard the roar of a plane, high above, out of his view, knew the sound. One of their carrier planes, he thought, with the strange gull-shaped wing. We have nothing to compare; not even the Imperial Air Force can maintain the illusion that our Zero is the finest plane in the world. He stared out at the distant ships, thought, Tokyo promised me you would be blasted to oblivion, that the Imperial Air Force would come here as one mighty unstoppable wave, erasing your planes from the sky, showering your ships with bombs until every one was sent to the bottom of the sea. What a marvelous fantasy. It is what comforts our emperor every night when he goes to sleep, visions of our might, our victories, our endless glory, and the glory of our ancestors. A marvelous fantasy.

  He heard another engine, closer, and he stepped back from the opening, instinct, but the sound grew louder, passing close overhead. There were more now, many more, and he caught flickers of movement out to the north, planes dipping and rolling, streaks of machine gun fire, combat in the air. He was curious, moved to the edge of the cave’s mouth, sought the best view, thought, what is happening? The Americans do not make raids at night, and it will be dark in minutes. But those … those are our planes. He saw more of them now, rolling up and over the mountain, a swarm of angry insects. The swarm continued to grow, emerging from behind the mountain, some dipping low, flowing out past the city of Naha, past the distant beaches, spreading out in a chaotic pattern, no formation. He began to feel a sharp stirring in his chest, saw a flash of light, a burst of flames, then another. The ships were responding, streaks of anti-aircraft fire rising up, hundreds of ships answering the swarm with a swarm of their own, the streaks lighting the sky like strands of fiery straw. In the corridor behind him were boot steps, coming quickly, but he kept his stare out to sea, to the battle that was erupting right in front of him. Yes, there could be glory here! They have come at last!

  “Sir!”

  The voice was Colonel Miyake, another of the staff. The man stood silently for a long moment, absorbing the sight, and Ushijima said nothing, watched the distant bursts of fire, the impacts of so many bombs … and then he began to see, the planes were dropping low, close to the water, and the stirring inside of him turned colder, a sudden clarity, the sickening reality. He had seen this before, but only single planes, began to understand what the battle meant.

  “Sir! Forgive me for interrupting … but we have received a report. What we have been told has finally happened, sir! Tokyo reports the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum. They are attacking the enemy fleet! It is as we have heard, sir! The Divine Wind! Kamikaze!”

  Ushijima had received the coded messages from the Imperial High Command that the air force was mobilizing every available plane, an attack that was as the rumors described, wave upon wave of assaults upon the American fleet. So far the reports had been empty promises, rumors that inspired the men, and frustrated the one man who had the responsibility for defending Okinawa against what he now knew to be the enemy’s overwhelming superiority. He had kept the hope inside of him, his own fantasy, that someone in Tokyo would live up to the promise, that the ocean would be cleansed of the massive fleet. But the anti-aircraft fire and the bursts of flame revealed now what Operation Floating Chrysanthemum truly meant. The planes were not dropping bombs. They were the bombs.

  Though reports had circulated through the American command of scattered suicide attacks by small numbers of Japanese planes, the first organized kamikaze assault against American warships had taken place in October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The apparent willingness of the Japanese pilots to crash their explosive-laden planes deliberately into the American ships had shocked the American commanders and inflicted considerable casualties, sending five ships to the bottom and damaging thirty-five others. As horrified as the Americans were, those attacks had been carried out by no more than a few dozen specially chosen pilots. At Okinawa the Japanese sent more than three hundred fifty planes against the American fleet and produced devastating damage to several small vessels. Despite the enormity of the attack, the results were not nearly the crushing blow that the Imperial Air Force had promised. The Americans had long ago broken the Japanese intelligence codes, and when the first wave of Operation Floating Chrysanthemum left their airfields, American fighter planes were waiting for them. Half of the Japanese planes were shot down far out at sea, and many of those who survived the gauntlet were shot out of the sky by a storm of anti-aircraft fire. With so much firepower aimed their way, the Japanese pilots mostly ignored their orders to target the largest ships, the carriers and battleships, and instead launched themselves at the first ship they saw. Because of the configuration of the American fleet, those ships were most often the outer ring, the picket line, including smaller gunboats, patrol boats, transports, and supply ships, and the occasional destroyer or light cruiser. Though the most valuable prizes were largely missed, the destruction on the smaller American craft was horrific. Hundreds of sailors were killed, and several ships were sunk.

  As the carnage played out in front of him, Ushijima received word that he had long discounted, a communication from Tokyo that the Imperial Navy was finally fulfilling its own promises. They were coming to Okinawa as well. Most of the Japanese army commanders still believed that the navy far outclassed and outnumbered their enemies, but the admirals understood that the greatest naval battles they had fought were mostly one-sided affairs, and the Japanese fleets had suffered severely. What most Japanese never could be told was that the power of the Japanese fleet, the battleships and carriers, was simply gone. But there was one exception, one survivor, a ship that by its very size and strength inspired the Japanese people, their military, and their emperor. On April 6, that ship sailed out of the protection of her port and, accompanied by a fleet of support ships, made her way directly for the American anchorage at Okinawa. The Americans knew her to be the fiercest weapon the Japanese had in their arsenal, the largest and most heavily armed battleship ever built. It was called the Yamato.

  The first American ship to spot the Yamato was the submarine USS Threadfin, who radioed that the mammoth warship had emerged from her home port of Kure, on Japan’s inland sea. She was accompanied by nine smaller ships: eight destroyers and one cruiser. It required very little imagination for the American command to predict the Yamato’s destination. The Threadfin could not keep up with the faster-moving warships, and so the Americans responded by launching spotter planes to keep discreet track of the Japanese vessels. As the Yamato drew within two hundred fifty miles of Okinawa, the Americans were astonished to discover that the small fleet was steaming straight toward the island completely naked of air support. The response was ordered by Admiral Raymond Spruance, in overall command of the task force that included the fleet around Okinawa. The Americans launched an attack force of nearly three hundred planes, from eight different aircraft carriers.

  The worst challenge for the American pilots was weather, a dense
rain and cloud layer that kept their targets mostly hidden, but openings in the overcast were found. Midday on April 7, low-flying Helldiver bombers struck the first blows, followed by Avengers, who launched torpedoes as they skimmed toward their target barely above the water’s surface. The results were immediate and devastating. In a battle that lasted barely five hours, the Japanese cruiser and four of the accompanying destroyers were sunk, with the loss of more than a thousand crewmen. But the Japanese sailors who survived the carnage were witness to their final catastrophe. Stung by torpedoes and a continuing rain of bombs, the Yamato began to list severely, and in one great gasp, she rolled over and sank. As she disappeared beneath the sea, her magazine ignited in a mammoth blast that sent a fiery plume a mile high, a blast that ensured the end for more than three thousand of her crewmen. Those few Japanese sailors who survived the lopsided battle were rescued by their own ships after the American planes had gone home. Whether those rescued sailors regretted the complete absence of lifeboats, no one would dare complain. It was tradition on board Japanese naval vessels that lifeboats were a symbol of defeat, that sailors who did not die with their ship would suffer a shameful indignity if they survived.

  On Okinawa, word quickly reached Ushijima of the catastrophic naval battle. The particulars told him what he had suspected all along, that the navy had used the Yamato as a grand sacrifice, another show of glory for Japan’s legacy. It was a poorly guarded secret that the Yamato had not been given enough precious fuel for the round trip that would return her to her home port. Ushijima already understood what the others in Tokyo had to accept. The great attack against the American fleet was planned as a one-way trip.

  What the Japanese commanders could not know was that this most crushing of defeats had come at a cost to the Americans of only twelve pilots.