In the Battle of Okinawa the U.S. fleet lost thirty-four ships and more than 600 were damaged. The U.S. lost almost as many aircraft. However, the Japanese lost nearly 8,000 aircraft and nearly all of its remaining Imperial fleet.
Victory on Okinawa brought no rest for the battle-weary soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. They were told to prepare for the massive invasion of Japan itself. They’d won the battle for Okinawa, but the war itself was definitely not yet over.
From Potsdam, after the surrender of Germany and the Nazi war machine, the Allied leaders warned Japan of the destruction of their homeland when the invasion came. The Japanese still would not bend. Their military leaders would rather die than surrender.
But the casualties of the Battle of Okinawa helped President Truman confirm his decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman reckoned that although the new devices would probably kill thousands, using them to force a capitulation by Japan would be the more humane route in the long run.
More people were killed on Okinawa than were later killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The Okinawan civilians and Japanese and American dead at Okinawa numbered nearly 300,000.
Those numbers must have seemed horrendous to Truman, yet they would only get worse if the bombings continued over Tokyo, and if the planned invasion went forward. The president had also been told that at least one million American deaths would occur during an invasion of Japan. The Allied leaders projected that another one to two million Japanese lives would be lost in defending against an invasion.
These projections did not even include the 400,000 American and Allied POWs, slave laborers, and civilian detainees held by Japan; most would be executed if an invasion began. Nor would it include the half million to a million Japanese troops virtually stranded on various Pacific islands, who would likely starve if Japanese supply ships did not get through—which was now the case since the Japanese had no ships and the Americans controlled the sea lanes.
The Washington war strategists agreed that they couldn’t sacrifice millions of lives, but they weren’t sure about the atomic bomb, either. In any event, as the sign on Truman’s desk put it, “The buck stops here.” The president would make the ultimate decision. And by now, Truman knew that the atomic bomb was only viable alternative.
CHAPTER 18
MACARTHUR AND WAR’S END
(JULY–AUGUST 1945)
OFFICE OF THE U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
WASHINGTON, D.C.
22 JUNE 1945
Okinawa, the last battle of World War II, yielded horrific losses of life on all sides. President Truman decided that if they were going to press Japan into submission any time within the next ten years, the United States would have to use the atomic bomb.
Truman and the Joint Chiefs wanted the war to end right away. The idea of another decade of the horror was too much to contemplate. They also felt it was imperative to save American lives, but were also concerned about the loss of Japanese lives. That was the main factor in the decision to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, leading finally to Japan’s full surrender.
The U.S. soldiers and Marines also wished for an end to the war. The beleaguered American troops who survived Okinawa had never experienced such extreme carnage. Admiral Nimitz had noted, “It was the worst fighting of the Pacific war, its sustained intensity surpassing even the brutal combat of Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.”
But since Okinawa was so vital to Tokyo’s last stand, the Japanese felt compelled to defend the island to the death. They did so with a desperation equal only to the unrelenting resolve of the Americans, who were even more determined to guarantee a victory of their own.
Toward the end of the bloody fighting on Okinawa, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Olympic—the ultimate invasion of Japan. Military planners scheduled it for 1 November 1945. Under the joint command of General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz, the U.S. forces would launch an assault on Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese Home Island. The Joint Chiefs had approved an invasion force of 650,000 troops, 2,500 ships, and 6,000 planes to attack the southern coast of Kyushu.
The Imperial military intelligence had correctly guessed the sites of American actions before and after Okinawa. They had expected the Americans to land in the Philippines and ordered their troops there to move back into the mountains and jungles. These troops were to hold out in a defensive operation while they prepared the Home Islands for the expected invasion. They were planning to fortify the coastlines and determine strategies for turning back the Americans when they landed on the beaches.
President Truman
By August, the Japanese high command planned to station nearly 250,000 troops on Kyushu, where they planned to counter-attack with 6,000 kamikaze aircraft. These suicidal missions would attempt to destroy a quarter of the Allied invasion force before they landed, while American troops were still aboard their amphibious troop carriers.
Meanwhile, American code-breakers, still unknown to the Japanese, were intercepting messages that indicated Russia and Japan were holding secret talks. Russia, although a U.S. ally in the European theater, had signed a neutrality agreement with Japan before the events of Pearl Harbor.
These behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Soviet Union and Japan took place during the first two weeks of June 1945. At Emperor Hirohito’s behest, Japanese diplomat Koki Hirota met with the Russian ambassador to Japan to discuss a possible new relationship between the two countries. Hirota offered to share all of Asia with the Soviet Union, telling the Russian ambassador, “Japan will be able to increase her naval strength in the future. That, together with the Russian army, would make a force unequaled in the world.”
The idea of a Russia–Japan alliance complicated the American plans for Operation Olympic. Would an agreement between the two nations mean that Russian troops might come to the aid of the Japanese in the event of an Allied invasion?
U.S. SOUTHWEST PACIFIC COMMAND
MANILA, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
29 JULY 1945
MacArthur’s headquarters announced the end of all Japanese resistance in the Philippines, and the liberation of the Philippines was declared on 5 July. By 10 July preparations for Operation Olympic were under way, and 1,000 bombing raids against Japan were planned. Four days later, they began. The first naval bombardment of the Japanese Home Islands also commenced.
Meanwhile the U.S. was secretly considering the use of an incredible new weapon, capable of destroying an entire city. Destroying a city wasn’t a new concept. American B-29s under General Curtis LeMay, who had assumed command of the 20th U.S. Army Air Corps in the Mariana Islands, had leveled cities. After three months of bombing Japanese cities, however, few targets had been destroyed. General LeMay suggested that it would take his air force until October to destroy the fifty most important cities in Japan.
By late July, U.S. bombers had been dropping bombs on Japanese cities for several months, and although 300,000 casualties resulted from these raids, it took many missions and numerous tons of bombs to do it. These bombing raids did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the Japanese.
The U.S. now had the means to destroy an entire city with a single device—the atomic bomb—in a single bombing run. Such a weapon would certainly demonstrate to the Japanese warlords that continuing the war was futile. When MacArthur was briefed on the atomic bomb project, he was surprised. It seemed to him to have suddenly appeared as simply another military option, while it had in fact been decades in the making.
While the Manhattan Project is credited for the creation of the first atomic bombs, the concept was at least twenty years old. The first scientific papers were offered following World War I and throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The idea of an atomic bomb came first to Leo Szilard, a native of Budapest who immigrated to Great Britain, in 1933. His idea was patented and the patent was secretly transferred to the British Navy. The secrecy and patents did not put an end to the study and experiments toward n
uclear fission. A number of countries took more than a passing interest in the project.
In fact, in October 1940, Imperial Army Commander Sosaku Suzuki had sent Tokyo a report “on the possibility of Japan developing an atomic bomb” based on uranium deposits in its newly acquired Chinese and Burmese territories. And in April 1941, seven months before Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Army had given its approval for the Japanese development of an atomic bomb.
U.S. war leaders were concerned that both the Germans and the Japanese might be working on atomic weapons of their own. Fortunately for the Allies, the Japanese war leaders had taken a more traditional route, focused on building ships and aircraft and using highly trained, thoroughly committed troops. Their scientists had not actively pursued the idea of making atomic bombs.
In the United States, FDR had approved the top-secret plan for exploring nuclear fission as a basis for an atomic bomb, rather than moving forward with a plan for a nuclear energy reactor. The Manhattan Project was years ahead of any other nation’s quest for the atomic bomb. American scientists worked around the clock for the duration of the war to build the atomic bomb. They would soon see the culmination of all their efforts.
In April, Truman had informed Russian premier Josef Stalin that America was completing work on an atomic bomb; Stalin’s spies in the U.S. had already told him.
On 16 July, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested a few seconds before 0530 at the “Trinity” site in the middle of the desert. Code-named “Gadget,” the detonation yielded over twenty kilotons of explosive energy. In the process, the steel tower holding the “Gadget” was vaporized.
Word was sent to Truman, who was in conference with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam to discuss the Allied efforts for ending the war. Truman told the other leaders that the United States now had a way to end the war swiftly, once and for all.
The next day, 17 July, the Allied leaders met once more at Potsdam to consider the possibility that Japan might be open to surrender terms.
Ten days later, Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration. It demanded that Japan unconditionally surrender to the Allies, and without going into any details about the atomic bomb, it warned the Japanese that the alternative to a full surrender was “complete and utter destruction.”
Meanwhile, components of “Little Boy”—a working atomic bomb—were carried to Tinian Island in the South Pacific aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis.
A few days after the bomb components had been safely offloaded, a lone Japanese submarine managed to sink the Indianapolis, resulting in the loss of nearly 900 sailors. The Indianapolis went to the bottom so quickly that a radio distress call wasn’t even sent. Survivors were left adrift for two days, resulting in an even greater loss of life.
That week the tragedy of the Indianapolis was the dominant story in the headlines, along with Truman’s Potsdam Declaration. On 28 July, Tokyo rejected Truman’s call for an unconditional surrender.
Nevertheless, General MacArthur was already thinking about the end of the war. Both the Americans and Japanese knew that it was inevitable. The Japanese refused to accept the idea of surrender. In previous wars, the parties had merely declared an armistice. But Truman’s mandate to the Japanese called for an unconditional surrender.
Churchill, Stalin, and others had tried to talk Truman out of making Japan submit to an unconditional surrender. The Allies’ argument was that the Japanese would likely accept an armistice or conditional surrender, so they could negotiate terms for peace. It was the concept of unconditional surrender that made them choke.
The U.S. State Department and the president had sent MacArthur a list of reforms they wanted to achieve; their consensus was that the only way to achieve these goals was to mandate them through unconditional surrender terms. MacArthur had added his own ideas. While he had his own problems with Truman, this wasn’t one of them. He agreed that the reforms had to be made, and without an unconditional surrender, the Japanese could find allies who might help them negotiate their way out of the Americans’ terms.
The reforms presented in the Potsdam Declaration dealt primarily with destroying Japanese weapons, giving feudal farmers an opportunity to own land, ending the clan monopolies on industry, giving women equal rights, and replacing the imperial form of government with a democracy. To Truman and MacArthur, these were non-negotiable.
U.S. 20TH ARMY AIR CORPS
TINIAN ISLAND AIR BASE
5 AUGUST 1945
After Tokyo’s rejection of the Potsdam Declaration, Truman must have assumed that the Japanese government was in a total state of denial. They apparently believed the war was still winnable.
As Japan seemed prepared to commit national suicide rather than surrender or negotiate seriously with the Americans, Truman decided to follow the only course of action offering him the opportunity to end the war quickly and save the most lives.
Truman consulted with Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the Joint Chiefs’ General George Marshall the day before the first atomic bomb fell on Japan. Later that day, General LeMay received the word from Washington confirming the mission for 6 August.
Colonel Paul Tibbets was the pilot for the new B-29 Superfortress that would carry the bomb, which he named “Enola Gay” in honor of his mother. Colonel Tibbets told his B-29 crewmen, “You will be delivering a bomb that can destroy an entire city.” He didn’t know any more about the inner workings of the device than they did, but told his men simply, “It’s something new called ‘atomic’.”
“Little Boy” was loaded on the Enola Gay that evening. At midnight on 6 August, the crew got its final briefing. The twelve-man flight crew consisted of Colonel Tibbets, commanding officer and pilot; Captain Robert Lewis, copilot; Major Thomas Ferebee, bombardier; Captain Ted Van Kirk, navigator; Lieutenant Jacob Beser, radar countermeasure officer; Navy Captain William “Deke” Parsons, a Manhattan Project scientist; Staff Sergeant Wyatt Duzenbury, flight engineer; Sergeant Robert Shumard, assistant engineer; Sergeant Joe Stiborik, radar operator; Staff Sergeant George Caron, tail gunner; Lieutenant Morris Jeppson, bomb electronics test officer; and Private First Class Richard Nelson, radio operator.
The Enola Gay started its takeoff checklist and took off at precisely 0245 on 6 August. The flying time to mainland Japan would be about six hours. At about two hours from the target site, Captain Parsons supervised the arming of “Little Boy.” The Enola Gay, still flying at just over 31,000 feet, approached Hiroshima at about ten minutes before nine. The morning was clear and the skies were empty of enemy fighters or anti-aircraft flak. By now the navigator, engineer, and pilots could see the target, Aioi Bridge. At seventeen seconds past 0915 (0815 Hiroshima time) the bomb was released.
It took exactly forty-five seconds for “Little Boy” to fall six miles to the explosion altitude of 1,850 feet, closer than 650 feet to the landmark bridge. It exploded above the city with an effective yield of fifteen kilotons. In an instant, a brilliant, awful, blinding light filled the cockpit of the Enola Gay. Reflex action caused the crew to turn and look back at the light. But it faded as quickly as it came, and after it an angry, dark, and fiery form roiled across the landscape, rising skyward in a slowly forming mushroom cloud of debris, smoke, and fire that obscured Hiroshima.
For what seemed to be a long while, no one spoke. Then, they all began shouting at once: “Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!” Copilot Lewis said that there was a strange taste in his mouth. “It tastes like lead,” he observed.
“It’s the taste of atomic fission,” Deke Parsons explained.
As the Enola Gay headed back toward Tinian Island, Paul Tibbets wrote a few notes in his logbook. His entry concluded with the words, “My God, what have we done.”
U.S. 20TH ARMY AIR CORPS
TINIAN ISLAND AIR BASE
10 AUGUST 1945
There was no official Japanese response following the bombing of Hiroshima. The U.S. had earlier begun printing and dropping millions of l
eaflets on Japanese cities, warning its citizens of the destruction to follow if their leaders did not surrender unconditionally. The day after the first blast, leaflets warned of more atomic bomb attacks.
The U.S. had originally planned to wait for some time before using another atomic bomb, but a forecast of bad weather pushed up the schedule. The confirmation came to the Tinian air base, where the second atomic bomb—nicknamed “Fat Man”—was kept. The mission would be for 9 August; the target was the Kokura Arsenal.
As the Americans prepared to give “Fat Man” a ride into history, the Japanese and Russians were still frantically negotiating. Until 8 August, the strategy was to somehow convince the Americans to accept negotiated terms rather than an unconditional surrender. That would buy more time for the Russians and Japanese to work things out once the Americans and Japanese stopped the war.
Japanese foreign minister Togo was still hopeful that Ambassador Hirota was making some headway with the Soviets when the Russians abruptly cancelled the talks. The Soviets later informed Tokyo that Russia was declaring war on the Japanese, effective the next day.
Togo and Hirohito were not told the rationale for the Russians’ sudden about-face. Perhaps the awesome power and effectiveness of the atomic bomb made Stalin reconsider plans to side with Japan. The equation had suddenly shifted. Even if Japan could rebuild its navy, and even if the USSR could muster an unprecedented army, both parties now had to consider the new tactical advantage of the United States. The Americans had a bomb that made conventional warfare obsolete. It changed everything.
As Russia declared war on Japan, it immediately invaded Manchuria, which by now was just a shell of Japanese military occupation.
War Stories II Page 40
