Many thousands of troops—four divisions overall—landed on their heels, and soon the shoreline was converted into a burgeoning supply depot, with vehicles driving on mud tracks, crates stacked in rows, and men standing and walking upright. Farther inland, infantrymen were digging foxholes and trenches. There was such a concentration of troop strength in the area that the holes directly abutted one another. Many had carried life jackets from the boats to use as pillows, and had laid palm fronds across their foxholes to keep out the rain. The Third Amphibious War Diary noted, “Troops generally 1000 to 1400 yards inland. Resistance is fairly light. Troops are still advancing except where enemy is entrenched and using mortars. Casualties are light on landing beaches. There is little evidence of enemy movement.”8 Without any concerted enemy resistance, units on the northern sector swung north and quickly seized possession of the island’s most important strategic asset: Tacloban airfield, near the town of that name on the island’s northeast coast.
From the bridge of the Nashville, MacArthur swept his binoculars from White Beach near Dulag on the south end of the long arc, up to Red Beach near Tacloban on the north. There were so many ships standing between the Nashville and the invasion beaches that it was actually difficult to see the beach at all. He paused often to relight his corn cob pipe, and chatted amiably with the war correspondents assigned to his ship. He regaled them with stories of his first posting in Tacloban when he was a newly commissioned officer out of West Point.
A few minutes after one o’clock, MacArthur descended a ladder to his landing barge. He was followed by leading members of his staff, his air commander General Kenney, and a handful of his favorite war correspondents. The barge stopped at another transport to embark Sergio Osmeña, who had succeeded the late Manuel Quezon as president of the Philippines, and Brigadier General Carlos P. Romulo, resident commissioner to the U.S. House of Representatives. As the barge ran in toward Red Beach, MacArthur sat upright on a bench near the stern. He slapped Dick Sutherland on the knee and said, “Believe it or not, Dick, we’re back!”9 After two-and-a-half years, the scene seemed dreamlike. He said it again to Romulo, grasping both of his Filipino friend’s hands: “Well, here we are!” They were all saying it, recalled Romulo: “All said it over and over again, with different inflections, as if it were the newest and profoundest of expressions. It didn’t sound trite to us. It sounded like Washington’s Farewell Address, or Lincoln at Gettysburg. We couldn’t hear it enough.”10
The coxswain ran the barge gently aground with a thud, and dropped the ramp. They were about fifty yards from shore. Two Signal Corps photographers stepped off the ramp and waded ashore, so they could capture the scene on film. Sutherland, at MacArthur’s arm, repeated, “We’re here!”—and MacArthur agreed: “Well, believe it or not, we’re here.”11 The party waited patiently until the photographers had their cameras ready. Then MacArthur, wearing aviator sunglasses under his gold-braided field cap, stepped down into the knee-deep water and began wading in to shore. He was followed at a short distance by Osmeña, then by the others in his party. The photographs capturing this scene would be published in newspapers around the world.
Wading through the surf onto a beach congested with supplies, the smell of cordite and burning palm trees thick in his nostrils, MacArthur strode inland at a brisk pace. A company of troops assigned to guard him hurried forward, suddenly anxious, because for a moment the SWPA chief seemed determined to head directly toward the tree line, where Japanese snipers might still be lurking. Then he did an about-face and went back to shake hands with Osmeña again. “Mr. President, how does it feel to be home?” Osmeña, tears welling in his eyes, could not find his voice.12 Carrier planes droned low overhead. The roar of not-so-distant artillery and rifle fire rang in their ears. Emaciated Filipino civilians milled about the scene, many waving American flags that had been kept in hiding during the years of Japanese occupation. They greeted the American soldiers with wide smiles, saying, “Lovely Americans!”
Another Signal Corps crew was preparing a radio broadcast unit and mounting up a transmitter. MacArthur and Osmeña sat together on a fallen palm log. On a tree nearby, the American and Filipino commonwealth flags fluttered side by side. The crew let them know the broadcast team was ready.
After a short delay, MacArthur took up a handheld microphone. A soft rain began falling as he spoke. The broadcast was carried live in the United States, an extraordinary feat at the time; it was also broadcast throughout the Philippines via the mobile transmitter, although it seems that very few Filipinos heard that initial broadcast.
As was his usual practice, MacArthur employed the first-person singular pronoun to refer to the forces under his command. “People of the Philippines,” he declared: “I have returned! By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil.” He instructed the Filipino people to rise up and strike the enemy, and “Rally to me!”13
The speech was met with eye-rolling among many of the troops under his command, who saw it as another instance of MacArthuresque grandstanding. Hadn’t they all returned? But there was no arguing with the electrifying effect on the Filipino people. Even if they did not hear the speech on the radio, most soon learned of it from leaflets or word of mouth. The following day, on the steps of the State Capitol in Tacloban, MacArthur would preside over a more formal ceremony with President Osmeña—a symbolic transfer of sovereignty back to the Philippines. He had not cleared this declaration with the U.S. State Department or the Department of the Interior, which held commonwealth authority over the Philippines. MacArthur was making his own U.S. foreign policy in Asia—not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.
LATE ON OCTOBER 20, Kurita’s powerful column of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers entered Brunei Bay in North Borneo. Two oil tankers were waiting; all ships would drink their fill. The following afternoon, launches from throughout the fleet delivered captains and senior officers to the heavy cruiser Atago, Kurita’s flagship. There they were briefed on the final Sho operations order, just arrived from Combined Fleet headquarters in Hiyoshi. Their faces told the tale; the officers were unsettled by the plan, and some ventured to ask blunt questions. If the situation was as dire as the high command believed, shouldn’t the commander in chief personally lead them into battle? Why was Admiral Toyoda holed up in his safe underground bunker in Yokohama? If this sortie amounted to a naval banzai charge, shouldn’t they aim for the American battleships and carriers, rather than the transports in Leyte Gulf? And why were they to attack in daylight, after training intensely for a night action?
Kurita finally rose and answered these objections with a short speech. The surprise attack on the transport fleet offered their best hope of dealing a serious blow to the invasion, he said. This might be the last opportunity for a concerted fleet battle; if they did not fight now, they might never have another chance. It was now or never. Moreover, he said, orders were orders. The officers stood and gave a unified cheer of “Banzai!” Then they drank a toast of cold sake and returned to their ships.14
Kurita’s force of thirty-one warships sortied from Brunei at 0800 on October 22 and shaped a northerly course for Palawan Island. Having studied the charts and considered all the factors, he had decided that his force would take a middle route through the Palawan Passage, and thence to the Sibuyan Sea and San Bernardino Strait. Kurita was followed seven hours later by Nishimura at the head of the “Section C” force, which would take a more direct southerly route to Leyte Gulf via Balabac Strait, the Sulu Sea, and Surigao Strait. Far to the north, Admiral Shima’s “Second Striking Force” sortied from the port of Mako in the Pescadores Islands, and started south with vague orders to follow Nishimura through Surigao Strait. Ozawa’s threadbare carrier fleet had hauled their anchors out of mud at the bottom of the Inland Sea and headed for a rendezvous at the Bungo Strait, putting to sea on the afternoon of October 20. By nightfall on October 22, all of the various elements of Plan Sho were in motion.*
Bef
ore the battle, the Americans had forty-four submarines at sea, many of which were specifically placed to intercept and observe Japanese naval units headed for the waters off the eastern Philippines. More than a dozen had been deployed to observe and guard the sea approaches to Leyte Gulf. The region’s complex island geography tended to limit the routes that any deep-draft ship could take through the barrier formed by the central islands of the Philippines. Submarines were stationed at various navigational bottlenecks: the Balabac Strait, Mindoro Strait, Verde Island Passage, Palawan Passage, and seas west of Luzon. After studying the charts and considering all the factors, Kurita and his staff chose to traverse Palawan Passage, a navigable corridor running northwest between Palawan Island and the “Dangerous Ground.” The latter was a poorly charted region of the South China Sea, rife with shoals, cays, and reefs—a four-hundred-year graveyard of shipwrecks. Kurita and his staff knew that their chosen route would likely bring them into the crosshairs of American submarines, but they had no other alternative, given their rigid orders and the limitations imposed by a tight fuel budget.15
At midnight on October 22–23, two American Gato-class submarines waited near the southwest end of Palawan Island. The Darter (Commander David McClintock) and Dace (Commander Bladen Claggett) were surfaced, idling side by side, separated by only about 200 feet. At 1:16 a.m., blips began appearing on the Darter’s SJ radar scope. They were in the southeast, at a range of about 17 miles. At first the operator thought it must be a weather front, but soon they resolved into many blips, moving together across the scope. They could only be heavy warships, northbound for the Palawan Passage. With a handheld megaphone, McClintock called across the water to the bridge of the Dace: “We have radar contact. Let’s go!”16 The two subs ran at four-engine speed on the surface, making about 19 knots, hoping to reach an interception point ahead of the enemy force.
Cloaked by darkness, the two submarines radioed reports of a Japanese fleet northbound through the Palawan Passage, correctly estimating that it included at least three battleships.17 Darter’s first flash report went to Admiral Christie in Australia, who promptly passed it along to Halsey and other commands. Each of the Darter’s follow-up contact reports raised the number of ships estimated in the column. In his last report before submerging, McClintock reported: “Minimum 11 ships. Same course, speed.”18
Supposing that the enemy fleet was traveling at 22 knots, the Darter’s tracking party was pessimistic about their chances of getting into an attack position. But as the range closed it became apparent that the fleet was making no better than 18 knots. And it was being funneled into a narrow passage, so its defensive zigzagging would be limited. “We had them now!” exclaimed the Darter’s log.19 As the pallid dawn rose over the jungle-covered mountains of Palawan, both U.S. boats submerged.
The big ships in the Japanese fleet were arrayed in two parallel columns, with a few destroyers on the flanks. Atago led the port column. Darter moved into position to attack that group; Dace continued a few miles northeast and set up an ambush on the starboard column. Their crews manned battle stations.
In the conning tower of the Darter, Commander McClintock held his eye up to the periscope glass and turned it by grasping the two handles on the shaft. Through the lens, the enemy warships loomed out of the mist, appearing as gray cathedral-like shapes evenly spaced in two lines. The Darter was almost directly ahead of the port column. McClintock watched the Atago as she closed the range, until she grew so large in his crosshairs that he could not see her entire length in the circular field. At 6:32 a.m., he fired six bow-tube torpedoes at the “can’t miss” range of 980 yards, then turned sharply to port and fired four stern tubes at the following ship, the cruiser Takao.
The Atago’s lookouts did not spot the incoming torpedo tracks until they were nearly home. In any case, the flagship had no hope of evading. Four columns of fire and whitewater erupted along the length of her starboard side. Several hundred of her crew were killed immediately, probably before they knew what was happening. Her bow plowed under, and she listed heavily to starboard. Through the Darter’s periscope, McClintock saw black smoke boiling up from a searing mass of orange flames. The stricken cruiser’s superstructure was entirely concealed behind the oily plume. He saw Japanese sailors gathering on deck, preparing to abandon ship.
On the Atago’s bridge, Kurita knew right away that his flagship was finished. He did not hesitate. He told her captain, “It’s time to go.”20 Then he removed his shoes, dropped into the sea, and began swimming for the nearest destroyer, the Kishinami. By his own account, Kurita was the first man to leave the ship.
The Takao caught two torpedoes near her fantail about a minute later. The blasts broke two shafts and flooded her boiler rooms, leaving her dead in the water. Her crew rushed into damage control mode as the rest of the column overtook and passed around her.
The entire formation now turned sharply to starboard, away from the unseen enemy submarine. But the coast of Palawan was not far to starboard, leaving little room for evasive maneuvers. With Atago foundering, command passed temporarily to Admiral Ugaki in the Yamato. Both columns increased speed and steadied back onto the base course of 40 degrees, but that took them directly into the sights of the Dace. Commander Claggett watched the starboard column as it bore down on him. The Dace was low on torpedoes, so he had to be selective. He decided to let the first two ships pass unmolested with the memorable order, “Let them go by—they’re only heavy cruisers.”21 Mistakenly he identified the third ship in column as a Kongo-class battleship: actually she was another heavy cruiser, the Maya. When she was broadside-on at 1,800 yards, he fired a six-fish salvo.
Minutes later, the Dace’s crew heard the unmistakable sounds of four torpedo hits, followed seconds later by an explosion so deep and terrible that the soundman wondered whether “the bottom of the ocean was blowing up.” Then they heard a big ship tearing herself apart, rivet from rivet. Claggett called it “the most gruesome sound I have ever heard.”22 He rightly surmised that the Maya’s magazine had detonated. The ship went up in a soaring tower of whitewater and flame; debris rained down in every direction, and it kept raining for the better part of a minute. Admiral Ugaki, watching in dismay from the Yamato’s bridge, saw a pall of yellow smoke hanging over the Maya’s final position, and “nothing was left after the smoke and spray subsided.”23
The other big ships dared not break the pace, so they kept on to the north. But the escorting destroyers scattered depth charges throughout the area, forcing the two submarines to remain submerged for several hours. The Japanese destroyers also rescued hundreds of survivors of the Atago and Maya. Admiral Kurita struggled through gelatinous oil-covered seawater to the Kishinami, where he was hauled aboard and given a shot of whiskey and a pair of white sneakers to replace the shoes he had left behind. Looking across to the Atago’s last position, he noted that she was already gone—she had sunk in nineteen minutes. Kurita signaled to Ugaki that he intended to come aboard Yamato and take her as his new flagship. But he and his staff could not transfer to the battleship until nine hours later, because the surviving ships needed to clear Palawan Passage in a hurry.
The Atago and Maya were gone; the Takao was seriously damaged but could still make way at reduced speed, so she was sent back to Singapore with an escort of two destroyers. (She was later judged beyond repair, and would never fight again.) As a result, this opening blow in the Battle of Leyte Gulf had subtracted five ships from Kurita’s thirty-one-ship fleet.
Darter and Dace stalked the retreating Takao, but were forced to give up the hunt when Darter ran hard aground on an uncharted shoal. Every effort was made to haul her free, but to no avail. Dace took Darter’s entire crew aboard and returned to Fremantle, abandoning the grounded submarine after placing demolition charges in her control room and conning tower. To this day, the rusted remains of the wreck of the Darter are perched on a reef off Palawan Island, serving as a navigation aid and tourist attraction.
McClintoc
k and Claggett’s radioed contact reports may have even been more valuable than their attacks on Kurita’s fleet, because they gave the first definite indication that the Japanese navy intended to contest the invasion of Leyte. On the other hand, the sinking of the Atago had dumped the fifty-five-year-old Kurita into the sea and forced him to swim for his life. It had done the same to his entire Center Force staff. They would pass nine hours on the cramped bridge of a destroyer—during which time the ship was constantly evading phantom submarine contacts, with the crew expecting to be torpedoed at any moment—before going aboard the Yamato in late afternoon. In The Art of War, Sun-Tzu had written, “If your enemy is rested, cause him to exert himself.” After the war, when interviewed by American interrogators, Kurita was too proud to say that the experience had exhausted or demoralized him. But he privately admitted to colleagues that physical strain, sleep deprivation, and high tension had diminished his performance in the ensuing battle.
ADMIRAL HALSEY HAD DOUBTED that the Japanese fleet would contest the Leyte invasion, but at the end of the day on October 23 he was forced to conclude that he had been wrong. The day’s accumulated sighting reports, and clues derived from top-secret radio intercepts (“Ultras”), pointed to a “violent reaction” by the enemy. The Darter and Dace had revealed that a major surface force was advancing into Visayan seaways, and a subsequent flash report from the submarine Guitarro put that same force near the entrance of Mindoro Strait. No one had spotted the Japanese aircraft carriers, but Nimitz’s headquarters warned of indications that Admiral Ozawa’s First Mobile Fleet had sortied from the Inland Sea and might be closing in from the north. (These intelligence estimates were based on radio traffic patterns and a stray intercept discussing movements of fleet oilers to a rendezvous between Japan and the Philippines.)
Twilight of the Gods Page 28
