Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  But the more pressing question, in mid-October 1944, was whether the Japanese army would maintain its principal strength on the main northern island of Luzon, or whether it would attempt large-scale troop transfers to meet the invaders on Leyte. On October 18, when U.S. warships first began shelling Leyte’s beaches, and special forces seized the small islands at the entrance of Leyte Gulf, the question remained unresolved. General Yamashita wanted to fight a limited, delaying battle on Leyte. He was opposed to transferring large numbers of troops from Luzon, presuming that many would be lost at sea. U.S. air and submarine attacks on troop transports had extracted an exorbitant cost in the South Pacific. But others were swayed by the Japanese navy’s accounts of the punishment inflicted on the U.S. Third Fleet off Taiwan between October 12 and October 15. That was compounded by the navy’s subsequent report that it had scored another major victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Field Marshal Terauchi insisted upon pouring reinforcements into Leyte, overruling Yamashita. The latter, vexed by what he regarded as a disastrous policy, nonetheless ordered the mass transportation of Japanese troops from Mindanao, Luzon, and other islands in the Visayas into Leyte by the back door at Ormoc Bay.8

  Approximately 43,000 Japanese troops were on the island as the invaders came ashore, about double the number estimated by U.S. intelligence. But the Japanese managed to bring an additional 34,000 reinforcements ashore during the campaign. Nine major reinforcement convoys sailed from Manila, and countless smaller troop movements from Mindanao and the Visayas arrived by boat or barge. About 10,000 Japanese troops were lost while in transit to Leyte when their transports were attacked. Many who landed safely on Leyte did so without their equipment and heavy weaponry, limiting their effectiveness once ashore. Nevertheless, the arrival of the crack First Division in the first week of the campaign did much to fortify the confidence and morale of the Japanese. “We had hopeful discussions of entering Tacloban by the 16th of November,” said General Tomochika, the division’s chief of staff. Moreover, there was serious talk of taking MacArthur alive, and ransoming him at the price of “the surrender of the entire American army.”9

  Early plans had envisioned deploying the First Japanese Division in the vicinity of Carigara and the Twenty-Sixth Division a few miles south, at Jaro. A supply line would be run up the coast in sea lifts from Ormoc. But on November 1, island headquarters at Ormoc learned that American forces were already crossing the Carigara range, which was separated by much difficult terrain from their landing beaches. The power and speed of the American armored ground attack, so far from their initial landing point on the island’s east coast, came as a nasty surprise. Many battalion-sized units were decimated, and island headquarters found it difficult even to maintain communications with their forward lines. The Japanese army was forced back into the mountains southwest of Carigara, where the terrain was more favorable for defense. But that move cut them off from the coast, which complicated the logistical picture, because it was difficult to maintain overland supply lines from Ormoc.

  IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the victorious Third Fleet was worn out. Pilots had flown near-daily combat operations since early October. Air group leaders warned that symptoms of acute fatigue were spreading through the ranks. A flight surgeon on the Wasp judged that only 30 of the carrier’s 131 airmen were fit for continued daily flight assignments.10 Most of the ships’ crews had not felt solid ground under their feet for two or three months. Halsey wanted to pull his fleet back to Ulithi Atoll for a brief rest before Operation hotfoot, a carrier raid on the Japanese homeland, tentatively planned for the third week of November. Just four minutes after his dispatch to all commands boasting that the Japanese navy had been “beaten, routed, and broken,” Halsey radioed Kinkaid: “For future planning it must be understood that fast carriers require rearming and air groups are exhausted after 16 days unprecedented fighting.”11

  That suggestion did not go down well with Kinkaid, or with MacArthur, who expected Task Force 38 to remain in the area until the Fifth Air Force was ready to take over air defense of the Leyte beachhead. Kinkaid reported details of the mauling suffered by his escort carriers in the Battle off Samar. They were in no condition to maintain air cover over the transport fleet and beachhead: “CVEs have been doing splendidly in keeping planes in air but may shortly become inoperative.” The army planes could not yet assume responsibility for air cover because the Tacloban and Dulag airfields were in no condition to receive them. For the time being, at least one of Halsey’s carrier groups must stay behind “for support and protection [of] Leyte Gulf area and possibly CVEs.”12

  Kinkaid did not have to spell out what was clearly implied: that Halsey must do penance for his recent sins. Since the Third Fleet boss was at fault for having allowed the Taffys to be ambushed by Kurita, it was only right that he make up the deficiency in airpower. In the days that followed, Halsey renewed his urgent entreaties to be released, and Kinkaid insisted upon continued air protection. It was not just the airmen: Halsey and his staff were feeling the strain of prolonged combat operations at sea. Later he admitted, “I was tired, in mind, body, and nerves. So were we all.”13

  Late on October 26, Halsey put his case directly to MacArthur: “After 17 days of fighting, the fast carrier force is virtually out of bombs, torpedoes, and provisions, and pilots are exhausted. I am unable to provide any extended direct air support. When will your shore-based air take over air defense at the objective? Halsey.”14

  From his headquarters in Pearl Harbor, Nimitz monitored the situation with mounting concern. He knew that the Third Fleet had been pushed to the limit, but the navy had agreed to provide carrier air cover to support the Leyte operation. The near-calamity off Samar had raised the stakes. Issues of interservice and inter-theater coordination, if not resolved in the Pacific, would be kicked up to the Joint Chiefs. Worse, influential voices in Congress and the press had taken aim at the two-theater command setup in the Pacific. Governor Dewey had raised the issue on the presidential campaign trail, and the election was just two weeks away. If a major setback occurred in the Pacific, MacArthur’s powerful backers would insist upon consolidating the entire campaign under his singular authority.

  The naval high command had remained aloof from politics, as its professional code required. But Nimitz, King, and Leahy had each served many years in Washington, and they were wise to the city’s ways. Command unity in the Pacific was a cause célèbre of the political opposition. The threat was real. The dual-theater command model must be made to work.

  When Nimitz intercepted Halsey’s importunate query to MacArthur (261235), he moved quickly to intervene. Halsey had reported a shortage of provisions as one factor dictating his retirement to Ulithi. Nimitz did not believe it, and challenged his fleet commander’s accounting in a message copied to King and Vice Admiral William L. Calhoun, the Pacific Fleet logistics chief: “Your 261235 reference to provisions not understood. Report approximate average number days supply of dry provisions in each type of combatant ship in company with you and list controlling items which are sufficiently short to affect combat operations.”15 As for the question of air protection over Leyte Gulf, the CINCPAC put Halsey in his place with this peremptory order, adding Kinkaid and MacArthur as coaddressees: “My OpPlan 8–44 remains in effect. Cover and support forces of the Southwest Pacific until otherwise directed by me.”16

  Thus chastened, Halsey arranged to rotate his carrier groups back to Ulithi Atoll in a “round robin.” Two carrier groups, 38.1 (McCain) and 38.3 (Sherman), retired to Ulithi for rest and replenishment, while the remaining two—38.2 (Bogan) and 38.4 (Davison)—remained off Samar to provide air cover for Leyte Gulf. But Sherman’s task group, anchoring in Ulithi on October 30, was urgently recalled by Halsey two days later. The Japanese were putting up an unexpectedly spirited fight in the air. Luzon’s airfields were being reinforced by replacement planes from Formosa, China, and the Japanese homeland. Furthermore, massed aerial suicide attacks present
ed a new, perpetual, and bloodcurdling threat. The era of the kamikaze had arrived.

  Bogan’s flagship Intrepid caught it on October 29. An outgoing afternoon strike had bombed and strafed Japanese airfields north of Manila. Several kamikazes apparently tracked the American planes as they returned to their carriers. One dove out of the overcast, striking the Intrepid’s starboard 40mm gun gallery. The carrier’s battle efficiency was not impaired, but the attack killed six men and injured ten.

  The following afternoon, Davison’s group was targeted by a swarm of kamikazes, and this time the butcher’s bill was higher. Jim Russell, chief of staff to Admiral Davison, watched the attack from the Franklin’s flag bridge. Five enemy planes eluded the combat air patrol and dove into the heart of the task group: “The first thing we knew, they were coming down in these long slanting suicide dives.”17 Every antiaircraft battery on every ship opened fire. Gunners on the Enterprise sawed the wing off one attacker, which splashed into the sea about 30 feet from the ship. San Jacinto’s gunners shot down another, sparing their carrier. The Belleau Wood’s gunners knocked down one kamikaze but could not hit the second—and that one hit aft, penetrating the flight deck and setting off a destructive fire in the hangar. The fifth hit the Franklin, dead center on her flight deck. It gouged a 40-foot hole just forward of the No. 3 elevator and exploded in the elevator pit. More than an hour was needed to bring the fires under control.

  Personnel losses were heavy: ninety-two killed on the Belleau Wood, fifty-four on the Franklin. A dozen planes on the Belleau Wood and thirty-three on the Franklin were incinerated or damaged beyond repair. They were jettisoned.

  On the Franklin, according to Russell, the Japanese pilot’s body was recovered intact. “You know,” he said, “despite the explosion, that fellow’s body was recognizable. His silk flying suit held him together enough so you knew he was a human, at least. Of course, he was well smashed.”18

  JAPAN’S STATE-RUN NEWS MEDIA had reported yet another spectacular victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Imperial Japanese Navy had deliberately bided its time, said the reports, “in order to pile training upon training.” It had waited patiently for the Americans to cross the wide Pacific, where they would be disadvantaged by lengthening supply lines. Finally, the U.S. fleet had blundered heedlessly into the flight-radii of powerful Japanese air bases in Formosa and the Philippines, and had suffered two back-to-back thrashings in the space of just two weeks. A commentator on NHK radio assured listeners that the end must be near:

  One thing is now clear: America has lost the war. Japanese forces have now complete air and sea superiority on and around Leyte, and powerful additional Japanese forces are moving up for the attack. All the Japanese have to do in future operations is to project their indomitable spirits at the enemy and they will suffer internal fear that will defeat them before they get into the fight. The Occidental mind, of course, will not understand the great Oriental power.19

  Reports dwelled especially on the kamikaze attacks off Samar on the afternoon of October 25. Oblique references to “special attack forces” and “body-crashing” had been heard before—but from that date to the end of the war, the kamikazes were the single biggest story in Japanese newspapers and radio broadcasts. By one estimate, stories about suicide pilots occupied about one-half of all column inches in the Tokyo papers during the period. Although references to discord between the army and navy were forbidden to appear in print, it was clear to anyone who could read between the lines that the two services were competing to lay claim to the tokko (“special attack”) phenomenon.20 The navy had been the first mover, with the sacrifice of Admiral Arima on October 15—but the army responded just five days later, trumpeting the creation of its “Banda Unit” at the Hokota Flight Training Center in Ibaragi Prefecture. IGHQ directed the new suicide units to “disrupt the reinforcement and replenishment at sea of the enemy landing forces (including the destruction of transports near anchorages) and destroy the enemy carrier striking task force (including naval vessels supporting the landing operations).”21

  Kamikazes were both a tactical and a propaganda expedient. The militarist junta was alarmed by the public’s waning spirits and its rising doubts about the veracity of domestic war reporting. Faith in ultimate victory must somehow be restored. The suicide air corps and other novelties—such as the oka, kaiten, and intercontinental balloon bombs—were analogous to the “miracle weapons” (wunderwaffe) advertised by the Nazis during the same period. To a certain extent, all were propaganda gambits aimed at shoring up the Axis regimes’ deteriorating credibility and consolidating their grip on power. In Japan, where shame always offered a practical lever for social control, the kamikazes were held up as exemplars for ordinary civilians. In reporting the suicide attacks on Task Force 38 in late October, the editors of the Mainichi Shinbun reflected: “All of us should learn from the serene spirit of these youths.”22 Prime Minister Koiso urged munitions workers to follow the example of “the valiant men of the Special Attack Corps, [and] demonstrate even more spirit of sure victory in the field of production.”23

  With remarkable speed, the kamikaze corps was expanded and institutionalized in both the navy and the army. Entire air groups were redesignated as special attack units with new highfalutin literary or mythological names. Hundreds of planes and airmen designated for tokko missions flew into the Philippines in November 1944, so that the kamikaze corps expanded rapidly even while many suicide planes were immolated in combat. Two hundred army planes flew into Negros Island, west of Leyte, to join Lieutenant General Kyoji Tominaga’s Fourth Air Army. At training centers in Japan, entire classes of pilot-cadets, some with only rudimentary flying skills, were merged into the nascent kamikaze corps. Many were sent to fly directly to the Philippines for attacks that might occur within weeks or even days. Recent inductees who had not yet started primary flight training were informed that they would train from the outset as kamikazes. That established a training pipeline, ensuring that a freshet of suicide pilots would become available in the spring of 1945.

  Vice Admiral Fukudome had at first resisted Onishi’s suggestion that the navy’s two air fleets in the Philippines adopt massed suicide tactics, and his Second Air Fleet continued to fly conventional missions during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. But Fukudome was impressed by the apparent success of Lieutenant Seki’s October 25 mission, and swayed by mounting evidence that conventional aerial tactics were no longer effective. The next day, October 26, the two air fleets were combined into one, with Fukudome in charge and Onishi as his chief of staff. From that date, Fukudome said, “the kamikaze or special attack planes constituted the nucleus of my air force.”24 He had personal misgivings about sending young men to their certain deaths, as did other senior commanders, especially when word arrived from Tokyo that the Showa emperor had been briefed on Seki’s attack. Hirohito had asked the navy chief of staff, “Was it necessary to go to this extreme? They certainly did a magnificent job.”25 Admiral Onishi interpreted the man-god’s query as implied criticism, and was deeply troubled by it. But he and Fukudome agreed that no realistic alternative existed.

  Some defiance persisted down the ranks. Lieutenant Commander Iyozo Fujita, a veteran squadron leader, was asked to select twelve pilots for suicide missions. “I refuse to do this,” he told his superiors. “If you want to do it, I have nothing to do with this decision; you select the pilots.” Then he returned to his quarters and lay down in his bed. Fujita added, after the war, “At this time in the war I believe that the high command was going crazy. In the end the group of fighters still went on their mission, and nothing was ever heard from them again.26 Some pilots were privately horrified, but did not feel free to voice their objections. One aviator-in-training, a university student, recalled that he was “bowled over” by the news that his training class had been designated for kamikaze operations. But he dared not speak up, even to his fellow cadets. “We couldn’t share our doubts with each other. We were all drawn from different universities.
If I had expressed my disquiet, my university could have been disgraced. I had to keep my own counsel.”27

  Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that a majority of Japanese airmen were not only willing but eager to give their lives as kamikazes. When volunteers were solicited, unanimous acquiescence was typical. One squadron leader recalled that his men crowded around him and clutched at his arms, crying, “Send me! Please send me! Send me!” He snapped at them: “Everyone wants to go. Don’t be so selfish!”28 According to air commander Rikihei Inoguchi, pilots designated for future kamikaze flights lobbied fervently to be assigned to each upcoming mission. “Why don’t you let me go soon?” they implored, and “How long must I wait?”29

  Kamikazes were a privileged caste. Exalted as “gods without earthly desires,” they were treated with respect and deference even by colleagues whose rank, experience, and skill surpassed their own. While standing by for assignment to a tokko mission, they lodged in separate quarters, typically the best and cleanest on the base, and ate meals fit for high-ranking officers. They received expensive gifts from conventional aviators and other military units. Civilian groups at home, including primary school students, wrote fan mail and sent “care packages.” War correspondents and photographers sought them out for interviews and photo shoots. They were feted at lavish banquets where geishas sang and danced for their entertainment, and rare delicacies were washed down with high-shelf sake. Distinctions of rank faded. Commander Inoguchi recalled an exchange with kamikaze airmen at the airfield on Cebu, an island in the central Philippines. One pointed out that the order of precedence for dead spirits at Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto Valhalla, was fixed by date of arrival rather than by military rank.