The Final Storm: A Novel of the War in the Pacific

by Jeff Shaara

  Throughout late 1941, the Japanese surge engulfs Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, and Indochina. In the Pacific, the American island of Guam falls, as well as the great chains of islands spreading all across the south and central Pacific, which now become Japanese strongholds. To the south, the Japanese conquer the British fortress at Singapore and sink two British battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were thought invincible. The combined blows are a knife in the morale of the British, who had believed their power in that part of the world was unassailable. But the Japanese continue to press forward, and by early 1942 they occupy and fortify the Dutch East Indies, the Solomon Islands, and New Guinea. Though Wake Island also falls, some five hundred Marines on the island make a valiant though hopeless effort to hold the Japanese away. What is only a minor thorn in the Japanese side becomes a significantly heroic symbol that gives hope to the Americans that the Japanese might not be unstoppable after all. That optimism is further fueled by two enormous engagements, one at sea, the other in the air. In May 1942, the two opposing navies engage in a slugfest in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia. Though the American and Australian navies suffer the greater loss in warships, the fight ultimately prevents the Japanese from carrying out their planned invasion of Australia. Farther north, in June 1942, the Americans confront a massive Japanese fleet attempting to complete the work begun at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attempt to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap near Midway Island, northwest of Hawaii. But planes from those carriers instead devastate the Japanese fleet. The loss of their largest and most modern warships, including most of their aircraft carriers, is a blow from which the Japanese will never recover.

  At home, the Japanese people and much of their military are being told that the engagements against the enemy are one-sided victories, that the Japanese effort is meeting only with success. With senior commanders believing the tale, the Japanese military loses the sense of urgency that their situation ought to demand, and little effort is made to shore up the devastated fleets. The same is true for Japanese airpower, which has been badly shaken by the increasing skills of American pilots and the improving technology of American aircraft.

  On April 18, 1942, the Japanese people receive their first taste that what their government is feeding them might not be the complete truth. Sixteen American B-25 medium bombers are launched from the carrier USS Hornet, and make a one-way bombing run over Tokyo. The raid, led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, is both success and tragedy. All but one of Doolittle’s planes are lost, though many of the crews survive. The raid has no real tactical effect, but to the Japanese people, the sight of American bombs falling on the Japanese capital is eye-opening in the extreme.

  In Washington, the American strategy begins to gel. If there is a push to be made against the vast territories now in Japanese hands, it will come from two spheres of control. The more southerly sphere, based in Australia, is commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. The more northerly, because of the vast amount of ocean involved, will be commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Thus begins a two-prong campaign aimed at driving hard into the Japanese bases, which both men believe are overextended. In August 1942, the American First Marine Division, led by General Alexander Vandegrift and supported by troops from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, launches an invasion of a part of the Solomon Islands anchored by the island of Guadalcanal. The goal is to drive a wedge into the Japanese supply lanes that threaten Australia, and isolate Japanese troops based on New Guinea and surrounding islands. Moreover, the Japanese are rapidly constructing a major airfield there, which will only enhance their presence through that entire part of the Pacific. What begins as an invasion of a single island eventually grows to a fight that involves the ground, air, and sea arms of both sides, and becomes the first extended combat action of the Pacific war. The losses to the Japanese are horrific, and when the fighting ends, the Japanese must face the reality that the tide has turned against them. Both Nimitz and MacArthur realize this as well.

  On the mainland of Asia, a different war is being waged. Beleaguered Chinese forces under Chiang Kai-shek are surviving only with the assistance of the British and Americans, who have created two supply routes for sustaining Chiang’s army. One, through Burma, is too vulnerable to Japanese attack and so can barely be sustained. The other, far more dangerous, is “the hump,” an air route from India across the Himalayan Mountains to China, where fleets of planes and some of the most illustrious pilots in American aviation history haul much needed supplies for the Chinese. But Chiang’s army is receiving help from ground and air forces as well, led from India by American general Joseph Stilwell, and inside of China by the Flying Tigers, an American fighter plane wing led by General Claire Chennault. But the two Americans never work effectively together, and Stilwell in particular alienates the British, whose assistance he needs to continue the flow of supplies out of India. Seeds of dissension are sown as well by Chiang, whose corrupt officers and brutal training methods cannot ever put a fighting force into the field to match the Japanese. Worse for Chiang, in China’s north there is a new rival leader emerging, whose own army is doing what it can to combat the Japanese. His name is Mao Tse-tung.

  In the Pacific, the Americans seem to be falling into the exact kind of strategy the Japanese are now hoping for: a piecemeal, grinding assault against a vast scattering of Japanese island outposts. With sea and air power decidedly in their favor, the Americans believe that overwhelming bombardment of Japanese positions will allow the Marines and army ground troops an advantage in sweeping ashore in so many of these crucial outposts, where airfields and deepwater anchorages await.

  The Japanese have purposely expanded their empire into lands where precious war materials, especially oil, rubber, and metal ores, can be ferried to factories in Japan. Cutting those supply lines becomes a priority, mostly for MacArthur, who knows that the Japanese have established large and powerful bases all around resource-rich New Guinea. MacArthur continues his drive up toward the Japanese forces, which results in several sharp engagements, including the Battle of Bougainville, costly for both American and Australian troops.

  By this time, it is apparent that a competition has developed between MacArthur and Nimitz, most of that energy coming from MacArthur, who has as his primary goal the liberation of the Philippines. Despite strategic considerations that seem to point more to mainland Japan as the most desired goal, MacArthur insists that his efforts be directed at recapturing the nation to whom he has pledged his return. MacArthur has significant popular appeal, especially with the troops in his command, and in Washington not even the chiefs of staff are willing to back him down. Thus the two-prong strategy of the Americans begins to resemble something more like a race.

  While the complex strategies and vicious campaigns continue, one particular disaster befalls the Japanese. Code intercepts reveal to American intelligence that Admiral Yamamoto will be traveling a certain route at a certain time through the area approaching Bougainville. In response, American fighters rise to intercept the Japanese admiral and his escorts. They are successful. On April 18, 1943, Yamamoto’s plane is shot down, and Japan loses arguably its greatest military planner of the war.

  While MacArthur’s forces press the fight through the Solomons, still close to New Guinea, Admiral Nimitz aims his spear on a more direct trajectory toward Japan. In November 1943, the next major assault in the chain occurs at an island atoll called Tarawa. Led by General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, two Marine divisions struggle mightily to erase the Japanese positions, which are assumed to have been badly chewed up by heavy naval gunfire. Instead the Marines wade ashore only to find themselves in one of the most costly fights of the Pacific campaign. One more experience awaits them as well. Facing certain defeat, enormous numbers of Japanese soldiers engage in banzai attacks, hordes of men throwing themselves en masse into the Marine positions. The cost in human life is staggering, and the Americans begin to realize that the Japanese are very different indee
d. Young Marines embroiled in pitched battles suddenly confront the bizarre, screaming waves of enemy troops pouring into Marine positions with murderous intent yet also an astonishing eagerness to die. When faced with utter defeat, the Japanese choose suicide over surrender, seeking a kind of honor that few Americans can understand.

  In the United States, the casualties absorbed on Tarawa are made public: more than a thousand Marines dead, with twice that many wounded. Whether or not the American public fully appreciates the kind of enemy they are fighting, they are rudely awakened to the kind of sacrifice the Marines are being asked to make.

  In early 1944, the fights continue, with MacArthur jamming his troops through the Admiralty Islands close to New Guinea, while Nimitz’s carriers and warships support the Marines in the Marshall Islands, primarily on the atoll of Kwajalein. By February 1944, Nimitz pushes farther toward the next great chain of islands, the Carolines. There the Japanese maintain one of the most fortified bases in the entire Pacific, the island of Truk. Over time, superior American air and sea power obliterates the Japanese fleet in Truk Lagoon and destroys more than three hundred Japanese aircraft.

  In June 1944, the greatest amphibious invasion of all time is coming to fruition a world away, on the beaches at Normandy. Though the American newspapers focus almost exclusively on what General Dwight Eisenhower’s forces must accomplish, Admiral Nimitz is engaging in a Pacific campaign that will rival Normandy in its significance. The last great chain of islands that secure the waters far from Japan are the Marianas, and while Eisenhower’s army and airborne troops slug their way through the French countryside, Nimitz launches assaults on the island of Saipan, a two-week campaign that claims 14,000 American casualties, two-thirds of them Marines. Less than two weeks after Saipan is secured, Nimitz orders the start of an assault on Guam, to recapture the American island lost so early in the war. At nearly the same time, the Marines and soldiers on Saipan press onward, a short few miles to the island of Tinian. While the fight for Tinian proves not nearly as costly as Saipan, Guam is another matter altogether, with a loss of 8,000 American casualties.

  By September 1944, the Normandy campaign draws to a close, and Allied commanders are well aware that Germany’s defeat is only a matter of time. In the Pacific, both MacArthur and Nimitz are accomplishing victories as well, but for MacArthur the big plum still awaits: the Philippines. For Nimitz, the island hopping continues, the next target a fortified Japanese outpost in the Palau Islands, called Peleliu. Protected by underground fortifications, the Japanese have strengthened their position on Peleliu to one of invincibility. But the Americans proceed as they always have and bombard the island with enormous firepower. On September 15, expecting a stroll on the beach, Marines advance onto Peleliu only to learn that the Japanese are still waiting for them, protected from the navy’s shelling by a network of underground hiding places. The fight that follows lasts more than two months and becomes one of the most vicious of the entire war. The First Marine Division alone suffers more than 6,000 casualties.

  Despite the extraordinary cost to the Americans who continue their drive toward the enemy’s homeland, that drive produces results, including the resignation of the humiliated Hideki Tojo.

  With the Mariana Islands now in American hands, long-range B-29 bombers can make strikes directly onto mainland Japan, and begin to do so with perfect regularity. It is a symbol that few Japanese can misinterpret. But the airfields are not adequate for the sheer volume of planes the American forces know they must use to bring Japan down. Closer to Japan lies another atoll, Iwo Jima, where the Japanese have already constructed an airfield the Americans know they must have. The value of Iwo Jima lies in its closer proximity to Japan and the fact that American bombers have demonstrated a woeful record of mechanical failures, which have sent hundreds of crewmen into the sea. What the Americans do not know is that the 20,000 Japanese troops burrowed into the small chunk of volcanic rock have learned the lessons from Peleliu and Saipan. Dug into a thousand or more caves and supported by an enormous battery of heavy artillery, the Japanese await the inevitable invasion with perfect calm. The island is small enough, barely four miles long, that Japanese defenses spread like a fine spiderweb through the entire island.

  On February 19, 1945, more than 60,000 Marines and soldiers make their landing, only to confront a firestorm that pins them to their beaches. The ensuing fight lasts six weeks, ending on March 26. The losses to both sides are staggering. On Iwo Jima the Japanese once again demonstrate that few will readily accept surrender. Of the 20,000 troops who defend the island, fewer than three hundred are taken prisoner. But the fight to the death has accomplished what the Japanese now seem to prefer. The Americans suffer 26,000 casualties, more than a third of their force. The numbers are so appalling that American newsmen are not given the figures, so that the American people will not learn of the astounding cost of the fight for several months.

  With the losses so astoundingly high, the Americans know they cannot sustain many more fights like Peleliu and Iwo Jima. Though MacArthur sticks to his guns and drives into the Philippines, Admiral Nimitz and the strategists in Washington understand what the generals in Europe have learned as well. Waging a safer fight from the air will not be enough to win the war. But the airfields close to Japan are crucial, and the islands are essential for basing troops for the eventual invasion of Japan. The maps show plainly that one more island lies in their way. Far larger than Iwo Jima, with deepwater shipping and a dozen airfields, the island is in fact a country, occupied by some quarter million natives, along with their Japanese overseers, estimated to number close to 150,000. This fight will be the first where American troops will strike at a place many Japanese consider their own soil. It is called Okinawa.

  PART ONE

  1. THE SUBMARINER

  EAST CHINA SEA, NORTH OF FORMOSA

  FEBRUARY 21, 1945

  The boredom was overwhelming. Even in the darkness, with a low warm breeze, he felt the restlessness, held the sharp stare at what should be the horizon. It was hidden, of course, black water meeting black sky, no hint of the dawn still several hours away. They had patrolled these waters for more than two weeks, some calling it an adventure, the eagerness the crew felt to be back on the search for the scattered Japanese supply ships. Two months before, they had been assigned to rescue patrol, close to mainland Japan, a vigilant search for downed American pilots, or even the Japanese. But enemy pilots were very few now, the Japanese air force so depleted, or more likely, so wary of the superiority of their enemy that they seemed to avoid dogfights with the American fighters completely. He hadn’t paid much attention to that kind of talk, the newsy communications that filtered down through the chain of command. He was much happier thinking about the American pilots they had rescued, his crew cheerfully hauling aboard coughing breathless men, soaked and shivering, desperately happy to be alive. It was a genuine thrill to rescue a pilot, every sailor feeling that special pride, more so if the man happened to be from a carrier, a naval pilot, and so, one of their own. The pilots were more than just grateful, and in their momentary euphoria they made loud promises of lavish gifts, nights on the town for everyone aboard the sub. The promises usually included a rendezvous in Honolulu or even San Francisco, talk that every crewman enjoyed. The job had been made worthwhile by the beaming gratitude of the men they had saved. It didn’t hurt either that as the rescued pilots were returned to their aircraft carriers, they were often exchanged for tubs of ice cream, a luxury few submarines carried on their own.

  The pilots of the newer American fighters had found that their planes were considerably more agile, and significantly more armored than the legendary Zero, and so the fights grew increasingly one-sided. After long months of terrific casualties among its pilots, Japan seemed to pull the Zeroes out of the sky, holding them back for some purpose no one thought much about. Now the rescues were usually B-29 crews, more likely the result of some mechanical failure in the air than the direct result of combat. Th
ough the B-29 was the largest and most modern bomber of the war, the plane could be a curse to fly. The B-29 had chronic problems with the engines: overheating, flameouts, which might be just as deadly as an accurate strike of an enemy anti-aircraft gun.

  The sub rolled slightly to the side, riding a crossing swell, the captain caught off guard, a slight stumble against the steel of the bulkhead. All right, stay awake. But the empty seas were intoxicating, dreamlike, and he thought of the hard bunk down below. Not yet. After dawn you can catch a few winks, but right now your job is up here.

  He never fully trusted the instincts of his younger officers, though he knew that his exec, Fred Gordon, was a good man, would likely have his own boat one day, and maybe sooner than the captain preferred. Combat losses to the submarine crews weren’t catastrophic, not compared to many of the aircrews above them. Many of the men simply rotated out after several months at sea, fatigue playing a huge part in their decreasing efficiency. But there were combat losses, and the officers who came from Annapolis seemed to feel that far more deeply than their crews. He thought of the Tang, sunk a few months before, could see the face of Ed Beaumont. Never thought you’d be the one, Eddie. Lucky in love, lucky in poker, and your fish gets sunk by your own damn torpedo. Happens I guess, and by God you took a few Jap bastards with you. Something to be said for that, I suppose.