The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  The SOPAC staff developed a vital esprit de corps, symbolized by their practice (decreed by Halsey) of not wearing neckties. “He wants his men to be comfortable,” a sailor observed in his diary. “He doesn’t go in for this regulation stuff.”69 The “no-ties” policy was not entirely for the sake of physical comfort in a sweltering climate, however—army officers did not normally wear them, and Halsey did not want them to become a symbol of service divisions. “I don’t want anybody even to be thinking in terms of Army, Navy, or Marines,” he told his officers. “Every man must understand this, and every man will understand it, if I have to take off his uniform and issue coveralls with ‘South Pacific Fighting Force’ printed on the seat of his pants.”70

  Noumea was a languid little colonial capital, a bit tumbledown but still charming in contrast to almost any other seaport in the South Pacific. Vandegrift recalled it as “ramshackle in a pleasantly unpainted way with galleries encircling the second stories of residences and louvered doorways flanked by brilliantly blooming flowers.”71 Being French, the town offered good food and wine to those who could afford it. Plantation grandees lived in airy mansions on hills, flanked by elegant rows of coconut palms. Their daughters, usually dressed in immaculate white silk dresses, were local icons. Thousands of Americans who had never met them nonetheless knew their faces and names, but they were accessible only to officers and available only for marriage. The French colonialists were not overjoyed by the inundation of Americans, but granted that if they had to be overrun by Allied servicemen, better the Americans than the British.

  As Halsey’s staff expanded and the hot southern summer approached, it became increasingly evident that the flagship Argonne could not accommodate a major command. Local French officialdom had been uncooperative in responding to Ghormley’s requests for quarters ashore, but Halsey was determined to succeed where his predecessor had not. He sent Colonel Julian Brown as an emissary to the French governor, His Excellency Marie Henri Ferdinand Auguste Montchamp. Having previously served in French forces, Brown had been awarded a fourragère and the Croix de Guerre, which he wore when he went to meet the governor. Brown asked for suitable housing in town or elsewhere on the island. “What do we get in return?” asked Montchamp. Brown replied, “We will continue to protect you as we have always done.” At a subsequent meeting Brown added, “We’ve got a war on our hands and we can’t continue to devote valuable time to these petty concerns. I venture to remind Your Excellency that if we Americans had not arrived here, the Japanese would have.”72

  To his credit, Halsey did not behave with the hubris of a conqueror. He took a personal liking to Governor Montchamp, whom he thought “a nice old boy, a good and tried soldier—albeit a bit futile.”73 But Charles de Gaulle’s man in the South Pacific was Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, the High Commissioner for Free France in the Pacific, who was often away and generally unresponsive to American wishes. Among the local colonists there were layers of intrigue that Halsey and his officers only gradually fathomed. The politics were complicated by political tensions between those sympathetic to the Vichy regime and those loyal to de Gaulle’s Free French. The French had about 2,000 troops in New Caledonia, and Halsey thought they could easily be moved into one or two barracks. Halsey offered to feed all French troops in the island in return for an allocation of space—but when the question was appealed directly to de Gaulle, the answer was negative. “This whole situation is really a pain in the neck,” Halsey wrote Nimitz on January 8, 1943. “We have very few dealings with them fortunately, but every time we do they are inclined to get in our hair. . . . It is the usual story: we do all the giving and they reciprocate by doing all the taking.”74

  Promises and small concessions followed. Eventually, the French allowed the COMSOPAC staff to relocate into an old barracks building near town. For living quarters, Halsey and his senior staff moved into the former Japanese consulate, a modest but comfortable brick house on a hill overlooking the harbor. The consul, who had been interned in Australia, had left behind his furniture, art, and housewares. Halsey relished living among paintings and embroideries depicting geishas, carp, and Mount Fuji, especially when a marine color guard raised the American flag over the house each morning. “We are enjoying his silverware, china and many other comforts,” he told Nimitz. “Unfortunately the furniture (chairs, sofa, etc.) was designed for those short bandy-legged bastards. We must perforce sit on the back of our necks.”75 When a Filipino mess attendant broke a piece of the consul’s china, Halsey told him, “The hell with it! It’s Japanese.”76

  Captain Miles Browning, the chief of staff, had served with Halsey since 1938. He was one of the navy’s early aviators, having earned his wings in 1924, and had done as much to develop aircraft carrier doctrine and tactics as any man in the service. Browning had always been an irritable character with an explosive temper, but in early 1943 he seemed to be cracking under the strain of prolonged service. He was drinking heavily, feuding with various officers, and attempting to restrict others’ access to Halsey. He was rumored to have had an affair with another naval officer’s wife, a grave offense. When Secretary Knox visited Noumea in January 1943, he was taken aback at Browning’s brusque and disrespectful behavior. Complaints reached all the way to navy headquarters in Washington, and Admiral King, over Halsey’s passionate objections, recalled Browning to the States, where he would take command of the new USS Hornet (CV-12). The new COMSOPAC chief of staff was Robert B. Carney, who would serve with Halsey for the rest of the war.

  THE NEW SUPERBATTLESHIP MUSASHI, whose colossal proportions matched those of the Yamato, put in to Truk Lagoon on January 23.‡ She entered by the North Channel at low tide and anchored among the other big ships of the Combined Fleet, not far from her twin sister. Like the Yamato, she was manned by an elite, handpicked crew, was armed with a main battery of mammoth 18.1-inch guns (the largest naval weapons in the world), and was said to be “unsinkable.” Like her sister, the Musashi would spend most of the war at anchor, draped in anti-torpedo nets. At the high cruising speed required for naval combat operations, the two behemoths drank prodigious quantities of fuel—and by 1943, Japan’s oil supply was a matter of life or death to the empire.

  One day after the final evacuation of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal, Admiral Yamamoto shifted his flag from the Yamato to the Musashi, the latter having been specially outfitted to function as the Combined Fleet’s flagship. His launch brought him aboard while a military band played the national anthem. He passed in review, dressed as always in a pristine white uniform with gold braid and white gloves, and moved into his new suite of air-conditioned cabins, as upscale and spacious as those on the Yamato. Ugaki followed later that afternoon.

  Yamamoto had aged considerably in the fourteen months since the raid on Pearl Harbor. His close-cropped hair had turned almost completely gray, and his eyes appeared discolored. Rarely did he emerge from his quarters, and when he did, it was only briefly, usually to acknowledge (with cap waved in the air) a departing ship or a squadron of aircraft. Occasionally he joined his staff officers for a game of ring-toss on deck. In a letter written at the end of January 1943, he claimed to have set foot ashore only four times since the previous August, and only to visit sick or wounded men at the hospital or to attend funeral services. Other sources suggest Yamamoto was a regular patron of a “naval restaurant” on an island in the lagoon. The establishment was actually a franchised satellite of a well-known brothel near Yokosuka Naval Base in Tokyo Bay.

  The commander in chief seemed resigned to his fate. When he was asked, in October 1942, what he would do after the war, he replied, “I imagine I’ll be packed off either to the guillotine or to St. Helena.”77 On other occasions he declared that he did not expect to live through the war. He mourned the loss of so many of the fleet’s officers and sailors, and was especially saddened by the loss of commanders who refused to leave their doomed ships. Yamamoto had campaigned to reform the principle that a captain could not honorabl
y survive the destruction of his ship—but to little avail, as the belief was deeply inculcated in the Japanese naval officer corps. He was prone to existential ruminations. To a friend he wrote, “I wonder what heaven must think of the people down here on this small black speck in the universe that is earth, for all their talk about the last few years—which are no more than a flash compared with eternity—being a ‘time of emergency.’ It’s really ridiculous.”78

  Though he could not say it overtly, Yamamoto must have known Japan was staggering toward a catastrophic defeat. He had thrown the entire weight of his considerable political influence against the decision to wage war on the United States. He had warned that the great industrial power of America must eventually overwhelm Japan. His attack on Midway in June 1942 had been a gambit aimed at forcing the war to an early conclusion. The failure at Midway had ensured that the conflict would become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan could not hope to win. He often criticized the “facile optimism” that Japanese commanders in the navy and especially the army carried into battle against the Americans.

  On the morning of April 3, 1943, Admirals Yamamoto and Ugaki, accompanied by more than a dozen officers of the Combined Fleet staff, boarded two Kawanishi flying boats and flew to Rabaul. From there they would supervise “I-Go,” an aerial counteroffensive against Allied shipping and bases in the southern Solomons and New Guinea. Yamamoto was quartered in a cottage high on a hill behind Rabaul town. He spent the following week inspecting airfields and other military installations, and meeting with local army and navy commanders in the various headquarters concentrated on New Britain. As always, he bid good luck to the departing air squadrons by standing in some prominent vantage point and waving his uniform cap over his head.

  For ten consecutive days, heavily reinforced bomber and fighter groups attacked Allied shipping and airfields on Guadalcanal, Port Moresby, Milne Bay, and the Russell Islands. More than 200 aircraft attacked Guadalcanal on April 7, a raid larger than any attempted during the five months the Japanese had contested the island’s ownership. As usual, the Japanese aviators and aircrews returned with fantastically exaggerated claims of success: they had destroyed dozens of ships and hundreds of planes. (In fact, I-Go claimed twenty-five Allied planes, one destroyer, one corvette, one oil tanker, and two transports. The Japanese lost forty aircraft in the operation.) Yamamoto, his spirits buoyed by the ostensible triumph, ordered the operation wound down. He announced that he would conduct a one-day tour of forward bases at Buin, Ballale, and Shortland Island on the eighteenth. The commander in chief’s itinerary was radioed from Rabaul to those commands on April 13.

  The signal was picked up by Allied listening posts. Cryptanalysts in Pearl Harbor went to work on it immediately, and it soon gave up its secrets. Major Alva B. Lasswell, duty officer at Joseph Rochefort’s Combat Intelligence Unit (“Station Hypo”), translated the first version of the decrypt and pronounced it a “jackpot.”79 That the message referred to Yamamoto was easily deduced, and the geographic designators for Rabaul, Ballale, and Buin were quickly extracted. Better than that, the message contained the specific information that Yamamoto would travel on a medium bomber escorted by six fighters, and would “Arrive at RYZ at 0800.” That would put the admiral’s plane over the southern end of Bougainville on the morning of the eighteenth. The location was just within fighter range of Henderson Field. Lasswell and intelligence analyst Jasper Holmes took the decrypt to CINCPAC headquarters and handed it to the fleet intelligence officer Ed Layton, who laid it on Nimitz’s desk a few minutes after eight on the morning of April 14.

  Nimitz scrutinized the chart on his wall and confirmed that Yamamoto’s plane would enter airspace that could be reached by American fighters operating from Guadalcanal. “Do we try to get him?” he asked Layton.80

  The question could be broken into two parts.

  First, was it wrong to target the Combined Fleet chief based on a conventional understanding of military chivalry? Like most naval officers of his vintage, Nimitz had interacted socially with Japanese officers in the prewar period. He was not a particularly vengeful or bloody-minded man. In eras past, an American flag or general officer would certainly have refused to single out his opposite number for assassination. Under no conceivable circumstance would George Washington have ordered a hit on William Howe, or Robert E. Lee on Ulysses S. Grant. But war in the twentieth century was not war in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Even by the standards of the Second World War, the Pacific campaign had been unremitting in its brutality. Japan had not waged a limited war in the Pacific, nor had it asked for one. As recently as the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Japanese ground and naval forces had strictly adhered to the rules of war. Russian prisoners had been housed comfortably, fed well, and provided with excellent medical care. Their requests for cigarettes, spirits, and reading materials had been readily granted. Those few who died in captivity had been buried with military honors. Had Japan carried those chivalrous inclinations into the present war, Nimitz might have hesitated to give the order. But the behavior of Japanese forces in China, the Philippines, Malaya, Hong Kong, the East Indies, and the Solomons had simplified the issue.

  The second question was strategic. Was it wise to kill Yamamoto? This was the man who had planned and executed the disastrous foray against Midway, losing four aircraft carriers with all their aircraft. Yamamoto had badly mismanaged the Guadalcanal campaign by deploying air and troop reinforcements in piecemeal fashion. He was evidently doing a fine job of losing the war. Shouldn’t he be permitted to continue? But Layton, who had known Yamamoto personally, argued that he was the best-respected military leader in Japan, and that his death would strike a “tremendous blow” at the enemy’s morale. “You know, Admiral Nimitz, it would be just as if they shot you down,” he said. “There isn’t anybody to replace you.” Nimitz, persuaded, sent Halsey an “eyes only” message alerting him to the break and ordering a fighter interception. He concluded, “Best of luck and good hunting.”81

  As it happened, Halsey had already learned of the operation in a chance encounter in Melbourne, Australia. Halsey, who was inspecting naval facilities in that city, had dropped in to the communications intelligence office. A yeoman, Kenneth A. Boulier, was working on one of the draft decrypts when the COMSOPAC stopped at his desk and asked, “What are you working on, son?” When Boulier explained, Halsey raised his voice and addressed the entire unit: “Goddamit, you people knock off this Yamamoto business! I’m going to get that sonofabitch myself!”82

  Southern Bougainville lay more than 400 miles from Henderson Field, but the planes would have to take a roundabout route to evade detection. The mission would require about 1,000 miles of flying, a range that would test the capabilities of even the longest-legged American fighters. The marine air commander on Guadalcanal assigned the job to the army’s 339th Fighter Squadron, whose Lockheed P-38 Lightnings had a range comparable to that of the much lighter Zero. With a lean fuel mixture and drop tanks, the P-38s could (just) make the long flight. But the timing would have to be precise, as the planes would not have fuel to burn while awaiting the appearance of the enemy planes. Major John Mitchell of the 339th was assigned to lead eighteen P-38s piloted by handpicked airmen. Four of those aircraft were designated as “killers,” the ones that would attack the medium bombers carrying Yamamoto and other high-ranking officers; the others would fly cover against the escorting Zeros. Mitchell’s flight plan would put the squadron directly over the final approach to Ballale airfield at 9:35 a.m.

  Yamamoto and his party arrived at Rabaul’s Lakunai Field a few minutes before six. They climbed into the two waiting G4M “Betty” medium bombers—Yamamoto into one, Ugaki into the other. The men wore green khaki uniforms with airmen’s boots. (Yamamoto’s customary white dress uniform was thought too formal for the front lines.) The planes roared down the runway and climbed past the gray caldera guarding the entrance to the harbor. The weather was clear, with excellent visibility above and below a high
ceiling of intermittent cumulus. Leveling out at about 6,500 feet, the two bombers flew in such close formation that Ugaki could clearly see Yamamoto through the windshield of the other plane, and even feared that the wingtips might collide. Zero escorts converged alongside, and drifted in and out of view. They droned on to the southeast for an hour and a half, hugging the southern coast of Bougainville.83

  Ugaki nodded off as the group began its descent toward Ballale. At 9:43 a.m., he awoke to find his plane in a steep diving turn. The pilot was unsure of what was happening, but the sudden evasive maneuvers of the escorting Zeros had alerted him that something was awry. The dark green canopy of the jungle hills reached up toward them. The gunners opened up the gun ports to prepare for firing, and between the wind blowing in and the sound of the machine guns, things got very noisy. Ugaki told the pilot to try to remain with Yamamoto’s plane, but it was too late; as his plane banked south, he caught a glimpse of his chief’s plane “staggering southward, just brushing the jungle top with reduced speed, emitting black smoke and flames.” His view was again obscured, and the next time he looked, there was only a column of smoke rising from the jungle.84

  Ugaki’s pilot flew over Cape Moira and out to sea, descending steadily to gain speed. Two Lightnings were in close pursuit, however, and .50-caliber rounds began slamming into the wings and fuselage. The pilot tried to pull up, but his propellers dug into the sea and the plane rolled hard to the left. Ugaki was thrown from his seat and slammed against an interior bulkhead. As the water entered the sinking aircraft, he thought, “This is the end of Ugaki.”85 Somehow, however, he and three other passengers managed to get free and swim toward the beach. They were helped ashore by Japanese soldiers and transported to Buin.