The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Senior military officers privately admitted, “We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success.”17 In Europe, the Allies were driving east from their Normandy beachhead while the Russians were advancing west into Poland. Hirohito’s military advisers privately told the emperor that the loss of Saipan was inevitable. But the emperor was in no mood to accept that verdict, and he pushed his chiefs to renew the fight by any means possible. “If we ever lose Saipan, repeated air attacks on Tokyo will follow,” Hirohito told Tojo. “No matter what it takes, we have to hold there.”18 In a late-afternoon meeting at the Imperial Palace on June 20, he directed Tojo and Shimada to muster all available naval and air forces for another desperate attack on the American fleet, to be followed by troop landings on the contested island.

  Knowing full well that the sovereign’s proposal was tactically daft, the Naval General Staff worked through the night and circulated a draft plan on June 21. The Fifth Fleet, under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, would be summoned from Ominato Naval Base in northern Honshu. Admiral Shima would rendezvous with two fleet oilers and a troopship carrying one regiment, then sortie from Yokosuka for the Marianas on July 2. Another army division would embark on transports totaling 80,000 tons and put to sea in the first week of July. The surviving elements of Ozawa’s fleet would be reinforced with the escort carriers Kaiyo, Taiyo, and Shinyo. Having lost nearly all of his aircraft in the recent battle, Ozawa would embark new air groups consisting of naval air-training squadrons and army fighters. Admiral Kurita’s Second Fleet, having previously been ordered to sail for the Singapore area, would refuel and rearm in the western part of the Inland Sea and then return directly to the Marianas. All available land-based aircraft would stage through Iwo Jima and renew the air battle against the American carrier force. The American fleet would be destroyed in time for the troop reinforcements to put ashore on Saipan.

  Conceived at the man-god’s command and in the depths of despair, the plan to recapture Saipan was preposterous on its face. It was not even clear that enough fuel could be provided to put the various fleet elements into position to renew the battle. The American submarines would likely claim many more victims. American seaplanes would discover the incoming forces early. The army leadership was implacably opposed to putting their fighter squadrons aboard aircraft carriers, and it was not clear that the army airmen could even take off from the flight decks. The troopships would need a stroke of good fortune to get anywhere close to Saipan, and even if the troops could be landed, they would likely be wiped out on the beaches. But the Showa emperor had lost faith in his military leaders and did not want to hear their objections. For three days the services scrambled to launch an operation they knew to be suicidal. On June 24, Admiral Toyoda of the Combined Fleet weighed in with his formal opposition. That same day, Tojo and Shimada informed the emperor that there was no hope of recovering the island, and that they had cancelled the operation on their own authority. Even then, Hirohito refused to accept that judgment as final, and he convened a larger board of military advisers on June 25. When they confirmed that Saipan was a lost cause, Hirohito told them to put their conclusions in writing and left the room.

  As usual, the Japanese people could only guess at the full truth. For several weeks in June and July, news reporting on the battle for Saipan was perplexing and contradictory. The Board of Information was evidently undecided. When and how should the public be informed that the island was to be yielded to the enemy? The July 1 issue of Toyo Keizai ventured to declare, “It can be acknowledged that this one island has such value that we will expend all our power to protect it.”19 Prior to the invasion, that opinion had been unimpeachable, but now it elicited an “advisory warning” from the police. Lacking clear guidance from the government, the newspapers generally resorted to hollow sloganeering in stories headlined “The Fighting Will of 100 Million Seethes” or “The Establishment of an Impenetrable Defense Cordon and Total Tenacity.”*20

  Even without reliable news reports, ordinary Japanese could deduce that the loss of Saipan would open a desperate new phase of the war. Maps were unrolled and studied. Saipan was not far south. It had been Japanese territory for more than twenty years. It was home to a large population of Japanese civilians. If the Americans could land an invasion force on Saipan, within bombing range of the homeland, then the regime’s past claims of fantastic and annihilating victories must have been fabrications. Aiko Takahashi told her diary on July 18, 1944, that Japan had obviously suffered another crushing defeat, but “reports in newspapers and magazines boast that giving up these islands is a tactic for drawing in the enemy and the enemy is doing what we want.”21 She did not believe it, nor did many other ordinary Japanese. But it was not safe to air such opinions within earshot of others. Sachi Ariyama, a boy in Kawagoe, recalled that his father was arrested after expressing a casual opinion that the fall of Saipan meant “things were serious.” After many hours of interrogation he was released, but the entire family remained under surveillance until the end of the war.22

  Disaster in the Marianas inevitably loosened Tojo’s grip on power. In February the general had fortified his control of the cabinet by adding the job of army chief of staff to his concurrent offices of prime minister and army minister, and by arranging for the malleable Admiral Shimada to serve simultaneously as navy minister and navy chief of staff. Controlling such an all-encompassing portfolio of political and military offices, Tojo could scarcely duck responsibility for the Saipan debacle. In late June he issued a public statement referring to his “great shame” before the emperor. He had never used such language in the past.

  Since the fall of Guadalcanal in early 1943, an anti-Tojo coalition had been maneuvering behind the scenes to oust the general from power. The group included several former prime ministers, military leaders, diplomats, elected members of the Diet (parliament), and various members of the imperial family. The prime mover was Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who had twice served as prime minister in the prewar years and whom Tojo had pushed out of office six weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Konoye worked with a navy group around Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, another former prime minister who had been Yamamoto’s chief ally in opposition to the Tripartite Pact. Konoye and Yonai built support among a working group of former prime ministers called the jushin (senior statesmen). Konoye expressed his views to Marquis Koichi Kido, lord keeper of the privy seal and chief adviser on the emperor’s personal staff.

  Tojo did not go willingly. For several weeks in late June and early July 1944, the opposing factions grappled for ascendancy. According to rumors, Tojo wanted to have his adversaries arrested by the Kempeitai, but he could not turn up sufficient grounds to bring charges against figures as influential as Konoye and Yonai. He proposed another cabinet reshuffling in which he would retain at least one of his accumulated jobs, perhaps that of army minister. The Combined Fleet chief, Admiral Toyoda, threatened to resign if Shimada was permitted to remain simultaneously as the head of the Navy Ministry and the Naval General Staff. The jushin collectively declined to accept any offices in a cabinet that retained Tojo.

  Konoye feared that the war and its disruptions would prompt a socialist upheaval, as in Russia during the Great War. His greatest concern was the survival of the kokutai. In the 1930s, the army’s kodo (imperial way) faction had often advocated collectivist values in the guise of right-wing ideology—for example, by urging a “restoration” of all industry and private property to the throne, or threatening to rectify economic inequality by direct force of arms. Konoye reportedly went so far as to tell his fellow jushin that he feared revolution more than defeat: “Even if defeated, we could maintain the national structure and the imperial family, but in case of a leftist revolution, we could not.”23 The mayhem prompted by aerial bombing and foreign invasion might bring another breakdown in army discipline, a return of factionalism and assassinations, and a complete disintegration of Japan’s fragile political order.

  The jushin were determined to be rid o
f Tojo, and Kido was persuaded to throw his considerable influence behind the cause. But who would take Tojo’s place? Existing power-sharing arrangements could not be easily unscrambled. For all his manifest flaws, Tojo had managed to unify the army. He had brought the kodo faction to heel, and neutralized many of its leading figures by sending them to forward posts. During his premiership, the rebellious young officers had not broken out in open defiance, as they so often had in the past. The struggle for primacy and influence between the army and the navy remained as bitter as ever, but Tojo had kept the rivalry from boiling over into open conflict. For two and a half years, he had maintained a brittle consensus within the ruling circle. It was not clear that a successor could prolong the intricate balancing act.

  Konoye urged Yonai to serve again as prime minister, but the admiral declined, insisting that the army would only accept one of its own. On the same grounds, the jushin agreed that no civilian should be proposed for the post. A general was needed. Several names were considered and rejected. The man selected by default was Kuniaki Koiso, a retired general who had served throughout the war years as governor of Korea. He was to be little more than a figurehead, chosen only to mollify the army. Yonai would serve as vice premier as well as navy minister, and the new cabinet would be presented to the nation as a unity government with power to be shared by the army and navy.

  Tojo’s position became untenable on July 15, when Shimada was ousted from his dual posts. Tojo’s last hope of a reconstituted cabinet was defeated on July 17, when the jushin signed a joint memorandum stating that “a partial shuffling of the cabinet will not do.”24 He resigned on July 18. In a nationwide radio address that evening, Tojo told his countrymen that “Japan has come to face an unprecedented great national crisis. Our enemies, the United States and Britain, have gradually increased the intensity of their counter-offensive and have at last advanced into the Marianas.” In the same breath he prophesied the elusive triumph that would save Japan: “The situation now approaches when opportunity will occur to crack the enemy and to win victory.”25

  That same day, the Japanese public learned of the previous week’s mass civilian suicides on Saipan. The Asahi Shinbun printed a translated New York Times story on the deaths. Accompanying commentary in Asahi and other papers commixed sorrow with pride. The suicides were lauded as a beacon of hope and inspiration. The mothers who had killed their children and themselves were “the pride of Japanese women.” Kiyosawa collected other such examples of overwrought and lachrymose sentiments: “Courage springs forth a hundred, a thousand-fold more, a blaze of glory, for the first time in history. . . . The essence of a great race shines brightly at the last moment. . . . And thus we are strengthened by this, the true form of Japan.”26 Admiral Ugaki felt a deep sense of “shame,” but also thought the civilians had set a good example for their countrymen: “No people but the Yamato nation could do a thing like this. I think that if one hundred million Japanese people could have the same resolution as these facing this crisis, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a way to victory.”27 Like Kiyosawa, the Tokyo diarist Aiko Takahashi was disgusted by the harrowing account and refused even to call it bravery: “We should have the courage, come hell or high water, to give up the fight.”28

  The “imperial mandate” was conferred upon Koiso and Yonai on July 22, 1944. Together, they released statements emphasizing their determination to foster close cooperation between the army and the navy. Behind closed doors, they had discussed the need to take steps toward peace, but in their public communications they steadfastly resolved to carry on the war with undiminished intensity. “The Government will firmly adhere to the nation’s established foreign policy,” said Koiso on taking office, “and work for a thorough-going realization of the principles of the Greater East Asia, thereby carrying the Holy War to a complete victory and thus setting the Imperial mind at ease.”29

  The Koiso government was hobbled from the beginning. Its every move was carefully calibrated to reassure army hardliners. Insiders would compare the Koiso cabinet to a “charcoal-burning car”—like the retrofitted vehicles on the streets of wartime Tokyo, it moved haltingly and often broke down.30 Koiso was refused a seat on the Supreme Council, and thus was denied a voice in war strategy. Admiral Yonai found himself marginalized. Tojo’s allies retained control of the Kempeitai and manipulated politics through the mechanisms of internal repression. Koiso dutifully mouthed the same bellicose avowals and victory forecasts that had been Tojo’s trademark. On September 16, the new leader assured a national radio audience: “Japan is preparing to launch a great offensive in the near future to crush Britain and America.”31

  Many senior figures in the ruling circle (including Konoye, Kido, Yonai, and perhaps the emperor) evidently regarded the Koiso cabinet as a transitional government. Getting rid of Tojo was a first step toward peace, but no further maneuvers in that direction could be safely attempted until conditions had ripened. What was needed, according to various opinions, was either a smashing victory or a catastrophic defeat. In late June, Kido had asked Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu to prepare a plan to seek a diplomatic settlement with the United States. The most likely route was to ask Stalin’s government to act as a mediator. To this end, Kido warned Koiso to be scrupulous in avoiding any action likely to antagonize Russia. But all the senior government figures agreed that the rank and file of the army would not countenance a peace initiative until it was obvious that Japan was utterly defeated. When and if such a moment came, the emperor must be persuaded to end the war on the strength of an outright imperial decree.32

  Hirohito clearly wanted to find a way out of the war, but he remained convinced that an acceptable peace could be negotiated only in the aftermath of a major victory. “I wanted to grasp the chance to quickly conclude a negotiated peace after striking a crushing blow on the enemy someplace,” he said in his postwar Soliloquy. “Then, with America staggering, we would have been able to find room for a compromise.”33 Steeped in the history of the Russo-Japanese War, determined at all costs to win his Battle of Tsushima, the emperor could not bring himself to admit that his nation was already defeated.

  Critics have faulted Hirohito for failing to intervene sooner to stop the war, but there was never any realistic prospect of a negotiated peace. Terms short of unconditional surrender would not have enticed the Allies, while even the most dovish Japanese leaders assumed a diplomatic settlement must maintain some version of Japan’s Asian empire. As for the militarist junta, terms of “peace” had been offered by two military “experts” in a broadcast by Domei News Service three weeks before the invasion of Saipan:

  Complete destruction of American naval power and maritime trade; abolition of private banking institutions and trade unions; restriction of American steel and oil production; destruction of all shipyards except those building river and coastal vessels; creation of a political authority, free from “influences wielded by economic interests” and modeled after the “pure sovereignty of Japan,” to maintain strict surveillance over the United States for ten or more years, or perhaps indefinitely.34

  That offer was evidently tongue in cheek. It had not been presented by the foreign ministry or any other qualified representative of the Japanese government. But Kido’s more earnest diary musings on the subject suggest that he had yet to face up to his country’s dire predicament. He imagined that Japan might cling to some portion of its Asian empire by pitting the Allies against one another. In a March 31 entry, he surmised that Japan might approach the government of Great Britain and offer to mediate a truce with the Nazis. With peace restored in Europe, London might then be willing to assist Japan in negotiating a settlement with the United States. The British leadership, Kido presumed, would maneuver to prevent the Americans from becoming the supreme power in the Pacific. In the same vein, the Russians might choose to bolster Japan’s regional standing as a bulwark against the Anglo-American nations.35

  In early 1944, with the defeat of Germany and Japan already
foreseeable, Kido sketched out terms of peace that would involve “considerable concessions.” He envisioned a five-nation commission involving the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan. All other independent nations in the region would be made “permanent neutral powers, similar to Switzerland.” Japan would undertake not to fortify its occupied territories and islands. The five powers would agree to guarantee freedom of trade throughout the region. Japan would remain sovereign in Manchuria and Korea.

  Such a proposal would have been rejected by the Allies at any time after December 7, 1941. By 1944, the United States and Britain were implacably committed to forcing Japan’s unconditional surrender. Even so, Kido worried that his plan “may, at a glance, be considered too conciliatory and weak-kneed” by Japanese hardliners.36