Strong Men Armed

by Robert Leckie

  Yamato shoved off from Tokuyama at three-twenty on the afternoon of April 6, exactly twenty minutes after the first of the kikusui dove on the American ships off Okinawa.

  On that morning of April 6 the Fast Carrier Forces were discovered by Japanese scout planes in the northern Ryukyus. Some 100 fighters and bombers were brought down on them.

  Later in the day American air patrols flying off Okinawa’s now-operable airfields were drawn off into battle with Japanese fighters sent down in advance of the kamikaze.

  At three o’clock, with the way cleared for them, the suiciders struck. They dove on the destroyers of the radar picket screen and among the forests of masts in the Hagushi Anchorage. Some 200 came for five hours until darkness veiled the targets or magnified the death pyres of American ships.

  Destroyers Bush and Calhoun went down, the minesweeper Emmons, LST 447, and the ammunition ships Logan Victory and Hobbs Victory. Nine other destroyers were damaged, as were four destroyer escorts and five mine vessels. Up north, the carrier Hancock and two destroyers of the Fast Carrier Forces were hit.

  It was an impressive day’s work for the first sally of the kikusui, even though they had lost 135 planes. But the kamikaze reports were as usual exaggerated, dovetailing with those from the 32nd Army claiming 30 American ships sunk and 20 more burning. Such bloated estimates helped inflate the spirits of Yamato’s 2,767 officers and men as the sleek dreadnought tore through the night, making for the Inland Sea’s southeastern gate at Bungo Strait.

  There had been a ceremony. At six o’clock, all men and officers not on duty had been broken out on deck. A message from Admiral Ozawa was read:

  “Render this operation the turning point of the war.”

  The men sang the National Anthem, gave three banzais for the Emperor, and returned to quarters. At ten o’clock, Yamato was in the Pacific Ocean—racing down Kyushu’s eastern shores with her consorts gathering about her, shooing the American submarine Hackleback away, swinging to starboard off Kyushu’s southern nose to sail west through Van Diemen Strait into the East China Sea.

  Admiral Ito was taking the Surface Special Attack Force on a big swing west-northwest in hopes of pouncing on the Americans off Okinawa at about dusk of the next day.

  But Hackleback had already alerted Admiral Spruance and shortly before half-past eight the next morning a scout plane from Essex spotted the Japanese force just southwest of Kyushu, less than 400 miles above Okinawa.

  Patrol planes began taking off from Kerama Retto.

  At ten o’clock, Yamato’s pathetic pair of fighter escorts flew back to Japan.

  At ten-thirty Rear Admiral Morton Deyo was ordered to take six battleships, seven cruisers and 21 destroyers north and place them between the approaching Japanese warships and the American transports. At almost the same moment the patrol planes found Yamato sailing at 22 knots in the middle of a diamond-shaped destroyer screen, with cruiser Yahagi trailing behind. The big planes shadowed the naked enemy fleet like vultures.

  “Hope you will bring back a nice fish for breakfast,” Admiral Turner signaled Admiral Deyo.

  The commander of the intercepting force seized a signal blank and pencil to write his reply. “Many thanks, will try—” An orderly handed him an intercepted message. Scouts of the Fast Carrier Forces had found the enemy. Three groups totaling 380 planes were preparing to strike. “Will try to,” Deyo concluded, “if the pelicans haven’t caught them all!”

  The “pelicans” had.

  At half-past twelve the American warbirds were over the target. Ten minutes later two bombs exploded near Yamato’s mainmast. Another four minutes and a torpedo had pierced her side. At the same moment destroyer Hamakaze stood on her nose and slid under, and Yahagi took a bomb and a fish and went dead in the water.

  There was a respite.

  The Americans came again at half-past one and planted five torpedoes in Yamato’s port side. Water rushed into boiler and engine rooms and great Yamato began to lean to port. Rear Admiral Kosaku Ariga, Yamato’s captain, ordered counter-flooding in the starboard boiler and engine rooms. Ensign Mitsuru Yoshida attempted to warn the men there. Too late. They were sacrificed.

  Still Yamato listed, and she had but one screw working. Her decks were a shambles of cracked and twisted steel plates. Her big guns would not work. The watertight wireless room was filled with water, and an explosion had wrecked the emergency dispensary and killed everyone inside.

  At two o’clock the final attack began.

  Hellcats and Avengers plunged from the skies to strike at the hapless ship. Yamato was shaken fore and aft and the entire battleship shuddered violently. Communications with the bridge were cut off, the distress flag was hoisted, the steering room became flooded, and with the rudder jammed hard left, mighty Yamato sagged over to a list of 35 degrees.

  “Correction of list hopeless!” the executive officer cried.

  Down came the Americans for the death blow.

  “Hold on, men!” Ariga shouted. “Hold on, men!”

  Bombs were striking around and upon Yamato, raising a giant clanging, flinging waves of roaring air across her decks, jumbling men together in heaps. Out of one pile crawled high-ranking staff officers. Admiral Ito struggled to his feet. His chief of staff arose and saluted him. The two men regarded each other solemnly. Ito turned, shook hands with each of his staff officers, wheeled and strode into his cabin, either to embrace death or await it—the world will never know which. Admiral Ariga rushed to save the Emperor’s portrait, but met death instead.

  Yamato was dying slowly, like the giant she was. Her decks were nearly vertical, her battle flag all but touched the waves, explosions racked her monster body, her own ammunition began blowing up—and all around her were her sister ships in death agonies. Yahagi was sinking, Isokaze, Hamakaze, Asashimo and Kasumo had received their death blows.

  At twenty-three minutes after two Yamato slid under, a full day’s steaming from Okinawa.

  Japan had lost her navy, the suicide battleship had failed, and it was now up to the kamikaze and the men of Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima.

  13

  In the north of Okinawa, Ushijima’s men seemed to have melted away from the pelting up-island advance of the Sixth Marine Division—the “Striking Sixth” as the men of General Shepherd’s freshly blooded outfit were calling themselves.

  The Sixth swept up both coasts, a regiment to either side, making giant strides daily. Tanks loaded with grinning riflemen rolled up the dusty roads unimpeded but for an occasional sniper, a clumsy roadblock which bulldozers or the tanks themselves could knock aside, or here and there an obviously freshly planted land mine.

  On April 8 the tanks came to the mouth of the Motobu Peninsula, a wild headland jutting to the west or left flank of the Marines. Here the Marines discovered why it was they had come so swiftly up the island.

  On Motobu were gathered almost all of the 2,000 remaining soldiers of Colonel Udo’s northern defense force. They were holed up on 1,200-foot Mount Yaetake, among the usually well-chosen and well-fortified labyrinth of cave-eaten ridges, cliffs, gorges, steep hills and rocky corridors—well supplied with guns, prepared to fight to the end.

  The Marines moved in. They pushed cautiously around the coastal roads, their engineers swiftly building bridges over the ruins of those demolished by the Japanese or trucking in loads of rock and dirt to fill tank-traps blasted at the foot of cliffs or out in the rice paddies. By April 13 they had driven the Japanese back onto the crest of the Yaetake stronghold. They were prepared to attack in a pincers, three battalions to begin a fighting climb from Motobu’s west coast, two to strike from the east.

  That was a Friday the thirteenth on Okinawa. With first light, these Marines of the Sixth Division were startled, then grief-stricken to hear the bullhorns of the ships offshore blaring:

  “Attention! Attention! All hands! President Roosevelt is dead. Repeat, our supreme commander, President Roosevelt, is dead.”

  Swift
ly the news reached men out of earshot. They were stunned. Many of them cried, most of them prayed. Many of these youths had known no president other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They had truly loved him, had depended on him—how much they did not know until they heard that he was dead. Nor could they turn for solace to company officers, barely a few years their seniors. They could only ask: “What do we do now?”

  Memorial services might be possible on ships even now flying the flag at half-mast, but the Marines on Motobu could do nothing but move out.

  The Yaetake attacks became a week-long nightmare against a phantom enemy. Everywhere in the hills were small groups of Japanese clustering around a Hotchkiss heavy machine gun and the usual proliferation of Nambu lights. Marines might grenade these nasty spitting nests, might call down exact mortar fire, but then, in the succeeding rush, might find nothing but a trail of blood to suggest that anyone had struck at them.

  “Jeez!” a Marine swore. “They’ve all got Nambus, but where the hell are they?”

  On April 15 naval gunfire and close-up air strikes grew stronger. More artillery was brought in. Artillery observers went forward, among them a battery commander and his spotter, Pfc. Harold Gonsalves. The commander lived because Gonsalves hurled himself on a Japanese grenade to save him— and win the Medal of Honor. More and more guns lashed at Yaetake.

  Next day the Marines drove deeper into the Japanese complex. Corporal Richard Bush led a squad forward on the right flank of the three-battalion line striking at Yaetake’s eastern mass. The face of the opposing ridge erupted with gunfire. Bush’s squad went up and over it to drive the Japanese out, to score the first breakthrough. But Bush was badly wounded. He was pulled back to a cluster of protecting rocks where other men lay. A grenade sailed in. Bush pulled it to him. He saved the other wounded and he also lived, to join that amazing company of Marines whose Medals of Honor testified to the toughness of their bodies. Through the hole his squad had cut, through other holes along the line, the fight marched upward—swirling up in the mountains where it became as much a matter of supply as killing the enemy.

  Marines toiled up hills with five-gallon cans of water on their backs and bandoleers of rifle-clips or grenades slung crisscross about their bodies. Battalion commanders going up to inspect the lines brought a water-can or a mortar shell along with them.

  It was four days before the Marines burst into Colonel Udo’s headquarters to discover this mimeographed sheet intended for their eyes:

  NEWS OF NEWS

  No. 1

  Saturday, April 14

  PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT DIED A SUDDEN DEATH

  To the men of the Sixth Marine Division!

  We take it a great honor to speak to you for the first time.

  We are awfully sorry to learn from the U.P. telegraph that the life of President Roosevelt has suddenly come to its end at 3:30 P.M. on April 12. It seems to be an incredible story in spite of its actual evidence.

  Men of the 6th Marine Division, particularly men of the 15th and 29th Marines and the 3rd Amphibious Corps, we express our hearty regret with you all over the death of the late President. What do you think was the true cause of the late President’s death? A miserable defeat experienced by the U.S. forces in the sea around the island of Okinawa! Were this not the direct cause leading him to death, we could be quite relieved.

  We do not think that the majority of you have exact knowledge of the present operations being carried out by the U.S. forces although a very few member of you must have got a glympse of the accurate situation.

  An exceedingly great number of picked aircrafts carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers held on her course to and near the sea of Okinawa in order to protect you and carry out operations in concert with you. The 90% of them have already been sunk and destroyed by Japanese Special Fighting Bodies, sea and air. In this way a grand “U.S. Sea Bottom Fleet” numbering 500 has been brought into existence around this little island.

  Once you have seen a “Lizard” twitching about with its tail cut off, we suppose this state of lizard is likened to you. Even a drop of blood can be never expected from its own heart. As a result an apopletic stroke comes to attack.

  It is a sort of vice however to presure upon others unhappiness. This is why we want to write nothing further.

  It is time now for you, sagacieus and pradent, however, to look over the whole situations of the present war and try to catch a chance for reflection!!

  The Marines went on to conquer the rest of Motobu, securing the peninsula on April 20. Above them, the Sixth Division’s Twenty-second Regiment had reached Okinawa’s northernmost point. The biggest battle in the northern sector was over.

  The Sixth spent the rest of April patrolling and pursuing those Japanese who had fled Yaetake and turned irregular, using wardogs to scent the enemy and bark a warning. They even found that natural enemy of whom they had had such ample, ominous warning.

  “Lookit the snake I just killed. It’s one of them habu!”

  “Hoo-what?”

  “Habu, the snake they was all talkin’ about before we landed.”

  “What’re yuh gonna do with it?”

  “Do with it! With the slop they been feeding us on this screwy island? I’m gonna cut it into fillets and then I’m gonna fry it and eat it!”

  Marines of the First Division were not quite so desperate. They were, in fact, still celebrating the Honeymoon, extending it for the duration of the month of April.

  Many of the division’s battalions built bivouacs complete with gravel paths, showers and mess halls. The men went to abandoned Okinawan homes to remove the sliding panels which separated the rooms. They used them for foxhole covers or to build shanties. Everybody had a pet—a pony, a goat, even one of those numerous Okinawan rabbits which might have escaped the pot. There was an open-air theater at Division Headquarters and there all the clerks and typists gathered nightly to play leapfrog until it was dark enough for a movie. This was not battle as the First had known it. But the men said, “Peace—it’s wonderful!” They were so enchanted by Lilac Time that they brewed jungle juice out of their rations, drank it from “borrowed” lacquer ware—one of Okinawa’s few crafts—and began to harmonize.

  They sang all the old favorites such as “The Wabash Cannonball” or “Birmingham Jail,” as well as that vast repertoire of bawdies and unprintables collected or composed by local bards during three years of tramping the Pacific. There was a new printable one for Okinawa, and it went:

  Oh, don’t you worry, Mother, your son is safe out here.

  No Japs on Okinawa, no saki, booze or beer.

  Your sons can’t find no Nips, so we’re going back on ships.

  But don’t you worry, Mother, cause we’re going on another.

  But they were not. The honeymoon was ending. They were staying on Okinawa and going south, down to that Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line which had stopped the Army’s Twenty-fourth Corps.

  14

  The honeymoon had been brief for the Twenty-fourth Corps—hardly more than a weekend.

  The day after Love-Day, while the Second Marine Division made another feint off southern Okinawa, the Twenty-fourth’s soldiers raced across the island. Next day they turned south, 7th Division on the left flank, 96th on the right. Their advance seemed to be as effortless as the Marine thrust in the north.

  But on April 4 they found resistance “stiffening.”

  It grew stiffer daily until, on April 8, “greatly increased resistance” was reported. They had come into the outerworks of Ushijima’s barrier line. Three days later they were stopped cold beneath one of the Pacific War’s most furious and skillful artillery barrages. A regiment of the 27th Division—now ashore while the Second Marine Division was sailing back to Saipan—was ordered in with the 96th Division on the right.

  On April 12 the Japanese launched a land-air counterattack. Another massed kamikaze raid struck at American shipping that day, and in the night the 32nd Army attacked all along the line. The
Japanese were repulsed, but they came again the following night. They were stopped again, with losses totaling 1,594 men.

  It seemed that the time for the American breakthrough had arrived. Major General Hodge planned a powerful thrust with three divisions abreast. It was scheduled for April 19.

  In the interval, the 77th Division, assisted by Major Jones’s Recon Battalion, moved to seize Ie Shima just off the western tip of Mobotu Peninsula. Ie was a good-sized island and had an airfield. The 77th landed on April 16 and fought a savage four-day battle, killing 4,706 Japanese while losing 258 soldiers killed or missing and 879 wounded. Among the 77th’s dead was the most famous and beloved civilian who ever marched with the dogfaces: the correspondent Ernie Pyle.

  Pyle was killed going up front again. Back at Ulithi, as he shoved off to join the First Marine Division, with whom he landed at Hagushi, another newsman called out jokingly, “Keep your head down, Ernie,” and Pyle had snorted, “Listen, you bastards—I’ll take a drink over every one of your graves.” But Pyle’s grave was dug on Ie Shima and over it his new comrades in the Pacific placed the inscription: “On this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”

  It was the following day that General Hodge’s grand assault began. With the 7th Division on the left, 96th in the center, 27th on the right; with six battleships, six cruisers and nine destroyers firing on call; with 650 Marine and Navy planes flying close-up support or scourging enemy supply and assembly areas; with 27 battalions of artillery massed and hurling everything from 75-millimeter to eight-inch shells all along that five-mile front—the Twenty-fourth Corps attacked.