Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II

by Laurence Rees

  The next eighteen months brought the imperial forces nothing but a string of defeats throughout their fledgling empire. The first half of 1943 brought the loss of Guadalcanal, the fall of Buna in Papua and defeat in the Aleutian Islands. After a lull in the summer of 1943 the autumn brought more disasters with the successful Allied landing at Finschhafen in Papua, whilst 1944 dawned with the Americans landing on the Marshall Islands. In February that year, in the face of defeat after defeat, prime minister Tojo attempted to consolidate his position and ensure the cooperation between the navy and the army that had previously been lacking by replacing the army chief of staff, Sugiyama, with the only man he felt was up to the job — himself, whilst the chief of the navy staff was replaced by Tojo’s creature Shimada. With this new team in place, Tojo believed the Japanese could at last win the decisive victory that would pave the way for peace. The setting for this great victory would be the battle for the island of Saipan in the Marianas and the conflict in the seas around it.

  Saipan was not just another in the long line of islands that the Japanese had tried (and failed) to defend for the last two years. Unlike the others, it was territory that had been held by the Japanese before the war. Even though, since the island was held as a mandate, this was not strictly speaking Japanese soil, the arrival of the Americans on its shores marked a worrying development for the Imperial High Command. If the enemy was not exactly at their doorstep, they had certainly arrived in their backyard.

  The 2nd and 4th US marine divisions, comprising some 77,000 men, landed on Saipan on 15 June 1944. The geography of the island was ideal for the defenders, with high ground overlooking the landing beaches. The 32,000 Japanese troops under the command of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito inflicted heavy casualties on the marines beneath them as they came ashore. ‘How I ever went through the twenty-five days and twenty-five nights on Saipan, I don’t know,’ says Michael Witowich, one of the US marines who took part in the battle. ‘Day in day out, day in day out, no sleep. Only God would know the suffering you’ve got to go through. I can’t forget my buddies, the horror, seeing them dying and screaming, “Help! Help!” There’s nothing you can do. Guys that are screaming and yelling. Horrible. You can see pictures, you can read about them, but you have to be there to listen to the death rattle and the feeling that you get by seeing what’s happening. It’s horrible.’

  As the marines fought on the beaches, Saito was convinced that the approaching Japanese fleet would sink the American ships that were supplying the attackers. But it was not to be. Once again, in the ensuing sea battle the Japanese experienced disaster, losing three aircraft carriers and 500 planes. American reinforcements poured on to the island. Given that it was forbidden for Japanese troops to surrender, Saito could do nothing more than retreat to defensive positions in the centre of the island and fight to the end — and the end came three weeks later, on the night of 6 July 1944, when 4000 Japanese troops launched a huge banzai suicide charge against the Americans. Three days later many of those left alive committed suicide by jumping from the cliffs at Marpi Point. Significantly, for the first time in the war it was not just soldiers and sailors who killed themselves but civilians as well — including thousands of women and children. ‘They would get the child in their arms, and they’d bend over and jump off the cliff,’ says Michael Witowich, who was on patrol nearby. ‘They’d jump and you could hear the screaming of the children on the coral.’ Seeing the children waiting to leap to their deaths, he decided to act: ‘I used to shoot the children as they went down, so they wouldn’t suffer when they hit the coral. I used to think in my dreams whether it was right for me to do that, so they wouldn’t have to suffer when they went down. ‘Cos when they hit the coral they’d still be alive and have a horrible death, so it’s like shooting a horse that breaks its leg — and this is a human being.’

  The civilian suicides on Saipan marked a turning point. Up to that moment suicide had essentially been the prerogative of the military, or of senior figures within the Japanese elite. Now, fuelled by the desperate knowledge that their soldiers must not be taken alive, thousands of ordinary civilians took their own lives. The Japanese army on the island played a key role in encouraging civilians to die, convincing them that it would be shameful to survive the occupation of the island and that the Americans would torture, rape or kill them if they were captured alive.

  Japanese propaganda films made shortly after the loss of Saipan emphasize the nobility of dying in the struggle against the Allies, and the message was spread even amongst Japanese school children. ‘We have heard that all our soldiers on Saipan died bravely,’ shouts an army officer to a parade ground full of solemn-faced young children in one newsreel. ‘All the Japanese civilians on the island cooperated with the army and shared their fate.’ The propaganda did not trumpet the reality — that for the first time in the conflict Japanese pre-war territory had fallen and that as a result Tojo had resigned (to be replaced by Kuniaki Koiso, who survived as prime minister until April 1945). Instead, it proselytized the fiction that there can be glory in defeat if it is marked by self-sacrifice for the good of the nation, the good of the emperor. The desire for the last elusive ‘victory’ was becoming corrupted into the belief that defeat could become victory if the enemy took the land but not its people.

  It was this attitude that was to influence the creation of the most uniquely Japanese military unit of the war — the kamikaze (’divine wind’) — and it was during the battle of Saipan that the seeds were sown for the birth of these institutionalized suicide squads. On 19 June 1944, in the seas around Saipan, the Japanese air force lost a total of 315 aircraft to the Allies. It was obvious that Allied military technology had progressed so quickly that the advantage the Japanese Zero fighter had possessed in the early days of the war had evaporated. Six weeks later in Tokyo, Warrant Officer Shoichi Ota believed he had come up with a solution to the problem. He showed a drawing of a missile he had conceived to design technician Tadanao Miki. Incredibly, Ota’s plan called for a missile to be slung underneath a bomber and then piloted the last few miles to its target by a human being. ‘I was amazed,’ says Miki. ‘I thought, “Who’s going to pilot it?” As an engineer I was against it. I felt a person’s life could not be regarded so lightly. But then Ota said, “I would pilot it.” That’s what he said. And I thought, “Oh my God!”’7 As a result of Ota’s personal commitment to the project, the missile was put into production.

  At the same time as Ota’s missile was being built, Japanese pilots were showing that they too, without specific orders, could sense the mood of the nation. On 20 August the Ozuki fighter unit was sent into action against American bombers approaching the home islands of Japan. ‘During the dogfight,’ says Masaji Kobayashi, who flew on the sortie, ‘two pilots suddenly announced that they were out of bullets and were going to crash into the B-29s. I saw two of them deliberately crash their planes into the B-29s. It was not planned but spontaneous.’ Just as with the sacrifice at Saipan, Japanese newspapers proclaimed that this airborne suicide attack was proof that spiritual strength was every bit as potent as military power. But Japanese commanders (especially Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi) realized that, outnumbered as they were, it was nothing more than a gesture to sacrifice one Japanese plane for an American one. If this suicide tactic was to have military as opposed to propaganda value, the target would have to be more significant. And there was nothing more threatening to Japan than the American aircraft carriers — the war ships that had, from the Japanese perspective, so tragically escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor.

  As a result, in October 1944, as the Allied fleet approached the Philippines, and with Ota’s piloted missile not yet ready, the elite Japanese 201st Air Group was given a new task. Volunteers were called for, and told that their mission would be to fly a plane packed with explosives directly into an Allied carrier. It was the job of Wing Commander Tadashi Nakajima to explain the new plan to the assembled pilots: ‘I said, “Those who volunteer p
lease write down your names on a piece of paper.” I wondered. What would I do if nobody did? But that evening an officer brought all the scraps of paper to me. In the whole unit only three had not volunteered.’ The three who had not put their names down were in the unit hospital. Every able-bodied pilot had said he was prepared to die — some had even signed the request form with their own blood. ‘Later that night,’ recalls Nakajima, ‘one of the officers said, “You asked the rank and file, but you didn’t ask us.” I replied, “I didn’t ask you because I knew you would volunteer.” And the officer smiled. He was very happy to hear that.’

  On 25 October 1944, aircraft of the Japanese 201st Air Group left their base in the Philippines to mount suicide attacks on Allied carrier groups just over 400 miles (650 km) away. ‘I had just finished breakfast,’ says Robert Fentriss, one of the American sailors in the carrier group targeted by these first kamikazes, ‘and about that time the general alarm went, bong-bong, and then there was the rat-a-tat-tat-tat of machine guns and then WHOOM, that was it. And in just a fraction of a second the ship was in a roaring inferno. There was smoke and you couldn’t see — all sorts of confusion.’

  ’I watched this plane come in,’ says John Mitchell, a gunner’s mate on a nearby US warship, ‘and it just kept coming in. It was like slow motion almost, because he was firing his guns. I almost saw the projectiles hitting the deck. And the plane kept coming in and it didn’t pull out. And I yelled, “Pull out, you bastard, pull out!”’

  The US carrier Santee was severely damaged by the kamikaze attacks. But such was the shock and disbelief amongst the American sailors that it was not until the next day that they fully understood that the Japanese were mounting a mass, planned suicide attack. ‘I was just absolutely dumbfounded,’ says Robert Fentriss. ‘I could not believe that someone would do something like that. I couldn’t believe what I had seen. And I said to one of my shipmates who was standing very close to me, “Did you see what that joker did?” or words to that effect. That’s the first time I knew it was a kamikaze.’ ‘We were a really cocky bunch,’ says Bill Simmons, another US sailor in the same carrier group. ‘We thought we had the war won. And then when they began the kamikaze attacks, it just scared the living daylights out of everybody. Suddenly we were not the great navy we felt we were.’

  The action of the kamikaze pilots was inexplicable to these American sailors. After all, wasn’t the whole point of fighting in a war to try to survive it? But the Japanese pilots had been educated in a wholly different philosophy. At the core of it was not just the belief that their supreme commander, Emperor Hirohito, was a divine figure whose orders must be obeyed without question, but the spiritual faith that after death as kamikaze pilots their souls would dwell in the emperor’s own shrine. ‘Everybody at that time knew that their soul would go back to Yasukini,’ says Morimasa Yunokawa, then a pilot in the Japanese navy. ‘That was the special place where the souls of those who had died fighting for the country and their emperor went.’ Propaganda archive of the time shows war widows visiting the Yasukini shrine across from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, so that, as the commentary puts it, ‘they can at last meet again those who have been living on only in their memories. For the widows, this was an unforgettable moment to show their appreciation for being able to honour their god-like husbands.’

  However, it is important for those of us in the West who have been brought up with the concept of Christian martyrdom to realize that the spiritual beliefs of the kamikaze were not analogous. The focus of the kamikaze pilots was at least as much on the service they were doing to the society they left behind than on the certainty of an afterlife. ‘There is no living thing that desires death,’ says Hachiro Hosokawa, another Japanese wartime pilot. ‘But there comes a time when you face responsibilities you cannot run away from, and at that point you give up your life. To give up your life for your country and your people was the highest honour. It was not only me but everyone who thought that way.’ In a country where the group mattered more than the individual, there could be no higher glory than to die in such a suicide attack.

  Despite the kamikazes, the ‘one great victory’ that Hirohito and the Japanese High Command were chasing was still proving elusive. Their plan was not proving to be a strategy so much as wishful thinking — and wishful thinking began to be the order of the day. In early October 1944, Hirohito’s advisers simply misled him — they told him that overall, in a series of sea engagements, the Japanese had won great victories and that sixteen American carriers had been sunk (in reality the Imperial Navy had not sunk one of them). It was this kind of false briefing that led Hirohito to suppose that a decisive victory over the Americans could be won as the enemy approached Leyte in the Philippines later that month. Yet again, the Japanese leadership were chasing a dream. Between 22 and 27 October the Americans inflicted another massive defeat at Leyte Gulf, sinking four Japanese carriers and killing more than 10,000 Japanese servicemen. The superior firepower of the Americans had proved decisive once again.

  Meantime, on the Southeast Asian mainland the British (with Indian army soldiers playing a prominent part) managed to defeat the Imperial Army on the Northeastern border of India at the battles of Imphal and Kohima and in the process the Japanese 15th army was almost completely destroyed. During the autumn of 1944 the Allied forces pushed the remaining Japanese back towards Burma, with Colonel Orde Wingate’s guerilla Chindits harrying them from behind the lines.

  As autumn turned to winter in 1944 the Japanese were facing something unique in their long history as a nation — catastrophic defeat. Starting the war had been easy. Ending it — before the whole of Japan was in ruins — would prove more difficult.

  ENDGAME

  By the start of 1945 the Japanese leadership were trapped in the near impossible situation they had created for themselves. Militarily they knew they must be defeated — but they could not surrender unconditionally because that would mean the destruction of the whole emperor system, and life without that was inconceivable. There were precious few alternatives; the easy option was to keep fighting and hope for the best — perhaps the Americans would eventually falter in the face of suicidal Japanese resistance. Unfortunately for the Japanese, by the start of 1945 it was clear that this option was also the one least likely to succeed. But how else could the impossible circle be squared — how could they surrender without sacrificing the emperor?

  One possibility, some of Hirohito’s advisers thought, was to persuade him to abdicate in favour of his son, the eleven-year-old crown prince. To that end secret discussions were held in January 1945 with the chief abbot of Ninnaji temple to see if it might be possible for Hirohito to ‘retire’ to a temple in Kyoto. But the talks came to nothing — it was still easier and more comforting for the Japanese elite to put their faith in the fantasy of the ‘one big victory and then peace’ strategy.

  In February 1945, as the Japanese leadership procrastinated, American marines landed on the tiny volcanic island of Iwo Jima, less than 700 miles (1100 km) south of Tokyo. The island was a vital strategic objective for the Allies, as use of its airstrips would allow bombing raids to be mounted more effectively against the home islands of Japan. Once more the Japanese response was tenacious and desperate. Beneath the sulphurous landscape the defenders, under the command of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayahi, built a honeycomb of tunnels and fox-holes. Their fierce defence of the island cost the Americans dear — by the time it was captured, after a five-week battle, one in three of the marines who had taken part had been killed or wounded.

  The level of sacrifice made by the marines on Iwo Jima had a profound effect not just on public opinion in the United States but also on their fellow servicemen in the Pacific. Weeks after the island had been taken, Paul Montgomery and the rest of his bomber crew landed on Iwo Jima to refuel on their way back to base on the island of Tinian: ‘We were taxiing in and I passed right by a graveyard. There were an indescribable number of marker crosses. I couldn’t describe t
o you how affected I was. I had never seen 7000 markers before. And when I came to realize that they were just kids like myself and that they wouldn’t be going home....It just took something out of me that I didn’t know was there. I thought I was pretty tough. I wasn’t tough. I became traumatized with the price that had been paid for that island — and the reason they took it was so I could have a runway to land on coming back.’

  Paul Montgomery was just one of thousands of young Americans participating during the spring and summer of 1945 in the biggest aerial bombardment in history. Early in the war the Americans had attempted to use precision bombing against Japanese military and industrial targets, but in January 1945 that policy changed with the arrival of a new air force commander — General Curtis Le May. The new tactic was simple — burn whole cities to the ground. In an effort to force Japan to accept unconditional surrender (and eradicate the need for more marines to die capturing islands like Iwo Jima) the decision had been taken to bring the war home to the civilian population in a cataclysmic manner. Packed with incendiaries, B-29 bombers now flew low over Japanese towns at night and set the buildings on fire.

  The controversy over the decision to use nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed Le May’s earlier devastating conventional bombing campaign against Japan. As a result, one astounding fact has not seeped into the public consciousness — five months before the atomic bombs were dropped, on the night of 10 March 1945, the Americans fire-bombed Tokyo and killed around 100,000 in the biggest fire storm in history. More people died in a few hours than in either of the later attacks with atomic bombs.