Islands of Destiny: The Solomons Campaign and the Eclipse of the Rising Sun

by John Prados

  Aboard the Tokitsukaze, Yoshihara Kane, a lieutenant general and Adachi’s chief of staff, was up to greet the dawn. With the convoy rounding the Huon Peninsula, the general could see the coast of New Guinea for the first time. Suddenly he glimpsed a plane in the distance, coming up from the south, but it disappeared in mist. Yoshihara felt apprehensive, a premonition of evil, but this was an Imperial navy show. Any decision would be made by Kimura. The admiral could have put about, withdrawing, or made for Finschhafen, the nearest port. He radioed Rabaul for instructions. Shades of Eastern Solomons: neither Mikawa nor Kusaka made any immediate reply. Because an arrival time at Lae had been set, Kimura held his course. Bending on every ounce of steam, the convoy accelerated to nine knots.

  General Yoshihara went below for breakfast. His impression was that that plane, rather than being some casual morning flight, had been looking for them specifically. As Yoshihara climbed back topside, the dawn mists were giving way to a sparkling day. All was calm, so he returned to his cabin, then went to consult his senior staff officer on what they should do upon debarking. Ten minutes later, at about 10:00 a.m., sirens sounded and Tokitsukaze went to battle stations. Machine gun bullets from strafing planes began to perforate the destroyer’s unarmored hull. The ship groaned and vibrated as her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Motokura Masayoshi, maneuvered under the bombs. The Tokitsukaze shuddered with a blow. She lost way. Motokura thought they had been torpedoed. Yoshihara felt it miraculous that there had been no explosion, but there was no remaining aboard, so the nearby Yukikaze was asked to take the Army men off.

  By then General Yoshihara could already see smoke rising from more than half the surrounding vessels. The air assault succeeded brilliantly. As it happened, Kenney’s planes struck just as the JNAF fighter patrol was to hand over to the next unit. Fighters of the 253rd Air Group had had the first shift, reinforced by planes of the 204th later. Around 10:00 a.m. there were twenty-six land-based Zeroes orbiting at 20,000 feet as eighteen Zuiho aircraft approached. Some of the patrolling Zeroes had started for Gasmata. Hearing panic on the radio, the interceptors returned. American and Australian fighters engaged them as the strike waves pounced. Half the Zeroes were lost. B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked from medium altitude, while B-25s and A-20s came in very low to skip bombs. Much of the carnage took place in just twenty minutes, though follow-on attacks occurred throughout the day. The American official historian estimates that twenty-eight of thirty-seven 500-pound munitions from the skip bombers hit, an amazing success rate. Fifth Air Force losses were a mere three P-38 fighters and a single B-17.

  On the Japanese side the toll was horrendous. There were six transports and two cargo ships in the convoy. Every one disappeared beneath the waves. In addition to Tokitsukaze, Kimura lost his flagship and two more destroyers, half his total escort. In all, the losses amounted to eight merchantmen, four destroyers, and about fifteen aircraft. In his memoirs, George Kenney claimed the losses as six destroyers or light cruisers sunk, two more damaged, eleven to fourteen merchantmen sunk, and ninety-five aircraft definitely or probably destroyed or damaged. Naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison investigated this huge discrepancy after the war and discovered that captured documents had revealed the true strength of the Japanese convoy before the end of March 1943. The inflated numbers appeared in pilot claims—always exaggerated—and had been used in MacArthur’s press releases, soon to be corrected. Yet even after the war General Kenney repeated the demonstrably false claims.

  Back at the battle, Admiral Kimura was wounded when his flagship Shirayuki had her fantail blown off. Commander Kawahashi Akifumi brought his Shikinami alongside and rescued the crew. When General Yoshihara came aboard to consider what to do, Kimura lay on a couch in Shikinami’s wardroom, blood seeping through the bandages covering his arm. Yoshihara wanted the destroyers to take his men on to New Guinea. Kimura agreed that might be desirable, but his warships were now low on fuel, and he had no desire to risk them on the anvil under the Allied planes. They were still wrestling with this decision when orders came to return to Rabaul immediately. In Tokyo, informed of the disaster, Emperor Hirohito immediately asked Yoshihara’s question: Why had the Navy not immediately shifted gears and landed the troops elsewhere than Lae? The high command had failed to learn the lessons of the Guadalcanal convoy battles.

  Kimura’s remaining destroyers saved as many as they could. A couple of submarines in the area, I-17 and I-26, also helped, rescuing 275 men. That night New Guinea–based PT boats came to finish off the derelicts. In at least one case, the PTs drove an I-boat underwater and machine-gunned refugees who had thought themselves saved. Some 2,734 Japanese soldiers were taken aboard rescue vessels. A couple hundred destroyer crewmen were recovered later. More than 900 troops had already been deposited at Lae. Some 3,000 men of the 51st Division were missing. The lucky few survived. Yamada Masayoshi drifted for ten days and finally reached Goodenough Island, only to be captured by Australians. Two more soldiers, Lieutenant Iki and Sergeant Namiki, who rescued the battle flag of the 15th Regiment, endured a whole month and providentially reached shore near Gasmata. Most of the missing men perished. The Imperial Navy never sent another transport convoy to New Guinea.

  The Bismarck Sea slaughter stunned the Imperial high command, Combined Fleet, and everyone else. Despite precautions, the convoy had been crushed. That showed the swing of the pendulum, but it also raised leadership questions. The Navy decided to revamp its command structure and recalled Mikawa Gunichi. Samejima Tomoshige, a baron and vice admiral, replaced him. Until the previous October, when the fifty-four-year-old Samejima went to Truk to head the Fourth Fleet in the Central Pacific, he had been Emperor Hirohito’s senior naval aide-de-camp. The question of an Imperial Navy gambit to placate Emperor Hirohito is relevant here. The emperor’s impatience had become increasingly apparent from his repeated, if indirect, criticisms. Much of our knowledge of Hirohito’s anxieties resides in the diary of Samejima’s associate Captain Jyo Eiichiro, another Navy aide, of whom the monarch was quite fond, and with whom Hirohito even relaxed, playing cards and other games. Jyo, an aviator, exemplified the thoroughly modern element of the Navy. When off duty he explored facets of science, which fascinated Hirohito as well. The two were close enough for Captain Jyo to furnish informal advice. Although this is speculative, it is possible the aide encouraged the emperor to get his own observer near the front by inducing the Navy to send Samejima to the Central Pacific, where he could keep an eye on the Combined Fleet command. Aware of Hirohito’s concerns from his remarks, as well as Captain Jyo’s reports, the Navy Ministry no doubt saw an advantage in assigning an officer close to the imperial household to a command position from which the emperor might obtain a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the fleet.

  Admiral Samejima was renowned for leading Navy troops at Shanghai during a 1932 incident that had prefigured war with China. He had skippered cruisers and battleships, and led an aircraft carrier division. Samejima’s combination of surface and aeronaval experience could be useful. But at Truk, Vice Admiral Samejima had outranked Combined Fleet chief of staff Ugaki, something of a delicate personal situation. The same arguments that lay behind posting the admiral to the fleet applied to sending him to Rabaul, at the very tip of the spear. And there were other advantages: The baron was an Etajima classmate of Kusaka Jinichi’s, which might improve relations among the brass at Rabaul. The baron’s assignment was also desirable because, having come from Truk, he was au courant with the furious strategic planning then under way. Within weeks of Baron Samejima’s arrival, the hotheaded staff officer Kami Shigenori was packed off home. Given mounting losses, the Imperial Navy needed to fight deftly, not rush around out of control.

  At Tokyo, the IGHQ huddled to craft a fresh strategy. In mid-February, Emperor Hirohito had questioned why there were no signs of Japanese offensive action. He pressed Admiral Nagano to use the bases at Munda and Kolombangara to bomb Guadalcanal. That concept was already pregnant with the notio
n of an aerial onslaught in the South Pacific. On March 25, the Navy General Staff promulgated Directive No. 209. This conceded that the war had entered a new, third phase. Unsurprisingly, the order called for thorough steps to protect convoys, and now made formal the arrangement whereby supplies to forward posts would be carried by submarines or fast warships. More important, the directive provided that “enemy fleets in advance bases will be raided and destroyed,” that immediate efforts should be made to establish air superiority, with the main strength of the JNAF dispatched to the South Pacific for that purpose. In the Solomons, Allied strength would be annihilated by seizing the initiative.

  In a separate NGS order (No. 213) issued directly to Yamamoto the same day, Imperial Headquarters provided for the fleet to cooperate closely with the Japanese Army and concentrate their main effort in New Guinea. Army air forces were to relocate there, while the Navy would defend the islands and the Bismarck Archipelago with the ground forces allotted them. The fleet should expand large-scale air operations and secure a network of airstrips and supply transit bases. Imperial Headquarters wanted the Navy and Army to work as one unit—a fantasy—but it did assign explicit responsibility to the Army for the Rabaul area (New Britain) and Bougainville, and to the Navy for the Central Solomons. Admiral Nagano’s staff also alluded obliquely to a specific air campaign to consist of counterair missions, attacks on Allied transportion, interception of enemy attacks, and defense of communications lines. This instruction became the genesis for Admiral Yamamoto’s last, fateful operation.

  Because of what happened to Yamamoto, the fact that Ugaki did not survive the war, and the loss of the latter’s diary for this period, the specific planning for what became a huge enterprise is obscure. It is known that Kusaka and JNAF commanders had agitated for the assignment of carrier air groups to land bases. Until then carrier aircraft had flown from land only as a temporary expedient or when their ships were sunk or put out of action. As early as February, Commander Ohmae had personally raised the issue. Kido Butai officers insisted on the integrity of the carrier force, and Ohmae’s fervid appeals were denied. It is likely that right after the Bismarck Sea debacle, Ugaki put staffers to work on how to counter the Allied air advantage, with conversations at a staff level between Truk and Rabaul, and that Combined Fleet staffers carried the results to Imperial Headquarters. It is known that Watanabe of the fleet staff visited Tokyo at this time. In any case, the concept went into the NGS directives. The offensive, to be called the “I Operation,” was on. Regardless of what IGHQ might say about priorities of New Guinea versus the Solomons, Yamamoto fully intended to hammer both.

  Preparations consumed the next weeks. For the first time the Japanese built their strength in the Solomons to three full JNAF flotillas. The matter of the carrier air groups was reconsidered and their deployment approved in March. To the base air force the Japanese would add Kido Butai’s groups, though the flattops themselves remained at Truk. Admiral Kusaka, controlling the land-based force, would be the major player, but Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo, now leading the carrier force, came to Rabaul to oversee his own units. To be sure all the leaders worked together, Admiral Yamamoto went to Rabaul too, taking along Ugaki and the Combined Fleet staff. The C-in-C certainly had his own doubts. Before departing, Yamamoto played shogi into the night with an officer he was leaving with the rear echelon. He confessed misgivings about moving the high command so near the front. Yamamoto would have preferred a return to Empire waters. But his presence would be good for morale. At home the citizenry were complaining about commanders who did not lead their men into battle. In any case it had become necessary to make this venture go just right.

  Never before had fleet headquarters been located ashore. Any doubts that Yamamoto intended to lead in person, not simply visit the front, were dispelled when the admiral and Ugaki turned up replete with their stewards and the fancy dishware, tablecloths, and silverware used to serve meals aboard flagship Musashi. On the morning of April 3, the staff group took a launch to Truk’s seaplane base and packed into a pair of Emily flying boats. The big four-engine patrol bombers took wing, circled the Musashi, and laid in their course for Rabaul. Yamamoto landed in Simpson Harbor at midafternoon. Admirals Kusaka, Ozawa, and Mikawa, the latter soon to leave, received him. Yamamoto’s staff would work out of Southeast Area Fleet headquarters. He and Ugaki stayed at the colonial governor’s villa on Residence Hill. The war’s toll could be seen on the faces of the men and in their health. The C-in-C’s friend Kusaka Jinichi had dysentery and could hardly keep his food down. Yamamoto picked a cucumber and tried to get Kusaka to eat it. Yamamoto himself was off-kilter, looking tired. Okumiya Masatake, the air staff officer, noticed his physical decline. Medical experts studying Yamamoto believe he may have gotten beriberi, with swollen ankles and shaking hands plus potential mental impairment. The admiral was getting vitamin C shots from his doctor and was said to be changing shoes four or five times daily. But the I Operation would be the big show. Yamamoto pushed at the hinge of fate.

  VI.

  WAR OF ATTRITION

  Already the tentacles of Allied power had begun to wrap around Japan’s Central Solomons outposts, replicating the headaches of Guadalcanal. Well might Admiral Yamamoto want to change the rhythm. Chief of staff Ugaki records that the Combined Fleet had concluded that if the big offensive did not work, “[T]here will be no hope of future success in this area.” Admiral Ugaki wondered whether the point had been driven home sufficiently to the sailors and airmen who were about to fight. The entire I Operation was fraught with consequence.

  At the end of March a Munda-bound Tokyo Express had recoiled in the face of fierce aerial attacks. Twenty-four hours later, April Fools’ Day, the Express tried again, with six destroyers to Kolombangara. This action took place simultaneously with a big AIRSOLS raid on Munda. Japanese fighters intercepted the attackers and pursued them toward the Russells, over which nearly sixty JNAF fighters furiously battled a hundred Americans. Kusaka’s fighter groups claimed to have destroyed about half of the enemy aircraft but incurred nine losses. American records note only six planes lost. Meanwhile the destroyers completed their voyage undisturbed. But the Americans had been tougher than ever and the JNAF achieved little.

  The Allies quickly struck back. On April 3, hours after Yamamoto flew into Rabaul, the 43rd Bombardment Group bashed Kavieng, where Captain Yamamori Kamenosuke’s heavy cruiser Aoba lay anchored outside the port. Especially upsetting about this attack was that the B-17 aircraft skip bombed—the Americans had found a way to make their heavy bombers effective at sea. Japanese officers also cringed because the Aoba had just returned from repairing damage taken at Cape Esperance. She had yet to get back into action. A 500-pound bomb made a direct hit, cooking off two of the cruiser’s torpedoes. Though Yamamori’s crew extinguished the resulting fire within an hour, he had to beach Aoba to prevent steady flooding from sinking her. It took two weeks to pump her out and apply a temporary patch. The Imperial Navy could not afford incidents like this.

  The events at Kavieng put a dark cloud over the I Operation. Already misgivings had sprung up in the ranks. The dogfight over the Russells had been another mission for the Eleventh Air Fleet fighters, which had battled over the islands twice in the previous month. Kusaka’s fighter strength, though powerful, was increasingly limited. The 204th Air Group had a full complement of forty-five Zeroes, the 253rd some thirty-six, while the fighter component of the 582nd Group possessed twenty-seven planes. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan depended on massive reinforcements. The air groups of Carrier Division 2—the Hiyo and Junyo—just up from Empire waters, formed one major source of augmentation. The carrier planes flew from Ballale when attacking and withdrew to Rabaul when not in action. Air staff officer Okumiya Masatake accompanied Rear Admiral Kakuta. Full of foreboding, Okumiya saw young men, many just out of flight school with barely a month of carrier training before this aerial offensive. The pilots—supposed to be Japan’s best—were proof positive of the decline.
He feared for both crews and aircraft. “More than once this lack of experience cost us our valuable warplanes, as the unqualified pilots skidded, crashed, and burned on takeoff,” Okumiya wrote.

  Ozawa of the Third Fleet, Kido Butai’s boss, arrived at Rabaul on April 2, his Carrier Division 1 planes alighting there from the Zuikaku and Zuiho. The latter’s fighters were actually returning to the Solomons less than a month after a previous stint there. The carrier air groups added more than 180 aircraft to the JNAF deployment. Of Kusaka’s land-based air fleet, the 21st Flotilla set up shop at Kavieng with half its seventy-two Betty bombers, the rest at Vunakanau. The 26th Air Flotilla concentrated at the complex of fields around Buin on Bougainville. With the 25th Flotilla, Kusaka’s fleet brought 190 warplanes to the table. The concentration was huge for the Japanese, the biggest since the Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor—but a measure of the changing war was that at Pearl Harbor the carriers by themselves had fielded a force of practically this size.

  Admiral Yamamoto was not to be deflected. But sometimes determination is not enough. With Yamamoto and his staff at Rabaul, a weather front closed in over the northern Solomons. Yamamoto and Ugaki were pelted with rain their first night and into the morning, but more than that, delay became necessary to dry out runways and obtain better flying conditions. By midmorning the C-in-C had pushed back the onset of his offensive by twenty-four hours, to April 6. As the awful weather continued into the fifth, Ugaki considered changing the initial target from Guadalcanal to Port Moresby, but finally agreed to another twenty-four-hour postponement. Yamamoto and Ugaki inspected Lakunai Airfield, the Zuikaku planes there, and Captain Sugimoto Ushie’s 204th Air Group Zeroes. Ozawa deployed the Zuikaku and Zuiho aircraft to Bougainville later that day. Yamamoto directed Kakuta to move his carrier aircraft to Buin also, and the latter followed suit the next morning. On April 6, Admiral Mikawa handed the Eighth Fleet command over to his successor, Baron Samejima.