Decisive Darkness: Part One – Majestic

by Paul Hynes

  To the Allies the message was brief, reiterating the former Japanese peace terms, including the retention of the Emperor, no occupation of the Home Islands, and that only the Japanese would be responsible for disarmament and war crimes trials. With the Emperor effectively being held under house arrest, and the peace faction in the process of being purged from the highest echelons of Japanese society, the hope of peace which had seemed so assured the previous day now appeared to be further than ever.

  The unenviable task of telling the American public that the war was in fact not over fell to a dismayed President Truman who made his best efforts to relay to his own sadness to the American people but also his resolve to see the war through to a conclusive end. On the streets the sorrow quickly turned to anger, with a clear target in mind.

  The Japanese-American community, which had spent years in American internment under suspicion of being enemy agents, had been undergoing a process of release since the spring. No longer considered a threat, many now found themselves endangered by the angry drunken mobs who had received the news that the war would continue. The violence spread throughout the west coast and sporadically moved east, as all people of East Asian appearance now found themselves vulnerable to a wave of hate attacks by American servicemen and civilians who were often still drunk from their celebrations of ‘victory’.

  Whilst some have said that the worst of the rioting which followed these events has largely been exaggerated for dramatic effect on the basis of a few memorable photos of servicemen rioting in San Francisco, by August 16th there were already measures being pursued to return the Japanese population of the west coast, recently returned from internment, back into camps for the sake of law and order.

  With the small gatherings of citizens baying for blood outside of the White House gates, Truman had had to embody calm in public in the hope that the American people would follow his lead despite the fact that, as he and many of his colleagues would later admit, he was privately seething at the fact that the Japanese had left him to look like a fool. A cruel joke had been played on the American people and he had been an unwilling participant, promising that the bloodshed was now over only to have to inform the relieved citizenry their sons were now very much back in the firing line. Despite having only become President in April, he was well aware of the fact that the longer the war now progressed the more embittered the American public would become, not only against the Japanese but against his own administration. For all it may seem strange in the present, Truman was genuinely worried at the time that this would be the defining moment of his Presidency, yet already he was beginning to show signs of the greater destructive tendency that would make him America’s most controversial President to this day.

  Shortly after hearing the news of the aborted peace, Truman ordered the next bomb to be used as quickly as possible on Tokyo, to wipe out the new Government and leave the survivors with no illusions as to the scope of American power, he was quickly brought his senses. Truman’s secretary of state, George C. Marshall, pointed out that bombing Tokyo would likely destroy the Imperial Palace, and potentially take the Emperor with it, inspiring the remnants of the Japanese government to resist all the more fanatically. At this juncture there was still a great deal of hope amongst some in the Truman administration that the political situation in Japan was in flux yet was still salvageable enough that a response which could be construed as an existential attack was not to be advised. There was also the less nuanced reality of the destruction of vast swathes of Tokyo by American bombing in the early months of 1945, there simply wasn’t enough left to burn for the use of America’s only unused atomic bomb to be acceptable.

  It was agreed that a third bombing would, and effectively had, to take place, both to bolster American morale after the devastating news that the war was not over, and to give the Japanese the impression that the Americans had a limitless supply of bombs that they would continue to drop until the Japanese surrendered, a “rain of ruin” that Truman had promised shortly before Anami’s coup. The target would also take on a strategic role, striking the Japanese preparations for defence of the Home Islands should America need to invade.

  Captain William “Deak” Parsons, the man in overall charge of the transportation and handling of the bombs had planned and organized the assembly facilities on Tinian island to handle a steady stream of bombs in the wake of the Hiroshima attack, yet this was not yet feasible. The plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Site, the key to America’s young nuclear arsenal, was falling behind the promise of a continuous stream of new bombs despite working at full capacity, only one bomb was readily available on August 15th, the essential materials of which were already on their way.

  Specially designed to carry the ‘Fat Man’ devices which had already destroyed Nagasaki and would form the basis of the continuing atomic assault on Japan, the B-29’s nicknamed Spook and Jabbet were ordered to make the vast trip across the Pacific to the United States to transport the core of the third bomb (unceremoniously dubbed ‘Fat Man #2’) along with the other necessary components within hours of the breaking news of Japan’s non-surrender. The dispersed Manhattan project, the heavily secretive source of America’s first atomic bombs, speedily equipped the two bombers before they once again flew across the Pacific to Tinian Island. There the bomb would await preparations for its final destination, over the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

  Unlike most Japanese cities in 1945, the war had not actually reached Kokura. Isolated air raids had taken place in some areas, more for psychological reasons than anything else, despite the economic value of the city. Only two months previously, the nearby city of Yawata had been victimized by one of the notorious American firebombings that almost every large Japanese city had had to endure in the last year. The damage to Kokura was largely psychological as their sister city burned in the night, unaware that had they met Yawata’s fate the far worse blight the American’s had ins tore for them may have been avoided. Kokura, with the islands largest arsenals, railroad shops, and ordnance works, all effectively intact, was an obvious target for the list of identified targets that American planners had drawn up when considering where the atomic bomb may be used.

  The city had had been the target of the original Fat Man on August 9th but heavy cloud cover had spared the city in favour of the bombs secondary target, the port of Nagasaki. Had the war ended on August 14th the towns absurd luck of surviving an Atomic attack due to bad weather might have been celebrated by later generations, but the successful coup had only ensured a delay for the city on the targeting schedule. On August 21st, luck, and time, ran out.

  The hundreds of American and Dutch prisoners of war who had been made to labour in the towns ordnance works, unaware of the fate of Hiroshima, had been confused on August 9th when their guards had fled to the nearest shelters at the site of only two B-29’s, now they ran again, some of them hysterically weeping as ‘The Great Artiste’, flew by Captain Frederick Bock, cast its payload over Kokura’s railway station. For a few brief moments of searing pain their confusion was ended, before their world was ripped apart. Whilst the original Fat Man’s power had been somewhat shielded by the mountains surrounding Nagasaki, its brother would send a shockwave equivalent of twenty three thousand tons of dynamite unhindered across the landscape.

  As with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the initial fireball simply vaporised those in the vicinity of the railway station, and left many others in the surrounding area to stagger around blinded and in flames, their skin melting in the intense heat as their wretched screams added to the screech of the blast, the thunderous noise of a door closing in heaven, before their bodies were torn to pieces along with the buildings around them. Tens of thousands more would join them as the blast spread destruction across the land at the speed of sound. By the time the infamous mushroom cloud had formed to tower above the skyline, over half of the area’s population of 178,000 were either dead or seriously injured. In the following days the toll would continue
to climb as those badly injured succumbed without any medical assistance, the area’s hospitals had been so badly damaged in the blast as to render them useless, many of the staff unable to help themselves let alone others. As blackened rain drops began to fall from the sky, even those with the world’s most advanced medical knowledge would not have been able to comprehend with the implications of what it meant to the blasts survivors. The hastily nicknamed ‘Atomic Sickness’ would soon begin to claim its first victims amongst those who had believed they were lucky to have survived.

  Whilst the news of the third bombing and the images of the Kokura inferno did indeed boost the morale of the American home front, the Anami regime did not flinch. Those who held the belief that their righteousness allowed them to regard the Japanese population as mere pawns were never likely to blink at the perception of an unending supply of American bombs. Their goal was to prepare Japan for an apocalyptic battle to the last subject if that was it took to force their enemies to negotiate, it mattered little whether to the destruction was atomic or otherwise when they continued to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan, a fate worse than death to Anami and many of his clique.

  Practical moves, however where taken to disperse as much industry and personnel from potential targets as possible. At the centre of this was the beginning of the relocation of the junta and their administrative inheritance from Tokyo to the recently completed Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters.

  Based in the mountains surrounding the city of Nagano, the Headquarters was designed to survive heavy bombing raids, it was hoped that the complex could also protect the Emperor and the Supreme Council from an Atomic attack. To this effect the Korean labourers forced to build the underground lair were put under further pressure to complete construction, going for days without proper access to food or water with little time to sleep, hour after hour of arduous work. Those who had not yet died from exhaustion, dehydration or work related injury where executed when the site was deemed appropriately secure for the junta and their Emperor. It was deemed necessary for there to be as little knowledge of the underground headquarters as possible, they could not reveal any secrets they weren’t supposed to if they were dead.

  As moves to minimise the effect of any further atomic attacks went on in earnest, attempts were also under way to limit American use of their new found weapon. On the 28th of August, one week after Kokura’s destruction, a communique from the junta was relayed to the American embassy in Switzerland. Any hope that a third bombing might have shaken the Japanese resolve was now proven to be naïve, there was a recognition of the bombing but only in that hundreds of Americans had died in the Kokura attack, and that from now on the 30,000 western allied prisoners in Japanese captivity would be moved to the centres of Japan’s main cities, becoming human shields. In the instance of Kokura the Americans had accidentally killed their own men, with the next bomb they would know full well that they were likely risking Allied servicemen’s lives alongside Japanese subjects.

  It was hoped that this would demonstrate Japanese resolve to the American government, without actively admitting this betrayal of international law to the world. Of course the American’s could let the public know, but the junta’s perceptions of American moral weakness implied that this would have its own dividends. Anami might have been led to believe that his ploy had worked, it would take another month before Yamaguchi became the fourth Japanese city reduced to rubble by a single bomb, in that period the junta could have been prone to believe that their righteousness had been proven by their ability to take full advantage of American squeamishness.

  In reality, there was little time spent at all on the bombs that might be coming from the United States as all attention quickly turned to the north.

  For on August 28th, 1945, the same day Anami relayed his intentions to stand firm against American attacks, the scattered and confused garrison of Rumoi scrambled around in terror as odd looking planes let loose a torrent of bombs, diving down on their targets and obliterating them, as they had done to so many of Japan’s former allies.

  From the foggy coast of western Hokkaido, a flotilla of ships emerged.

  And they flew the Red Flag.

  Northern Storm: The Soviet Invasion of Hokkaido

  On August 28th, 1945, the invasion of Japan began.

  To the shock of the Japanese Supreme War Council, now huddled under the mountains of Nagano, it did not arrive in the area of the ‘Decisive Battle’, where the Japanese had planned and prepared so meticulously, nor was the force carried by the armada the Americans had amassed to strike that same area, easily the largest in human history.

  Instead, it would be six small assault craft escorted by the modest four destroyers and six torpedo boats of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, carrying the first echelon of the 87th Rifle Corps, as they charged into the port of Rumoi on western Hokkaido. Hours earlier Soviet airborne forces had dropped just outside the area, securing the town’s airfield that would facilitate the hastily planned Soviet attack.

  In the two hours it had taken to land the remainder of the lead rifle division, the small port had already been secured with little resistance. Unlike the larger forces gathering on Honshu and Kyushu for the expected American invasion, the Japanese forces available for the defence of the island consisted of a mere two divisions, neither of whom were based anywhere near the Soviet landing, an American invasion from the east of the island had seemed far more plausible for Japanese planners yet unable to accommodate for the fact that Japan had been at war with the Soviet Union for the past fortnight.

  The Soviet threat had not been entirely ignored. Substantial Japanese forces were based around the coastal fortress of Wakkanai on the islands northernmost point, in the belief that the Soviets would only have the capacity to transport a force directly across the La Perouse strait that lay between Hokkaido and Sakhalin. Sakhalin, split between Japan and Russia for over forty years, had finally fallen to the Red Army in the days of confusion following Anami’s coup. It had seemed impossible that they would be able to move further south so quickly with their inadequate Pacific fleet.

  Though previous Soviet naval landings in the preceding weeks, where they had almost simultaneously landed on Korea, Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands off the coast of Japan, would have given ome indication of the threat facing Hokkaido, the Japanese defenders had suffered from poor communication with their beleaguered garrisons. Thus as the first Soviet paratroopers fell from the sky most within the Japanese army had remained blissfully unaware that since the early spring of 1945, the greatest naval transfer in history was taking place between the Americans and the Soviets. ‘Project Hula’ had been launched in the name of greatly increasing the Soviets naval capacity before their promised entry into the Pacific war, with dozens of American ships changing hands across the Bering Strait that divides Alaska with Siberia. The newfound Soviet ability to mount daring naval landings across the northern limit was being exploited to the fullest extent.

  Had the Japanese been prepared it is entirely possible that the hastily launched Soviet landing would have ended disastrously for the Red Army, their ignorance had left the Rumoi region with only a single coastal defence site, based twenty miles away from the town, unable to offer any support as its occupants mercilessly trampled by swarms of Pe-2’s and Il-2’s that had brought Japan’s European allies such sorrow.

  The four Soviet submarines tasked with alerting their comrades to any Japanese naval response were satisfactorily bored as they continuously reported that they saw nothing amiss. Whilst even a year beforehand the Japanese navy would have made any such landing a suicide mission for a Soviet flotilla, the once mighty fleet had been so relentlessly battered by the navies of the Soviets Anglo-American allies, that they remaining ships had all been pulled south, awaiting the expected American invasion, the same went for the Japanese air force, whose few units in the area c could offer little resistance to wave after wave of Soviet dive bombers and fighters. Thus the Soviet
s quickly linked up with their airborne forces. All that was left in defence of the port and region was the militias of the Civilian ‘Volunteer’ Corps, woefully unequipped and inexperienced old men and young boys who had been press ganged to make-up for the deficit in real troops.

  Despite fierce proclamations of patriotism from the Anami regime, this initial outing of Japan’s subject army ended in woeful embarrassment. Expected to face battle hardened veterans of the European conflict with little more than knives, homemade bombs and in more farcical cases spears made from bamboo shoots, many chose to simply stay at home, or to flee when the Kempetai, the notorious Japanese secret police, came to march them towards the expanding Soviet foothold. Others chose to resist, many more were forced to, as they were marched out in columns to drive the Russians back into the sea with their motley arsenal, only to meet a predictable fate. On the first day the Soviets had secured the region and continued to land further troops from an array of craft, they had easily despatched the initial whimper of Japanese resistance.

  From the Fifth Area Army headquarters in Sapporo, the island’s capital city, panic reigned. The Soviets had overestimated the strength of the Japanese, but the Japanese commanders now thrust into combat were aware of exactly how measly their forces were. As the Soviets consolidated their position, frantic calls to the Supreme Council went out, when could reinforcements be sent? The inquiries went unanswered, the junta had not expected a Soviet invasion, more preoccupied with consolidating their own grip on power it was better to reassure themselves that their northern flant was safe from the supposedly tiny Soviet naval forces, now that it had arrived there was little that could be done.

  Since early August the Americans had been heavily mining the Tsushima strait between Honshu and Hokkaido, whilst also hammering the transport links which connected Northern Honshu from the more populous south, and destroying most large Japanese ships in the area. Whilst this had been done in the name of separating the south of Japan from the majority of their domestic food production, it had also rendered any meaningful reinforcement of Hokkaido impossible. Though vast numbers of kamikaze craft were being built and concentrated on Kyushu for the expected American invasion, it was considered unfeasible to transport a significant proportion of these to destroy the Soviet flotilla, given America’s total air superiority over the Home Islands and the fact that most types were designed or only had increasingly scarce fuel allocated with a one-way trip in mind To the dismay of Sapporo , the eventual reply from the Supreme Council only reiterating these facts. “There can be no meaningful reinforcement of your position until the situation in the South has been resolved.” Hokkaido had been effectively abandoned.