Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  It is not clear how General MacArthur could pretend a Taiwan invasion would not have the same effect. If anything, because Taiwan lay closer to the mainland, a blockade from there would have been more effective than one based on the archipelago. Aircraft ranges were such that Japanese vessels could skirt the bottleneck of a blockade from the Philippines by hugging the Southeast Asia and China coasts. Such a blockade would have to be enforced by constant naval patrols, and aircraft would need to cover both the Taiwan and Luzon straits.

  But MacArthur insisted Taiwan would be a mistake. He thought the people there would be unfriendly—Japan had held the place since 1895—which would make it an insecure base for a blockade. This argument begged the question of the effects of Japanese colonialism, for Tokyo’s proconsuls had treated the Taiwanese in a shabby fashion. MacArthur slung mud at King’s Taiwan option in hopes something might stick.

  FDR told his doctor afterward, “In all my life, nobody has ever talked to me the way MacArthur did.” The president demanded an aspirin before bed, but, more than that, another one for morning, when there would be another session of this marathon discussion.

  Admiral Nimitz spoke at length too. The most iconic photo of the Pearl Harbor talks features Nimitz standing at a map, holding a bamboo pointer, with the others looking on as he points at Tokyo. He was more analytical, agreeing upon Mindanao but not seeing any advantages offered by Luzon and Manila—with its great bay—that were not available for less cost elsewhere. Having talked with fleet commander Admiral Raymond Spruance, Nimitz spoke authoritatively on the Marianas invasions and the naval battle that had been fought to protect the landings. The Pacific theater supremo then presented Taiwan as a great opportunity. Under Roosevelt’s gentle prodding he conceded there might be circumstances that made a Luzon invasion, capping a Philippine campaign, desirable. There he let go of Ernie King’s logic, effectively accepting the MacArthur option. Admiral Nimitz felt he could move either way—and that his forces were adequate for the operations. MacArthur, too, had proclaimed his armada sufficient.

  Leahy, for one, felt relieved. Rather than the heat expected in a clash between MacArthur and Nimitz, “it was both pleasant and very informative to have these two men who had been pictured as antagonists calmly present their differing views.” The friendly atmosphere lasted through the entire discussion. “It was highly pleasing and unusual,” he noted, “to find two commanders who were not demanding reinforcements.”

  Leahy was also impressed with the president’s leadership. “Roosevelt was at his best,” he recorded, “as he tactfully steered the discussion from one point to another and narrowed down the area of disagreement.” MacArthur agreed. In his 1964 memoir he wrote of the president, “He was entirely neutral in handling the discussion.”

  MacArthur thought that Nimitz behaved with complete evenhandedness and got the impression the president had doubts about the Taiwan option. The general went out of his way to say nice things about Admiral King, whom he actually despised. President Roosevelt’s mission had succeeded.

  Finally the group sat down to lunch. Afterward MacArthur asked to speak privately with FDR, and then he made his political pitch for the Philippines invasion as fulfilling American promises. He left immediately afterward to begin the long return flight to the Southwest Pacific. The rest of the day passed with an upbeat FDR visiting the naval air station at Kaneohe Bay. Entertainment came at dinner that evening. The Nautical Hawaiians, seventeen sailors of the 14th Naval District led by Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Bill Dias, set up on the lawn outside the dining room and serenaded the president. As the sun set, the table was cleared, and the diners went outside, hula dancer Lila Reiplinger and singer Emma Pollack took the entertainment to a higher level, under palm trees, in the bright light of a half-moon. The performance went on until the 10:00 p.m. curfew.

  On Saturday, the twenty-ninth, there were more base drop-bys, plus a lunch with Admiral Nimitz at his quarters on Makalapa Hill. One of the Makalapa drop-bys honored the hush-hush Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) and supersecret code-breaking outfit called the Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC). Despite the security surrounding the president’s Hawaii visit, the spooks somehow knew about it. Julianne Dilley, a key telephone switchboard operator, had had time to uncrate and clean her best dress for the occasion. Now she stood among a knot of colleagues. President Roosevelt waved. Julianne was thrilled. She and husband, Luther, among the stalwart code breakers who had been at Pearl Harbor since the war began, were going to supply critical support for the next phase of the war. The president understood, even if the spooks, so far, could only suspect. That afternoon Roosevelt held a news conference, and in the evening he reboarded the Baltimore. The cruiser cast off its moorings at 7:20 p.m., getting under way for Adak, in the Aleutians.

  • • •

  EARLIER IN 1944, on a visit of his own to MacArthur at Brisbane, Australia, Admiral Nimitz had provoked Dugout Doug’s anger by mentioning a Joint Chiefs of Staff directive that required both of them to propose options for accelerating the Pacific offensive. Nimitz had had to wait for his moment, then interject that members of the Joint Chiefs were people like them, trying to do their best. The Chiefs happened to have even more information than theater commanders like MacArthur or Nimitz himself, and the admiral thought they were doing a pretty good job of it. Nimitz would have sympathized with Admiral Leahy, whose view of the Pearl Harbor conference was that President Roosevelt was getting an excellent lesson in geography—among his favorite subjects—and gaining a familiarity with the situation that would be invaluable “in preventing an unnecessary invasion of Japan.” The planning staffs in Washington, Leahy felt, were ignoring the steep loss of life that would result from a direct invasion of Japan, which they advocated mindlessly. “MacArthur and Nimitz,” Leahy writes, “were now in agreement that the Philippines should be recovered with ground and airpower then available in the western Pacific and that Japan would be forced to accept our terms of surrender without an invasion of the Japanese homeland.” Leahy considered that the most valuable result of the Pearl Harbor discussions.

  But the real question was, Could that agreement be driven home and made to stick? Navy official historian Samuel Eliot Morison claims the arguments raged for Philippines versus Taiwan for months after the Pearl Harbor conference. That is not quite true. Planners from CINCPAC continued to present lesser versions of the Taiwan option into September. But it was late in August before Admiral Leahy had returned to Washington and could brief the Chiefs on the Pearl Harbor results. The uncertainties disappeared after high-level deliberations in early September. By then the only remaining doubt would be whether the initial target in the Philippines should be the island of Mindanao or that of Leyte.

  There were three aspects to making a Philippines invasion work. One, the Japanese fleet remained in play. While the Imperial Navy had suffered crippling aircraft carrier losses—and huge attrition of its naval air forces—in the Marianas campaign, its surface strength remained. So long as Japan possessed a powerful fleet, it would be difficult to isolate the Home Islands sufficiently to compel Tokyo’s surrender. Two, Japanese determination seemed undiminished. If they remained steadfast, ultimately someone would have to go in and dig them out. The Washington planners’ point on that seemed well-taken. Last were the positions held by the Allies. Ernie King’s attitude here had merit. An Allied juggernaut emplaced on Taiwan posed an absolute block on Japan’s sea-lanes to Southeast Asia. Ships could not transit from Empire waters to the south without spending many days within the envelope of Allied bases. MacArthur’s preference—the Philippines—offered a favorable position but not an absolute barrier. Naval forces would have to make a blockade of Japan effective, and the power of Japanese naval and air resistance became crucial. Put another way, MacArthur’s Philippines invasion plan placed additional weight on other factors.

  FDR ended his cruise at Bremerton, Washington. From there he made
a radio speech to the nation, declaring the participants at the Pearl Harbor meeting had reached complete accord. At a news conference the president referred to the Philippines and MacArthur in the same sentence. Soon after, he went to a conference with Prime Minister Churchill after all, but paused to dash off a letter to Dugout Doug. Roosevelt told MacArthur that the days in Hawaii had been the highlight of his trip and promised, “as soon as I get back I will push on that plan, for I am convinced it is logical and it can be done.”

  Everything now hinged on the Japanese variables.

  CHAPTER 1

  ALL IN

  Now in the third year of the war that Japan had herself initiated, the consequences of her decision were palpable. The fight in the Marianas that June crystallized the issue. Here the Allied armada invaded Japanese territory for the first time. The Combined Fleet, heart of the power of the Imperial Navy, sallied to do battle—and had been soundly trounced. Swarms of Japanese airplanes hardly managed to lay a glove on the Americans. Meanwhile, the Allies continued fighting on Saipan, while the neighboring islands of Tinian and Guam tottered at the precipice.

  On the evening of June 21, as the Japanese fleet scurried to safety, four senior officers of Imperial General Headquarters gathered for dinner in Tokyo with the chief private secretary to Japan’s foreign minister. Naval officers among the group spoke of the battle as a great victory, drinking toasts to the Combined Fleet’s glorious achievements. One of the men, forty-year-old Captain Watanabe Yasuji, happened to be among a dwindling number of links between the heady early days and the increasingly ominous wartime present. Watanabe, now with the Naval Affairs Bureau at the Navy Ministry, had been the gunnery officer on the Combined Fleet’s staff at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Many considered him the favorite of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, Japan’s great hope. If nothing else, Watanabe had been his constant opponent at shogi, a popular strategy board game. Yet Yamamoto’s death in a U.S. ambush in the Solomons had been a tragic setback for Japan. It certainly had drained Watanabe’s fighting spirit, though as a descendant of ancestors who had lost an epic battle to the feudal Genji clan, the captain had not given up.

  But even as Watanabe toasted to Japan’s supposed success, he had a new perspective. One of his naval academy classmates commanded an air group being chewed up in the Marianas. Watanabe had seen the same thing before, in the Solomons, where the cream of Imperial Navy seamen and aviators had been skimmed off by voracious Allied combat power. By Tokyo’s decision, the Marianas had been central to Japanese plans since the fall of 1943, and now the Allies were there. Another link with the heroic early days, Admiral Nagumo Chuichi, commanded the Navy’s forces in the area, and his headquarters on Saipan were in greater peril every day. Men of sound minds could agree something needed to be done. The difficulty lay in deciding what.

  When the dinner broke up, Captain Watanabe stayed behind to speak to the Japanese diplomat. Kase Toshikazu held a delicate position in the hierarchy. As confidant to ministers and advisers of the emperor, Kase worried intensely about the ability of the present government to conduct the war. General Tojo Hideki had concentrated much of the power in his own hands by simultaneously running the cabinet, the Army ministry, and the Army General Staff, and by having an associate, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, do the same on the Navy side. The Tojo government’s policy seemed bankrupt. Saipan demonstrated that. But Tojo ruled with an iron fist and brooked no interference. Secret policemen had repeatedly visited Kase to try to induce him to voice opposition. As a result, the diplomat had become ultracautious. Thus it is even more significant that Kase considered Watanabe his trusted friend. Captain Watanabe swore Kase to silence. The captain then told him the toasts they had drunk were to the official version. In reality the Navy had sustained a devastating defeat. Considering their conversation, Kase thought the episode had been hilarious in an ironic way. He decided to sound out some of his senior political contacts.

  A RESCUE TOO FAR

  Nagumo Chuichi had once thought the Allies would not attack the Marianas. Since the enemy would not attack, Nagumo felt the islands had no need of fortification. He said that to former comrade Kusaka Ryunosuke when the latter passed through Saipan on the way home to become chief of staff for the whole fleet. Now, with his nation’s fleet soundly beaten, Nagumo must have wished the great naval battle had come out the way the propagandists pretended.

  The reasons for failure had nothing to do with poor advance work or bad luck. Despite Nagumo’s proclivities, the Imperial Navy had never been better prepared. Watanabe Yasuji knew it. As gunnery staff officer he had been responsible for tactical flourishes in Yamamoto’s plans. Those had featured multiple moving parts coordinated in time but not space, in effect trading concentration for surprise. Admiral Yamamoto had been renowned for breaking with tradition, in this case with the prewar Japanese concept of the “decisive battle,” in which the different ship types and combat forces each helped deliver the adversary’s main fleet to the guns of the Imperial Navy’s battle line in ripe condition to be finished off.

  Where Yamamoto had opted for plasticity, his successors, attempting to cope with mounting Allied material superiority, had veered toward the set piece of a Kabuki play. The Combined Fleet command had reconceptualized the Pacific Ocean area as an array of zones, trying to ensure each one had local resources, bases, and airfields, with contingency plans fashioned for rapid deployment of warships and planes to any threatened sector. The various Japanese combat forces would join together, whittling down any Allied force to the point at which it could be dealt with by a Combined Fleet now built around aircraft carriers. This battle plan was all about mass action, and closer to the classic vision of a decisive battle than the Yamamoto template. Koga Mineichi, Admiral Yamamoto’s successor, termed this the “Z Plan,” invoking the heady days of the Russo-Japanese War, when fleet commander Togo Heihachiro had sailed to a famous victory under the flag for that letter.

  Since Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ), comprising the general staffs of both Navy and Army, considered the Marianas a key sector, plans for them were especially well developed. Nagumo had been sent to Saipan to lead the Central Pacific Area Fleet, the local naval command. Prince Takamatsu of the imperial family, a Navy captain who had been close to Watanabe, told a foreign ministry associate that this might be the last full-scale operation of which the fleet would be capable. Staffers were quietly confident. The Navy had never had such a detailed battle plan.

  Japanese planners foresaw that they possessed one significant advantage. Imperial Navy warplanes had a longer striking range than U.S. carrier aircraft. Land-based bombers could fly even farther. Potentially the Combined Fleet could battle the American task forces from distances at which the United States would be unable to respond, and part of the Japanese strength could fight from land bases impossible to sink. The Imperial Navy made specific preparations to take advantage of this. In 1943, many months ahead of time, it created a First Air Fleet, an elite land-based force. It was to be the anvil to hold the American task force that would later be finished off by the hammer of the Japanese carriers. Around that time—before he ever went to Saipan—Nagumo led a survey mission to the Marianas to select new airfield sites for the redeployed air force.

  The Japanese carriers, also reorganized, became the First Mobile Fleet, comprising three carrier groups, with the aircraft of each to fly as a single force. Pilots and crews of the carrier air groups, who had not been in action since the end of 1943, were better trained and prepared than previously. In Vice Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo the Mobile Fleet for the first time had a commander with a solid understanding of carrier operations. The Navy General Staff (NGS) also prepared elaborate plans for submarine screening lines that might warn of an approaching Allied fleet and weaken it before the battle. From a matériel standpoint, the Combined Fleet had been about as well prepared as it could be. All the extensive study culminated in tabletop war games rehearsing the operation. Emperor Hir
ohito personally attended the NGS’s postmortem of its version of these war games.

  Nagumo’s command was remarkable in the way it disintegrated as battle neared. The Fourth Fleet, his surface naval force, which was not so strong to begin with, suffered near annihilation with U.S. task force raids on Truk and Palau in the early months of 1944. On the eve of battle Nagumo really had only a seaplane tender and some patrol boats. A Japanese Army formation, the 31st Army, had been attached to a joint force led by the Navy. American submarines took a heavy toll of its soldiers, sinking a number of the troopships bringing them to the Marianas. Then the general leading the 31st Army refused Nagumo’s orders, making his unified command a fiction.

  As battle approached, the two air flotillas that had formed parts of Nagumo’s force were assigned to Vice Admiral Kakuta Kakuji of the First Air Fleet instead. This left dispositions unchanged and the First Air Fleet headquarters located on Tinian.

  No plan survives contact with the enemy, and so it proved with the scheme for the Marianas battle. Much of the land-based air strength of both the First Air Fleet and the local forces fell to the swarms of American carrier planes that raided Truk, Palau, and the Marianas as Admiral Nimitz’s invasion began. Half of Kakuta’s force evaporated. Allied intelligence put more nails into the coffin of Japan’s dreams. It had been code breakers who furnished U.S. submariners with the Japanese convoy positions, enabling the slaughter of troopships bound for the Marianas. Intercepting an instruction from the Japanese Sixth Fleet to its own submarines, U.S. code breakers were able to break out the locations of an entire patrol line of Japanese subs, and an Allied hunter-killer group then rolled up the line, sinking half a dozen undersea craft. The Japanese would be desperately short when the Marianas battle began. They would also lack destroyers—and here the code breakers alerted the submariners to the Imperial Navy fleet concentration, and subs dispatched seven of these precious escorts. More decrypts told U.S. submarines the best places to find Ozawa’s fleet, and the boats then confirmed the Japanese sortie with sighting reports. The dearth of escorts mattered when Ozawa lost two fleet carriers, one of them his flagship, to subs.