Storm Over Leyte

by John Prados

  Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commanding Task Force 58, the U.S. carrier force, as well as the Marianas invasion fleet, could base his dispositions on both radio intelligence and submarine reports. The most controversial aspect of the battle on the Allied side became Spruance’s decision to pull the fleet back as Ozawa advanced. Spruance understood that Task Force 58 protected the invasion and therefore needed to be kept whole. He put up strong fighter defenses. Ozawa’s strike aircraft were intercepted many miles away from the American fleet on June 19. Very few got past the defenses and none scored any appreciable damage. So many planes fell to the savage defenses that Americans called the encounter “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.”

  Having defeated the Japanese onslaught, the next day Spruance pursued the enemy. His own carrier strikes wiped out another aircraft carrier. The Imperial Navy lost three flattops and something like 450 warplanes, while achieving nothing. One has to wonder how IGHQ officers could have toasted this “victory” with a straight face. Indeed, Tokyo propagandists made extravagant claims—nine American aircraft carriers and five battleships sunk or damaged—while in reality hardly any U.S. ships were touched.

  • • •

  THE DISASTROUS PHILIPPINE Sea battle left the Imperial Navy in the position of having important forces in a combat zone completely dominated by the Allies. Not only were more than 15,000 sailors caught in the trap, but also those endangered included skilled ship artificers and aircraft mechanics, Japanese communications intelligence experts, naval infantry, and the staffs and commanders of the Central Pacific Area Fleet, First Air Fleet, and Sixth Fleet.

  For days, talk of rescue expeditions roiled across Tokyo. Navy staff officials promised salvation. Junior naval officers clamored for action, accusing the Japanese Army command of obstructing a rescue. Many others thought the whole idea ludicrous. The scheme might have had some chance while Ozawa’s Mobile Fleet monopolized Allied attention, but the day after Prime Minister Tojo approved the mission the Mobile Fleet went down in defeat at the Turkey Shoot.

  Combined Fleet chief of staff Kusaka Ryunosuke, anxious to succor his old boss Nagumo, dreamed up the first scheme for the Saipan mission, revolving around two old battleships. Staffers thought Kusaka’s idea silly, but he was determined to go ahead. Captain Yamamoto Chikao (no relation to the great admiral), who led the operations section of the NGS, completed the plan on June 21.

  The next day Admiral Ozawa’s vanquished Mobile Fleet anchored at Okinawa on its way home. As the fleet neared Japan, C-in-C Toyoda Soemu held the options open by ordering Ozawa to concentrate in the Inland Sea and prepare for an immediate mission. Under a revised rescue plan, the one available fleet carrier, Zuikaku, and every other two-bit aviation ship the Navy could scrape up would be loaded with whatever planes could fly, scrounged from both the Army and the Navy. The planes would have to take off only once. They would be expended in the fight.

  This improvised carrier fleet would sail several days behind a convoy escorted by the Fifth Fleet, Japan’s northeast sea frontier protection force, expected to leave the port of Yokosuka carrying an Army infantry regiment. The carrier force would cover its approach with a one-way air attack. The next day Japan’s Second Fleet, the Navy’s big-gun unit, would steam in and crush the Allied fleets off the Marianas. The Fifth Fleet would then arrive with the Army’s regiment, and a day after that would be another convoy with a full Army division.

  The rescue, still merely on paper, already looked shaky. The Ozawa fleet had been smashed in a full-scale battle and could hardly be ready for another. That went for the Second Fleet as well—it had been part of Ozawa’s force. Admiral Ozawa himself estimated he needed two months to get the ships back in fighting trim. About the only naval units really at hand were the Fifth Fleet and the old battleships. The aged Yamashiro of Battleship Division 2, and a pair of converted battleship–aircraft carriers, the Ise and Hyuga, were just completing modification to this hybrid status. There was also the Fuso, then in the southern Philippines after participating in a similar—but abortive—sortie to aid the Japanese defenders of Biak Island. The two hybrid ships, still working up, were ultimately left out of the plan.

  Operations officers wanted to send at least the Yamashiro. She could dash to Saipan, deliver the regiment to stiffen the defenses, and then ground herself to serve as an artillery battery. The Army might contribute one of its own transport ships. Cruisers of the Fifth Fleet could carry more troops as well as the landing barges to put them ashore. With a handful of escorts these warships could become a relief mission. The Fuso, sailing independently, would shoot up Allied convoys headed to the battle areas. Combined Fleet alerted her for that mission on June 17. But the battleship-only rescue was a nonstarter. Three days later the Navy scrubbed the Fuso raiding mission. Combined Fleet commander in chief Toyoda Soemu thought the entire concept reckless and rejected chief of staff Kusaka’s proposals. According to Kusaka this was among the few times Toyoda ever did that.

  Historian Anthony Tully attributes the rescue to Captain Kami Shigenori. A notorious hothead in the Imperial Navy, Kami might well have dreamed up this kind of scheme. Tully reports that Captain Kami, ready to accept any risk, volunteered to skipper the Yamashiro to her destiny. Contrary to some claims, however, at that time Kami was no operations specialist with either the fleets or the NGS. He was captain of the light cruiser Tama. That vessel at least belonged to the Fifth Fleet and could have participated, but it leaves the captain as just another advocate, not the planner of this extravaganza. It is true that Kami had spent much of his career in staff billets, but by the same token he had minimal command experience. The Tama had been his first ship in many years. Why the Navy should put Kami in charge of a battlewagon goes unexplained. In November 1966, Admiral Kusaka personally claimed credit, regretting the rescue had not been carried out, claiming that with the right timing it could have worked.

  Meanwhile the plan had also envisioned that a long-range air unit (the “Hachiman Force”) would cooperate with the surface fleet, flying out to strike the Allied armada and paving the way for the surface ships. Cobbled together ad hoc, and composed of crews picked from the Yokosuka Air Group and Twelfth Air Fleet, the Hachiman Force actually deployed to Iwo Jima, but it never comprised more than sixty aircraft, and half those were lost in June and July.

  Serious fliers thought this enterprise could only be a death ride. How a small air unit would penetrate the dense Allied umbrella, where the entire Mobile Fleet had failed, remained a mystery. Similarly, an ancient battleship was supposed to sink the mighty Blue Fleet, and another would get through to Saipan and reverse the strategic balance. The rescue plan had no substance. Admiral Toyoda stuck to his guns, and the Army high command dismissed the idea out of hand. The Army had spent six months reinforcing the Marianas with really significant forces—more than a few of which had been sunk en route by Allied subs. A single regiment sent now would achieve nothing, a regiment plus a division not much more.

  But these plans, empty as they were, are important for other reasons. Such a degree of desperation now prevailed in Tokyo that the most extreme alternatives suddenly appealed. There is an argument from cultural history that the Japanese held special esteem for showing nobility even in failure. In the Pacific war in late 1944, Japan stood at the brink of that very deep chasm.

  Visit http://bit.ly/1ViyOdI for a larger version of this map.

  A more mundane reason would turn out to be a distraction in the next real battle. That is, the rescue plan envisioned taking the Fifth Fleet away from its geographic mission, employing it instead as an integral element in a battle concept. Once the Imperial Navy finally finished reconfiguring the force for the next battle, that element stuck—the old northern force would morph into the anticipated vanguard for the Ozawa fleet.

  Emperor Hirohito sided with the young Navy officers. He demanded action. He had told Admiral Shimada on the eve of the Philippine Sea battle that with sufficie
nt determination Japan might achieve a success like Tsushima, the glorious 1905 victory against the Russian fleet in the Sea of Japan. Hirohito warned Prime Minister Tojo of air raids on Tokyo if the Marianas were lost. They had to be held. IGHQ chiefs kept bringing him bad news. The emperor ordered Navy minister Shimada to craft a rescue. On June 24 Tojo and Shimada united to tell the emperor the bad news that Combined Fleet now felt the plan unworkable. Hirohito countered, demanding a second opinion from the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals, a military appendage of the jushin, or senior statesmen, who had a behind-the-scenes role in Tokyo. When the board also nixed a rescue, the emperor ordered them to put that judgment on paper, turned on his heel, and stalked off. The Yamashiro mission evaporated.

  One jushin with whom diplomat Kase Toshikazu discussed Japan’s situation was Admiral Okada Keisuke. Okada had been Navy minister and prime minister in the 1930s. Now he told Kase that a rescue operation would only deepen the disaster, though perhaps that was a good idea—“he thought it advisable to let the ‘young fellows’ have their own way once in order to reconcile them ultimately to their inevitable fate—defeat.” Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa, another jushin, agreed the loss of Saipan would be a calamity, but he refused a useless gesture.

  On June 29 Prince Takamatsu conceded to associates that the recent defeat had stymied the Imperial Navy for the present. The Navy captain’s remark, coming from the second brother of Hirohito, suggested the emperor had accepted reality.

  The only efforts to rescue the Japanese in the Marianas would be by submarine. The big fleet submarines, I-boats, and smaller medium-range craft, RO-boats, were used in these operations. Two subs went down in futile missions to Saipan to recover Sixth Fleet commander Vice Admiral Takagi Takao. Thirteen Japanese submarines were lost in the Marianas, nearly half in rescue attempts. The sole success came to Lieutenant Commander Itakura Mitsuma’s I-41. Itakura managed to get his boat into Apra Harbor on Guam and spirit away more than 100 airmen.

  RESHUFFLING THE DECK

  What did happen after the Marianas debacle would be the fall of Tojo and Shimada. The former had many enemies. There were offices at IGHQ—not just Navy but Army ones too—where the occupants regarded Tojo as an enemy. The prime minister owed a good deal of this to his ruthless approach, brooking no opposition. Officers who spoke up or who said the wrong thing could quickly find themselves sent to the China front—Tokyo’s equivalent to Hitler sending an officer to the Russian front or Stalin sending someone to Siberia. When a Tojo intimate, whom he frequently consulted in private, advised the general to give up his second/third job as chief of the Army staff and said something about realigning the cabinet to try to seek a compromise peace, Prime Minister Tojo threw his friend out.

  Colonel Tanemura Sato, an Army senior staffer, viewed Tojo as a tool of the Imperial Navy. Many Navy officers saw their own chief, Admiral Shimada, as Tojo’s creature. The prime minister had induced Shimada to hold the posts of Navy minister and chief of the General Staff simultaneously, as Tojo did for the Army. Feelings had already run high that the men ought to shed their dual posts.

  Colonel Matsutani Sei had been a section chief on the Army staff. Worried sick at the velocity of the Allied advance, that spring Matsutani organized a study group of influential IGHQ officers to coordinate planning. They met regularly at Tokyo’s Sanno Hotel. Matsutani’s Army counterparts included Colonels Hattori Takushiro and Nishiura Susumu, respectively, a senior operations planner and a former aide to Tojo himself. Navy members included the operations chief Captain Yamamoto; Captain Ohmae Toshikazu, the operations staff officer for the Mobile Fleet, Japan’s carrier force; and Captain Fujii Shigeru, a top logistics planner who had earlier been private secretary to Admiral Shimada. Matsutani led the discussions. Over time the growing pessimism became unmistakable. Thus, Admiral Yonai’s remarks to Kase Toshikazu reflected wider feelings that were anathema to Tojo.

  Colonel Matsutani became another of Kase Toshikazu’s intimates. Convinced that an early end to the war had become the only solution, around the beginning of July Matsutani showed up in Kase’s office with a paper titled “On the Future Conduct of the War.” He had compiled the study together with Colonel Tanemura and another General Staff officer. Matsutani pointedly observed that while Tokyo professed to have a military strategy, it had no diplomatic program. He wanted to argue this with Prime Minister Tojo. Diplomat Kase, fearing the officer would be disgraced, perhaps imprisoned, begged Matsutani not to. The colonel also showed the paper to a couple of senior General Staff officers. Both forbade him from circulating it.

  Matsutani did anyway.

  On July 2, the colonel confronted Tojo. A stormy argument ensued. The next day Colonel Matsutani dropped by Kase’s office in dress uniform to say good-bye. He had been ordered to the China front.

  But the press of events overpowered Tojo. The Philippine Sea disaster left Admiral Shimada completely discredited. Hirohito demanded his ouster. General Tojo could not save his close ally, nor even preserve his own multiple posts. Tojo’s great advantage had always been loyalty to the emperor.

  Saipan stripped that away—or, more accurately, the general’s honest evaluation of the uselessness of a fleet rescue sortie led Hirohito to rescind his protection. After that Tojo became fair game. Admiral Toyoda of the Combined Fleet, among the most senior active officers, stood in line to succeed Shimada. Tojo managed to torpedo that idea, insisting he could not work with Toyoda, whose attitude was anti-Army.

  Maneuvers against Tojo began in the Diet—significant because the Japanese legislature had long since stopped being a power center. Anti-Tojo forces coalesced around Prince Takamatsu. The Allies’ extension of their offensive with landings on Tinian and Guam in July only sharpened the differences. Prime Minister Tojo tried to curb dissent by inviting some of the jushin to join his cabinet, then dismissing Admiral Shimada. The jushin met with Lord Kido, the emperor’s privy counselor. Finally, on July 18, unable to quiet the clamor for his skin, Tojo gave up his post as Army chief of staff. Later that day he resigned all posts and retired. Tojo finished the war tending his garden.

  A new cabinet took office as President Roosevelt made his voyage to Pearl Harbor, empaneled on July 22 under General Koiso Kuniaki. Koiso was also head of the new Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, an inner cabinet/military coordination unit made up of the war and Navy ministers, their respective chiefs of staff, the foreign minister, and the prime minister. This group made the basic policy decisions. The military high command, rather than meeting at IGHQ, would gather at the War Council’s offices. The new Navy minister would be Yonai Mitsumasa.

  Everyone was aware that heavy bombers flying from the Marianas would be capable of striking Japan. As if to underline the point, a force of American B-29s, temporarily based in China, attacked Japan for the first time since the Doolittle Raid of early 1942. The raid aimed not at Tokyo, but at a steelworks at Yawata, on Kyushu, and it occurred the same day American troops stormed ashore on Saipan. The threat loomed—the target could just as easily have been Tokyo. The Japanese did not know that the Allies were already planning to expand the B-29 force and regroup it in the Marianas for an air campaign against Japan. But anticipating that precise move, General Koiso brought up the matter of evacuating the supreme command from Tokyo.

  That subject raised hackles. General Koiso broached it with Marquis Kido after his imperial audience, and Kido took it directly to the emperor. The Japanese had long lived in fear of bombing. Before the war, mass civil defense drills and a constant barrage of media harped on the threat of death from the air. Tokyo watched the 1940 Battle of Britain with apprehension, with the German bombing of London; and the Doolittle Raid had had a powerful effect on the nation’s sense of security.

  In case of evacuation, Marquis Kido told General Koiso, IGHQ and the Supreme War Council should be colocated and the emperor would take charge as generalissimo. But, Kido added, he had never discussed lea
ving Tokyo, alone or in concert, with Hirohito. That conversation took place on July 26. The emperor instantly dismissed the idea.

  Hirohito feared restlessness and defeatism among the people if he left the Home Islands—which he referred to as “the mainland.” Only absolute necessity would induce him to reconsider. “I must remain on the mainland by all means,” the emperor declared, “to try desperately to protect the mainland, where our grand shrine reigns.” The emperor would not budge.

  Too many hard-liners remained in high places, determined to fight. Fleet C-in-C Toyoda later remarked, “While it would not be accurate to say that we were influenced by public opinion, questions were beginning to be asked at home as to what the Navy was doing after loss of one point after another down south.”

  Perhaps Admiral Suzuki Kantaro’s sensibility, applied more broadly, was right: The hard-liners needed to get their way and see it fail, at least once. That could happen in the Philippines.

  • • •

  WHILE POLITICAL MACHINATIONS continued, the military moved ahead with its preparations. Even as American leaders struggled to decide which way to jump and Tokyo reflected the same apprehension, commanders of the Combined Fleet held a conference on measures for the next battle, then sent the project to the NGS for the drafting of an operations plan. Officers at IGHQ wanted to apply the new standard of detailed planning that had been achieved before the Marianas battle.