Storm Over Leyte
Page 42
Aftermath. On the deck of Seventh Fleet flagship, Wasatch, fleet intelligence officer Captain Arthur H. McCollum briefs fleet commanders and staff on the course of the Leyte Gulf battle and its consequences.
United States Naval Institute
ABBREVIATIONS
AIB
Allied Intelligence Bureau (SOWESPAC intelligence agency)
ASW
Antisubmarine warfare
ATIS
Allied Translator and Interpreter Section
CAP
Combat air patrol
CIC
Combat Information Center
C-in-C
Commander in chief (Japanese)
CINCPAC
Commander in chief, Pacific Ocean areas
CNO
Chief of naval operations
COMINCH
Commander in chief, U.S. fleet
CVE
Escort aircraft carrier
F-22
Combat Intelligence Division (COMINCH)
F-6F
Plane-type identifier for Hellcat fighter
FECB
Far East Combined Bureau (British intelligence agency)
FRUMEL
Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne (SOWESPAC communications intelligence)
FRUPAC
Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (Pearl Harbor communications intelligence)
IGHQ
Imperial General Headquarters (Japanese high command)
JAAF
Japanese Army Air Force
JCS
Joint Chiefs of Staff
JICPOA
Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area
JNAF
Japanese Naval Air Force
NGS
Navy General Staff (Japanese Navy command)
ONI
Office of Naval Intelligence
OP-16
Naval Intelligence Division (ONI), Navy Department
OP-20-G
Communications Intelligence, Navy Department, Washington, DC
PT
Patrol torpedo boat
SB-2C
Plane-type identification for Helldiver dive-bomber
SEFIC
Seventh Fleet Intelligence Center
SOWESPAC
Southwest Pacific Area (and command—MacArthur’s theater)
TBM
Plane-type identification for the Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber
TBS
Talk between ships (short-range voice radio)
Ultra
Code name for Allied communications intelligence
ENDNOTES
PROLOGUE
“POSSIBLE ENEMY TASK FORCE”: U.S. Navy, Hawaiian Sea Frontier, broadcast dispatch 21133, July 1944. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (hereafter cited as FDRL): Roosevelt Papers: Map Room Files series, box 95. Vice Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, of Solomons fame (see Islands of Destiny), now led the Sea Frontier.
“A political picture-taking junket”: D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2, 1941–1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975, p. 527.
“The blockade that I will put”: Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur. New York: Random House, 1996, quoted p. 405.
“In all my life, nobody”: Mark Perry, The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur. New York: Basic Books, 2014, quoted p. 271.
“It was both pleasant and very informative”: William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950, p. 250.
“It was highly pleasing and unusual”: Ibid., p. 251.
“He was entirely neutral”: Douglas A. MacArthur, Reminiscences. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest, 1964, p. 214.
“In preventing an unnecessary invasion of Japan” and “MacArthur and Nimitz were now in agreement”: Leahy, I Was There, p. 251.
“As soon as I get back”: Thomas J. Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23–26 October 1944. New York: Pocket Books, 1996, quoted p. 38.
CHAPTER 1. ALL IN
“He thought it advisable”: Kase Toshikazu, Journey to the Missouri. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 74.
“I must remain on the mainland”: Kido Koichi, The Diary of Marquis Kido, 1931–1945: Selected Translations into English. Frederick, MD: University Press of America, 1984, p. 398.
“While it would not be accurate to say”: Toyoda Soemu Interrogation, in United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific), Naval Analysis Division, Interrogations of Japanese Officials (hereafter cited as USSBS, Interrogations of Japanese Officials). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946, vol. 2, p. 317.
“Attacking and destroying the enemy fleet”: IGHQ Directive No. 431, July 21, 1944. Imperial General Headquarters Navy Directives, vol. 2, pp. 67–68. U.S. Navy microfilm J-27.
“Raiding operations” et seq.: IGHQ Navy Directive No. 435, July 26, 1944. Imperial General Headquarters Navy Directives, vol. 2, pp. 71–84. U.S. Navy microfilm J-27.
“To intercept and destroy the invading enemy”: Combined Fleet, Top Secret Operations Order No. 83, August 1, 1944. Supreme Commander Allied Forces (SCAP), Reports of General MacArthur: Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific, vol. 2, pt. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966, p. 329.
“I agreed to the showdown battle” and Bix opinion: Herbert B. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000, p. 481.
“Unprofessional vindictive satisfaction”: Wilfred J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific in World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979, p. 180.
“Under present conditions”: U.S. Navy, JICPOA, Letter, W. Holmes to W. Sebald, July 24, 1944. National Archives and Records Administration: Records Group 457 (hereafter cited as NARA: RG-457): Records of the National Security Agency: SRMN 009, “JICPOA-F-22 Administrative Correspondence, January 1942–September 1945,” p. 193.
CHAPTER 2. THE LOWDOWN
“KING HAS CONFERRED WITH NIMITZ”: Ugaki Matome Diary, July 25, 1944, dispatch quoted in Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945 (hereafter cited as Ugaki Diary), ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon; trans. Chihaya Masataka. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008, p. 436.
“I placed my greatest reliance”: Fukudome Shigeru, “The Air Battle off Taiwan,” in The Japanese Navy in World War II: In the Words of Former Japanese Naval Officers, ed. David C. Evans. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986, p. 341.
“acute”: Commander Terai Yoshimori interview. Naval Historical Center (hereafter cited as NHC): Records of the Japanese Navy and Related Documents, box 73, fol
der: “Interrogation no. 602.”
“If we are to win”: Hasegawa Kaoru, My Personal History: Two Lives. Japan: Rengo Company Ltd., n.d. [1999], p. 16.
“Had the U.S. Navy been dependent”: Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, p. 119.
“Outline of operations” et seq.: Combined Fleet Top Secret Operations Order No. 85, August 4, 1944. Supreme Commander Allied Forces (SCAP), Reports of General MacArthur: Japanese Operations in the Southwest Pacific, vol. 2, pt. 1, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966, p. 330.
“I will recommend the idea”: Nakata Seiichi, ed., For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Kamuela, HI: eXperience inc., 2011, quoted p. 161.
“Make the demons weep”: Yonai Mitsumasa speech, September 9, 1944. Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, Contemporary Japan, vol. 13, nos. 7–9, September 1944, p. 851.
“Japan’s Fleet in Being Strategy” et seq.: Ito Masanori, “Japan’s Fleet in Being Strategy,” Contemporary Japan, vol. 13, nos. 7–9, September 1944, pp. 638–44.
CHAPTER 3. BREAKTHROUGH AND EXPLOITATION
“A dream come true”: Harold L. Buell, Dauntless Helldivers: A Dive-Bomber Pilot’s Epic Story of the Carrier Battles. New York: Dell Books, 1991, p. 331.
“It was obvious”: Okumiya Masatake and Horikoshi Jiro with Martin Caidin, Zero! The Story of Japan’s Air War in the Pacific: 1941–1945. New York: Ballantine Books, 1957, p. 243.
“My decision to poke a strike”: William F. Halsey and J. D. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1947, quoted p. 199.
“BECAUSE OF THE BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE”: Quoted ibid.
“The South Pacific campaign had impressed us all”: Ibid.
“The hell you do”: E. B. Potter, Admiral Arleigh Burke: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1990, quoted p. 187.
“Those are Japanese installations” et seq.: Ibid., quoted p. 202.
“We have never made a dishonest estimate”: U.S. Navy, JICPOA, Letter, W. J. Holmes to W. J. Sebald, May 15, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRMD-009, “JICPOA-F-22 Administrative Correspondance,” January 1942–September 1945.
CHAPTER 4. BEST-LAID PLANS
“Perhaps the most important single document”: Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi, eds., MIS in the War Against Japan: Personal Experiences Related at the 1993 MIS Capital Reunion, “The Nisei Veteran: An American Patriot.” Privately printed, Japanese American Veterans of Washington, DC, 1995, p. 29.
“To depend entirely”: Ugaki Diary, August 9, 1944, p. 439.
“Now we have something to study”: Ugaki Diary, August 17, 1944, p. 442.
“The war is in its last stages”: Yoshimura Akira, Build the Musashi: The Birth and Death of the World’s Greatest Battleship (trans. Vincent Murphy). Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991, quoted p. 153.
“How is it that the headquarters, attack force”: Ugaki Diary, September 18, 1944, p. 458.
“Our one big goal”: Koyanagi Tomiji, “The Battle of Leyte Gulf,” in Evans, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II, p. 360.
“All-out decisive battle” et seq.: JICPOA, “Estimate of Enemy Distribution and Intentions,” September 4, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRMD-010, pt. 2.
“Across this wide Pacific” et seq.: U.S. Navy, JICPOA, Letter, W. J. Holmes to C. G. Moore, September 22, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRMD-009, “JICPOA-F-22 Administrative Correspondance,” January 1942–September 1945.
“It was not believed that the major elements of the Japanese Fleet”: Royal Navy: Tactical and Staff Duties Division, Historical Staff, Battle Summary no. 40: Battle for Leyte Gulf, 23rd–26th October 1944. B.R. 1736 (41). Admiralty, May 1947, p. 18, fn. 4.
“The overall tanker movement picture”: JICPOA, “Estimate of Enemy Distribution and Intentions,” September 18, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRMD-010, pt. 2.
“This is the first indication”: U.S. Navy, Commander in Chief, Summary of Radio Intelligence, October 17, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRNS-0918, “Japanese Radio Intelligence Summaries 1944.”
CHAPTER 5. DESTROY THE INVADING ENEMY
“I was hardly in a position”: Toyoda Soemu, The End of the Imperial Navy. Tokyo: 1950, pp. 149–53 (U.S. Navy translation). NHC: IJN Records, Leyte Series, box 30, folder: “Senior Officer Comments,” quoted from p. 1 of the source document.
“Our fighters were nothing but so many eggs” et seq.: Fukudome Shigeru, “The Air Battle off Taiwan,” in Evans, ed., The Japanese Navy in World War II, p. 347.
“If we had stayed in the administration office”: Quoted ibid., p. 350.
“Right he was!”: Handwritten marginal note on JICPOA, “Summary of ULTRA Traffic 0000/12–2400/12 October,” NARA: RG-457, SRMD-007, Summary, September 11–December 31, 1944, pt. 1, p. 94.
“I am sorry to say”: Admiral Teraoka Kimpei, Translated Extracts from the Diary of Teraoka Kimpei, October 10–20, 1944. NHC: IJN Records, Leyte Series, box 30, folder: “Senior Officer Comments.”
“These planes failed to find our fleet”: ONI, OP-20-G Radio Summary, October 14, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRMD-007, p. 100.
“We were squarely in the dragon’s jaws”: Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, p. 205.
“A graveyard”: Admiral Obayashi Sueo, interview with John Toland, December 23, 1966. Notes, Toland Papers, FDRL.
“REMAINING ENEMY STRENGTH IS COMPARATIVELY LARGE”: Colonel Hattori Takushiro, History of the Greater East Asia War, vol. 3. Tokyo: Masu Shobo, 1953 quoted p. 367.
“Circling around at an altitude of two thousand meters”: Denis Warner and Peggy Warner, with Seno Sadao, The Sacred Warriors: Japan’s Suicide Legions. New York: Avon Books, 1982, quoted p. 81.
“THE THIRD FLEET’S SUNKEN AND DAMAGED SHIPS”: Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, quoted pp. 207–8.
“A campaign of mendacity unprecedented” et seq., including Japanese newspaper headline quotes: Office of Naval Intelligence, The O.N.I. Weekly, vol. 3, no. 44, November 1, 1944. NARA: U.S. Navy Records, Microfilm Publication M1652, Roll 66, pp. 3523–28.
“In order to understand the state of mind”: C. Vann Woodward, The Battle for Leyte Gulf: The Incredible Story of World War II’s Largest Naval Battle (reprint edition). New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007, p. 16.
“It is erroneous to think”: Federal Communications Commission, Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, “The ‘Annihilation’ of Task Force 38,” Special Report no. 132, quoted p. 5. FDRL: Roosevelt Papers, Map Room Files, box 89, folder: “MR-300, Sec. 2: Warfare (Japan) January–December 1944.”
CHAPTER 6. MACARTHUR RETURNS, SHO UNLEASHED
“CENTRAL PHILIPPINES ATTACK FORCE”: COM7THFLT-COM3RDFLT, 150542, October 1944. From U.S. Navy, Commander in Chief Pacific Command Summary (i.e., war diary, hereafter cited as CINCPAC Graybook), pt. 2, p. 2240.
“Since this is the important battle”: Stanley A. Falk, Decision at Leyte. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966, quoted p. 85.
“A sortie from Singapore”: ONI, OP-20-G Radio Summary, October 18, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRNS-0919, p. 1952.
“Based on an analysis of U.S. communications”: ONI, OP-20-G Radio Summary, October 19, 1944. NARA: RG-457, SRNS-0920, p. 1.
“I have returned!” et seq.: MacArthur, Reminiscences, quoted pp. 252–54. With Philippine independence already scheduled for a moment in the near future, little would be gained by advancing that event. On the other hand, giving this bit of patently political advice served to suggest to FDR that General MacArthur really had the president’s interests at heart.
MacArthur memoir versus his letter to FDR: Letter, Douglas MacArthur to Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 20, 1944. Reprinted in MacArthur, Reminiscences, pp. 253–54. MacArthur’s actual letter is in the Roosevelt Papers (FDRL: FDR Papers, Map Room Files, box 104, folder: “President’s Secretary’s File: War Department—General Douglas MacA
rthur, 1944–1945”).
“WILL ADVANCE THROUGH SAN BERNARDINO STRAIT” et seq.: Combined Fleet Top Secret Dispatch 181110, October 1944 (from 1st Diversion Attack Force detailed action report [WDC 161641]). NHC: IJN Records, Leyte Series, box 30, folder: “G4: Miscellaneous Orders.”
Kurita “was vaguely aware”: Anthony P. Tully, Battle of Surigao Strait. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009, p. 23. Historian Tully has made many contributions to the study of the Japanese Navy in World War II. A number of his contributions relate to the modern history of the Surigao Strait battle, including clarifying the identities of the Japanese battleships Fuso and Yamashiro, the positions of which are reversed in a number of histories. I agree with Tully on many points, including, as is related in Chapter 8, that Japanese cruiser Nachi collided with the Mogami, and not the other way around, another point of confusion in the histories. Here, however, and on a few other items our views differ. Nevertheless I want to acknowledge the work he has done here, on the Midway battle (in Shattered Sword), and on the Nihon Kaigun Web site, all of which mark him as one of the foremost historians of the Pacific war.
“If the fleet does not take the offensive now” et seq.: Ohmae Toshikazu, “Research Report on Questions Related to SHO Operations,” n.d. (received in Washington, DC, on April 13, 1953), quoted p. 5. (Ohmae relied on records provided by Hattori Takushiro.) NHC: Japanese Navy and Related Records, box 30, folder: “Senior Officer Comments.”
“The war situation” et seq.: Ito Masanori with Roger Pineau, The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy (trans. Andrew Y. Kuroda and Roger Pineau). New York: McFadden-Bartell Books, 1965, quoted pp. 100–1.