D-DAYS IN THE PACIFIC

by Donald L. Miller

  13 Sherrod, On to Westward, 270.

  14 John Lardner, “A Reporter on Okinawa: I—Suicides and Bushwhackers,” The New Yorker (May 19, 1945), 34.

  15 Sledge interview, Lou Reda Productions; Sledge interview with DLM.

  16 Nichols, Ernie’s War, 408-9.

  17 Quoted in Gerald Astor, Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II (New York: Dell, 1995), 158.

  18 Lardner, “Suicides,” 34.

  19 Quoted in E. B. Potter,Nimitz (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 372.

  20 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 409.

  21 Raymond Sawyer, oral testimony, EC.

  22 Evan Wylie, “Death of Ernie Pyle,” in “Yank,” the GI Story of the War, 230.

  23 Sherrod, On to Westward, 296-97.

  24 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 406-7; interview with Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, Lou Reda Productions.

  25 Guillain, I Saw Tokyo Burning, 204.

  26 Victor Davis Hanson, Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 61.

  27 Morison, Two-Ocean War, 550.

  28 Quoted in Flower and Reeves, The War, 743.

  29 Quoted in Feifer, Tennozan, 206.

  30 Quoted in Astor, Operation Iceberg, 174.

  31 Robert Leckie, Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II (New York: Penguin, 1996 edition), 92-95. For an account of the Yamato’s final voyage, see Russell Spurr, A Glorious Way to Die (New York: New Market Press, 1981).

  32 Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, 538.

  33 Quoted in Feifer, Tennozan, 224.

  34 Vice Admiral M. L. Deyo, “Kamikaze,” ms, U.S. Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C.

  35 Quoted in Morison, Two-Ocean War, 545.

  36 Evan Wylie, “Kamikaze: Jap Suicide,” in “Yank,” the GI Story of the War, 269-70.

  37 Morison, Two-Ocean War, 548-49.

  38 Phelps Adams, “Attack on Carrier Bunker Hill,” New York Sun (June 28, 1945).

  39 Both quotations in Miller, War at Sea, 526.

  40 Sherrod, On to Westward, 294; Mitscher quoted in Miller, War at Sea.

  41 CINCPAC Headquarters Reports, 3rd Fleet Reports, and 5th Fleet Reports, U.S. Navy’s Classified Records Branch, Washington Navy Yard, Washington D.C.; Japanese Monograph No. 83, Okinawa Area Naval Operations, January-June 1945. Naval Air Operations, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Belote and Belote, Typhoon, 342-43. Belote and Belote put the total number of Japanese planes lost in the Okinawa campaign at 1,600.

  During the entire war, the Japanese lost 3,913 airmen on kamikaze missions that caused the death of at least 3,300 U.S. sailors and navy airmen. See Frank, Downfall, 181-82.

  42 Zimmerman interview.

  43 Hanson Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won: Great Campaigns of World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 377.

  44 Quoted in Ambrose, American Heritage New History of World War II, 572.

  45 Major General Wilburt S. Brown, oral history interview, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.

  46 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 411-12.

  47 Sawyer, EC.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Sledge, “Sledgehammer’s War and Peace.” 21.

  50 W. Eugene Smith, “24 Hours with Infantryman Terry Moore,” Life (June 18, 1945), 20-25.

  51 Sledge, “Sledgehammer’s War and Peace,” passim; Sledge interview, Lou Reda Productions; Sledge, Old Breed, 252-53, 269; Sledge interview with DLM.

  52 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 420, 429-30.

  53 Sledge interview, Lou Reda Productions.

  54 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 451-53.

  55 Quoted in ibid., 435.

  56 Sledge, Old Breed, 223.

  57 Feifer, Tennozan, 276.

  58 Evan Regal and others quoted in Feifer, Tennozan, 415-19; Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 441-43.

  59 Miyagi Kikuko, in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press, 1992), 357.

  60 Ibid., 360-62.

  61 Sledge interview. Lou Reda Productions.

  62 Sledge, Old Breed, 306-8; Sledge interview, Lou Reda Productions.

  63 Approximately 100,000 American fighting men were killed in action or missing in action in the Pacific war. The 1st Marine Division had the highest number of days in contact with the enemy in the Pacific theater, approximately 225, and the highest losses of any American division—Marine or Army—in the theater. It suffered 19,284 casualties, which included 5,435 killed in action, a little over one quarter of the entire number of Marines killed in action in World War II (19,733).

  64 Bruce I. Gudmundsson “Okinawa” in Robert Cowley, ed., No End Save Victory: Perspectives on World War II (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), 638.

  65 Belote and Belote, Typhoon, 173-74, 263-66.

  66 Meirion Harries and Susie Harries, Soldiers of the Sun, 428.

  67 W. H. Lawrence, “Japan, Like Okinawa, Will Cost High Price,” New York Times (June 24, 1945), 1.

  68 Sledge, Old Breed, 312. For a succinct account of the military lessons of the Battle of Okinawa, see Jon T. Huffman, “The Legacy and Lessons of Okinawa,” Marine Corps Gazette 79 (April 1995), 64-71.

  CHAPTER 10: THE SETTING SUN

  1 Marvin A. Kastenbaum, “A Teenage Warrior,” ms, EC. For the Japanese annihilation campaigns in China, see Bix, Hirohito, 365-68.

  2 Quotations in Richard Rhodes, “The Toughest Flying in the World,” World War II Chronicles (New York: American Heritage, 1995), 40-47; interview with Ruven Greenberg, EC.

  3 Charles J. Rolo, “Wingate’s Circus,” Atlantic Monthly (October 1943), 91-94.

  4 Quoted in Mary Penick Motley, ed. The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975.)

  5 Gregory F. Michno, Death on the Hellships: Prisoners at Sea in the Pacific War (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 282-83. For different—and lower—figures, see Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 297.

  6 Forrest Knox, in Donald Knox, Death March: The Survivors of Bataan (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 338-40; William R. Evans, Kara! (Rogue River, Ore.: Atwood, 1986), 107, 112.

  7 Interview with Melvin Rosen by DLM; Davis quoted in Knox, Death March, 350; John M. Wright, Jr., Captured on Corregidor: Diary of an American P.O.W. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1988), 92; Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 294.

  8 Interview with Maynard Booth, Lou Reda Productions; Rosen interviews by DLM and Lou Reda Productions; interview with William G. Adair, Lou Reda Productions; all Marion Lawton quotations in Knox, Death March, 356.

  9 Rosen interview, Lou Reda Productions. For a powerful account of the journey of the last hell ship, see E. Bartlett Kerr, Surrender and Survival: The Experience of American POWs in the Pacific, 1941-1945 (New York: William Morrow, 1985), Chapter 12. For graphic eyewitness accounts, see, in addition to the books previously mentioned, Manny Lawton, Some Survived (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin, 1984) and Sidney Smith, Give Us This Day (New York: W. W. Norton, 1957).

  10 Quoted in Knox, Death March, 364-65.

  11 Tenney interviews with DLM and Lou Reda Productions; Tenney, Hitch, 122-37.

  12 Hewlett quoted in Knox, Death March, 368; these figures are from the Center for Internee Rights, and include merchant marines. In Surrender and Survival, 339, Kerr states that 25,600 American military personnel were captured by the Japanese and that 10,650 were killed or died in captivity, a mortality rate of 41.6 percent. Kerr does not include merchant marines; to put the German figures in perspective, 60 percent of the Russian military personnel captured by the Nazis did not survive the war.

  13 Interview with Frank “Foo” Fujita by DLM; Fujita interview, Lou Reda Productions.

  14 Tenney interview by DLM; Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 308.

  15 Tenney, Hitch, 164; Tenney interview, Lou Reda Productions.

  16 For
the story of the Chichi Jima fliers, see James Bradley, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage (Boston: Little, Brown, 2003).

  17 Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 322. For the terrifying ordeal of one captured American flier, see Fiske Hanley II, Accused American War Criminal (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1997); for Japanese atrocities against airmen POWs, see also Marc Landis, The Fallen: A True Story of American POWS and Japanese Wartime Atrocities (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004).

  18 Interview with Ray Halloran by DLM; interviews with Ray Halloran and Robert Goldsworthy by Mark Natola.

  19 LeMay, Mission, 376.

  20 Terkel, “The Good War” 201.

  21 LeMay, Mission, 375.

  22 Ibid., 375, 381.

  23 Truman diary, June 17, 1945, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 47.

  24 Quoted in Frank, Downfall, 143.

  25 Ibid., 139-45; for the invasion plans, see ibid., Chapter 8.

  26 Interview with McCloy, in David McCullough. Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). 401.

  27 Quoted in Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese, 325.

  28 Sledge, “Sledgehammer’s War and Peace,” 1; Sledge interview by DLM.

  29 Kastenbaum ms, EC.

  30 D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore, “Half a Million Purple Hearts,” American Heritage (December 2000), 81-83. See also D. M. Giangreco, “Casualty Projections for the Invasion of Japan, 1945-46: Planning and Policy Implications,” Journal of Military History 61, no. 3 (July 1997), 535; and D. M. Giangreco, “The Truth About Kamikazes,” Naval History (May-June 1997), 25-30.

  31 Herbert Bix, “Japan’s Delayed Surrender: A Reinterpretation,” Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995), 210; Army Battle Casualties and Non-Battle Deaths in World War II, Final Report, 7 December 1941-31 December 1946 (Washington, DC.: Statistical and Accounting Branch, Office of the Adjutant General). 10. For ULTRA intercepts, see Edward J. Drea, In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); and Drea, Mac-Arthur’s ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992).

  32 Frank, Downfall, 194, 202.

  33 Quoted in ibid., 196.

  34 Bix, “Japan’s Delayed Surrender,” 214.

  35 Spector, agle Against the Sun, 543.

  36 Guillian, I Saw Tokyo Burning, 209.

  37 Interview with Paul Tibbets by DLM, January 26, 2002.

  38 Interview with Frederick L. Ashworth by DLM.

  39 Paul W. Tibbets, The Flight of the Enola Gay (Reynoldsburg, Ohio: Buckeye Aviation, 1969), 183.

  40 Sweeney, War’s End, 137-38. Sweeney retired from the service as a major general.

  41 Tibbets interview.

  42 Ibid.; Tibbets, Enola Gay, 192. It was LeMay’s idea to have the bomb dropped by a single, unescorted plane. See Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 284.

  43 Interview with Raymond Biel by Mark Natola.

  44 Quoted in Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 308.

  45 Quotations in General Groves, Memorandum to the Secretary of War, 18 July 40. quoted in ibid., 433-40. For a perceptive analysis of the story of the bomb, see Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race (New York: Vintage, 1987).

  46Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 519. For an excellent account of the decision to use the bomb, see Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

  47 Quoted in David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 845.

  48 Quoted in Barton J. Bernstein, “The Perils and Politics of Surrender: Ending the War with Japan and Avoiding the Third Atomic Bomb,” Pacific Historical Review 46 (February 1977), 5.

  49 Bix, “Japan’s Delayed Surrender,” 222-23. For a suggestive essay on this issue, see Ian Buruma, “The War over the Bomb,” New York Review of Books (September 21, 1995), 26-34.

  50 Barton J. Bernstein, “Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory.” Diplomatic History 19 (Spring 1995), 240.

  51 Quoted in McCullough, Truman, 437.

  52 Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 265.

  53 “The Atomic Age,” Life (August 20, 1945), 32.

  54 Terkel, “The Good War,” 506-13.

  55 Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 306. Groves initially expected a second plutonium bomb “to be ready about August 24,” with “additional ones arriving in increasing numbers from there on” (309). For the sinking of the Indianapolis, see Doug Stanton. In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (New York: Henry Holt, 2001).

  56 Quoted in McCullough, Truman, 448.

  57 Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 309.

  58 Sweeney, War’s End, 163-64.

  59 Tibbets, Enola Gay, 186.

  60 Colonel Paul Tibbets, Jr., as told to Wesley Price. “How to Drop an Atom Bomb,” Saturday Evening Post (June 8, 1946), 136: Tibbets, Enola Gay, 226-27; and Tibbets interview.

  61 All quotations in Tibbets, Enola Gay, 228 and Tibbets interview.

  62 Quoted in McCullough, Truman, 454.

  63 Tibbets, “How to Drop an Atom Bomb,” 136; Tibbets interview.

  64 Tibbets, Enola Gay, 237.

  65 Quoted in Feifer, Tennozan, 567.

  66 Sweeney, War’s End, 176.

  67 Morrison in Terkel, “The Good War,” 513.

  68 Quoted in Flower and Reeves, The War, 1032.

  69 Hajimi Kito in Terkel, “The Good War,” 539.

  70 Michihiko Hachiya, Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6—September 30, 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 1-9.

  71 Quoted in Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1967), 79.

  72 Hachiya, Hiroshima Diary, 97.

  73 LeMay, Mission, 387.

  74 Trolley in Terkel, “The Good War,” 544.

  75 LeMay, Mission, 382.

  76 Quoted in McCullough, Truman, 455.

  77 Ferrell, Off the Record, 52.

  78 Interview with Ray Gallagher by DLM; interview with Ray Gallagher by Mark Natola.

  79 Quoted in Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, Enola Gay (New York: Stein & Day, 1977); Tibbets interview.

  CHAPTER 11: VICTORY

  1 Ashworth interview. Unless otherwise indicated all quoted passages are from interviews by DLM and Mark Natola with the men on Bockscar. Ashworth was especially helpful in re-creating the flight of Bockscar. General Sweeney was interviewed by my associate Mark Natola but would not release the interview for publication. Subsequently, I made several unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with him. The interview he did with Natola stays close to the substance of his autobiography, War’s End, which I have used in this chapter to give his account of the mission. General Sweeney died in 2004.

  2 Sweeney, War’s End, 4.

  3 Ibid., 198.

  4 William L. Laurence, “A Giant Pillar of Purple Fire,” New York Times (September 9, 1945).

  5 Sweeney, War’s End, 200.

  6 Morrison in Terkel, “The Good War,” 513.

  7 Sweeney, War’s End, 203.

  8 Tibbets interview; Paul Tibbets, Return of the Enola Gay (Columbus, Oh.: Mid Coast Marketing, 1998), 248 (revised edition of Tibbets’s earlier book).

  9 Sweeney, War’s End, 209; Purnell quoted in Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 344.

  10 Laurence, “A Giant Pillar of Purple Fire.”

  11 Sweeney (War’s End, 212) claims that Hopkins’s message was garbled in transmission and came out as “Sweeney aborted.”

  12 Tibbets interview.
>
  13 Sweeney, War’s End, 211.

  14 Ibid., 213-15.

  15 Ibid., 217.

  16 Laurence, “A Giant Pillar of Purple Fire.”

  17 Ibid.

  18 Sweeney, War’s End, 223-26.

  19 Tibbets, Return of the Enola Gay, 250; Tibbets interview.

  20 Quoted in McCullough, Truman, 459.

  21 Ferrell, Off the Record, 61. The standard volume on the end of the war in the Pacific is Robert J. C. Butow, Japan’s Decision to Surrender (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1954).

  22 Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 352-53.

  23 New York Times, August 15, 1945.

  24 The figure of 405,399 deaths is the number of service personnel who died during their service in the war. The approximate figure of the number of persons who died in combat is 291,557. Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II: Final Report 7 December-31 November 1946, Department of the Army; for recent data on the human cost of the war, see Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, Chapter 20; and Weinberg, A World at Arms, 894-920. In warfare all figures on casualties are approximate.

  25 Paul Fussell, “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb,” reprinted in Kai Bird and Lawrence Lischultz, eds., Hiroshima’s Shadow (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 217-18.

  26 Sledge, Old Breed, 312-15.

  27 Interview with Fiske Hanley by DLM; interview with Fiske Hanley, Lou Reda Productions; Frank Fujita, oral testimony, Lou Reda Productions; Frank Fujita, Foo: A Japanese American Prisoner of the Rising Sun (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1993), 1-5, 312-16; Halloran interview by DLM.

  28 Goldsworthy interview.

  29 Quoted in Charles Smith, Securing the Surrender: Marines and the Occupation of Japan (Washington, DC.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1997), 10.

  30 Tenney, Hitch, 172.

  31 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 271-77.

  32 Quoted in Morison, Two-Ocean War, 576.