The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  The sun was rising as Privy Seal Kido, who had opposed the war, approached the Palace by car. Still staggered by Pearl Harbor, he closed his eyes, and bowing toward the sun, offered a prayer to the gods. He was profoundly grateful for the divine assistance that marked the beginning of Japan’s desperate course. As a patriotic Japanese he fervently hoped for victory.

  Several blocks away at the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Building, announcer Morio Tateno checked the script of the first news program of the day. Curbing his agitation, he began to broadcast at exactly 7 A.M.: “We now present you urgent news. Here is the news. The Army and Navy divisions of Imperial Headquarters jointly announced at six o’clock this morning, December 8, that the Imperial Army and Navy forces have begun hostilities against the American and British forces in the Pacific at dawn today.”

  The news was blared through hundreds of loudspeakers in the streets. People stopped in their tracks, startled; then, as martial music blared out, many began clapping as if it were a ball game. The enthusiasm was general, but some of the older citizens started toward the Palace gates to pray for victory, not with jubilation but with solemnity.ǁ In the plaza, newsvendors with “extras” trotted by, the bells around their waists jingling so loudly that they could be heard in Number Three East reception hall of the Imperial Palace.

  In this spacious room the Privy Council was in session. The longest discussion was on a problem of little note: why the Netherlands was not included in the imperial rescript. There was another lengthy argument about use of the terms “America” and “England.” One councillor protested that this would cause confusion and, moreover, would be impolite. Togo stubbornly refused to make the change; everyone in the world knew that America meant the United States of America.

  Before noon the Emperor put his seal on the rescript and war was officially declared. He added one line expressing his personal regrets that the empire had been brought to war with Britain and America and toned down the closing phrase, “raising and enhancing thereby the glory of the Imperial Way within and outside our homeland,” to “preserving thereby the glory of our empire.”

  Marquis Kido found the Emperor apparently undisturbed. Then His Majesty confessed that it had been a heartrending decision to declare war on the United States and Britain, and particularly unbearable to make an enemy of such close friends as the British royal family. Kido made no reply. What could he say?

  Prime Minister Tojo was already talking to the nation by radio, soberly, without any oratorical flourishes. The West, he said, was trying to dominate the world. “To annihilate this enemy and to establish a stable new order in East Asia, the nation must necessarily anticipate a long war.…” The fate of Japan and East Asia was at stake and the hundred million people of the empire must now pledge all energies—their lives—to the state.

  There followed a recording of “Umi Yukaba,” a martial song:

  Across the sea, corpses in the water;

  Across the mountain, corpses in the field

  I shall die only for the Emperor,

  I shall never look back.

  That afternoon as Prime Minister Tojo was leaving the official residence in riding clothes, his secretary, Colonel Susumu Nishiura, stopped him. “How can you go riding today? What would happen if you were injured?” Tojo went back inside without a word.

  Japanese fears that the premature Malayan attack might compromise the Pearl Harbor strike were groundless. Surprisingly, London was not alerted. More surprising, word of Pearl Harbor itself did not reach Churchill until two and a half hours after the first bombs fell. And he had to learn it from a newscast. He was spending the weekend at his country residence, Chequers, with two American house guests—W. Averell Harriman, who was the U. S. Lend-Lease co-ordinator, and Ambassador John Winant. At 9 P.M. they all heard a BBC announcer go on and on about fighting everywhere but the Far East, before announcing matter-of-factly that the Japanese had attacked Hawaii.

  The two Americans straightened in their chairs.

  “It’s quite true,” said the butler, Sawyer. “We heard it ourselves outside. The Japanese have attacked the Americans.”

  After a moment’s silence Churchill left for his office. Winant took for granted that he was going to declare war on Japan, as he had recently promised “within the moment.” “Good God,” Winant said, “you can’t declare war on a radio announcement!”

  “What shall I do?”

  “I will call up the President and ask him what the facts are.”

  When the ambassador had Roosevelt on the line he said, “I have a friend who wants to talk to you. You will know who it is as soon as you hear his voice.”

  Churchill picked up the phone. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?”

  “It’s quite true. They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat.”

  “This actually simplifies things. God be with you.” Churchill couldn’t help feeling great elation, now that the United States was officially at his side. He recalled Sir Edward Grey’s telling him more than thirty years earlier that America was like a gigantic boiler: “Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.”

  Saturated with emotion, he went to bed and slept soundly.

  5.

  During the plotting of the Malay campaign the perpetrators had counted on only an even chance that it could be launched in complete secrecy and drew up plans for the men making the initial landings to live off the land in case they were isolated by the British fleet. For a time the planners seriously considered having them plant seeds so they would survive a long siege, but this scheme was discarded as bad for morale.

  The invasion of the Malay Peninsula that preceded Pearl Harbor evolved smoothly despite six-foot waves, and by the end of the day the Kota Bharu airport was in Japanese hands. But the other two landings to the north, across the border in Thailand, were impeded by faulty execution of orders. Major Shigeharu Asaeda was assigned to lead the way at Pattani. He had personally picked that beach on one of his secret missions as suitable for landing because its white sand at high tide indicated firm footing. The launches of the Pattani force churned toward the shore an hour before dawn. When the water was chest-high the troops, burdened by full field equipment, began leaping overboard. To his horror Asaeda found himself sinking in mud; the beautiful white sand did not extend into the water at low tide. Some of the men carrying machine guns were dragged down and drowned. It took the others almost three harrowing hours to slog the three hundred yards to solid ground, where they were raked by Thai fire.

  At Singora the sand was solid and it looked as if Colonel Tsuji would make a reality of his imaginative scheme to crash the Malayan border in buses. Tsuji assumed that a major, who was posing as a clerk at the Singora consulate, had already persuaded the Thai Army and police not to interfere. But Major Osone was not on the beach waiting for the invaders. Tsuji went into town and finally managed to rouse the Japanese consulate by pounding at the gate. It was the portly consul himself who sleepily greeted them with a surprised “Ah so, the Japanese Army!” Behind him was the equally sleepy Major Osone. He had burned his secret code too soon and had been unable to decode the last-minute telegram with the exact time of the landing.

  The exasperated Tsuji ordered the consul to drive him to the police station. In case persuasion failed, he had brought a large furoshiki containing 100,000 ticals of Thai money. They were not far from the station when a bullet smashed a headlight. “Don’t shoot!” Tsuji’s interpreter called out. “This is the Japanese Army. Join us and attack the British Army!” The answer was a volley of shots which seemed to be directed at the fat consul, whose gleaming white suit made him an inviting target. The Japanese returned the fire. It was the end of Tsuji’s fanciful plan.

  Off the tip end of the Malay Peninsula the citizens on the island of Singapore first learned of the war when bombs exploded at four o’clock in the morning. Half an hour earlier the fighter control operations room ha
d received a report of unidentified aircraft 140 miles from Singapore, but no one at the Civil Air Raid Headquarters answered its repeated phone calls. Consequently, the lights of the city guided the invaders to their target; in fact, they stayed brightly lit during the entire raid. The custodian of the keys to the master switch could not be found.

  Sixty-three people were killed and another 133 were injured, but there was still no sign of alarm in Singapore. The great majority was reassured by an order of the day issued by Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, commander in chief in the Far East.

  We are ready. We have had plenty of warning and our preparations are made and tested.… We are confident. Our defences are strong and our weapons efficient.… What of the enemy? We see before us a Japan drained for years by the exhausting claims of her wanton onslaught on China.… Confidence, resolution, enterprise and devotion to the cause must and will inspire every one of us in the fighting services, while from the civilian population, Malay, Chinese, Indian or Burmese, we expect that patience, endurance and serenity which is the great virtue of the East and which will go far to assist the fighting men to gain final and complete victory.

  Not everyone was assuaged by such rhetoric. Yates McDaniel, the American representative of the Associated Press, knew that the Brewster Buffalo fighter planes protecting Singapore were slow and cumbersome. He also knew there wasn’t a single tank in Malaya; that almost every one of the great fixed guns of Singapore was pointing out to sea, useless in case of land attack down the peninsula; that the troops in Malaya had no jungle training; that the native groups had been excluded from any participation in the defense of their homes and that most of them hated the British more than they did the Japanese.

  Late that morning McDaniel’s good friend Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton told him on the phone, “We’re sending out two capital ships under ‘Tom Thumb’ Phillips.” By his tone McDaniel guessed Layton strongly disapproved. “Would you like to go along?”

  “How long will they be out?” McDaniel admired Phillips and had been struck by the strangely heroic figure of the little admiral standing on a box so he could look over the bridge.

  “Five or six days.” Layton explained that Phillips was determined to sail north, up the east coast of Malaya, and attack the invasion convoy which was still landing Japanese troops at two points.

  McDaniel was tempted. It sounded like a good show, but since he was the only AP man in town, he had to refuse. He was concerned by Layton’s obvious opposition to the plan. And he remembered the black cat of Prince of Wales sitting in President Roosevelt’s lap at the signing of the Atlantic Charter. It gave him a feeling of foreboding.

  Just before sailing that afternoon, Phillips asked Air Vice-Marshal C. W. Pulford what air cover the fleet would get on its sortie. Pulford, a former Navy man, was eager to co-operate, but his airfields in northern Malaya were already reportedly knocked out. He promised to give Phillips air reconnaissance the next day, December 9, but didn’t think he could spare any planes at all on December 10.

  As Phillips boarded the 35,000-ton Prince of Wales, Captain L. H. Bell noticed his uneasiness. “I’m not sure,” Phillips said, “that Pulford realizes the importance I attach to fighter cover over Singora on the tenth.” He said he would ask him in a letter what he could do for certain.

  The sun was setting as the fleet, under the code name of Force Z, steamed out of the sprawling Singapore base. Prince of Wales led, followed by Repulse and the destroyers. As they passed Changi Signal Station at the eastern end of the island, Phillips was handed a radiogram from Pulford: REGRET FIGHTER PROTECTION IMPOSSIBLE.

  “Well,” said Phillips, “we must get on with it.” After the publicity about the two warships since their arrival in Singapore, it would have been unthinkable to retire. Force Z continued on its northern course.

  In Manila, Major General Lewis Brereton, commander of MacArthur’s Far East Air Force, requested permission to bomb Formosa, some six hundred miles north, with his Flying Fortresses. It was 7:30 A.M., five and a half hours after the first attack on Hawaii.

  “I’ll ask the general,” replied Major General Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, and a moment later reported, “The general says no. Don’t make the first overt act.” Wasn’t the bombing of Pearl Harbor an overt act? Brereton wanted to know. He was told there had been little reconnaissance on Formosa and such a raid would be pointless.

  On western Formosa, Japanese naval officers of the Eleventh Air Fleet were equally frustrated. Fog had prevented them from taking off before dawn for strikes at Clark Field and its adjoining fighter bases. Now they feared that the Clark-based B-17’s would suddenly appear overhead and smash their own planes lined up on the runways.

  The only aircraft to leave Formosa were from an Army field and all they did was drop their bombs far north of Manila on unimportant targets. Reports of these nuisance raids reached Brereton’s headquarters at Nielson Field, on the outskirts of Manila, at 9:25 A.M. Brereton phoned Sutherland again begging permission to bomb Formosa. Again he was turned down, and when MacArthur finally changed his mind after forty minutes it was so late that Brereton had to make new plans hastily.

  His bombers were cruising aimlessly above Mount Arayat in order not to be caught on the ground, and for half an hour were not informed that it was a false alarm. They returned to Clark for refueling, followed by fighters flying cover.

  Back at Nielson Field, new alarms were coming in to the Interceptor Command by phone and telegraph from towns all along the northwest coast of Luzon. Some spoke of twenty-seven planes that looked like fighters, others of fifty-four heavy bombers. The fog had lifted in Formosa, and 196 Japanese naval planes in several groups were nearing their targets on Luzon. The bulk was bound for Clark Field. Colonel Alexander H. Campbell, Brereton’s aircraft warning officer, tried to make sense of the conflicting reports and concluded that one group was heading for Manila and several for Clark Field. At 11:45 A.M. he sent a teletype to Clark that failed to get through. Nor could anyone be raised on radio; apparently the operator was having lunch. Finally Campbell got a faint phone connection with Clark and was assured by a junior officer that he would immediately give the information to the base commander or operations officer.

  By 12:10 P.M., all fighter pilots on Luzon were either in the air or on alert—except for those at Clark Field. The junior officer had not yet passed on Campbell’s warning. Not a single fighter plane was flying cover over the parked Flying Fortresses.

  At 12:25, twenty-seven new Mitsubishi high-level bombers roared over Tarlac, just twenty miles to the north. Their goal was Clark, where many of the ground crew were walking unconcernedly from the mess halls to the flight line. Ordnance men were loading bombs on the huge unpainted Flying Fortresses. Pilots of the eighteen P-40B fighters, under Lieutenant Joseph H. Moore, were lolling in their planes at the edge of the field near empty fuel-drum revetments.

  At the 30th Squadron mess hall, mechanics and bomber crewmen were listening to a Don Bell broadcast over KMZH. “There is an unconfirmed report,” said Bell, “that they’re bombing Clark Field.” This elicited laughter and catcalls. Indeed, there were those who refused to believe that Pearl Harbor had been attacked; it was probably some “eager beaver’s” idea to put everyone on the alert.

  The Japanese in the twenty-seven Mitsubishis could already see a mass of large American bombers glittering in the bright sun. Their target was ridiculously visible, parked out in the vast open plain with Mount Arayat rising up like a huge traffic marker fifteen miles east of the field. Just behind came twenty-seven more bombers, and hovering high above were thirty-five Zero fighters. It was 12:35 P.M. Ten hours after Pearl Harbor, every plane at Clark Field was a sitting duck.

  At the edge of the field, New Mexico national guardsmen of the 200th Coast Artillery were eating lunch around their 37-mm. and 3-inch antiaircraft guns. At the cry “Here comes the Navy!” Sergeant Dwaine Davis of Carlsbad grabbed a movie camera bought with compa
ny funds and began taking pictures.

  “Why are they dropping tinfoil?” someone asked.

  “That’s not tinfoil, and those are goddamn Japs!” Then there was a roar like the sound of rushing freight trains.

  At the other end of the field a crew chief of the 20th Pursuit Squadron shouted, “Good God Almighty, yonder they come!” Lieutenant Joe Moore raced for his P-40B. Followed by six of his squadron, he taxied into position. He lifted into the air, swung wide and started a maximum power climb. Two others got off, but the last four planes were hit by bombs.

  The air-raid siren shrieked, but the ground crews seemed transfixed by the great V formation overhead—until strings of bombs fishtailed toward them.

  For the first time the national guardsmen at the AA guns fired live ammunition; much of their training had been with broomsticks and boxes or wooden models. Their bursts exploded far below the targets, but it was satisfying and somehow exhilarating to let loose at something in earnest.

  All at once there was nothing to shoot at. The sudden silence came like a jolt. Corporal Durwood Brooks walked toward the flight line in a daze. The idea of war was new and terrifying. Bodies and limbs were scattered around. He saw a friend, a Polish boy of nineteen, in a slit trench. By some freak an explosive bullet had blown him up like a balloon; he looked almost transparent.

  Men began emerging from the trenches like sleepwalkers, momentarily numb to the groans of the wounded. Buildings blazed and dark rolls of smoke churned from the oil dump across the field. But by a miracle only a few Flying Fortresses had been damaged.

  Lieutenant Moore and his two companions were trying to give chase. They found to their amazement that the Zeros were faster and more maneuverable, climbing at an astounding rate. They had been assured there was no such thing as a good Japanese fighter plane, although exact data on these Zeros had been sent to the War Department by the brilliant and unorthodox Colonel Claire Chennault in the fall of 1940. The chief of the Flying Tigers had also elaborated in detail on ways whereby the heavier P-40 should be able to shoot down the faster Zero, but this information, which could have saved the lives of bewildered American pilots dying that moment, had been filed away. Chennault was too much of a maverick to be taken seriously by his superiors.