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

by Toland, John

  On April 1 the sixteen crews finally selected for the mission boarded the carrier Hornet at Alameda Air Station in California while the other eight crews looked on with envy. The next day after breakfast Doolittle collected the men in an empty mess hall and began, “For the benefit of those who have not already been told or have been guessing, we are going to bomb Japan.” Thirteen planes would drop their four bombs apiece on Tokyo; three single planes would hit Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. “The Navy will get us in as close as possible and launch us off the deck.” They would not return to the carrier but would overfly Japan and make for small fields in China. Did anyone want to back out? No one did.

  Just before noon, accompanied by one heavy and one light cruiser, four destroyers and an oiler, Hornet with the sixteen B-25’s lashed to her decks, passed under the golden Gate Bridge. The departure of the bombers on their secret mission was witnessed by thousands of onlookers.

  On April 8 Admiral William Halsey-“Bull” to reporters, but Bill to his intimates—steamed out of Pearl Harbor on the carrier Enterprise with two heavy cruisers, four destroyers and an oiler. He was to rendezvous with Hornet and her escort and accompany them to the launching point.

  The Japanese knew nothing of the double sortie until two days later when Combined Fleet radio intelligence men intercepted messages between the two forces and Pearl Harbor. They deduced that if the Americans continued to proceed westward, Tokyo would be bombed. Because of the limited range of a carrier plane, the American ships would have to approach within four hundred miles before reaching the launching point. Since a surveillance net extended seven hundred miles offshore, there would be ample time to attack the enemy before the planes could take off. The assessment was accurate except for one thing—these were no ordinary carrier planes and they were scheduled to take off five hundred miles from the target.

  On April 13 the two American units merged into one formidable group, Task Force 16, and steamed directly for Tokyo. The crews’ confidence in the secrecy of their mission was shaken three days later when they heard a propaganda broadcast from Radio Tokyo: “Reuters, British news agency, has announced that three American bombers have dropped bombs on Tokyo. This is a most laughable story. They know it is absolutely impossible for enemy bombers to get within five hundred miles of Tokyo. Instead of worrying about such foolish things, the Japanese people are enjoying the fine spring sunshine and the fragrance of cherry blossoms.”

  The following day the fliers reported to the flight deck for a special ceremony. Captain Marc A. Mitscher handed over to Doolittle five Japanese medals awarded to Americans. The recipients had all asked that they be attached to a bomb and returned to Japan. While the medals were fixed to a bomb, fliers chalked on derisive slogans like “I don’t want to set the world on fire, just Tokyo,” and “You’ll get a BANG out of this!”

  Doolittle ended the horseplay by announcing that they would take off the next day. Task Force 16 would arrive at the launching point a day ahead of time. This was their last briefing. Doolittle would leave first, timed to reach Tokyo at dusk. “The rest of you will take off two or three hours later and can use my fires as a homing beacon.”

  There was one last-minute question that no one had put before: what to do in case of a crash-landing in Japan. That was up to each pilot. Doolittle didn’t intend to be taken prisoner. “I’m going to bail my crew out and then dive it, full throttle, into any target I can find where the crash will do the most good. I’m forty-six years old and have lived a full life.”

  The next morning at three o’clock, while they were still more than seven hundred miles from Tokyo, the secrecy of the mission—and therefore its success—was directly threatened. The radar of Enterprise detected two enemy ships off the port bow some twelve miles away. Several minutes later a light flickered on the horizon. Task Force 16 changed course and General Quarters was sounded on every ship. For half an hour the men waited uneasily. Then the All Clear sounded and the fleet resumed its westerly course as if nothing had happened.

  The weather was foul and the ships pitched and rolled. Just before dawn three search bombers left Enterprise to probe two hundred miles ahead. One of the pilots sighted a small patrol boat through the murky gray overcast; he turned back and dropped a bean-bag on the carrier’s deck. In it was a scrawled message:

  Enemy surface ship—latitude 36–04N, Long. 153–10E, bearing 276° true—42 miles. Believed seen by enemy.

  As a precaution Halsey swung all his ships to port. Within an hour, lookouts on Hornet herself sighted a small patrol vessel—it was No. 23 Nitto-maru—which began sending a message in the clear that three enemy aircraft carriers had been sighted seven hundred miles from Tokyo. Then another patrol boat was sighted little more than six miles away. Halsey ordered them both sunk and flashed a message to Hornet:

  LAUNCH PLANES X TO COL. DOOLITTLE AND GALLANT COMMAND GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU.

  On the bridge of Hornet, Doolittle pumped Mitscher’s hand and scurried down the ladder to his cabin, shouting, “Okay, fellas, this is it! Let’s go!” The klaxon screeched. The bullhorn boomed: “Army pilots, man your planes!”

  No one realized as keenly as the pilots how seriously this abrupt change jeopardized their chances for success—and survival. Everything had been planned precisely to the last gallon of gas, and now 150 miles had been added to their flight. Moreover, the surprise element was gone and they would have to bomb in daylight. All the same, they were eager to go and one refused an offer of $150 from a relief crewman to take his place.

  As Commander John Ford, the noted movie director, and his crew took pictures, a mechanical donkey began pulling the twin-ruddered bombers into position. The first plane, Doolittle’s, had 467 feet of runway. Ten extra 5-gallon cans of gasoline were loaded into each plane; the main tanks were topped.

  Doolittle gave his engines full throttle and they roared so that some of the pilots feared he’d burn them up. The wheel blocks were yanked away and the plane lunged ahead, the left tire following a white line running down the port side of the deck. The port wing of the B-25 hung over the side of the carrier as the bomber clumsily wobbled forward, flaps down, into the teeth of the gale sweeping down the deck.

  The other pilots watched tensely, wondering if the stiff wind would be enough to help lift Doolittle in time. If he didn’t make it, they surely wouldn’t. The B-25 gained speed. To some pilots Doolittle’s acceleration seemed agonizingly slow, but just as the bow of the carrier was lifted high by the heavy sea, he pulled up the bomber with yards of deck to spare. It was 7:20 A.M.

  There were spontaneous cheers as the Doolittle plane circled, passed low over Hornet and took a direct course for Tokyo. The remaining bombers began rolling heavily down the deck one at a time, each “sweated” into the air by the onlookers. All went well until the last plane slowly taxied toward the starting line. Suddenly one of the deck crew—Seaman Robert W. Wall—lost his footing and was blown like a tumbleweed by the preceding plane’s blast into the spinning left propeller. It mangled his left arm but knocked him free.

  Feeling the jar, the pilot glanced back to see Wall sprawled on the deck. Rattled, he put his flap control lever back in retract instead of neutral. The plane struggled off the end of the deck and abruptly dropped out of sight under the bow. The deck crews were certain it was going to plunge into the sea; then, to their relief, they saw it skimming just above the waves. Ponderously it lifted, turned and followed the other planes. It was 8:20 A.M.

  Naval headquarters in Tokyo were aware that an aerial attack was imminent, but the position given by Nitto-maru made them equally certain it would not come for another day. All available planes—90 fighters and 116 bombers—were alerted and Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo was ordered to leave Yokosuka Naval Base at once and intercept the Americans with six heavy cruisers and ten destroyers.

  At 9:45 A.M. a patrol plane reported it had come across a two-engine bomber flying westward some six hundred miles from land. But no one believed the report; the
Americans didn’t have twin-engine planes on carriers. The bombing attack could not possibly come until the next morning at the earliest, when the enemy carriers would be within three hundred miles of the coast.

  By coincidence, just as the last planes were leaving Hornet an air-raid drill began in Tokyo. It was a tame affair, without as much as the shriek of a siren, and civilians ignored orders of officious air wardens to seek shelter. Instead they watched fire-fighting brigades show off their equipment. By noon it was all over. Most of the barrage balloons had been hauled down and three fighter planes circled lazily above the city. It was a warm, pleasant Saturday and the streets were again busy with shoppers and pleasure seekers.

  A few minutes later Doolittle reached the coast of Japan eighty miles off course to the north. He banked left. In the plane behind, Navigator Carl Wildner began looking for fighter interceptors but all he saw were trainers rolling and looping. As the B-25 skimmed over the countryside he noticed people going about unconcerned. He passed over a military camp low enough to make out a group of officers, their swords flashing in the sunlight.

  The most important officer in Japan was in a plane trying to land through the line of oncoming American bombers. That morning Prime Minister Tojo had learned that an enemy task force was somewhere off the coast but had been assured it would be safe to take an inspection trip by air to Mito Aviation School. As his American-made passenger plane approached the landing field, a two-engine craft came up on the right. Tojo’s secretary, Colonel Nishiura, thought it was a “queer-looking plane.” It came so close that the pilot’s face was visible, and it occurred to Nishiura—it’s American! It flashed by without firing a shot.

  At exactly 12:30 P.M. Doolittle was over his target. Using a twenty-cent “Mark Twain” bombing device, which was more accurate for a low-altitude attack than the overrated Norden bombsight, Fred Braemer released the first bomb. There was no effective opposition from fighters or antiaircraft as plane after plane swept over the city dumping their explosives. One of the pilots, Captain Edward York, discovered that he didn’t have enough gas to get sufficiently deep into China and turned northwest for Vladivostok, though it meant probable internment. “I’ll bet we’re the first B-25 crew of five to bomb Tokyo and cross Japan at noon on a Saturday,” joked the co-pilot to ease the tension.

  Except for those near the impact areas, the citizens of Tokyo assumed the American attack was just a realistic climax to the air-raid drill. Nor did the truth come from radio station JOAK, which had abruptly gone off the air with the first explosions. Children in schoolyards and people in the crowded streets waved at the passing planes, mistaking their circular red, white and blue markings—similar to those used by the Allies in World War I—for the Rising Sun. Not a plane was shot down.

  Planes passed over the Imperial Palace but nothing was dropped. The crews had cut cards to see who would go after the Emperor’s residence, but Doolittle had issued explicit orders to avoid the Palace grounds as well as hospitals and schools.

  At the Army and Navy Club, Captain Tomioka was having lunch with Colonel Hattori. Their discussion of the Midway invasion, which both continued to oppose, was interrupted by the crump of bombs. “Wonderful!” Tomioka exclaimed, guessing that they came from enemy carrier planes. If the American fleet moved in closer, the Navy could have its Decisive Battle in homeland waters.

  This possibility never occurred to the man most eager about Midway. Instead Admiral Yamamoto was so stricken by shame at the attack on the capital that he left the pursuit of the Americans to Matome Ugaki, his chief of staff, retired to his room and refused to come out. Chief Steward Heijiro Omi had never seen him so pale or depressed.

  Admiral Ugaki was unable to locate the enemy fleet and that evening wrote in his diary: “We must improve countermeasures against future enemy attacks by checking the types and numbers of planes. At any rate, today the victory belonged to the enemy.” He wondered if the American task force had reversed course and run or was preparing another air assault on Tokyo.

  Halsey had long since turned back toward Pearl Harbor; there were no more bombers to launch. Captain York’s plane arrived safely in Vladivostok, where the crew of five was interned by the Russians. The other fifteen bombers came down in Japanese-occupied China. Three men were killed in crash-landings or bailouts; eight were captured and brought to Tokyo for trial.* The rest, including Doolittle, were alive and heading by various routes for Chiang Kai-shek’s lines.

  The feat lifted the morale of Americans still shaken by the fall of Bataan. It seemed to be a pledge that America would soon go over to the attack, and Allies on every battlefield and in every prison camp found fresh hope. Newspapers in the United States headlined the story with exuberance. DOOLITTLE DID IT, crowed the Los Angeles Times. Roosevelt added to the public’s delight over the surprise raid by announcing, with his flare for the dramatic, that the bombers had taken off from Shangri-La.

  The foray caused no outward panic in Japan, but was a psychological shock to a nation brought up to believe for centuries that somehow the homeland would always be safe from assault. The newspapers belittled it as a “complete failure,” yet pictured Doolittle’s men as demons who “carried out an inhuman, insatiable, indiscriminate bombing attack on the sly,” and demonstrated “their fiendish behavior” by ruthlessly strafing civilians and noncombatants. As testimony of the effective Japanese air defense of Tokyo, a wing and a landing-gear tubing of a B-25 (secretly brought over from China) were exhibited at the Yasukuni Shrine Provisional Festival; a parachute was effectively draped over a ginkgo tree in full bloom.

  The raid itself was a failure as far as physical damage was concerned, but the fact that it had happened forced the Supreme Command to over-react. Four fighter groups were reassigned to protect Japan from assaults that were not even being planned by the enemy. The China Expeditionary Army was ordered to cease other operations and rout out enemy air bases in the Chekiang area.

  More important, it finally brought an end to opposition within the Navy to the Midway campaign. Yamamoto came out of his one-day retirement to renew demands that the invasion be executed promptly. Unless Midway—which had probably been the base of the air attack—was captured shortly, air and sea patrols in front of the homeland would have to be strengthened at the expense of battle area. Those who had been hoping to sabotage the project by a series of delaying actions capitulated, and on April 20 at a joint Army-Navy meeting, the Navy General Staff proposed that the plan to cut the Australian life line by seizing Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia be postponed so the Midway invasion could proceed as soon as possible. The Army still considered it a risky venture, but with Nagano openly supporting Yamamoto, reluctantly approved the operation. It was no time to create antagonistic feelings between the two services. Besides, the Navy would go ahead with the invasion no matter what the Army said.

  3.

  General Homma’s guns began to churn Corregidor into a no man’s land. Though morale was fairly high among the defenders, there was little hope that the island could be held long. A favorite song was “I’m Waiting for Ships That Never Come In,” and some of the men sarcastically wondered if the V’s for Victory chalked on so many helmets stood for Victim.

  On April 29 Japanese artillery fire and bombing reached a crescendo. It was the Emperor’s birthday. Two ammunition dumps exploded, solid rock cliffs were disintegrated and uncontrollable grass fires swept the little island, covering it with thick clouds of smoke and dust. The next day, and the next, there was no respite. The bombardment concentrated on the big mortars of Batteries Geary and Way which covered the approach from Bataan. By the morning of May 2 Battery Geary was still intact, but not for long. At noon an explosion rocked Corregidor like an earthquake. Battery Geary erupted. The barrels of its eight 10-ton mortars were tossed into the air like match sticks, one landing 150 yards away on the pockmarked golf course.

  Corregidor now had little except its beach-defense troops to hold off the landings. Of the 4,000 in number a
t the fall of Bataan, there were little more than 3,000 effectives left because of extensive bombardment casualties. Of these, about 1,300 were well-trained fighters from the 4th Marine Regiment. The rest was a conglomerate force of Filipino fliers and artillerymen and American refugees from Bataan.

  Life outside Malinta Tunnel was dangerous, but at least there was fresh air and light. The 10,000 people who lived safely in the rambling underground system suffered from an intolerable tension nicknamed “tunnelitis.” The dust made breathing difficult, and the smell of death from the hospital pervaded every lateral. When the blowers were off during bombings, the air became fetid, the heat almost unbearable. Huge black flies, roaches and other insects overran the place. Tempers grew short: arguments sprang up over trifles.

  On May 3 General Wainwright was told that the water supply was dangerously low and radioed MacArthur:

  SITUATION HERE IS FAST BECOMING DESPERATE.

  The following day sixteen thousand shells burst on the island. The terrified beach defenders crouched in their shallow foxholes, filled with an overpowering hatred for the “tunnel rats.” But those inside were not comforted by the protection Malinta offered. The almost continuous drumfire of explosions drove many to the point of hysteria. In his little whitewashed office Wainwright wrote Marshall an estimate of the situation:

  IN MY OPINION THE ENEMY IS CAPABLE OF MAKING ASSAULT ON CORREGIDOR AT ANY TIME.

  SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF SUCH ASSAULT WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THE STEADFASTNESS OF BEACH DEFENSE TROOPS. CONSIDERING THE PRESENT LEVEL OF MORALE, I ESTIMATE THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING LESS THAN AN EVEN CHANCE TO BEAT OFF AN ASSAULT. I HAVE GIVEN YOU, IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST, A VERY FRANK AND HONEST OPINION ON THE SITUATION AS I SEE IT.

  Homma was again behind schedule. Corregidor should have fallen two weeks earlier but the invasion had been delayed by a malaria epidemic in the infested river valleys of southern Bataan which was finally brought under control by quinine tablets flown in from Japan.