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

by Toland, John

  No samurai could have acted more nobly and Jimbo decided to try to save Roxas no matter what the consequences. He left his two charges under guard in a small town and returned to Davao; somehow he had to persuade General Ikuta to ignore the execution order.

  Jimbo’s arguments were all that Ikuta needed. The two men decided to use Roxas to help restore law and order, but for a while he would have to be kept hidden. What they did could not be kept secret for long. An officer arrived from Manila; Jimbo was to be court-martialed for his “high-handed” actions.

  Jimbo flew up to Manila to confront Homma himself, but since the general was out of his office, he had to speak instead to his chief of staff. General Wachi couldn’t believe such an order had gone out, particularly after Homma’s violent reaction to the execution of Santos.

  Jimbo showed him the original document. Although Wachi was not able to cancel any order stamped with Homma’s name, he wrote out another, temporarily suspending the execution. He told Jimbo to wait and pushed his way into Hayashi’s office, where the general and four staff officers were in conference. Jimbo could hear Wachi’s angry voice: “Did you men issue the order to execute General Roxas?” Hayashi and the others denied it; it would be violation of a specific order by General Homma. How could Wachi ask such a question?

  “Colonel Jimbo, come in!” Wachi hollered.

  The staff officers glared at Jimbo as he pulled out the execution order—but were forced to confess that they had stamped it “without giving it too much thought.” There was an awkward pause. Hayashi wheeled on Jimbo and shouted, “You have done a terrible thing to us!”

  Later that night Wachi came to Jimbo’s room at the Manila Hotel. Homma was pleased with Jimbo’s initiative and had already issued an order countermanding the Roxas execution. Moreover, he would report the matter, including Jimbo’s part in it, to the Emperor.‡

  So Roxas was saved, but the episode emphasized the subversion in Homma’s own command. It also further undermined a career already in jeopardy. As a commander in the field Homma had not been as aggressive as Tokyo wanted, and in peace he was far too lenient toward the Philippine people. Even after Terauchi’s admonition he continued to treat the Filipinos as potential friends rather than a conquered enemy. Against advice from his staff he ordered the release of all Filipino soldiers in the prison camps.

  He was relieved of his command, ordered to Japan and forced to retire in semidisgrace without making the traditional report of a returning commander to the Emperor.§

  * The captured fliers gave their interrogators such confusing accounts (some said they came from the Aleutians, some from a special carrier no one had ever heard of, some from a mysterious island in the Pacific on no map) that Ugaki issued an order to somehow “solve the riddle of the enemy attack.” The prisoners were, according to Ugaki’s diary, “forced to tell the truth,” and finally revealed most of the facts of the attack, but by that time Halsey was halfway to Pearl Harbor.

  † When Marshall subsequently attempted to get Wainwright a Medal of Honor, MacArthur refused to approve on the grounds that his actions did not warrant this great distinction and it would be an injustice to others who had done far more. It was not until after the war that Wainwright at last received the decoration from President Truman. Bitterness toward MacArthur over this and similar matters still exists among the surviving group of officers close to Wainwright, nicknamed the Wainwright Travelers.

  ‡ Roxas survived the war to become the first President of the Republic. When he learned in August 1946 that the man who had saved his life was still a prisoner in North China awaiting trial as a war criminal, he wrote a personal letter to Chiang Kai-shek requesting amnesty for Jimbo. He was released and returned to Japan the following year and is now living in Tokyo. As Vice President of the Order of the Knights of Rizal [Dr. José Rizal], Tokyo Chapter, he is authorized to use the title Sir Nobuhiko.

  § After the war Homma was tried, convicted and executed as a war criminal by the man he defeated, MacArthur. Homma’s chief defense council, John H. Skeen, Jr., called it “a highly irregular trial, conducted in an atmosphere that left no doubt as to what the ultimate outcome would be.” The others on the defense staff signed a letter to Homma stating that he had been unjustly convicted. Associate Justice Frank Murphy of the U. S. Supreme Court protested the verdict. “This nation’s very honor, as well as its hope for the future, is at stake,” he wrote. “Either we conduct such a trial as this in the noble spirit and atmosphere of our Constitution or we abandon all pretense to justice, let the ages slip away and descend to the level of revengeful blood purges.… A nation must not perish, because in the natural frenzy of the aftermath of war, it abandoned the central theme of the dignity of the human personality and due process of law.”

  While Homma was awaiting sentence he wrote his wife, Fujiko: “In the twenty years of our married life we’ve had many differences of opinion and even violent quarrels. Those quarrels have now become sweet memories.… Now as I am about to part from you, I particularly see your good qualities, and I have completely forgotten any defects. I have no worry about leaving the children in your hands because I know you will raise them to be right and strong.… Twenty years feel short but they are long. I am content that we have lived a happy life together. If there is what is called the other world, we’ll be married again. I’ll go first and wait for you there but you mustn’t hurry. Live as long as you can for the children and do those things for me I haven’t been able to do. You will see our grandchildren and even great-grandchildren and tell me all about them when we meet again in the other world. Thank you very much for everything.”

  The last words from Homma came in a letter to his children just before the execution: “There are six men here who have been sentenced for life. It will be better to be shot to death—like dying an honorable death on the battlefield—than spending a disgraceful life in such a cage the rest of one’s life. Don’t lose courage, children! Don’t give in to temptation! Walk straight on the road of justice. The spirit of your father will long watch over you. Your father will be pleased if you will make your way in the right direction rather than bring flowers to his grave. Do not miss the right course. This is my very last letter.”

  13

  The Tide Turns

  1.

  By the end of April Captain Kameto Kuroshima, the “foggy staff officer,” had transformed Yamamoto’s basic idea into an intricate war plan that involved almost two hundred ships maneuvering in close co-operation over a battlefield stretching two thousand miles from the Aleutians to Midway, which was 2,300 miles east of Japan. On the face of it, the objective was to capture Midway and the western Aleutians. These islands would then become key points in a new outer perimeter stretching all the way from Kiska in the north, through Midway and Wake to Port Moresby in the south, just three hundred miles from Australia. Patrol planes based on these three islands could detect any enemy task force attempting to pierce the empire’s inner defense. In fact, however, the seizure of Midway was of secondary importance to Yamamoto; it was merely bait in the trap designed to lure the remnants of Nimitz’ fleet out of Pearl Harbor so it could be destroyed. That would mean the end, or at least postponement, of American efforts to dislodge the Japanese from their recent conquests in Southeast Asia.

  The commanders who would have to fight the battle—including Admiral Nagumo’s chief of staff, Ryunosuke Kusaka—were summoned to the recently completed 63,000-ton battleship Yamato, the new flagship of the Combined Fleet which bore the ancient name for “Japan,” to be briefed by Yamamoto personally. In the past five months Nagumo’s Striking Force had devastated Pearl Harbor, battered Darwin harbor, sunk two British heavy cruisers off Colombo, and the carrier Hermes and other ships off Trincomalee, on Ceylon, without a single surface loss. Nevertheless, Kusaka had serious reservations. Another major operation, he said, would be foolhardy. Kido Butai had steamed fifty thousand miles since Pearl Harbor and the ships needed reconditioning. The crews, too, ne
eded a rest; exhaustion was so prevalent that some men were actually seeing ghosts. Yamamoto overrode the objections. He ordered preparations accelerated.

  At the same time another important plan was set in motion. This was Operation Mo, the invasion of Port Moresby on the Coral Sea. Its fall would lead to easy conquest of the rest of New Guinea and place Australia itself in peril. As a preliminary, a force seized Tulagi, a small island some twenty miles north of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, and began constructing a seaplane base. The next day, May 4, the Port Moresby Invasion Force left Rabaul, since January the staging area for operations in the South Pacific at the upper tip of New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago. There were fourteen transports escorted by a light cruiser and six destroyers, and covered by the light carrier Shoho, four heavy cruisers and a destroyer.

  Most of this was known to Admiral Nimitz; his cryptanalysts had broken the Japanese fleet code. He had already dispatched Task Force 17—two carriers, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and eleven destroyers—under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to intercept the Japanese.

  Fletcher had reached the Coral Sea off northeastern Australia by the time he learned of the Tulagi landing. He immediately launched an air attack of ninety-nine planes on Tulagi from his flagship, the carrier Yorktown. To counteract this unexpected threat Vice Admiral Takeo Takagi, victor of the Battle of the Java Sea, was sent south from Bougainville with two heavy carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, two heavy cruisers and six destroyers.

  The two opposing forces drew closer, and it was Takagi who made the first contact. On the morning of May 7 one of his search pilots who spotted the oiler Neosho and a destroyer became overly excited and he reported them as an enemy carrier and cruiser. Two waves of high-level bombers and thirty-six dive bombers sank the destroyer and left the oiler helplessly adrift. While Takagi was concentrating his force on these minor targets, ninety-three planes from Yorktown and Lexington found the light carrier Shoho and began an aggressive bomb and torpedo attack. About 160 miles away comrades on the mother ships strained to hear this action on their radios, but the static made it difficult. Suddenly the voice of Lieutenant Commander Robert Dixon, leader of a scout bomber squadron, came in strong and clear: “Scratch one flattop! Dixon to carrier. Scratch one flattop!” At last, after five months, a Japanese ship larger than a destroyer had been sunk.

  In Rabaul the overall commander of Operation Mo, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, radioed the transports to turn back and wait until the seas were cleared of Americans. That afternoon visibility decreased and squalls limited aerial observation. By midnight the two enemy fleets had lost contact.

  Takagi, aboard a heavy cruiser, signaled Rear Admiral Tadaichi Hara, commander of the two carriers: CAN YOU LAUNCH A NIGHT AIR ATTACK? Hara signaled back from Zuikaku that he was prepared to send twenty-seven planes. They took off just before dusk but found nothing. On the way back, however, they were set upon by a group of Fletcher’s fighters. Nine Japanese were shot down; the others dispersed and tried to make their way home in the dark. One cluster of six eventually found a carrier and let down to join the other planes in the landing pattern. As the first Japanese skimmed the deck, landing hook extended, he was blasted over the side with a hail of gunfire. The carrier was Yorktown.

  After the fiasco, Takagi decided to retire temporarily to the north. Several hours later he doubled back toward the American carriers at 26 knots, and just before dawn on May 8, he dispatched twenty-seven search planes. The first carrier battle in history was imminent. Fletcher had radar but his carriers had operated together less than a week. Takagi had no radar but his two carriers had been working as a division for more than six months. Fletcher had 122 planes, Takagi one less. They were well matched, with Takagi having the slight advantage of cover from an overcast.

  But the first break went to Fletcher. At eight-fifteen one of his search pilots sighted the Japanese Striking Force. He circled, counting the ships, and radioed:

  TWO CARRIERS, FOUR HEAVY CRUISERS, MANY DESTROYERS, STEERING 120 DEGREES, 20 KNOTS. THEIR POSITION 175 MILES, ROUGHLY NORTHEAST.

  Fletcher ordered both carriers to launch air strikes, and around eleven o’clock thirty-nine planes from Yorktown came upon Shokaku, screened by heavy cruisers and destroyers. Zuikaku, just ten miles away, was hidden by a dense squall. Shokaku avoided torpedoes, but dive bombers made two direct hits which started fires. Another wave, twenty-four planes from Lexington, found the carriers. Shokaku escaped with one more bomb hit. Her fires were brought under control and she headed for home.

  Simultaneously the Japanese also found the Americans. Seventy planes converged on Fletcher’s two carriers. One bomb pierced the flight deck of Yorktown, but fires were skillfully brought under control. Lexington was not so lucky; two torpedoes ripped into her port side, while small bombs struck the main deck forward and the smokestack structure.

  The air attacks had been costly to both sides and by noon the battle was over. It was the first naval engagement in which opposing ships never saw each other or exchanged gunfire. It appeared as if Fletcher had emerged the victor. He had sunk a light carrier, a destroyer and three small vessels while losing one destroyer and an oiler. Then two explosions rocked the wounded Lexington and set off uncontrollable fires. Shortly after five o’clock Rear Admiral Aubrey Fitch, commander of the Carrier Group, leaned over the flag bridge and called down to Lexington’s skipper, Captain Frederick C. Sherman, “Well, Ted, let’s get the men off.”

  They lined up their shoes on the flight deck and calmly began going over the sides, as unconcerned as if it were a drill. One group went below to the ship’s service store; they filled their helmets with ice cream and ate it while waiting in line on the flight deck. As the last man, Captain Sherman, started down the life line, he told himself, Wouldn’t I look silly if I left this ship and the fires went out? But he clambered down the line, and once the survivors were clear, four torpedoes from the destroyer Phelps drove into the carrier’s starboard side. She shuddered and steam rose in billowing clouds.

  “There she goes,” said an officer watching from a nearby cruiser. “She didn’t turn over. She is going down with her head up. Dear old Lex. A lady to the last.”

  With the sinking of Lexington the battle became a tactical victory for Takagi, but the more important strategic triumph still was Fletcher’s. Admiral Inoue was forced to postpone the Port Moresby operation. Fletcher had accomplished his mission, and for the first time since Pearl Harbor a Japanese invasion had been thwarted.

  Takagi, however, was reluctant to give up. He was getting set to engage the Americans in a night battle when he learned that his own destroyers were almost out of fuel. Grudgingly he turned back for Rabaul. Far to the north, at his homeland anchorage Yamamoto was still resolved to pursue the Americans. Through Rabaul he ordered Takagi to attack in spite of the fuel shortage. Takagi obediently reversed course, but it was too late. Fletcher had vanished.

  Both sides claimed victory. The New York Times of May 9 announced:

  JAPANESE REPULSED IN GREAT PACIFIC BATTLE, WITH 17 TO 22 OF THEIR SHIPS SUNK OR CRIPPLED: ENEMY IN FLIGHT, PURSUED BY ALLIED WARSHIPS

  The Japan Times & Advertiser proclaimed that the enemy was panic-stricken. The source was a correspondent in Buenos Aires who wrote: “The effect of the terrible setback in the Coral Sea is indeed beyond description. A state of mania is prevalent in the American munitions fields.”

  Hitler was exultant. “After this new defeat the United States warships will hardly dare to face the Japanese fleet again, since any United States warship which accepts action with the Japanese naval forces is as good as lost.”

  2.

  Japanese newspaper accounts accurately reflected the jubilation at Imperial Headquarters—both Lexington and Yorktown had been sunk, a crushing blow to American power in the Pacific. The “triumph” stilled the objections of those who regarded the Midway operation as too hazardous. Coral Sea had been won by the 5th Air Squadron, the least experienced in the fle
et. What chance would the Americans have against the veterans of the 1st and 2nd Air Squadrons? Zuikaku and Shokaku arrived home a few days later. The “inferior” American pilots had inflicted more damage than first reported. Both would have to be scratched from the Midway invasion. Zuikaku had lost too many planes and pilots, and it would take a month to repair Shokaku.

  But nothing could undermine the supreme optimism that swept through Combined Fleet, and even Kusaka, recently so pessimistic, was sure Kido Butai could “beat the hell out of the Yankees.” The result was a relaxation of security measures. In contrast to preparations for Pearl Harbor, there was little attempt to disguise the flow of messages that marked the final stages, and staff officers openly discussed Operation Midway in restaurants and teahouses.

  On the evening of May 25 Yamamoto invited several hundred officers, including Nagumo and Kusaka, to a party on Yamato, which lay off Hashirajima in the Inland Sea. Too late Yamamoto’s steward, Heijiro Omi, discovered that the cook had made a grievous mistake. The tai, a fish cooked from head to tail, had been broiled in miso (salted bean paste) instead of salt; and the saying “to put miso on food” was a metaphor meaning “to make a mess of things.” Omi scolded the chef and in turn was scolded by the admiral’s flag secretary, but Yamamoto himself ignored the blunder and endless kampai (toasts) were drunk in heated sake to the Emperor and victory.