by Toland, John
At Army General Staff headquarters, Imamura was told that he and Admiral Yamamoto would work together to intensify air attacks in the Solomons and to reinforce the troops on Guadalcanal. Then the two would mount a joint offensive to retake Henderson Field and Tulagi.
Imamura arrived in Rabaul, New Britain, on November 22. He radioed Hyakutake, who was still on Guadalcanal, that he was sending two fresh divisions within a month; he asked for a complete factual report “without hiding anything.”
Hyakutake had just lost a thousand men on the Mataniko front. He radioed Imamura that his troops had been living on grass roots and water for a month.
… AN AVERAGE OF 100 MEN STARVE TO DEATH DAILY. THIS AVERAGE WILL ONLY INCREASE. BY THE TIME WE GET TWO DIVISION REINFORCEMENTS, DOUBTFUL HOW MANY TROOPS HERE WILL BE ALIVE.
The General Staff had not prepared Imamura for this but he was committed to their ambitious plans by his personal vow to the Emperor to retake Guadalcanal. For the moment all the general could do was send a message of sympathy to the men of Guadalcanal calling their bravery “enough to make even the gods weep,” and asking them to “set His Majesty’s heart at ease” by helping him retake the island.
It was the Army General Staff alone that remained irrevocably committed to the continuation of the Guadalcanal campaign. Their demands for more men, supplies and particularly another 370,000 tons of shipping had finally forced the War Ministry to reassess the situation. The chief aim, at present, said the War Ministry, was to increase the national power and war potential, and the requisition of additional ships would decrease the number of civilian ships, thereby decreasing national power. This would be worse than the loss of Guadalcanal.
The General Staff said it was ridiculous to set up Imamura’s new command without giving him ships to transport his troops—he would be “a man without a head.”
“Today there is the impression that Japan is on the verge of rise or fall,” Colonel Sako Tanemura, who had witnessed most of these arguments, wrote in his unofficial “Imperial Headquarters [Army] Diary” on November 18. It was like the lull before a great storm. “Does the General Staff have good prospects of success? If not, what should it do to get out of the difficulty? The Supreme Command must reflect carefully to cope with this touchy situation. Advance or withdraw! It is very delicate. No one is confident of victory … but the fake pride of Imperial Headquarters is forcing us to wage the Decisive Battle on Guadalcanal. If we should be defeated on Guadalcanal, it is certain we will lose the Pacific war itself.”
While debate over shipping dragged on, the Navy devised a makeshift operation to resupply Guadalcanal. Large metal drums partially filled with medical supplies or basic victuals with just enough air space for buoyancy were to be strung together with rope and hung from a destroyer’s gunwales. Upon arrival at Guadalcanal the string of drums would be cut loose as the destroyer made a sharp turn. A motorboat or a swimmer would pick up the buoyed end of the rope and bring it ashore, where soldiers would haul in the long line of drums.
First test of the new system came on the night of November 29. Admiral Tanaka, on the flagship Naganami, led a column of eight destroyers down the Solomons passage at 24 knots. Six of the ships were necklaced with from 200 to 240 drums apiece. The first and last destroyers acted as escort. Just before eleven o’clock the convoy passed west of Savo and swung left toward Tassafaronga. As it approached the point, the six supply destroyers broke off and prepared to loose their drums. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the sea was like black glass.
One of the destroyers discovered ships, bearing 100 degrees, and signaled Tanaka: “Seven enemy destroyers sighted.” The admiral gave orders to cease unloading and take battle stations.
Coming toward them was an eleven-ship formation—five cruisers in column with three destroyers on either flank—commanded by Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright. His flagship, Minneapolis, had already made radar contact but the admiral hesitated to send his van destroyers into the attack. Ten minutes later the destroyer Fletcher’s radar showed the Japanese on the port bow 7,000 yards away. Her skipper, Commander William M. Cole, asked Wright for permission to fire torpedoes; the admiral again hesitated—he thought the distance was too great—and it took Cole four minutes to convince him it wasn’t. At eleven-twenty Cole finally launched ten torpedoes. A moment later Admiral Wright ordered his cruisers to commence firing. “Roger! And I do mean Roger!” Wright said over voice radio. His cruisers opened up with their 5-, 6- and 8-inch guns, and shells began to rain on Tanaka’s lead ship, Takanami. She was almost ripped to pieces, but the crew continued working their guns until the ship exploded.
The cheering on Minneapolis was cut short as the cruiser was jarred twice by Japanese torpedoes. A third ripped into the port bow of New Orleans; two magazines exploded, ripping off the forward part of the ship. Almost simultaneously Pensacola was staggered by a hit below the mainmast on the port side, which flooded her after engine room.
While Northampton was avoiding the three damaged cruisers, Oyashio sent two torpedoes into her. The explosions were so cataclysmic that men on the bridge of nearby Honolulu broke uncontrollably into tears. Northampton listed sharply to port, afterpart in flames, and had to stop to check flooding. But she was beyond help and sank stern first.
Tanaka had already withdrawn. In the half-hour battle he had whipped the much heavier American force. At the cost of a single destroyer and without radar, he had sunk one cruiser and badly damaged three others. But his mission had failed; not a drum was delivered to the starving men of Guadalcanal.
Two nights later Tanaka made a second attempt. This time seven drum-laden destroyers survived an ineffectual Allied air raid, and reached Tassafaronga Point intact. The drums, 1,500 in all, were cut loose, but little more than 300 could be hauled to the beach. Tanaka tried again several days later; air and torpedo-boat attacks, however, were so effective that the entire convoy had to turn back.
On Guadalcanal, starvation and malaria had become the real enemy of Hyakutake’s men. Formal battle would have dissipated Japanese resistance in a matter of days and Colonel Konuma had to devise new tactics to cope with the combined Marine-GI attacks. Japanese soldiers dug individual foxholes and were ordered to stay in them even if the Americans overran their positions. Each foxhole would become a little fortress and Konuma gambled that the Americans would not accept the losses to overcome such a guerrilla-type defense.
Those who were too weak from disease and hunger to fight crowded the beaches. The air was putrid from the smell of rotting corpses. Large bluebottle flies feasted on the wounded and sick who were unable to drive them off. The men devised a mortality chart:
He who can rise to his feet 30 days left to live
He who can sit up 20 days left to live
He who must urinate while lying down 3 days left to live
He who cannot speak 2 days left to live
He who cannot blink eyes dead at dawn
2.
Colonel Tsuji, who had confessed he deserved “a sentence of ten thousand deaths” for his mistakes on Guadalcanal, was back in Tokyo with a new recommendation for saving the island. He convinced the General Staff that Lieutenant Colonel Kumao Imoto of the Operations Section should be sent, as Tsuji had, to supervise the new offensive on Guadalcanal.
Tsuji’s influence was as effective as ever, and early in December Imoto left Tokyo. Imoto had accepted the assignment, but privately he disagreed with his superiors; in his opinion Guadalcanal should be evacuated. He stopped at Truk to report to Combined Fleet, where Admiral Ugaki, one of his instructors at the War College, told him, “This is a most difficult situation. Let’s not worry about who should take the initiative in solving the problem. Our sole concern should be to decide what ought to be done at the present moment.”
It was an abstruse way—understandable only to one used to Navy subtlety—of advising Imoto that withdrawal from Guadalcanal was the only alternative. “I understand what you mean,” said Imoto. He flew on to Ra
baul with the conviction that Admiral Yamamoto shared his chief of staff’s conclusions—and he was right.
At Imamura’s headquarters Imoto encountered vehement criticism of General Staff policy. “The people in Tokyo are insane!” one of Imamura’s officers blurted out during the map games held to work out the details of the Guadalcanal offensive. “Do you honestly think there is the slightest chance of success in another attack?”
Nevertheless, Imoto forced the games through to their conclusion. He had to demonstrate the futility of further attacks before revealing his own reservations. The games proved what they all feared: hardly a transport reached the island.
In the corridors of Army headquarters in Tokyo, where the War Ministry and the Army General Staff shared the same building on Ichigaya Heights, there was already talk of withdrawal from Guadalcanal. The first general officer to suggest this course of action openly was Major General Kenryo Sato, Tojo’s adviser and chief of the Military Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry. Perturbed by the General Staff’s insistence on another 620,000 tons of shipping, he told Tojo they should “give up the idea of retaking Guadalcanal.”
“Do you mean withdrawal?” Tojo asked sharply.
“We have no choice. Even now it may be too late. If we go on like this, we have no chance of winning the war.” The position on Guadalcanal, moreover, was untenable. The enemy completely controlled the air and sea. “If we continue to hang on, it will end up as a battle of attrition of our transports.”
Tojo heard Sato out but remained troubled by the Emperor’s order to retake Guadalcanal; also, he was reluctant to interfere with military authority. He still believed, in spite of nagging doubts, that the General Staff should remain independent of the government. “Besides, even if we wanted,” he finally said, “we couldn’t give the General Staff all the ships they demand. If we did, our steel-production quota of over four million tons would be cut by more than half and we would be unable to continue the war.” He was torn by old loyalties. His face became pinched. He asked Sato if a reduction in the number of ships would oblige the General Staff to decide on withdrawal.
“Not immediately,” Sato replied. But he brightened at the thought of intrigue. He suggested that they make no mention of withdrawing for the time being, but give the Army only their share of shipping. Tojo nodded grimly.
At the next Cabinet meeting Tojo pushed through a plan to give the Army and Navy a total of but 290,000 tons, with the promise that more would follow, if possible. This resolution brought the continuing argument between the War Ministry and the Army General Staff to a crisis. Sato spoke for Tojo and his reasoning was sound; what infuriated the General Staff most was his implication that the operation on Guadalcanal would have to be “suspended.”
Under pressure from the General Staff, Tojo convened a special meeting of his cabinet on the evening of December 5 to reconsider the demands for more shipping. It was agreed to give both services another 95,000 tons. The increase was so small that Sato’s assistants warned him to explain the matter to the General Staff in person. But it was already past ten o’clock and Sato said that he would wait until morning. As he entered his quarters the phone was ringing. Lieutenant General Moritake Tanabe, the Vice Chief of Staff, asked Sato to come to his official residence at once and explain the Cabinet’s decision.
At the door of Tanabe’s house Sato heard angry shouts from inside. He recognized the voice of the Army’s Chief of Operations, the impulsive and hot-tempered Lieutenant General Shinichi Tanaka. Inside, Sato was confronted by seven or eight members of the General Staff.
“Bakayaro!” Tanaka shouted. He had been drinking.
When Sato turned to leave, Tanaka reached for his sword. Several of his colleagues seized him but he broke away, rushed at Sato and hit him in the face. Sato punched back. The two generals swung at each other as several General Staff officers shouted encouragement to Tanaka, made savage by the “power of sake.” Sato broke loose and pushed his way out of the hostile room. It was the first fight he had ever walked away from.
With Sato gone, the impetuous Tanaka still could not be restrained. It was well past midnight when, belligerent with charges and demands, he burst into the home of Tojo’s deputy in the ministry. Heitaro Kimura, a quiet man, apologized to Tanaka for the “insufficiency of my efforts” and finally persuaded him to go home. Even when he was sobered up the next morning, Tanaka continued his attacks. This time his victim was General Teiichi Suzuki of the Cabinet Planning Board. This intemperate display hardened Tojo’s position. He told Sato to inform the General Staff that “come what may” the Army was to get only what the Cabinet had decreed.
It was clear to the General Staff that Tojo’s ultimatum meant eventual suspension of the battle for Guadalcanal. The division chiefs held an emergency meeting and then, uninvited, drove in a body to the Prime Minister’s official residence. In the anteroom Sugiyama took aside Colonel Tanemura, the diarist, and whispered, “If there is another quarrel, bring him [Tanaka] out at once.”
Tanaka was ushered into a Japanese-style room where Sato and two others were sitting on the floor. Sato and Tanaka stared at each other as if ready to resume their fight. The atmosphere grew increasingly embarrassing. Finally, just before midnight, Tojo entered in kimono and lowered himself to the tatami. Tanaka begged him to reconsider the demand of the General Staff. Calmly, without a trace of emotion, Tojo refused. For half an hour the two argued, their voices rising. Tanaka lost all control. “What are you doing about the war?” he shouted. “We’ll lose it this way. Kono bakayaro [you damn fool]!”
Tojo stiffened. “What abusive language you use!” he said. The room was hushed. Tanemura entered from the anteroom and took Tanaka’s arm. “The Chief’s orders,” he said.
Tanaka, after being officially reprimanded for insulting a superior officer, was dismissed from his position, but as so often was the case in Japan, his crude and violent advocacy won the Army a temporary victory. The following evening Tojo bowed to the General Staff’s request for more shipping.
3.
Six hundred miles due west of Henderson Field lay the eastern tip of the second largest island in the world. Ungainly New Guinea, shaped very much like a plucked turkey, sprawled laterally for fifteen hundred miles. It was rugged, savage country, hardly worth fighting for except for its peculiar strategic position as a stepping stone—first by the Japanese to Australia and now by the Allies to New Britain and its vital port, Rabaul.
Thirty thousand American and Australian troops under Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger had fought their way from Port Moresby—on the south coast of the Papua peninsula, which pointed like a stubby finger at Guadalcanal—to take Buna Village on the opposite side of the promontory.
“Bob, I want you to take Buna or not come back alive,” MacArthur had told Eichelberger. “And that goes for your chief of staff too.”
It was a victory achieved at high cost in lives and suffering. The troops had been forced to cross the formidable Owen Stanley Range while fighting battles as fierce as those on Guadalcanal under just as miserable conditions. Though Buna had fallen, the ordeal was far from over. As on Guadalcanal, the Japanese refused to admit they were defeated and were making Australians and Americans pay for every yard of territory.
Attention at Imperial Headquarters, however, remained focused on Guadalcanal, where disaster was even more imminent. It was becoming more and more difficult to get supplies through. The drum supply system had proved impractical. Only limited amounts of medicine and food could be brought in by submarines stripped of torpedoes, guns and shells, or dropped from planes.
The Navy was ready to abandon Guadalcanal; and Yamamoto had let it be known in high circles that he favored such action immediately. But the Army General Staff still stood firm—in public. In private, however, informal conversations were going on among its members about how to withdraw without losing face. After all, they had promised the Emperor victory on Guadalcanal.
The urgency of the situati
on was emphasized by a radiogram from General Hyakutake on December 23:
NO FOOD AVAILABLE AND WE CAN NO LONGER SEND OUT SCOUTS. WE CAN DO NOTHING TO WITHSTAND THE ENEMY’S OFFENSIVE. 17TH ARMY NOW REQUESTS PERMISSION TO BREAK INTO THE ENEMY’S POSITIONS AND DIE AN HONORABLE DEATH RATHER THAN DIE OF HUNGER IN OUR OWN DUGOUTS.
On Christmas Day the Army and Navy leaders held a formal emergency meeting at the Imperial Palace to resolve the problem. It was no longer a question of whether withdrawal was necessary, but which service would have the courage to recommend it officially and thereby risk accepting the blame for defeat. Chief of Staff Nagano, his assistant Ito, Admiral Fukudome and Captain Tomioka represented the Navy; Chief of Staff Sugiyama and Colonel Tsuji represented the Army.
Admiral Fukudome, Nagano’s Chief of Operations, urged withdrawal but he himself hesitated. “What do you think of joint tactical map games before we decide?” he suggested.
Tsuji erupted. More than anyone else in the room he realized what each day’s delay meant to the starving men on Guadalcanal. Waving his arms, he exclaimed that it was the Navy’s duty to study general trends before an emergency arose. “You are all very well posted on the battle situation and yet you can’t even reach a decision. You had better all resign! I’ve often been on destroyers and undergone heavy air raids. The naval commanders I met there all told me, ‘The big shots at the Tokyo Hotel [Navy General Staff] and the Yamato Hotel [Combined Fleet] should come out here and see what we have to take and then they might understand!’ ”
Tomioka agreed with Tsuji on withdrawal but was so aroused by the insult to the Navy that he shot to his feet. “What are you trying to say? That destroyer commanders are all faint of heart? Take that back!”
