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

by Toland, John

  On the night of December 29, Suzuki received the first message from Fukue in more than a week: the 102nd Division was marching to the coast, where it would set sail in small boats for Cebu. The action was unprecedented in Suzuki’s experience and only with difficulty was he dissuaded from court-martialing Fukue summarily. Instead he ordered the 102nd Division to remain in place; Fukue himself was to report at once to Army headquarters with his chief of staff.

  But even this direct order was ignored. Fukue’s answer—composed by his chief of staff, a colonel named Wada—was as infuriating as the original decision to desert: “We appreciate the efforts of Army but at the present time we are very occupied preparing for evacuation. The division commander and chief of staff are consequently unable to report to Army headquarters.”

  On New Year’s Eve, Fukue had the effrontery to ask Suzuki to facilitate his insubordination: “All boats that were prepared for the retreat were destroyed by American planes on the night of the 30th, thus delaying our departure. Would it be possible for you to send an armored craft to aid the departure of the division commander?” Fukue and his staff, like Kamiko, managed to get across the Camotes Sea by banca. In Cebu City the general was relieved of his command by order of Suzuki. He accepted Suzuki’s instruction to remain on the island of Cebu; there was nowhere else to go.

  On Leyte, Mount Canguipot was being prepared for a long siege. Large quantities of provisions were purchased from local farmers and augmented by fern, grass and wild spinach. Salt was separated from sea water. Suzuki’s plan as far as Leyte was concerned was to tie up as many enemy troops as possible, but he too was coming to doubt the usefulness of such a sacrifice. Realistically, how long could he expect Mount Canguipot to hold out? One determined assault would overrun it. Almost a hundred men were dying of starvation every day. How was that helping the empire? Moreover, Yamashita had long since given him permission to evacuate.

  It was a wrenching decision for a samurai; only a week before, he would never have imagined he’d make it. Gem Division would be the first to leave. On the night of January 12, 1945, General Kataoka and his headquarters set off in three launches, safely reaching Cebu soon after dawn. In the next week 743 men—all that remained of the elite Gem Division—reached Cebu with four heavy machine guns, eleven light ones and five grenade launchers. But as Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger’s Eighth Army closed in on Suzuki, continued evacuation became almost impossible.

  Except for sixteen weeks of tedious mopping up, the fighting was over. The 70,000 Japanese who came to defend Leyte against 250,000 well-armed Americans had fought as well as could be expected. They wounded 12,000 GI’s and killed 3,500, but only about 5,000—one in thirteen—would live to see Japan. It was a decisive battle—for the Americans. They had destroyed an entire army and permanently crippled Japan’s remaining air force and fleet. The homeland itself now lay exposed, except for two island fortresses—Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

  * At the prison camp in nearby Santo Tomás University this information came in an underground news bulletin with the words: “Better Leyte than never.”

  † Seven weeks earlier a 5,000-ton freighter loaded with 1,805 prisoners from the Philippines had been torpedoed in the South China Sea (probably by the U. S. submarine Shark II). Five Americans survived, including Sergeant Calvin Graef and Corporal Donald Meyer, and they only by a remarkable series of coincidences: after hanging on to wreckage all night, they found a lifeboat containing a keg of fresh water; while fixing the rudder, they discovered a small compartment containing a sealed tin of hardtack; a box floated alongside which just happened to hold pulleys and rigging that exactly fitted their boat; finally, a pole someone had retrieved hours earlier turned out to be their mast. Just as they were about to raise the sail a Japanese destroyer approached to within a hundred yards but for some reason passed by without firing her machine guns. Even so, they probably would not have made it safely to China if fortune had not continued to favor them. After two days of sailing they were picked up by Chinese fishermen in a junk who landed them on the only area along the coast held by Chiang Kai-shek.

  PART SEVEN

  Beyond the Bitter End

  25

  “Our Golden Opportunity”

  1.

  A relatively unpublicized war was going on in China and Burma that was frustrating and miserable for all sides—there were more than two—as well as the hundreds of millions of civilians trapped in the turmoil. Fought over a tremendous area, it was an ideological and geographical nightmare.

  The British had been humiliatingly expelled from Burma in early 1942, and their attempts to return had met with limited success; forays by the Americans and Chinese into the Japanese-occupied territory had been equally inconclusive. But by the end of 1944 insatiable ambition had brought the Japanese to the point of disaster in Burma. Their dream was to topple India, that insecure pedestal of British imperialism, with the help of Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. The initial stepping stone was Imphal, a strategic city fifty miles west of the Burmese border. Not only was it the gateway to India but its occupation would be of inestimable propaganda value and an inspiration to all anti-imperialists.

  For many months the Japanese military leadership in Burma, champing under orders to remain on the defensive, had been requesting an invasion of India. These appeals, and those of Chandra Bose, were heeded at last: early in 1944 Imperial Headquarters ordered the 15th Army to invest “the vital areas of northeastern India in the vicinity of Imphal.” Its commander, Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, regarded the capture of Imphal as the first in a series of deep thrusts into India. He had been brought to this view by an enemy, Brigadier Orde Charles Wingate, a messianic figure whose Chindits* had been harassing the Japanese commanders of Burma in a number of unorthodox stabs far behind the lines. Although opposed to earlier plans to invade India, Mutaguchi had been impressed by Wingate’s raids. If an Englishman could bring troops through dense jungle and over mountains, so could he, and in far greater force. But leading a group of specially trained guerrillas over such terrain was one thing; leading an entire army was another.

  Colonel Tadashi Katakura, Mutaguchi’s operations officer, appreciated the obstacles: there were formidable rivers and rugged mountains to traverse; moreover, 15th Army was not logistically prepared to carry out such a long, arduous campaign with its present shortage of food, ammunition and medical supplies. Katakura forcefully pressed his misgivings—he had lost none of his bluntness since being shot in the neck during the 2/26 Incident for opposing the rebels—but Mutaguchi could not be persuaded to change the plans.

  On March 8, 1944, three reinforced Japanese divisions and a division of Bose’s I.N.A.—155,000 troops in all—crossed the Chindwin River and struck out across the mountains separating the two countries. On Indian soil Bose’s men fell to their knees to kiss their native earth. Shouting “Jai Hind! Jai Hind!,” they pushed ahead toward Kohima, a city eighty miles north of Imphal, astride the British supply route. There they would turn south and march to Imphal, followed by the 31st Division after it had subdued Kohima. The other two Japanese divisions headed straight for Imphal.

  The most proficient ground commander in the Far East, Lieutenant General William J. Slim of the British-Indian Fourteenth Army, had surmised that Mutaguchi would strike at Imphal—with perhaps a single brigade diverted to Kohima—and awaited the battle in a “rather complacent mood.” His plan was to let the Japanese advance to the edge of the Imphal Plain, and when they were “committed in assaults on our prepared positions,” to counterattack in full force and destroy them.

  “My heart sank,” he later wrote, when he learned that the enemy—two divisions strong—was attacking Kohima. This not only placed an important garrison city in jeopardy but threatened his army’s sole supply base and railhead at Dimapur, which lay about thirty miles to the northwest. He ordered immediate reinforcements. “As I struggled hard to redress my errors and to speed by rail and air these reinforcements I
knew that all depended on the steadfastness of the troops already meeting the first impetus of attack. If they could hold until help arrived, all would be well; if not we were near disaster.” What Slim feared above all was that the Japanese would by-pass Kohima and move on the railroad. An emergency line was set up on Kohima Ridge to block the road to Dimapur. Men were “scraped up” from the local administrative forces; five hundred convalescents were armed and put in the line.

  But the commander of the 31st Division, Lieutenant General Kotoku Sato, directed all his forces at Kohima, where the defenders resisted so stubbornly—they were driven onto a single hill—that the Indian National Army troops alone turned south toward Imphal. On the steep hillsides south and west of that city, the other two Japanese divisions were already erecting a formidable system of earth-and-log bunkers, preparatory to launching their combined attack.

  On April 18 the commander of the Indian force reported the unbelievable news that the road down to Imphal was lightly defended; his advance units were “only a stone’s throw away” from the city itself. Victory was imminent; Bose had bales of new currency ready for circulation. But his dream was shattered when Sato, who had found more than he had bargained for at Kohima, refused to follow to Imphal. Instead he arbitrarily ordered his men to prepare to return to Burma; he had verbal permission (it was not meant to be taken literally) to withdraw if he weren’t resupplied with food and ammunition by mid-April.

  Bose was furious—without Sato backing their spearhead, the I.N.A. troops could never break through to Imphal. He was sure it was a plot of 15th Army and accused the Japanese of purposely depriving Indians of winning the first significant victory in their own country. Mutaguchi was equally furious with Sato (and relieved him of his command), but no explanation satisfied Bose.

  The Japanese at Imphal were ready to attack, and asked Bose to deliver a radio broadcast on the Emperor’s birthday, offering him Imphal as a present. Bose was insulted. Perversely he now opposed any invasion of India that was not led by the I.N.A. He argued that the appearance of Indian troops would spark revolts throughout the nation, whereas Japanese invaders would only bring thousands of Indians to the side of the British.

  The altercation gave General Slim a double advantage: it divided the enemy and provided time for substantial reinforcements to reach the Imphal area by rail and air. The Japanese were converging on the city from six roads, but the defenders, with strong air support, held at every point. The debilitating battle continued inconclusively week after week. Both Japanese divisional commanders became convinced it would be impossible to storm Imphal, and one even began withdrawing troops without orders.

  Vice Chief of the Army General Staff Hikosaburo Hata—accompanied by Colonel Sugita and other staff officers—arrived at the front to investigate; they returned to Tokyo with disheartening conclusions for Tojo: “There is little probability that the Imphal operation will succeed.”

  Tojo turned on Hata, accusing him of defeatism. The Prime Minister had counted on the success of Operation U to divert the public’s attention from the startling loss of the Marshalls in the Pacific. He was so beside himself with frustration that his sarcasm also seemed to include Prince Mikasa, the Emperor’s brother, who sat directly in front of Hata, and a chill came over the room. Hata remained silent. “If I’d been Hata,” Colonel Tanemura wrote in his Diary, “I’d have ripped off my staff insignia and fought him.”

  On June 5 Mutaguchi met with his superior, General Masakazu Kawabe, Burma Area Army commander. Mutaguchi had already been obliged to dismiss all three of his division commanders—something unheard of in the history of the Japanese Army (one for incompetence, one for illness, and the third for refusing to obey orders) and it was on the tip of his tongue to declare that the time had come to suspend Operation U. But he could not speak. “I was hoping,” Mutaguchi later recalled, “that General Kawabe would perceive in silence what was in my heart.”

  Kawabe was not that perceptive. “The destiny of Subhas Chandra Bose was mine as well as his,” he wrote in his memoirs. “Therefore I had to assist Mutaguchi by all means in my power. I kept telling myself so.”

  The day following this meeting the British won back Kohima, after sixty-four days of some of the most bitter fighting of the war. A force of Japanese and Indians still held the road to Imphal, but within two weeks the British had smashed through and started to aid their harassed comrades in Imphal.

  Mutaguchi’s problems were aggravated by the arrival of the monsoon. Ceaseless rains poured down, washing out the jungle trails back to Burma. Only one of his three divisions had brought adequate food supplies; the others had to subsist on grass, potatoes, snails, lizards, snakes—anything they could get their hands on, including monkeys.

  Mutaguchi still could not bring himself to ask Kawabe for permission to withdraw but came close to it by inference. “If operations are to be suspended and the army is to go over to the defensive,” he wrote, “it is advisable that the army be withdrawn to the line running from the high ground on the right bank of the Chindwin River through the high ground to the northwest of Mawlaik to the Tiddim area.”

  Kawabe’s reply appeared uncompromising: he expected the 15th Army to do its duty “zealously” and fight harder. But his senior staff officer was already en route to Manila with a request for Field Marshal Terauchi to suspend the operation. Terauchi approved but word did not reach Mutaguchi until July 9. Four days later the troops began retreating toward the Chindwin River. On the long trek back over the mountains in the pounding rain, men fought one another for food. Thousands of sick and wounded fell out of the march and killed themselves with grenades. The paths were seas of mud and when a man stumbled he became half buried in slime; shoes were stolen from those struggling feebly to extricate themselves. Light machine guns, rifles, helmets, gas masks—anything useless—littered the trails. Only the will to live propelled the survivors; the men hobbled along with improvised canes, and those who lasted out a day’s march huddled together for sleep that rarely came because of the constant downpour. Many drowned, too feeble to raise their heads above the rising water, and the Chindwin River itself, their goal, claimed the lives of hundreds more in its swollen waters.

  In all, 65,000 men died—more than two and a half times the number lost on Guadalcanal, and about as many as fell on Leyte. Mutaguchi, his chief of staff and senior staff officers were relieved of their posts, as were Kawabe and his chief of staff. The command shake-up and the destruction of the 15th Army infected every other unit in Burma, and by the end of the year Japanese rule was at the point of collapse.

  2.

  In China, that tangled, multi-sided war continued to be a source of frustration to everyone concerned except the Communists. The Japanese had conquered a vast area in eastern China but were no nearer to a final solution in their agonizingly long war in that enigmatic country. Though they occupied one important city after another, it was like tunneling in the sand; the Nanking puppet government of Wang Ching-wei was unable to consolidate the victories after the Japanese troops moved on. The Japanese dominated the coast, rivers, railroads and highways, but in the expanses between, another struggle was going on among the Chinese themselves. Chiang Kai-shek was fighting Mao Tse-tung’s armies for control while the war lords sided with whatever group was winning.

  China bred dissension. Lieutenant General Joseph W. (“Vinegar Joe”) Stilwell, commander of all American forces in China, remained at incessant odds with “Old Leatherface” Chennault, commander of 14th Air Force, an outgrowth of the American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers. Their argument most often focused on the policies of the man Stilwell derisively called “Peanut”—Chiang. In a series of vituperative messages to Washington, Stilwell charged that the aid sent to China was being criminally wasted by the Kuomintang; moreover, its armies were expending as little matériel as possible against the Japanese, since “Peanut” was bent on saving men and supplies for the postwar confrontation with Mao.

  This, in large p
art, was true. Since the second Cairo Conference, when Chiang felt his vital interests were betrayed by Roosevelt under the influence of Churchill, the Nationalist troops had been waging passive warfare against Japan. In some sectors there had been virtual truce between the Kuomintang and the Japanese for over two years. A Chinese officer at an air base in Hupeh, for example, defended his refusal to shoot at passing Japanese aircraft with the excuse that if his men did so, “the Japs would be angry and would take revenge and return and bomb the city and do a lot of damage.” Another of Chiang’s officers argued that it was unnecessary for the Chinese “to take up an offensive against the Japs because soon the United States will surround Japan and then the Japs will have to retreat without fighting, and so it is better to leave them alone, and get along as best we can as we are.”

  Although Stilwell’s indignation was justified, he failed to appreciate the fact that the Kuomintang forces were more than paying for Lend-Lease assistance by tying up almost a million Japanese troops who might otherwise be used against MacArthur and Nimitz. Accordingly, Chiang not only resented Stilwell’s attitude but felt he had been taken in by American Communist propaganda, which labeled the Generalissimo a fascist and pictured Mao as an agrarian reformer, not a genuine Communist. “In the mistaken belief that the Chinese Communist forces, if placed under his [Stilwell’s] command, would obey his orders and wholeheartedly fight the Japanese,” Chiang wrote, “he assured me that the Government could safely re-equip them on the same basis as the Government forces and set them free from combat against the Japanese from where they were being held down by the Government’s blockade. Moreover, the Government, he pointed out, could thus also release its forces immobilized on blockade duty for redeployment against the common enemy.… Stilwell’s subsequent disagreement with me was entirely brought about by the machinations of the Communists and their fellow-travelers. It almost caused the disruption of Sino-American military co-operation in the China-Burma Theater of War.”