The Fall of Japan
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The Fall of Japan
William Craig
To my wife, Eleanor
Contents
Prologue
ONE: The Tactics of Despair
TWO: Meetinghouse
THREE: The Diplomacy of Defeat
FOUR: The Project
FIVE: The Little Boy
SIX: The Genie
SEVEN: The Air-Raid Shelter
EIGHT: Reaction in Washington
NINE: August 11—The Conspiracy Begins
TEN: August 12—Day of Crisis
ELEVEN: The Mounting Peril
TWELVE: August 14—The Final Word
THIRTEEN: The Rebellion
FOURTEEN: Peace on Earth
FIFTEEN: The Emperor Speaks
SIXTEEN: Delayed Reactions
SEVENTEEN: An Order From MacArthur
EIGHTEEN: Violent Interlude
NINETEEN: Lazarus
TWENTY: The Enemy Lands
TWENTY-ONE: “These Proceedings Are Closed”
TWENTY-TWO: The Last Recourse
Epilogue
Image Gallery
REFERENCE MATTER
Acknowledgments
Notes and Sources
Selected Bibliography
Indexes
About the Author
PROLOGUE
In September of 1931, the U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, wrote in his diary: “Trouble has flared up again in Manchuria. The Japanese, apparently their military elements, have suddenly made a coup.” Stimson’s entry was prophetic. The coup initiated a period of almost fifteen years during which Japan’s militarists controlled her foreign policy, and the spirit of militarism—with all its extremist passion, its brutality, its frenzy of determination—infected the Japanese Empire like a plague.
The 1931 Manchurian “trouble” was instigated by Army officers who wanted to wage a war of conquest and prove themselves more powerful than the Japanese Cabinet. Both of these goals were realized. By the end of 1931 the Japanese Army, overriding the protests of stunned officials in Tokyo, had taken over Manchuria.
Increasingly thereafter, the Imperial Army shaped the destiny of the nation. In 1937, the Army invaded China and perpetrated atrocities on the people of Nanking which repelled the rest of the world. Japan joined the Axis in September 1940; and by 1941 the Army had occupied French Indo-China—after France had fallen to Nazi Germany and could no longer protect her interest in Asia. Inexorably, Japan was building toward a confrontation with the West.
One of the chief architects of this design was a man about five feet four inches tall, bald, with a scraggly moustache, round eyeglasses and nicotine-stained fingers. His name was General Hideki Tojo, and his nickname was “The Razor.” Strong man of the Army, Tojo had worked diligently to achieve his preeminent position. He had earned a reputation as a brilliant administrator, skilled organizer and scrupulous executor of the Emperor’s orders. He was a man of huge personal ambition, drive and dedication. In 1937 he had become chief of staff of the elite Kwantung Army in Manchuria. A major spokesman for the military, he held that Japan’s war with China was a “defensive” action designed to contain a hostile neighbor. In 1938 he had gone to Tokyo as Vice-Minister of War; two years later, immediately after Japan joined forces with Germany and Italy, he had become Minister of War. During the year that followed, the Imperial forces continued to move southward on the Asian mainland, thus projecting themselves into an area that directly pertained to American, British and Dutch interests. In the summer of 1941 when these nations finally refused to allow Japanese importation of vital oil from the Dutch East Indies, Tojo and his army felt that sufficient proof had been given that the Western allies intended to encircle and destroy Japan.
The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, demanded that Japan withdraw from the Chinese mainland and Indo-China. In answer, on September 6, the Imperial policy makers made a tentative decision to go to war if negotiations failed. In October 1941, Hideki Tojo was asked to form a new cabinet to solve the deepening crisis with the United States. He was now Premier of Japan. Most Americans would think of him as a dictator equivalent to Hitler or Mussolini; he was, rather, a bureaucrat—a militarist at the head of a militarist ruling faction. Narrow-minded, with an almost paranoid distrust of American intentions, Tojo could not envision any policy but a firm stand against outside “encroachment.”
When statesmen and even supra-belligerent Navy officers hesitated to take such a drastic step as attacking the West, it was Tojo who stiffened their resolve. Dissident voices were stilled by threats of violence. The Commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto, was openly condemned when he told his admirals that Japan could not defeat the United States in a long war. Deeply disturbed at the prospect of disaster, Yamamoto conceived an operation designed to immobilize the United States Fleet for one year, and so give the Japanese time to win a sizable number of victories before attempting a negotiated settlement. This operation was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was Yamamoto’s solution to the dilemma posed by his less practical colleagues.
The Army and Navy won the victories he had predicted. For six months, Japanese arms ruled the Pacific. Singapore, Bataan and Corregidor fell. Then at Midway, America turned the tide. Aided by the fact that Japanese codes had been broken and deciphered by American cryptoanalysts, the United States fleet inflicted an enormous defeat on Yamamoto’s task force, which had sailed out intending to annihilate the remnants of Admiral Nimitz’ battle line.
Yamamoto retreated to his cabin on the battleship Yamato and did not come out until she docked in Japan. After he left his flagship, wounded crewmen were furtively taken to isolation wards of hospitals. Survivors of the stricken warships were warned not to mention anything about the Battle of Midway. Until the end of the war, few military men in Japan knew, as Admiral Yamamoto did, that in June of 1942 the Japanese Navy had been irreparably damaged and the Empire had suffered a fatal wound.
After Midway, some admirals in the Imperial Fleet began to think of a negotiated peace. In the Imperial Army such thoughts were rarely entertained. Only in the Navy was there a sizable nucleus of officers willing to discuss it. In the summer of 1943, one of them, Admiral Sokichi Takagi, was summoned to Tokyo by the Naval Ministry to conduct a survey of the war. He pored over available information and concluded that if the Americans succeeded in winning the Solomons, Japan must sue for peace. By the end of 1943 the Solomons fell, but Takagi still dared not circulate his conclusions in writing lest he be accused of defeatism—or worse, treason. Instead, he chose to approach top officials one by one, hoping to impress them individually with his country’s desperate situation. When he did, each man in turn was afraid to act on the warning.
The first break within Japan’s ruling circle did not occur until after the Americans landed on Saipan in June 1944. In countless engagements since Midway—Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Kwajalein—Imperial soldiers and marines had been dying by the thousands. With the invasion of Saipan, and with his vaunted army in serious straits, Premier Tojo was at last confronted by his opposition.
The jushin, a group of elder statesmen serving in an advisory capacity to the Emperor, decided that Tojo had to resign. Though officially powerless, the jushin exerted a subtle influence on Government policy. All its members were former Premiers. In July, when Tojo’s fortunes were at a low ebb and he was trying to reorganize his cabinet, the jushin imposed several conditions designed to inhibit his power. They not only forced Tojo to relinquish his concurrent post as Chief of Staff of the Army, and to oust Navy Minister Shimada, a Tojo ally; they also insisted on having several senior statesmen of their own choosing included in any new cabinet. This last issue led directly to Tojo’s downfall: the Premier could neither induce some of his own supporters to resign, nor persuade jushin men to join the cabinet under his leadership. With his cabinet in disarray, Hideki Tojo had no choice but to resign.
At this time, Japanese control of the Pacific was shrinking visibly. As the Imperial forces found themselves being pushed back to their Home Islands, they fought with increasingly suicidal desperation. Tojo went home to his wife and garden and left his successors to preside over the fall of Japan.
ONE
The Tactics of Despair
By the autumn of 1944, many of the Japanese officers responsible for the day-to-day prosecution of the war against the Allies knew that the likelihood of victory was becoming remote. One of these men was Admiral Takijiro Onishi, a headstrong, arrogant commander who exuded a masculinity and drive contagious to the younger men who served with him. A cult of junior officers worshipped Onishi much as Americans had adored Teddy Roosevelt in his Rough Rider days. On the other hand, many officers equal or superior in rank to Onishi detested his aggressive, showy manners, his bluntness, his condescending attitude toward those who disagreed with him. Onishi was a zealot who impressed his own ideas upon others with unwavering self-confidence.
In 1941 Onishi had been instrumental in drawing up the Yamamoto plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Immediately after the attack he ordered the devastating assault on Clark Field, outside Manila, which virtually eliminated American air capability in the Far East. Onishi had given this order despite the considered opinion of his staff, who felt that weather conditions were bad enough to force a cancellation of the mission. The admiral, howev
er, was not about to lose the initiative—he saw any opportunity to destroy the enemy as precious. The mission was effected despite the weather. Such boldness commanded fierce loyalty.
In October 1944, an American armada appeared near the eastern Philippines. Since the Americans had many aircraft carriers off Leyte, some way had to be found to immobilize these ships while Japanese battleships and cruisers closed in to deal with the outgunned enemy.
The situation was of desperate importance. If the Philippines went under, the Empire would be cut in two and its supply lifelines ripped away. Onishi was sent from Tokyo to Manila to take command of Japan’s First Air Fleet, now reduced to less than one hundred effective planes. His job was to remedy the tactical situation by whatever means available.
To the Japanese naval mind, carriers had always been the biggest menace in the war. Onishi concentrated on them with ferocious intensity. In so doing, he typified the blind spot that Admiral Weneker, the German attaché in Tokyo during the war, noted: “The Japanese admirals always thought of the U.S. carriers. They talked about how many were being built and how many were in the Pacific, and said that these must be sunk … their mission was at all times the American carriers.” Instead of devoting increased efforts to intercepting American supply lines, to attacking merchantmen and transports, the Japanese concentrated on the dreaded carriers.
Admiral Onishi was thinking of carriers on the evening of October 19, 1944, as he drove up to the main headquarters at Mabalacat Airfield on Luzon. Two men met him—Asaichi Tamai, executive officer at the base, and Commander Rikihei Inoguchi, senior staff officer of the First Air Fleet.
Onishi soberly outlined his plan: “As you know, the war situation is grave. The appearance of strong American forces in Leyte Gulf has been confirmed.… Our surface forces are already in motion … we must hit the enemy’s carriers and keep them neutralized for at least one week.” After this preamble Onishi broached a momentous idea: “In my opinion, there is only one way of assuring that our meager strength will be effective to a maximum degree. That is to organize suicide attack units composed of Zero fighters armed with 250-kilogram bombs, with each plane to crash-dive into an American carrier.… What do you think?” There it was, the bold desperate plan to stem the tide, to perform a miracle! It was worthy of an Onishi, a violent man given to violent solutions.
He struck the right nerve with his men. Stunned by the magnitude of this savage answer to the enemy’s power, his staff leaped at the opportunity to implement his strategy.
Four special attack units were formed immediately on Luzon. They waited for four days, then five, to strike at the enemy. Finally, a scout plane radioed back the sighting of a large American carrier force.
On October 25, at 7:25 A.M., nine planes rose from Mabalacat and headed east over the vast and lonely Pacific. The men in the aircraft were hoping, in fact eager, to die for their admiral and the Emperor. All wore white scarfs around their necks. Their helmets fitted snugly about their heads, almost concealing the white cloth each man had wrapped around his forehead. This was the hachimaki, a cloth worn centuries earlier by the samurai warriors of feudal Japan who used it to absorb perspiration and to keep their long hair from falling into their eyes. In 1944, the white cloth became the ceremonial emblem of the Special Attack Corps—the kamikazes.
Five of the nine planes were suicide craft. The other four went along to protect them from American interference. Lieutenant Yukio Seki led the mission.
At 10:45 A.M., the unsuspecting carrier force was sighted. It was a group of escorts protecting the beachhead at Leyte. The Japanese came at the perfect psychological moment. For hours the American fleet had been running before the brute power of Admiral Kurita’s force, which had burst out of San Bernardino Straits and turned south to destroy the fleet off Leyte. The carriers and destroyers had fought a tremendous delaying action against Kurita. It was only within the hour that the Japanese had turned and gone back, fearing a trap by other American units somewhere in the general area.
The St. Lo and her sister carriers had secured from general quarters at 10:10, and the crews were relaxing after the terribly close rendezvous with extinction. When Seki and his formation sighted them, the Americans had their guard down.
The Japanese bored in low. At 10:50, a warning went out to the carriers: “Enemy aircraft coming in fast from overlying haze.” At 10:53, a plane roared in over the St. Lo’s ramp, then went into a steep dive and crashed on the flight deck near the center line.
At 10:56, the gas below decks ignited. Two minutes later, a violent explosion rocked the ship. A huge section of the flight deck was gone. Flames roared up one thousand feet. By 11:04, the St. Lo was a mass of flames.
She sank twenty-one minutes later.
While the St. Lo burned, the other suicide planes banked and screamed straight into their targets. Not one missed. The Kitkun Bay, the Kalinin Bay and the White Plains were torn by explosions as steel smashed into steel at hundreds of miles per hour. Five planes had hit four ships. One carrier was sunk, the others badly damaged. This kamikaze mission was successful, as was another launched from Mindanao earlier that day. Onishi formed new units immediately.
During the next several months, the United States Navy became increasingly aware of the murderous suicide planes. In January 1945, when MacArthur sent an invasion fleet to Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, nearly forty warships were damaged by the new squadrons. Though the landings of General Krueger’s Sixth Army were successful, worried American admirals hoped the kamikazes were just a temporary expedient, not to be repeated on a wide scale. They did not know Admiral Onishi’s Special Attack Corps by name or organization. They did not know that equipment and personnel had been deployed to multiply its strength many times.
In March 1945, as Japanese intelligence sources reported increased enemy interest in the area around Okinawa, only 350 miles from Japan, Onishi had the satisfaction of having his Corps integrated into the defense plan of this island. Indeed, at the highest levels in Tokyo, Army and Navy staff officers were convincing themselves that the suicide planes could change the course of the war.
For some months after Saipan fell in July of 1944, American strategists had looked for the next most strategically desirable islands to invade on the way to Japan. Following the Honolulu conference that summer, MacArthur had carried out the occupation of Leyte in October. He now stood on Luzon. Once Iwo Jima was taken, Admiral Nimitz had wanted to invade Formosa—but Formosa was eventually ignored in favor of Okinawa. Sixty miles long and the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, Okinawa could be used by the United States both as a jumping-off point for the invasion of Japan and as a base for intensive bombings of the Home Islands of Kyushu and Honshu.
Fresh troops of the newly formed Tenth Army were to mount the assault on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945. Under the command of Simon Bolivar Buckner, the son of a Confederate general, the Tenth was composed of veteran outfits molded in the jungles of other waystops to Japan. Its divisions were already hallowed: the First Marines from Guadalcanal, New Britain and Peleliu; the Second Marines, as reserve, from Tarawa and Saipan; the Seventh from Attu and Leyte; the Seventy-seventh from Guam and Leyte; the Ninety-sixth from Leyte; the Twenty-seventh from the Marshalls and Saipan; the newly formed Sixth Marines made up of men from Eniwetok, Guam and Saipan. The soldiers and Marines, elite troops of the Pacific, would need the experience gained in countless confrontations with the Japanese; for even as they clambered into transports for the pitching ride to the shores of Okinawa, other Americans were suffering from the newly revised defense tactics of the Japanese on Iwo Jima.
The Imperial General Staff in Tokyo had decided that the tactic of the banzai charge was too costly, and the “meet them at the beach” theory was replaced on Iwo by “let the enemy come to us.” On that island, the Japanese stayed in caves and poured fire down on the heads of the Marines, who had trouble even getting a glimpse of them. Heavy artillery was used as an integral part of Japanese weaponry, and the corpse-strewn beaches of Iwo showed that for the first time in the long island-hopping trail to Tokyo, the Japanese were literally tearing the Americans to bits.