ON March 20 the Imperial General Staff issued its emergency plan for the defense of Okinawa. A new urgency now permeated Imperial Headquarters. Okinawa had for so long been a part of the empire that the potential threat was as upsetting as the threat of invasion against the home islands. Imperial Headquarters announced: “The emphasis on urgent operations on the Nansei Shoto [Okinawa] front is on a plan of concentration of the air forces on which we rely for the total destruction of the enemy main force.”
By spring 1945, the Japanese military still had two powerful weapons with which to oppose the enemy before he reached the shores of Japan itself: the air forces and the submarine force. The traditional submarine service continued to operate and occasionally
The Kamikazes
a Japanese submarine sank an Allied vessel. This did not happen often; the Japanese submarine had been improperly employed all through the war. But on orders of Imperial Headquarters the submarine service was also developing a number of “superweapons.”
The development of the Kaiten suicide submarine in 1944 had been accompanied by the formation of Tokko (Suicide) Squadron Number One, with headquarters at Ourazaki, south of Kure. Our- azaki was also the central base for the Koryu submarines, which were being produced at a great rate for the coming battle of Japan.
The commander of Tokko Squadron Number One, Rear Admiral Mitsuru Nagai, had such glowing reports of the successes of the Kaiten that Imperial Headquarters suggested the formation of a second squadron. Tokko Squadron Number Two was then organized, with Rear Admiral Noburu Owada in command. He was in charge of the new Kaiten, the Koryu and the Shinyu, the small boats that first met the Allies when they attacked Lingayen Gulf.
In the Philippines, the Shinyu operators had moved in close to ships, as directed, dropped off their depth charges and sped away. But the Philippines operation had not been successful. At Tokko Squadron Two headquarters it was decided that the fuses on the depth charges should be shortened to five seconds. The Shinyu operators still had a small chance of getting away if they were very lucky.
At the same time, a new use for the Shinyu was projected. The boats would carry explosive charges in the bow, and the pilots would steer the Shinyu into enemy ships in true Kamikaze style.
The suicide Shinyu were now being produced by the hundreds and moved around to harbors and havens on Kyushu and Honshu islands, where they were carefully hidden from air attack. The young pilots were trained under Admiral Owada for the day when the Allies would invade Japan proper, and every man would become a tokko hito , a suicide operator.
IN the fall of 1944, Lieutenant Commander Shinhiko Imai had been ordered to investigate the possibility of attacking the Panama
The Eve of the Last “Decisive Battle”
Canal. The idea was to destroy or so damage the locks that they were rendered useless. If this could be done the passage of American ships from East Coast shipyards to the Pacific Ocean would be slowed immeasurably. The warships would then have to go “around the Horn.”
The attack was to be carried out by enormous new submarines of the 1-400 class, which were planned as undersea aircraft carriers. They were four hundred feet long, displaced five thousand tons and had a range of thirty-seven thousand miles. They were built with aircraft hangars a hundred feet long and launching catapults. Each submarine was designed to carry two aircraft. Five of these 1-400 boats were to make the attack along with five normal I-boats. The planes would bomb the canal.
The idea was approved at the highest level, by the minister of the navy himself, but then it was called off because of the deteriorating situation in the Central Pacific. Early in January 1945, the special squadron was disbanded and the big submarines converted to carriers of the Kaiten suicide submarines. The work on the Kaiten continued, as did plans for other super submarines.
Another was the Koryu, a five-man submarine with a range of a thousand miles. The Imperial General Staff approved a major building program for more than five hundred of these craft for homeland defense.
A third undersea weapon was the Kairyu, a two-man submarine that was the successor to the obsolete type that had attacked Pearl Harbor and Sydney. This vessel had an extreme range of 450 miles, again suitable for operations around the homeland but little else. A fourth submarine was also planned, larger than the Kairyu, but smaller than the Koryu. It never got into production.
All these weapons had been projected for use in a normal fashion. But even by the fall of 1944 the submariners were regarding them as suicide weapons. Early in 1945 the torpedo shortage, and the general malaise of the country after the B-29 raids, became intense, led the navy to begin production of suicide versions of the Koryu and Kairyu with the torpedo tubes replaced by five hundred- kilogram explosive charges. At this point there was no question
The Kamikazes
about the method by which they would be employed.
Imperial Headquarters believed the Kaiten attack on Ulithi in November 1944 had been successful. Consequently, a new attack was planned at the start of the year and six I-boats assigned to the mission. That meant twenty-four Kaiten.
On December 8, 1944, the Sixth Fleet (submarine command) authorized the formation of the Kongo unit. The I-boats were the 1-56 , 1-47 , 1-36 , 1-53 , 1-58 and 1-48. They were to pick up Kaiten at Otsujima and Hikari training bases and then to participate in Operation Gen (Mystery).
The purpose of their mission was to strike a multiplicity of Allied targets almost simultaneously. The theory was that by so doing they could destroy the Allied will to carry on the war. This strategy had become paramount in the weeks since the failure of the Sho Operation in the Philippines.
These days, the term “psychological moment 1 ’ appeared more and more often in Japanese strategic discussions and operations orders. The Japanese military hierarchy were intense believers in the psychology of war, and had used psychological weapons to good advantage in the early years.
(An example was the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, organized to shore up the Japanese war effort. It had some good effects. Thailand, for example, had become a military ally, contributing troops to the Asian mainland and warships that operated with the Japanese navy. The benefits of that union remained after Japan was defeated and was largely responsible for the future selfliberation of the Asian peoples.)
The bases to be hit on X Day, January 11, were the Allied anchorages and ship facilities in the Admiralty islands, Burauen, Hollandia, Ulithi, Palau and Guam.
The first five submarines would carry their Kaitens to do those jobs. 1-48 would come along on Y day, January 20, to make a repeat performance at either Ulithi, Palau, Guam or Saipan, depending on actual conditions.
As with all the Japanese operational plans, this one was well
The Eve of the Last “Decisive Battle”
conceived, on paper, and had the ring of competence. The submarines were to leave on staggered dates; at no time would a group be vulnerable to Allied planes or anti-submarine forces. One of the danger points was the entrance to the Inland Sea; the American submarines were patrolling off the shores of Japan in ever greater numbers.
The 1-56 sailed on December 21, the 1-47 on December 25. Three others sailed on December 31, and the 1-48 sailed last, on January 9.
At the beginning of the second week of January they were advised of target conditions:
Hollandia: fifty freighters
Ulithi: three warships, eight cruisers, one light cruiser, other ships
Admiralties: one carrier, one warship, one cruiser
Palau: thirty-three transports
Guam: many destroyers; many submarines (Guam had become a U.S. forward submarine base); sixty transports
These reports came from search planes and the submarines themselves. By January 9 most of them were on station.
X day had been changed from January 11 to January 12, to make sure that all was ready. Much of the “psychological impact” of the Kaiten attacks depended on the buildup, with one report of disaster after another to assail the eyes and ears of the Allied commanders.
On X day the submarines moved in to attack.
The 1-56 was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Keiji Shoda. For three days he tried diligently to penetrate the Allied defenses of the Admiralties but each time his submarine rose to periscope depth. Allied anti-submarine patrol planes and surface units drove her back down. Finally she turned for home, having achieved nothing.
The 1-47 was scheduled to attack Humboldt Bay at Hollandia. Captain Zenji Orita arrived in plenty of time off the New Guinea
The Kamikazes
coast to examine the target area. On the afternoon of January 11 he had a good look around. He saw traffic moving in and out of the harbor, and knew that the Kaiten would find targets inside. Captain Orita put down his periscope and moved outside to submerge deep and wait for nightfall. —
In the afternoon he gave a party for his four Kaiten pilots. The cooks served sweet bean pastry and a special tea for the departing heroes.
An hour after night fell, he brought the submarine into the entrance to the bay and surfaced. He gave the Kaiten pilots their final instructions and they entered their suicide submarines, wearing their uniforms and hachimaki.
Shortly before dawn the submarine was in position and the Kaiten pilots started the motors of their craft. One by one they slid off the deck and were gone.
Through the periscope Captain Orita thought he saw a column of smoke and fire in the harbor, and so reported when he returned home. But one column was all he claimed. Three Kaiten had obviously been lost.
The 1-53 attacked in Kossol Passage, a much frequented waterway, and sent off three Kaiten. The fourth failed and never left the deck of the submarine.
One of the Kaiten blew up and sank before the eyes of Lieutenant Commander Sohachi Toyomasu, the submarine captain. Two, he was sure, succeeded; he and his crew heard two more explosions when the Kaiten entered the passage and presumably found their targets.
Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto’s 1-58 , attacking Apra Harbor on Guam, loosed his Kaiten force and reported one column of black smoke rising high into the sky. That, he decided, represented another ship sunk.
Commander Iwao Teramoto of the 1-36 was to attack Ulithi. He moved in, and off Solon island launched four Kaiten. He and the crew reported four large explosions; that meant four ships.
Lieutenant Commander Zenshin Toyama’s 1-48 was also to attack
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Ulithi, a few days after the others attacked. He sailed with his crew and his four Kaiten and was never heard from again.
The Americans knew where he was. After he arrived in the area on January 20 he was kept down by patrol craft. The following day the submarine was spotted by an anti-submarine patrol plane, and the base notified. The destroyer escorts Conklin , Raby and Cor- besier came out and began the hunt. Their sonar found the submarine and forced it to dive deep and remain on the bottom, silent, to counter the sonar.
The captain kept the 1-48 down until the air was exhausted and the batteries virtually dead. Then he had to surface. When he did, there were the escorts waiting. The 1-48 , its entire crew and the four Kaiten pilots went to the bottom of the sea.
All the other submarines of the attack force were back at Kure by February 3, giving their reports to Admiral Owada. He analyzed
them and sent the results to the commander of the Sixth Fleet.
When the reports were in the Sixth Fleet staff officers analyzed the results:
1-56: zero
1-47: four large transports sunk
1-53: two large transports sunk
1-58: one escort carrier and three large transports sunk
1-36: four fast transports sunk
1-48: one tanker, one cruiser and two large transports sunk
Imperial Headquarters was very pleased. The composite results were eighteen Allied ships sunk in one operation.
There was only one problem. There wasn’t a word of truth in the estimate of damages. Allied records showed that although some activity had been observed at Hollandia and elsewhere, not one single ship had even been damaged by the combined attack of nineteen Kaiten pilots.
Four had gone down with their submarines, one had returned home, depressed and lonely, having been deprived by mechanical difficulties of his trip to the Yasukuni shrine. As was becoming
The Kamikazes
more and more common, the Japanese high command did not know how badly their heroes had fared, and their enthusiasm for the suicide attacks was undiminished.
WHEN Iwo Jima was brought so severely under air attack that it was obvious in Tokyo that the Allies would soon land there, Imperial Headquarters ordered another Kaiten attack. This time the submarines 7-44, 1-36 and 1-58 would carry the twelve Kaiten pilots of the Chihaya suicide unit to their happy rewards.
It took a little time to get the submarines and the Kaiten together, but they were ready at the end of February to go out against the enemy in the Iwo Jima area. They picked up their Kaiten pilots and the little suicide submarines and sailed. So did the 1-368 and 1-370 , on Kaiten submarine operations against the Allied anchorage off Iwo Jima.
On February 26 the 1-370 ran afoul of the U.S. destroyer escort Finnegan off the coast of Iwo Jima. The escort forced the submarine down, tracked it, then began to depth-charge. The 1-370 went to the bottom.
That same day the 1-368 was caught by an anti-submarine patrol plane from the carrier Anzio west of Iwo Jima. The plane surprised the submarine, and the skipper was unable to get the boat down in time. The 1-368 went down forever in deep water.
On March 1 the 1-44 was standing off Iwo Jima, with her skipper looking for a favorable opportunity to launch the Kaitens. But again patrol craft intervened and forced the 1-44 down.
More anti-submarine craft were brought in and the search continued. Down below, the men of the 1-44 could hear the sound of enemy propellers overhead. The air in the boat grew foul and then fouler. The ordeal lasted for forty-seven hours. The men were half dead; some were showing signs of delirium from lack of oxygen before the enemy ships left the scene.
Again the next day the 1-44 was surprised by patrol planes. She went to the bottom and lay still, waiting for the enemy to go away.
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The enemy did not go away. But because the submarine was silent, there was no depth-charge attack. The searchers did not have the submarine specifically located, and moved out. All the Kaiten were smashed and a fuel tank badly damaged.
American security was so tight that the 1-44 had no chance to attack. The captain, Lieutenant Commander Genbei Kawaguchi, decided there was no use trying and returned to base. When he arrived he was immediately removed from command for “cowardice.” So far had the war changed!
Believing that two submarines had been sunk, the submarine command called off the Gen Operation. All three boats were brought back to Japan.
At this time, Imperial Headquarters decided that the submarine force’s Kaiten units simply had to have more experience in avoiding or thwarting the air-sea attacks. Their mission, after the Allies attacked Okinawa, was to penetrate Allied anchorages and attack the ships there. A brief training program was begun for all the boats not then at sea.
The Kaiten force now had a life of its own.
During the past five months a new concept of warfare had seized the Japanese military establishment. Tokko —Special Attack— was a common phrase in every branch of the service. For example, when the submarines were engaged in the multi-phase anchorage attack in November, the lookouts of the 1-44 had seen a raft in the water off Guam, and had gone alongside. The two survivors were Japanese soldiers from the Guam garrison who had been sent by their commanding officer to make a Tokko attack by floating with the tide around a point of land. But the current had carried the soliders out to sea and they were half dead when the submarine miraculously found them.
By this time, to the Japanese, Tokko could mean any kind of desperate attack. But it always meant death to the attackers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR