WHILE the Japanese were attacking the American invasion fleet off Okinawa the American carrier force hit Japan hard to soften up the Kyushu airfields. Consequently Admiral Ugaki had spent a good part of the daylight hours in a cave in the hillside above Kanoya airfield, where he had moved his headquarters.
Watching the planes blow holes in his installations, the admiral grew contemplative.
. . . We are having our ups and downs in this great final battle. I wonder how it really is, how it would look to Admiral Tojo, or to Admiral Nelson. From a cave it appears that we are going to continue to receive punishment.
The Kamikazes
. . .Japan’s gods gave us earlier the way of Yamato, and cleared the way for us. But now the gods are being asked for a miracle . . .
From the staff officers who had arrived in droves just before the Allied invasion of Okinawa he had gained a negative view of the prospects there. It seemed it was only a matter of time until Okinawa fell. And then what?
“For myself, Yamato remains.”
ON that evening of April 6, Admiral Ugaki was depressed. The day’s losses had been very high. Nearly all the hundreds of Kikusui suicide pilots had been lost. So had most of the fighters. He had expected that, but what he had not expected was that no element of the Ten Go air attack had found the American carriers.
Admiral Ugaki wanted those carriers. If he could damage and destroy a majority of them, then the tide of battle might be turned.
That evening a search plane reported that a dozen carriers and support ships were 150 kilometers off the Kyushu coast. Hastily, the admiral organized an attack force of bombers and suicide planes and sent them out. But they found nothing and returned glumly.
Although Admiral Ugaki was nearly exhausted after a week of planning and operations, he got very little sleep that night. April 7 was another day, another chance to destroy the American aircraft carriers.
He stayed up late that night, writing in his diary; his thoughts were gloomy. As the war continued to deteriorate, his mind turned ever more often to his old mentor Admiral Yamamoto, who in the late 1930s had been vigorously opposed to war.
Yamamoto had made peace with himself only by deciding that he must bow to the will of the Emperor. The Emperor, by not opting for peace in the face of the army’s arrogance, had opted for war. So be it. Yamamoto had then gone on to do his best.
Now, for Admiral Ugaki, the same situation had arisen. The
Operation Ten Go— II
military oligarchy had taken their plans for the Ten Ichi Go—the Holy War—to the Emperor. He had inquired only about a few points, and then had acceded to the generals’ plans.
Admiral Ugaki no longer had much faith in the outcome of the war, but he did not neglect his duty. The next morning he once again sent units out to find and attack the big American ships. Besides the dozen carriers off Kyushu, four more had been sighted at Okinawa. Kamikaze units were sent in both directions.
Admiral Ugaki’s preoccupation with the carriers created a serious situation that was not foreseen by the Japanese high command. Admiral Toyoda had planned the final foray of the remnant of the Japanese fleet for this occasion. The available “fleet” consisted of the great battleship Yamato , the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers.
If it seemed foolhardy to send these ships up against the enormous power of the American fleet, Admiral Toyoda replied that the critical moment was now, the ships had to be used in some positive way or they would be useless. As if to emphasize this position, on April 7 Japan was again visited by the B-29s, accompanied by a protective force of P-51 fighters. Here was the harvest of the Allied victory at Iwo Jima.
As all concerned knew, the Holy War as now conceived was based on total desperation. The degree of Admiral Toyoda’s desperation was indicated when without a tremor he ordered the remainder of the fleet to cast itself as the Surface Special Attack Force. That meant more than six thousand officers and men of the Imperial Navy who had never volunteered for suicide service were suddenly ordered on a mission of death. And it could be nothing else.
There was more than ten times the amount of fuel at Kure to fill the Yamato 's tanks, but the fuel was to be used for operations in the homeland. Since the Yamato was now of very little use, this last desperate, suicidal gesture might succeed. The Yamato was to have a one-way voyage to Okinawa. The thirty-three hundred men aboard this ship were condemned to die, and the men of the
The Kamikazes
light cruiser and destroyers seemed likely to follow them.
The Yamato s mission exemplified Admiral Toyoda’s limited imagination. It was in essence the same mission given Admiral Kurita during the Sho Operation in the opening days of the Allied invasion of Leyte. Vice Admiral Seichi Ito, who was given the honor of killing himself in battle, was told to go to Okinawa and like a cat among the pigeons lay waste to the Allied transports there. If he had to take on a few old battleships, which the Americans used for naval gun support, then the mighty Yamato should be able to manage its role.
When he had done in the American transports he was to beach the Yamato. She was to act as a shore fortress, using her guns to support General Ushijima’s counterattack. The surplus naval men would be sent ashore to fight as infantry. The Yamato was certainly more than a match for any battleship the Americans could put up
What Imperial Headquarters said was quite true, but of course it did not take into account the carriers that so preoccupied Admiral Ugaki.
On April 5 Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, chief of staff of the Combined Fleet, called Admiral Ugaki’s headquarters. He was representing Toyoda as the Holy War got under way. As a former naval aviator (commander of the Rabaul air forces during the South Pacific campaign) Admiral Kusaka inquired about air cover for the mission.
It was too bad, said Admiral Ugaki, but he had absolutely no planes for the job. Everything was committed to the Kihusui mass attacks on the carriers and transports at Okinawa.
The Yamato and her flotilla sailed on the morning of April 6, to arrive at Okinawa the following day. The course called for the ships to come out of the Inland Sea, then to run west and then southwest to make a dash for the western side of Okinawa, where the transports were located.
As Admiral Ugaki’s suicide planes darkened the skies above Okinawa, the Yamato and her protective force almost miraculously
Operation Ten Go—II
ran by several U.S. submarines without being attacked. With a little more luck, dawn would have found her outside the air-search area planned for that day by Admiral Mitscher s staff, which was moving about between Okinawa and Kyushu.
But the Yamato' s luck ran out at about 8:30 A.M. of April 7. She was spotted by a search plane from the U.S. carrier Essex.
In response to Admiral Kusaka’s pleas, Admiral Ugaki did send a handful of planes out to cover the Yamato flotilla that morning. But they were late in arriving and early in leaving, so effectively the force had no air cover.
That was when the first strike from Admiral Mitscher’s carriers found them a little past noon. The Yamato , the cruiser and the destroyers fired anti-aircraft guns and shot down seven planes. But the Americans had a thousand planes, and three waves of fighters
r
and bombers came in to attack the Japanese flotilla.
The result was predictable from the moment the first planes appeared. The Yamato sank. So did the Yahagi and four of the eight destroyers. Of the Yamato 's crew of thirty-three hundred only a little more than three hundred men were rescued.
Admiral Ugaki had not told the whole truth when he informed Admiral Kusaka that he did not have the planes to spare for a real air cover over the Yamato. What he meant was that he did not have the skilled pilots to spare. Most of these youths, straight out of flying school, were literally committing suicide if they went up against an F6F fighter. There was absolutely no sense in sending them into a situation where flying skill was important. As it was, when the Kamikaze missions set out each pilot was given a map showing all the islands along the way, compass headings and a weather report. Still, scores of them got lost.
On the second day of the Holy War Admiral Ugaki sent a suicide force against the carriers which arrived around 11:00 A.M. They were tracked in by radar, and nearly all of the planes were shot down by the Combat Air Patrol before they got to within fifty miles of the target. One Zero did manage to snake its way through and crashed on the carrier Hancock , destroying twenty planes on deck
The Kamikazes
and killing seventy-two men. Eighty-two others were injured. But that was the extent of the damage to the task force.
AS for the Holy War on the ships off Okinawa, it languished on this second day, largely because of the weather and because the army air forces were primarily concerned with the B-29 attack on the homeland. Admiral Ugaki sent out about seventy planes to Okinawa. The usual number got lost, and more than the usual number were shot down.
One Kamikaze crashed on the battleship Maryland , killing and wounding fifty-three men, but not putting the ship out of action. The destroyer Bennett, on picket duty, was also a Kamikaze victim, as was the destroyer escort Wesson. But the bad weather saved many ships that day.
The submarine service did not contribute its share to the operation, through no fault of its own. The 1-58 was sent out with six Kaiten to join in the Yamato' s foray against the ships southwest of Okinawa. But when Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto arrived, he was informed by radio that the Yamato had sunk, and the operation was canceled. Why that was done has not been satisfactorily explained. The 1-58 could have carried out her mission. But the shock at navy headquarters after it was realized that Japan had absolutely no more surface navy in commission, was too great for common sense to take hold. The 1-58 returned to Japan on a tortuous voyage that involved dozens of American air attacks.
The sinking of the Yamato had a euphorious effect on the Americans at Okinawa. Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, the amphibious commander, sent a jocular message to Admiral Nimitz, suggesting that the Japanese were finished. Nimitz, who sensed what was going to happen, set him straight in a hurry. So did the events of the new few days.
From this point on, until the end of the war, the suicide attacks never ceased.
On April 9 Admiral Ugaki received a message from army head-
Operation Ten Go—II
quarters in Tokyo announcing that the planned counterattack by General Ushijima’s forces had been delayed until that day. In accordance with the cooperative operations, Ugaki was asked to provide a major suicide attack that evening. He assembled the planes and sent off a wave, but the weather was so bad that the mission was aborted and the planes returned.
The next big attacks occurred on April 12 and 13. Ugaki sent out nearly two hundred planes that first day. The weather was clear at Kanoya and at Okinawa, which was good for the Kamikazes but bad for the defenders. The Japanese hit the destroyer Cassin Young , sank one LCS and damaged another.
Admiral Ugaki also sent the Okas into action again, and this time the bombers managed to get through to the ships around Okinawa and deliver the rocket-propelled bombs. The destroyer Mannert L. Abele was first hit by a Kamikaze Zero, then by an Oka, and sank in five minutes.
Another Oka hit the destroyer Stanley. The destroyer minelayer Lindsey was crashed by two Kamikazes. The destroyer escort Rail was also hit.
Then the destroyer Zellers and the battleship Tennessee were hit. So were the destroyer escorts Whitehurst and Riddle. Near misses were too numerous to be accounted for.
There were more attacks on April 13. By that time the Americans could see the pattern, and it was not a pretty prospect.
The Kamikaze attack was hell on ships’ personnel, as the counterattack tactics used by General Ushijima were hell on the soldiers and marines ashore. At the end of the first ten days of the Okinawa operation the shore forces had 3,700 casualties. The forces at sea had 1,200 casualties. The U.S. Navy was taking the greatest pounding of its history. To match Admiral Turner’s undue optimism, a thread of pessimism was beginning to work its way through the fleet.
When the waves of Kamikazes came in, it was impossible for one or two picket destroyers to knock down a dozen planes. Their guns simply could not work that fast. What was needed was more
The Kamikazes
Combat Air Patrol, and even this had proved insufficient.
Still, Admiral Ugaki made one serious error in his planning. Too many Kamikazes went after the picket destroyers which covered the perimeter well outside the area where the transports lay. Destroying the transports would cripple the American army ashore. The destroyers and escorts of the picket force were expendable, and replaceable.
In effect Admiral Ugaki was wasting his fire; creating havoc, no doubt, but still not achieving the utmost in destruction. Even so, the Kamikaze attacks were posing the U.S. fleet the most serious problem of the war. And as of mid-April nobody had an answer.
THE war continued and so did the waves of Kihusui. They came again on April 14 and 15, nearly two hundred of them. The fighters of Task Force Fifty-eight shot down many, and the gunners on the ships shot down more. But the Kamikazes damaged a battleship, six destroyers and two other ships.
They were back on April 16 to sink the destroyer Pringle and damage the carrier Intrepid and the battleship Missouri, plus several other ships.
They came on the seventeenth, again on the twenty-second, and then again on the twenty-seventh for a raid that lasted four days. One ship was sunk and twenty-two damaged.
Some officers had predicted that the Japanese must be running out of planes. But the Japanese airplane factories were working overtime, and the waves kept coming and coming.
May was marked by four big two-day raids which cost the Japanese about six hundred aircraft. The cost to the Allies was five ships sunk and thirty-four damaged. Even on the days when the big flights of Kikusui failed to appear, a few Kamikazes came in— and did more damage.
Admiral Turner was forced to change his mind completely. “One of the most effective weapons the Japanese developed, in my opinion, was the use of the suicide bombers,” he said later.
Operation Ten Go—II
Admiral Nimitz, in his inimitable style, would have said, “Strike the words ‘one of.’”
By the summer of 1945 concern at the highest levels over the efficacy of the Japanese suicide attacks had reached a peak. In June Admiral King, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy, ordered Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee to establish a new task force to study the Kamikaze problem. Admiral Lee moved up Casco Bay, Maine, with eleven ships and a flock of American fighter planes, Japanese Zeroes and a number of other aircraft, to conduct research into defensive measures.
All that summer the experimenters worked on early warning systems, better control of fighters, better anti-aircraft-gun performance. They tried new weapons, new techniques. They listened to every new idea. And in the end they came up with nothing.
The Kamikaze attacks continued in June. More ships were destroyed and hundreds more Kamikaze pilots died.
Naha fell to the Americans at the end of May and the fighting grew ever more desperate. Every Japanese infantryman was now a Kamikaze.
On June 19 General Ushijima paid his last respects to the Emperor and ordered all his men to go out and die. Most of them did. The Americans made much of the fact that at this late date some Japanese surrendered (106 soldiers on June 19), but the truth was that the vast majority of the military men committed suicide or carried out Banzai attacks. Thousands of Okinawans joined them.
When the battle for Okinawa ended, at least a hundred thousand Japanese had died on land, and thousands more had died in the air and at sea.
At Casco Bay, Admiral Lee was still far from solving the Kamikaze problem. And now the Allies had to face the prospects of an invasion of Japan, knowing that the enemy would fight even more ferociously on his home turf than anywhere else.
To say that Admiral Nimitz was concerned was a vast understatement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ON Taiwan Admiral Onishi fretted. The war seemed to have passed him by. Except for the one flurry of activity in January, his lot had been to sit and wait. He was held responsible by Tokyo for information about the deteriorating situation in the Philippines, and he sent daily search planes over Luzon. They reported the capture of Clark Airfield complex and the movement of the Americans, but that was all.
Admiral Onishi had few aircraft with which to operate, and he was constrained not to waste them on useless attacks on the Philippines. Even the scouting flights became a problem as he lost planes, and he had to use training planes for scout work. That meant more loss of planes; training planes were never meant for combat conditions.
Onishi became gloomy when the enemy attacked Okinawa. There was no way he could operate from Takao, so he moved up north, which gave him a closer shot at Okinawa. The airplanes he hoped for were not forthcoming from Tokyo. Only a handful of Kamikaze missions were launched from Taiwan.
Onishi wanted action. Not long after the beginning of the battle for Okinawa he got it.
The establishment of the suicidal war policy had created a broad split in the Japanese navy. Most naval officers opposed the radical change in policy. At the same time the government had already begun to show signs of dissolution that upset the war party. The Jushin, a group of former prime ministers who exerted power through their influence with the Emperor, had also decided the war was lost.
After the fall of Saipan they had forced General Tojo to resign as prime minister. Nor was he admitted to the club of the Jushin. The army was still powerful enough to control Japan, but the Jushin forced the appointment of Kuniaki Koiso as prime minister.
Now the fall of Iwo Jima had also brought the fall of Prime Minister Koiso. He was replaced by Kantaro Suzuki, who was old and faltering but dedicated to peace. In with him came Admiral Yonai, who had supported Admiral Yamamoto’s 1939 position that the Pacific war would be a mistake.
The war party saw the peace party closing in.
General Korechika Anami, the new war minister, was a strong advocate of continuing the war. He had to be; under the Meiji constitution the Japanese army had the right to choose the war minister, who had to be a general on active duty.
As the war situation grew desperate all these previous points of power began to dull. The war party needed all the strength it could get.
The enormity of the loss of the flagship of the fleet, symbolic of all the navy stood for, and the resentment against the totally useless method of its destruction brought the navy to the edge of dissolution.
The Kamikazes
As head of the war party within the navy, Admiral Toyoda found himself suddenly beset by opposition from within his command. Admiral Yonai, the naval minister, was definitely a member of the Wahei, the peace faction. He and his associates held that the war was lost and the quickest way they could end the fiasco would be the best way.
Faced with this attitude Admiral Toyoda needed supporters. What man in the navy could be more relied upon to pursue the war effort than Admiral Onishi, the man who had invented the Kamikaze concept and forced it on a reluctant Japan? Admiral Toyoda sent for Admiral Onishi and made him commander of all the naval air forces. That was his way of trying to quell the resentment that had boiled over in the aftermath of the Yamato affair.
And the Holy War went on.
The Kamikaze situation was growing more touchy every day. Too many young men were now saying privately what they feared to say publicly: that the war was lost. Why should people continue to sacrifice themselves?
The attitude was not all-pervasive. It was stronger within the army than the navy, but even the army had its healthy quota of kichigai , the “madmen” who were itching to crash an airplane, such as Cadet Shoichi Yasui.
Shoichi Yasui was a simple young village boy who had enlisted in the air cadet corps in March 1944. He was one of the new crop and given the “short course” which lasted less than a year. He was barely taught how to get a plane off and back onto the ground.
Cadet Yasui went from one training squadron to another, and because of the shortage of fuel and planes he flew very little. Even so he was trained in old-fashioned biplanes and then old, worn- out planes. In March 1945 he was assigned to the 536th unit of the Matsushita Squadron. On April 6 he wrote his last letter home to his brother.
“Warmest greetings. I hope you are all well. As for myself, more and more duty calls. What a fine reward determination is. It gives one peace of mind.
“After all, the body is only an attachment of the spirit.
“There is no use replying to this.
“Goodbye.”
He also enclosed a little poem:
Sensei ni yoroshiku.
(Remember me to teacher.)
Mura no hito ni yoroshiku.
(Remember me to all the villagers.)
Ane san oya ni koko seyo.
(Give filial piety to older sister and our parents.)
Matsu otoko yo hayaku hjikohei ni mare.
(Tell my friend Matsu to hurry up and become a flier.)
Gochin.
(May I achieve an instant sinking.)
The next morning Cadet Yasui arose before dawn, put on clean underclothing and a fresh uniform and donned his hachimaki. He ate a breakfast of warm rice gruel, then left for the field-operations room. There his commanding officer made his usual speech about Emperor and country and heroism. Officers handed around small glasses of sake and all the outbound pilots drank.
They were given maps showing them the way to the objective, and a list of types of ships that were primary targets. (This being the army, the transports led all the rest.) The pilots, too green to trust out alone, were warned to stick together in formation. Only the leaders were briefed on weather conditions and the positions of the enemy carriers.
Cadet Yasui and his comrades took off as the mist was rising, and four hours later they were all dead. For most of them death was meaningless: they were shot down at sea.
Day after day this performance was repeated at half a dozen fields on Kyushu. But it was not the only such operation. The Kaiten were moving again.
On April 20 the 1-47 took on a new load of Kaiten, the Tenbu
The Kamikazes
unit, and together with the 1-36 was to move out to the Ulithi- Okinawa line and wait for enemy ships. On April 28 the submarines were on station when the men of the 1-47 learned from radio broadcasts that the 1-36 had fired four Kaiten and sunk four Allied ships. (It was untrue.) They cheered and vowed to do as well.
A few hours later Captain Orita found a convoy and fired four torpedoes. Four explosions were heard. To the submariners that meant four hits. There were none. What they heard were the torpedoes blowing up.
The Kaiten pilots were growing impatient.
On May 2 the 1-47 fired two Kaiten off Okinawa. Explosions were heard, and the Kaiten were credited with two more ships. (None were hit.) Three more were fired at another group of ships. Three more hits. (Actually none.) One Kaiten malfunctioned and the pilot got back to Japan for another try.
On May 17 another attempt was made. 1-361 , 1-363 and 1-36 set out with Kaiten, the twenty-fourth such attempt. It was no more successful than the last. No one yet seemed to realize the fatal nature of the weapon. Its instability was the primary cause of losses.
Still, the determination of the Japanese never wavered. The Holy War continued. For the submarine service it meant more and more concentration on suicide weapons. In the spring and summer of 1945 the shipyards produced the following:
|
April |
May |
June |
July |
|
|
Koryu |
27 |
12 |
20 |
44 |
|
5-man Kiaryu |
100 |
42 |
74 |
125 |
|
2-man Kaiten |
73 |
42 |
51 |
159 |
|
1-man The figures |
indicate the Jap |
anese |
strategy. Everything |
now was |
Table captionbeing produced and saved for the coming honto kessen , the decisive battle of Japan.
289 The Flight of the Sacred Crane
Suicide crews were in training in all the new submarine units. Production continued to rise in August, as the navy doubled its efforts to produce weapons for the final battle.
Hundreds of Shinyu were produced and youngsters brought fresh from high school to man them. Some Shinyu attacked at Okinawa and damaged a few ships. But, as Admiral Onishi had said back in the Philippines, it was the spirit more than the weapon that counted.
At Okinawa soldiers and sailors proved that spirit time and again. For the first time during the war a total night watch had to be maintained. The Japanese would swim out to the Allied ships after dark, climb up the anchor chain, make their way onto deck and begin killing. Some used swords, some used grenades. They created great tension within the fleet.
In every way Japan was being made into a fortress. A new Imperial Palace was constructed in the mountains of northern Honshu, far from Tokyo, and a new Imperial Headquarters built in the caves there. Guns and equipment, food and ammunition were brought north and hidden in caves. Many aircraft went directly from the factory to the northern airfields. Others were brought to southern Kyushu and Honshu, to repel the invaders, and carefully hidden a mile from the airfields.
The nation was completely mobilized for a continuing war.
One day the Emperor’s brother traveled down to the coast to observe what was going on at a military camp. He found it full of civilians, old men, the half-crippled and boys, marching with sticks on their shoulders—a raggletaggle outfit, in old patched clothes and canvas shoes.
Where were their uniforms and rifles? he asked. They would come when they were needed, the officer in charge replied.
The army and navy war party were gearing up for a war to the finish. To them “finish’’ meant the end of the Japanese people. And in July the army decided that there were no more civilians as such. Every man, woman and child in Japan was to become a soldier of the Emperor.
The Kamikazes
The army philosophy was chillingly simple: it was better, said the generals, that the entire nation perish rather than become enslaved. They pointed time and again to the unconditional-surrender stipulation of the Allies. The Allies had promised that the army and navy would be disbanded, and the generals assumed that the Emperor would be dethroned and probably murdered. They dangled this dread possibility before the Japanese people with great success.
And the Holy War went on.
In July Admiral Ugaki’s planes continued to attack the Okinawa area, even though it was now occupied by the Allies. The Kamikazes came in day after day, and sank more ships and killed more men. Was there never to be an end to it?
Admiral Onishi kept feeding supplies to Admiral Ugaki and urged even greater efforts to destroy the enemy.
On July 1 Admiral Halsey set out from the Philippines with the Third U.S. Fleet. Destination: Tokyo. Object: destroy the airfields and factories.
For most of the next month and a half the Third Fleet ranged around Honshu and Hokkaido islands, raiding installations. The Japanese air force retreated into their shelters and took punishment. The pilots were under strict orders not to sortie except on orders from Tokyo, and high command ordered few responses to the raids.
Admiral Ugaki’s operations were expected, and he was empowered to go after the U.S. fleet with his suicide pilots. But the emphasis had gone from Admiral Ugaki’s operations with the fall of Okinawa!. Admiral Onishi’s and the air armies’ main effort was to prepare suicide planes and pilots for the coming battle of Honshu.
As August began even the B-29 raids were barely contested. The presence of the P-51 fighters persuaded the Japanese commanders to keep their planes hidden, saving them for the important battle to the death.
Admiral Halsey was of the private opinion that the Japanese were licked, an attitude that seeped into the dispatches of war
correspondents. B-29 pilots began to treat the missions to Japan like a “milk run.” They were protected by fighters all the way and met little air opposition (although plenty of flak). If their planes were hit, and they had to bail out or ditch over the ocean, there seemed to be an American submarine every few miles along the way to pick them up.
The victory attitude also permeated Admiral Nimitz’s Pacific Fleet. The submarine captains were bored and disgusted because there were virtually no targets. The captains no longer had to worry about convoys. Some no longer even bothered to zigzag as they moved their ships across the Pacific, so slight seemed the danger from submarines.
Suddenly, on August 2, the fleet, at least, was yanked back to reality. A pilot flying a routine mission off the Philippines had discovered a big oil slick and a lot of heads bobbing in the water. Rescue vessels immediately came out. The cruiser Indianapolis had been sunk by Commander Hashimoto in the 1-56 on July 29. The war was not quite over yet.
At sea Admiral Halsey was not convinced by a single incident. He was more convinced by the fact that he seemed to be running out of targets. Admiral McCain, the carrier commander, was not of that mind. He knew that somewhere the Japanese must be stacking up hundreds of airplanes, and he wanted to find them. But Halsey insisted on plastering old and battered warships in the harbors and coves because he felt the airfields had already been worked to death.
The naval gunfire would have made little difference. The Japanese were now storing their planes underground.
By the end of June the Japanese army air force had organized 340 suicide squadrons. By August, production was back up to two thousand planes a month. Altogether the army had 6,150 aircraft at its disposal, 4,500 of these in the islands of Japan. Standing by were 6,150 pilots with another 2,530 in training. The army had 2,350,000 troops in the home islands. These were real soldiers.
The army was also estimating a force of sixty million, to fight
The Kamikazes
for every foot of the hallowed ground: old men, women, and children who could dive under a truck or a tank with an explosive charge strapped to them, or who could hurl a grenade or prepare a booby trap. There were many ways to fight the enemy without confronting him and the army intended to use them all.
FINALLY, Lieutenant Kanno, the hero of Cebu, had his way. It did not happen quite the way he expected.
Kanno had been transferred at the end of 1944 to the homeland for service with the 301st Fighter Squadron, a traditional unit based on Yakushima island, south of Kyushu. He still was not allowed to make the Tohko foray because of his value as a pilot. On August 1 American planes raided the base at Yakushima. Lieutenant Kanno was manning a 20mm gun when the barrel exploded. He was killed immediately.
At Kanoya air base, Admiral Ugaki noted ruefully that he had no planes that morning to attack the American carriers, although they had been sighted off the Honshu shore. He could not even get to Tokyo to complain; the train service was disrupted by the bombings and no new schedule announced. He resigned himself to wait. He went to the dentist to have an inlay repaired, then to the Mizuko Buddhist shrine, where he prayed for his immortal soul. He felt that he had much to be punished for. He still was surprised that he had survived two major disasters, the flight in which he and Admiral Yamamoto were ambushed by the Americans and the battle of the Philippines during the Sho Operation.
His hawklike face gave little indication of what he had planned, but had anyone been privy to his secret diary he would have learned that the admiral fully intended to make a suicide mission himself in expiation for what he had done to the youth of Japan.
Each time a Kamikaze mission took off from Kanoya base the admiral was present, smiling his inscrutable, slightly sardonic smile.
“I shall follow you,” he told the pilots. “We shall meet at Minatogawa.”
And now Admiral Ugaki waited.
And as the days went by and the scout planes reported on the American buildup at Okinawa, the admiral knew what was going to happen.
... As for myself, supposing the enemy soon makes a landing, I can only fight. For others there is some future aside from battle; for me, none.
Whatever happens, the military units must obey orders, but for me I have a promise to keep: to join my compatriots in death, for whatever that brings.
My real concern now is for my wife, and for the young and old, the women and children. No matter what happens, the earth will remain the same. The ruins will in time be repaired. These are but small problems. I cannot even address them properly. The rushing time washes all earlier thoughts away and I think only of battle. Lamentable as it is, the battle is impossible to resist. So we fight on. . . .
Nor was Admiral Ugaki in any sense alone. Those same thoughts were whirling in the minds of air commanders throughout Japan. The Allied invasion was obviously very near, and the people faced the thought of invasion with revulsion.
The Tokyo propaganda machine blared forth warnings to the public that they must get ready to resist to the last. The Americans would come and bayonet the babies, rape the girls and women, then kill or enslave them.
The training mills were grinding out half-baked pilots by the hundreds. As they walked the streets, the pilots were greeted by peasants, by working women in baggy pajamas, by well-dressed ladies, who insisted on shaking their hands.
One, Flying Officer Ryuji Nagatsuka, was stopped by a peasant on a path near his air base. The old man bowed low in respect to the “living god” and wished him well as he prepared to “annihilate the enemy” who disturbed the peasant while plowing his fields.
Annihilate? Flying Officer Nagatsuka was twenty-one years old.
The Kamikazes
He had left Tokyo University to enlist as an air cadet and had graduated from flight school in April. Then he had been ordered to suicide training. After one month of that he was pronounced ready for death. On June 28 he was told that he would be sent out the following morning in the first and last sortie against the U.S. Third Fleet.
He sat down that night and wrote a brief letter to his parents. Like so many before him he found there was little to say. His parents already knew what was going to happen. All he could tell them was approximately when.
The next morning Nagatsuka and twenty-one others lined up in front of two tables at the edge of the field. The tables were covered with white cloths on top of which stood a bottle of sake and cups.
As they waited four pilots were excused—their planes had engine trouble. The others went through the ritual ceremony, watched by the ground crews and the pilots who were not going—at least this day.
Then, in a few minutes, they were in the air. «*
The weather was terrible. Halfway to their destination, the flight leader motioned the suicide pilots to return to the field. Five of them failed to get the message and went on to crash in the sea. The eleven who did get the message returned.
On the field they were reviled, accused of cowardice and told they were outcasts, not even fit to die for the Emperor.
This same incident was being repeated at airfields all over Japan. The high command was merciless. Now there was little doubt that the Japanese were being driven to destruction.
In Tokyo, Admiral Onishi worried about the growing strength of the peace faction in the government. Admiral Yonai had all but declared himself ready for peace at any price. The Jushin seemed to be leaning strongly toward some sort of negotiation. Shigenori Togo, the foreign minister, was a known advocate of peace and was working hard to influence the prime minister.
Against this trend stood a handful of admirals and most of the generals of the army. General Umezu, the chief of staff of the army,
could certainly be counted on to fight to the end. Onishi wasn’t so sure about General Anami, who kept his ideas to himself.
Late in July the Japanese closely watched the Potsdam meeting of the Allies. The Russians, as usual, were playing their own game. The Japanese ambassador was trying to get some lines out, but he was kept dangling in Moscow waiting for a meeting with the foreign minister, Molotov.
It was rumored that the Emperor himself was leaning toward peace and that he was pushing for negotiations.
At the end of July the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened Japan with destruction if she did not surrender. Admiral Onishi could curl his lip at that. The war party was ready for total destruction. Japan would fight on.
Then, on August 6, the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The casualties were horrendous: 61,000 people killed, 19,000 injured and 170,000 rendered homeless.
To the peace faction the atomic bomb was the clincher. To the war faction it was nothing of the sort. Japan had suffered worse. The great fire-bomb raid on Tokyo in March had killed and maimed more people and rendered more people homeless. The atomic bomb was just another weapon.
What really was a jolt was the declaration of war against Japan by the Soviet Union on August 9. But, said Admiral Onishi and his high officer friends, the Kwantung army could take care of itself. Japan had been planning war against the Soviets for years. She had a million troops in Manchuria and Korea.
The war must go on.
On the basis of the Soviet war declaration the peace faction had secured a meeting of the Supreme War Council with the Emperor. While the council was debating the Potsdam declarations, word came to Tokyo that another atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki.
It made no difference, said Admiral Onishi and the war party. The war must go on. The casualties of the American air raids to date, including the two atomic bombs, came to less than four-
The Kamikazes
hundred thousand people. A hundred million Japanese could fight, must fight, until the enemy retreated or Japan was annihilated.
(Admiral Onishi often used the exaggerated figure of a hundred million Japanese.)
When it became apparent a few days later that the peace party was in control and that the Emperor had offered to surrender to the Americans, Admiral Onishi was almost beside himself. He went to the Imperial Palace to intercede with the Emperor’s younger brother, Prince Takamatsu, who had been trained in the navy and was a friend of Onishi’s. The prince, who knew the reason for his mission, listened, but when Admiral Onishi could not offer any plan with a positive hope for victory, he said he would not speak to the Emperor.
Even if Prince Takamatsu had been convinced, he could not have swayed the Emperor at this stage of the war. What Admiral Onishi did not know was that the Imperial Family was of a common mind: the slaughter must be stopped.
On August 14 the Imperial Palace announced that the Emperor himself would broadcast to the people of Japan at high noon on the following day. So unprecedented was this public appearance of the Voice of the Sacred Crane that many Japanese could not believe it would happen. Only a few knew what he was going to say.
Admiral Onishi knew, and he was desolated. All he had lived for in the past year was now undone.
Some of the young hotheads in the war ministry decided to take the law into their own hands. One of these was Lieutenant Colonel Masahiko Takeshita, the brother-in-law of War Minister Anami. Here is his recollection:
It would be useless for the people to survive the war if the structure of the State itself were to be destroyed. . . .
Although a coup d’etat would mean temporary disobedience to the present Emperor. .. to act in compliance with the wishes of his Imperial Ancestors would constitute a wider and truer loyalty to the throne in the final analysis...
We did not believe that the entire people would be completely annihilated through fighting to the finish. Even if a crucial battle were fought in the homeland and the Imperial Forces were confined to the mountainous regions, the number of Japanese killed by the enemy forces would be small. . .
Even if the whole Japanese race were all but wiped out, its determination to preserve the national policy would be forever recorded in the annals of history. . .
We decided that the peace faction should be overruled and a coup d’etat staged in order to prevail upon the Emperor to revoke his decision. The purpose of the projected coup d’etat was to separate the Emperor from his peace-seeking advisers and persuade him to change his mind and continue the war... All we wanted was a military government with all political power concentrated in the hands of the war minister. . . .
Takeshita and a number of the other conspirators went to see General Takeshi Mori, the commander of the Imperial Guard Division, which was entrusted with protection of the Imperial Palace. They demanded that Mori join their plot, seize the palace and the Emperor, and stop the peace process.
Mori refused. Major Kenji Hatanaka, one of the hottest of the hotheads, drew his pistol and shot General Mori to death.
The recalcitrant staff officers then hurried to the palace gate, gained admission by using General Mori’s name, then forced their way into the grounds.
They insisted on seeing the Emperor. This outrageous request was resisted by the loyal troops of the guard and a skirmish began. General Shiuichi Tanaka, commander of the Eastern District Army, had learned of the plot and arrived on the scene with a strong force. The staff officers were forced to surrender, except Major Hatanaka, who shot himself on the steps of the Palace.
The coup came that close to succeeding. Had the conspirators seized or killed the Emperor, and prevented the broadcast the following day, the war would indeed have gone on.
On the morning of August 15 Admiral Halsey sent his first air
The Kamikazes
sweep out before dawn to hit the Tokyo airfields. They encountered the strongest fighter resistance they had seen in months.
Down on the fields the kichigai —the madmen—were clamoring to fly off on new suicide missions against the U.S. fleet. At the Kaiten bases of Hikari and Otsujima the young suicide pilots were also clamoring to go out on missions. At the Otake submarine school on the Inland Sea several crews of five-man submarines organized for an unauthorized sortie against the American fleet.
At the Atsugi naval air base outside Tokyo, Captain Yasuna Ozono prepared to send out half a dozen fighters over navy bases. They would drop leaflets calling for the fighting to go on.
Admiral Ugaki suspected what was about. Nonetheless, he announced to his aides that he intended to accompany the following day’s suicide mission to Okinawa, to meet his obligation to all those young pilots who had taken flight before him.
The headquarters of the Fifth Air Force had now been moved from Kanoya north to Oita, in a more protected area of Kyushu. The admiral’s quarters now consisted of one small room behind a curtain in the hillside cave that also housed headquarters. From here he announced that he would make the last flight.
His aides tried to dissuade him on the morning of August 15, but he insisted that the announcement be made. He would, however, wait until after the Imperial broadcast.
Admiral Ugaki gave a small party for his staff that morning. At noon he and the others listened to the Emperor’s broadcast. The reception was like the weather that day—terrible—but Ugaki and his officers got the gist of it:
... We feel deeply the existing state of affairs and its effect on the world’s people and the Imperial Domain. . . . state of calamity. . . . here to our loyal subjects proclaim. . . . We, Imperial Domain ruler, do. . . acceptance do instruct that notification be announced.. . continuation of hostilities can only finally lead to our nation’s destruction... to die on the battlefield ... we must resign ourselves to occupation to prevent our
whole people from falling prey to untimely death. . . concern for the bereaved families must accept. . . . kofuku suru
It was final.
Surrender.
Admiral Yokoi and the rest of the staff made one last effort to change Admiral Ugaki’s mind. He was obdurate.
“Let me at least choose the hour and the manner of my own death,’’ he said. In the code of the samurai there was no countering that argument.
The admiral said his goodbyes. He went to the airfield, stripped his uniform of all insignia of rank and got into the lead bomber of the eleven that would make the last Kamikaze mission.
The planes took off and disappeared over the horizon. That was the last seen of Admiral Ugaki.
Four of the planes returned. Engine trouble, the pilots said. Admiral Ugaki’s plane was not one of them.
After the bombers had been out for about four hours the admiral sent a final radio message:
I alone am to blame for our failure to defend the homeland and destroy the arrogant enemy. The valiant efforts of all officers and men of my command during the past six months have been greatly appreciated.
I am going to make an attack at Okinawa where my men have fallen like cherry blossoms. There I will crash into and destroy the conceited enemy in the true spirit of Bushido, with firm conviction and faith in the eternity of Imperial Japan.
I trust that the members of all units under my command will understand my motives, will overcome all hardships of the future, and will strive for the reconstruction of our great homeland that it may survive forever.
Tenno heika. Banzai!
Admiral Ugaki had made his final statement.
The Kamikazes
* * *
IN Tokyo, every admiral and general had to consult his conscience and decide what course he would take now that the unthinkable had happened.
Obviously the example of Admiral Ugaki loomed large before Admiral Onishi. What Ugaki had said of himself was even more true of Onishi, chief among all navy warhawks.
At his official residence in Tokyo the admiral held a little party for his friends on the night after the Emperor’s speech. At midnight everyone left. The admiral busied himself at his desk.
He wrote a haiku (poem) for his old civilian friend, his chum from his school days, Rin Masutani.
Sugasugashii
Refreshing,
Bofuu no ato ni
After the gale
Tsuhi kyo shi.
The moon rises, shining.
Then he turned his attention to his testament for the Japanese people. He paid his respects to the souls of the young men who had died for him, and took upon himself (although not so ardently as Ugaki) the responsibility for the failure of the Kamikazes.
Then he addressed himself to the youth of Japan:
In my death see that a rash undertaking leaves victory to chance and the enemy.
Accept the Imperial Will faithfully; it will bring good fortune.
Remember that you are Japanese. You are the treasure of the nation. With patience and the determined spirit of the Special Attack corps, work for the welfare of the Japanese people and for peace in the world.
Admiral Onishi put down his pen, drew the short sword he had fingered so suggestively in the disappointing days of Manila, and lay down on the tatami of his study.
With one swift movement he cut across his abdomen and pulled the weapon up. He then tried to cut his throat, but was not successful. Weak from the loss of blood, he lay back and waited.
The next morning a servant coming in to tidy up found him lying in a growing pool of his own blood, still conscious. He refused medical aid, and asked only to be left alone to die. It took him until six o’clock that evening.
Gone with him was also the dream of a Japan that could be saved by total sacrifice. For in the end the dream had become a nightmare.