Chapter Fourteen

1.     It was not until September 18, 1947, that the US Air Force became a separate entity; army personnel controlled the air force during World War II.

2.     Ketsu-Go—Operation Decision—was the official policy of defending Japan to the death. As historian William Manchester points out in American Caesar, “Manning the nation’s ground defenses were 2,350,000 regular soldiers, 250,000 garrison troops, and 32,000,000 civilian militiamen—a total of 34,600,000, more than the combined armies of the United States, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany.… Their weapons included ancient bronze cannon, muzzle loading muskets, bamboo spears and bows and arrows. Even little children had been trained to strap explosives around their waists, roll under tank treads, and blow themselves up. They were called ‘Sherman carpets.’”

3.     The kaiten torpedo was first developed in summer 1944. Essentially a one-man submarine with an explosive charge that activated upon ramming another vessel, the kaiten was launched from a larger host submarine. The program was largely ineffective in comparison with the kamikaze airplane suicide attacks.

4.     The mistake came about because Japanese submarines relied upon the sound of explosions to confirm a sinking, lacking visual confirmation because they were forced to dive soon after firing their torpedoes. This, plus an Imperial Japanese Navy habit of inflating the number of sinkings of American vessels in order to please superiors, often led to false reports.