(from William Manchester,
Goodbye, Darkness—A Memoir of the Pacific War)
THE ROLLBACK of the Japanese conquests in the Pacific began in August 1942, when the U.S. Marines fought a bloody six-month battle to capture Guadalcanal. Thereafter continuous island-hopping invasions in the Central Pacific were mingled with fierce and successful naval battles which eroded Japan’s sea and air power. The “up the ladder,” leapfrogging amphibious landings on island chains started in the Solomon and moved to the Gilberts, the Marshall, the Mariana and Bonin Islands. Better remembered are the blood-soaked battles named after the conquered islands. In 1943: Bougainville, Tarawa, and Makin. In 1944: Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Siapan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, and Leyte in the Philippines. Followed in 1945 by Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
Okinawa, in the Ryukyu chain, was the last island invaded (April 1945) by the U.S. Army and Marines. A natural air base for launching round-the-clock bombing raids against Japan, it was also within easy reach of southern Kyushu—the obvious first target for the invasion of Japan proper. The strategy predated President Harry S. Truman’s authorization of the use of the newly developed atomic bomb. Upon the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered unconditionally. The uncommon casualty rate experienced on Okinawa and other islands, where the entrenched Japanese fought to the death, helped convince the American command that the atomic bomb was an acceptable option—indeed it has been estimated that the Japanese surrender saved roughly two million casualties.
From his memoir Goodbye, Darkness, here is William Manchester’s account of his encounter with a Japanese sniper. His Marine Corps regiment landed 3,512 men on Okinawa, including rear-echelon troops; of these, 2,812 fell—an 80 percent casualty rate.
THERE WAS just one moment in the war when I saved my own life, and it came right after my soggy nap in that defective cave. Back on our own little amphitheater of war, still soaked to the skin, I started a routine tour of the line companies that afternoon, covering it much as a mailman covers his route, except that I had company, because, if possible, we always moved in pairs. My buddy that day was Chet Przyastawaki, the Colgate athlete with the shrill voice. We followed the embankment as far as it went and then moved from one local feature to another: the Long Square, the Blue Icicle, Grable’s Tit, the X, the Iron Claw, Thurston’s Trick, and the V, also known as the Hairless Pussy. This was a time when the Japanese were constantly challenging us, trying to infiltrate every night and sometimes, brazenly, by day. If their purpose was to keep us off balance, they were succeeding. This surging back and forth quickened the pulses of the Raggedy Asses. People like us, moving from one command post to another, could get caught by occasional Nips [Niponese] who were testing us, penetrating as deeply as they could and then, when found, trying to slip back.
Chet and I had covered the companies, Fox to Easy to Dog, as smoothly as Tinker to Evers to Chance. Positions around Sugar Loaf were in constant flux—at one time or another nine Marine battalions fought on the hill—and we had been told to skirt enemy lines on our way back, scouting every dip, crease, cranny, and rut in the ground that might be useful in combined attacks. The last leg of our journey, before we reached the lee side of the railroad embankment, took us past the crevice called McGee’s Closet and down Windy Alley, a rock gulch which, like Sugar Loaf itself, had changed hands repeatedly. We arrived there at the worst possible time. The Japs had launched a reconnaissance in force; no sooner had we entered the lower throat of the alley than we heard the unmistakable sounds of an enemy patrol sealing it off behind us, closing our option of retracing our steps. Then we heard a familiar, husky sob in the air, directly overhead. We hit the deck, and a mortar shell burst a hundred feet away, followed by another, and then another. Silence followed. Chet crossed himself. Another shell burst. The stupid Japs were falling short of their targets, our lines, mortaring us in. When mortared, you are supposed to flee in almost any direction, but, as we were about to discover, it is not always that easy. As we rose cautiously, we heard jabbering on the opposite slopes of both sides of Windy Alley. So much for our flanks. We darted ahead, toward the embankment, and that was when the pneumatic whuff of the first bullet from that direction sang between us. It wasn’t from an M1; it had that unmistakable Arisaka whine. We hit the deck again and rolled rightward together, toward the protection of a huge boulder, a rough slab of rock. Two more bullets whuffed past before we made it. Our problem now, and I cannot begin to tell you how much it discouraged me, was that a Nip sniper was in position at the alley’s upper throat, behind another boulder, blocking the maze of intersecting paths there, cutting us off at the pass. We were trapped, the nightmare of every foot soldier. All I had going for me was sheer desperation. Warning: this animal is vicious; when attacked, it defends itself.
Lying in tandem, Chet and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. The coral had cut both his hands, but I was in no mood to comfort him. I felt a wave of self-pity. For several seconds I was completely mindless. Fear is the relinquishment of reason; we yield to it or fight it, but there are no halfway points. Then I struggled and shook off the panic. It was one of Napoleon’s maxims that in war you must never do what the enemy wants you to do. This Jap expected us to stay put. So we wouldn’t. Each of us had two grenades hooked on his harness. I
hunched up and reached for one. Chet shook his head. “Too far,” he whispered. If the range was too great for a Colgate halfback, a scrawny sergeant didn’t have a chance, but I already knew the distance was too great; reaching the Nip with a pitch wasn’t what I had in mind. I didn’t tell Chet now what was there, because as I unlooped the grenade I had to think about a weapon which would reach our man. I was carrying a carbine and a .45, both useless in a sniper’s duel. Chet had an M1. I asked, “Did you qualify?” He said, “Sharpshooter. Under three hundred.” I shook my head. It wasn’t good enough. For once I was going to do what the Marine Corps had taught me to do best. I said to Chet, “Give me your weapon and an extra clip.”
My problems were complicated. I knew nothing, for example, of the Japs’ timetable. If this was a quick in-and-out operation, the sniper might disappear, running back to his hole in Sugar Loaf. But that wasn’t the way their snipers worked; if they had quarry, they usually hung around until they flushed it. And this one now confirmed his personal interest in us in a thin, falsetto, singsong chant, a kind of liquid gloating: “One, two, three—you can’t catch me!” Chet muttered in an even higher register, “No, but he can catch us.” I was looking up at the sky. The light was clouded. Soon waves of darkness would envelop us, and conceivably it could come to the knife. I couldn’t even think about that. Instead, I asked Chet, “Is your piece at true zero? He said, “It throws low and a little to the right.” I took it, leaving him the carbine, and said, “His piece must throw high, and he probably doesn’t know it. He had three clear shots at us and drew Maggie’s drawers every time.” Chet said, “But from where he is…” I nodded grimly. That was the worst of it. An invisible line lay between his position and ours. It was diagonal. The azimuth of his lair was about 45 degrees west; mine was 135 degrees east. On a clock this would put him at eight minutes before the hour and me at twenty-three minutes past—northwest for him, southeast to me. Since both our slabs of rock were set dead against the alley’s walls, I couldn’t use my weapon and my right arm without stepping clear of my boulder, exposing myself completely. All he needed to show was an arm and an eye, unless, by some great stroke of luck, he was left-handed. I had to find that out right now.
Peering out with my left eye I caught a glimpse of him—mustard colored, with a turkeylike movement of his head. He was right-handed, all right; he snapped off a shot. But he wore no harness, and I had been right about his rifle. It wasn’t true; the bullet hummed overhead and hit the gorge wall, chipping it. So much for the marksmanship of the Thirty-second Manchurian Army. My job was to beat it. Luckily Windy Alley was calm just now. I checked the cartridge in the chamber and the five in the magazine. Now came the harnessing. The full sling I had perfected during my Parris Island apprenticeship involved loops, keepers, hooks, feed ends, and buckles. It took forever, which I didn’t have just then, so I made a hasty sling instead, loosening the strap to fit around and steady my upper arm. My options were narrowing with each fading moment of daylight, so I didn’t have time to give Chet an explanation. I handed him the grenade now and said, “Pitch it at him, as far as you can throw. I’m going to draw him out.” He just stared at me. What I loved about the Raggedy Ass Marines was the way my crispest commands were unquestioningly obeyed. He started to protest: “But I don’t understa—” “You don’t have to,” I said. “Just do it.” I started shaking. I punched myself in the throat. I said, “Now.”
I turned away; he pulled the pin and threw the grenade—an amazing distance—some forty yards. I darted out as it exploded and rolled over on the deck, into the prone position, the M1 butt tight against my shoulder, the strap taut above my left elbow, and my left hand gripped on the front hand guard, just behind the stacking swivel.
Load and lock
Ready on the left Ready on the right Ready on the firing line
Stand by to commence firing
My right finger was on the trigger, ready to squeeze. But when I first looked through my sights I saw dim prospects. Then, just as I was training the front sight above and to the left of his rocky refuge, trying unsuccessfully to feel at one with the weapon, the way a professional assassin feels, the air parted overhead with a shredding rustle and a mortar shell exploded in my field of fire. Momentarily I was stunned, but I wasn’t hit, and when my wits returned I felt, surprisingly, sharper. Except for Chet’s heavy breathing, a cathedral hush seemed to have enveloped the gorge. I could almost hear the friction of the earth turning on its axis. I had literally taken leave of my senses. There remained only a trace of normal anxiety, the roughage of mental diet that sharpens awareness. Everything I saw over my sights had cameolike clarity, as keen and well-defined as a line by Van Eyck. Dr. Johnson said that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” So does that immediate prospect of a sniper bullet. The Jap’s slab of rock had my undivided attention. I breathed as little as possible—unlike Chet, who was panting—because I hoped to be holding my breath, for stability, when my target appeared. I felt nothing, not even the soppiness of my uniform. I looked at the boulder and looked at it and looked at it, thinking about nothing else, seeing only the jagged edge of rock from which he had to make his move.
I had taken a deep breath, let a little of it out, and was absolutely steady when the tip of his helmet appeared, his rifle muzzle just below it. If he thought he could draw fire with that little, he must be new on the Marine front. Pressure was building up in my lungs, but I thought I would see more of him soon, and I did; an eye, peering in the direction of my boulder, my last whereabouts. I was in plain view, but lying flat, head-on, provides the lowest possible profile, and his vision was tunneled to my right. Now I saw a throat, half a face, a second eye—and that was enough. I squeezed off a shot. The M1 still threw a few inches low, but since I had been aiming at his forehead I hit him anyway, in the cheek. I heard his sharp whine of pain. Simultaneously he saw me and shot back, about an inch over my head, as I had expected. He got off one more, lower, denting my helmet. By then, however, I was emptying my magazine into his upper chest. He took one halting step to the right, where I could see all of him. His arms fell and his Arisaka toppled to the deck. Then his right knee turned in on him like a flamingo’s and he collapsed.
Other Nips might be near. I knifed another clip into the M1, keeping my eyes on the Jap corpse, and crept back to the boulder, where Chet, still breathing hard, leaned against me. I turned toward him and stifled a scream. He had no face, just juicy shapeless red pulp. In all likelihood he had been peering out curiously when that last mortar shell burst. Death must have been instantaneous. I had been alone. Nobody had been breathing here but me. My shoulder was all over blood. Now I could feel it soaking through to my upper arm. I shrank away, sickened, and the thing he had become fell over on its side. Suddenly I could take no more. I jumped out and dodged, stumbling, up the pitted, pocked alley. I braked to a halt when I came to the body of the dead sniper. To my astonishment, and then to my rage, I saw that his uniform was dry. All these weeks I had been suffering in the rain, night and day, this bastard had been holed up in some waterproof cave. It was the only instant in the war when I felt hatred for a Jap.