Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  It was also propaganda aimed at the home front. Obsessed with the specter of war-weariness among the Japanese public, the Tokyo regime wanted to provide a shot in the arm to the general mood. The spectacle of young warriors immolating themselves in battle might spur the people to work harder, to sacrifice more, to band together for the climactic stage of a war for national survival. Those themes had already been introduced into the Japanese news media. After his recent suicide attack on the American fleet, Admiral Arima had been lifted up as a “hero god,” and it was suggested that Japanese civilians should be inspired by his example and do more for the war effort. There was even an implicit suggestion, in much of the editorial commentary, that civilians should be shamed by the sacrifices of their fighting forces, and must arouse themselves to work harder, eat less, and give more of themselves to the war effort. Arima’s colleague, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, went on the radio to urge Japanese workers to “attack in the field of production with the spirit of ‘bodily crash.’ ”62

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the kamikaze was a propaganda weapon aimed at the enemy. It was the culmination of what might be called Japan’s “theory” of the Pacific War—a line of reasoning behind its seemingly reckless decision to attack the United States in December 1941, a decision taken in full awareness that American industrial capacity was some ten times larger than Japan’s. The unique collective “fighting spirit” of the Japanese people—the “Yamato spirit,” as it was often called—explained why Japan had never been conquered, and why it had never lost a war. After the war, General Torashirō Kawabe told his American interrogators: “I wish to explain something which is a difficult thing and which you may not be able to understand. The Japanese, to the very end, believed that by spiritual means they could fight on equal terms with you. . . . We believed our spiritual confidence in victory would balance any scientific advantages.”63

  This was religious dogma, rooted in the divinity of the emperor and (through him) the Japanese race. If the Americans were still fighting in 1944, and still demanding unconditional surrender, it was because they had not yet fully grasped the potency of this spirit. And how could they? They were a mongrel people, hopelessly decadent and self-seeking, without any real unity of spirit or purpose. Their great material wealth, industrial base, and technological aptitude would count for nothing if they could not summon the will to fight to the end on Japan’s terms. It was no accident that the kamikaze was introduced to the world in the final weeks of the U.S. presidential campaign, when FDR and Governor Dewey were at one another’s throats, and American political disharmony was on display for the entire world to see. A typical view was expressed by Admiral Ugaki, who commented on the new kamikaze corps in an October 21 entry in his diary:

  Oh, what a noble spirit this is! We are not afraid of a million enemies or a thousand carriers because our whole force shares the same spirit. . . . If 100 million people set out for production and defense with this spirit now, nobody need worry about the future of the empire.

  In the United States they are said to be all crazy about the presidential election and Dewey is a little ahead. I dare say they can’t match us, as their objective in war or their policy of operations are all based on personal benefit.64

  For the nine remaining months of war to come, this was to be Japan’s guiding strategic vision: to display to the Americans the full force and fury of their Yamato spirit. A nation willing to turn its young men into guided missiles was a nation that would fight to the last man, woman, and child—and a nation willing to fight on such terms could not be conquered. If the Japanese raised the stakes high enough, the Americans would flinch. Their leaders, beholden to American voters, lacked the stomach to fight to the point of civilizational annihilation. Perhaps the Pacific War was already lost; in private councils, among themselves, the junta’s leaders were increasingly willing to admit it. But there was a difference between defeat and surrender, between losing an overseas empire and seeing the homeland overrun by a barbarian army. The man-guided missiles were never a realistic bid for victory, but rather a talisman to ward off the horror of total defeat. Even if the official propaganda would not yet admit it, the battle for the sacred islands of Japan had already begun, and the kamikazes were its first line of defense.

  * The term “kamikaze” may have originated in an Allied translation error. In any case, “kamikaze” caught on with the Allies during the last year of the war, and has since become the commonly accepted term in Japan as well. See Sheftall, Blossoms in the Wind, pp. 59–60, footnote.

  Chapter Five

  THE LEYTE INVASION WAS NOT QUITE AS LARGE AS THE NORMANDY invasion four months earlier, but the fleet was obliged to cross a lot more ocean. Thirteen hundred miles lay between Hollandia, MacArthur’s major port of embarkation on northern New Guinea, and the landing beaches at Leyte Gulf. But the invasion fleet amounted to more than seven hundred ships, too many to squeeze into Hollandia—so a major portion of the force sailed from Manus, in the Admiralties, which lay another 500 miles to the east. The various elements of the great armada would rendezvous at sea along the way. By now, it was an old story. Hundreds of landing craft had been borrowed from the Pacific Fleet, but that was another old story—the two theaters had been sharing these specialized vessels and their crews since 1943. After more than two years of amphibious campaigning, the Americans had the game well in hand. They had honed their techniques the hard way, in some thirty landings north and south of the equator. There was the typical last-minute rush to get forces ready, the distribution of bulky plans, the hurried last-minute fueling and provisioning, the communal spasm of effort required to get the ships to sea on time—and all of this, too, was by now an old and familiar story to the thousands of veterans of this largest amphibious campaign in history.

  A Gambier Bay pilot, patrolling overhead, called it “the largest force I’d ever seen gathered. Ships stretched all the way to the horizon.”1 The various semiautonomous task forces sailed in circular cruising formations, doing no better than 9 or 10 knots, so that even the most sluggish vessels could stay on station—a baroque array of attack transports, ordinary transports, landing craft, patrol craft, minesweepers, ammunition ships, oil tankers, and various other service ships. The transports carried 174,000 troops. Each type of landing craft was designated by an acronym beginning with the letter “L,” for “landing”—LSTs, LSDs, LCIs, LCTs, and half a dozen more. Destroyers knifed through the formations, as graceful as greyhounds and as vigilant as sheep dogs. Nine out of ten vessels in this force had not even existed when the Japanese had taken the Philippines in 1942. Indeed, many had just recently arrived in the Pacific, manned by freshly trained crews who had never fought in combat.

  After the war, an interviewer asked Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, commander of the Seventh Fleet, how he had coordinated the movements of those hundreds of ships. “I didn’t quite do it with my own little fingers,” he replied. “It was a question of organization, that’s the thing.”2 The byzantine timetables were devised by working backward from the moment each vessel was wanted in Leyte Gulf. The slowest ships departed first, some as early as October 4, when the plans were still being written. Then ships left in staggered departures, sailing from their various ports of origin, separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles. The fleet had to refuel while underway, given the great distance, so fleet oilers were found waiting at predetermined times and coordinates.

  MacArthur jokingly referred to “my three K’s”—his troika of senior naval, air, and ground commanders, who all happened to have surnames beginning with that letter. Kinkaid led the Seventh Fleet, colloquially known as “MacArthur’s navy.” Lieutenant General George C. Kenney of the USAAF had served as Southwest Pacific air commander since July 1942. The Sixth Army, the principal ground force for the Leyte operation, was commanded by Lieutenant General Walter Krueger. Covering air support for the first stage of the invasion would be provided by the Third Fleet. Halsey would remain in Nimitz’s chain of
command, as he (and Spruance) had in prior joint operations. The Joint Chiefs did not attempt to decide how the commands would mesh, merely instructing Nimitz and MacArthur to “arrange for coordination of mutual support.”3

  After an unprecedented run of carrier air strikes throughout the western Pacific, the Third Fleet and its Task Force 38 airmen were overdue for a long rest in port. Pilot fatigue was evident in all of the carrier air groups, and its toll was beginning to be counted in more frequent operational accidents. Flight surgeons had noted the debilitating effects of this dread syndrome—the gaunt, hunted look on the faces of the pilots, brittle nerves, rapid weight loss. Halsey had only taken command of the fleet in August, but many of the rank and file had been at sea for ten months, with only brief liberties in remote central Pacific atolls. Even Halsey was tired, as Mick Carney had noted. The fleet needed a long spell of rest and replenishment while swinging peacefully at anchors in Ulithi lagoon. Alas, the invasion of the Philippines was only beginning, and the fast carriers of the Third Fleet had a leading part to play. For the first time, MacArthur’s ground forces would wage a sustained campaign beyond the radius of USAAF fighter protection. On Leyte, it was hoped that the Americans could capture and quickly upgrade Tacloban Airfield, so that it could receive Kenney’s interceptors as soon as possible. But until that happened, Halsey’s aviators would need to do most of the work of beating back the Japanese air response. When Halsey queried MacArthur on October 21, asking for an estimate of when Task Force 38 could pull back to Ulithi, the SWPA commander responded firmly: “Basic plan for this operation in which for the first time I have moved beyond my own land-based air cover was predicated upon full support by 3rd Fleet. . . . I consider that your mission to cover this operation is essential and paramount.”4

  One of the looming “known unknowns” about the pending operation was the scale and depth of Japanese air resistance. Another was the question of whether the Japanese fleet would contest the landings. Halsey’s recent rampages had exposed the frailty of Japanese airpower, it was true—but the Philippines were home to hundreds of enemy airfields and feeder strips, and its geographic position was such that it could be reinforced quickly from China, Formosa, and the home islands. The Leyte operation differed from all prior Pacific amphibious landings in that the enemy could rely on depth and dispersal of his air reinforcements. In the pessimistic scenario, the Americans might find themselves in a protracted and grinding air campaign, fighting off waves of enemy planes incoming from the south, west, and north. That was a grim outlook for the carrier force, given that aviator fatigue was already a critical problem. Halsey might have reflected, ruefully, that the Leyte invasion had been moved up by two months on his own bold recommendation. He had made his own bed, and now he was compelled to lie in it.

  As for the enemy fleet, cryptanalytic intelligence and sighting reports had correctly placed Kurita and the surface warships in Lingga Roads near Singapore, and Ozawa and the carriers in the Inland Sea. Prevailing opinion in MacArthur’s shop, and also in the Third Fleet and at Pearl Harbor, was that the Japanese navy would not come out to fight. But there were dissidents to this view, and all could agree that a major fleet action was at least possible. If Kurita’s surface ships moved against the Americans, they would have to come through one of the navigable straits that pierced the island barrier of the central Philippines—Surigao Strait to the south of Leyte, or San Bernardino Strait north of Samar—or else pass south of Mindanao, or the long way around the north coast of Luzon. All were considered, but in the rush to meet the October 20 deadline, the Third and Seventh Fleet commanders and their planners never agreed on detailed contingency plans for each scenario.

  Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet was far from defenseless, and could do much of the work of protecting itself against any enemy thrust. The shore bombardment and fire support group included six battleships of the older and slower classes—among them several leviathans damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor—and an ample number of cruisers and destroyers. This force was designated Task Group 77.2, and commanded by Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf, a veteran of several previous amphibious operations. Kinkaid’s fleet also included sixteen small escort carriers, whose planes would be deployed mainly in the role of bombing and strafing ground targets on the invasion beaches, and flying protective cover over the amphibious fleet. This was Task Group 77.4, commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas Sprague. His flotilla of small, slow flattops and their screening destroyers was divided into three sections, remembered in history by their radio call-signs: Taffy 1, Taffy 2, and Taffy 3.

  Mick Carney, Third Fleet chief of staff, recalled that Halsey had inculcated this dictum into everyone in his chain of command—“that if major action could be provoked, that this was always your primary purpose, to bring about that climactic action. . . . And it was his intention that we go in and slug it out with them, if we could get anybody to slug with, no matter what the hell we took. This was firmly fixed in the minds of all of us, on the basis of his personal instructions to us and conclusions from all the discussions that we had leading up to operations.”5

  ON OCTOBER 17, advance elements of the fleet landed U.S. Army Ranger commando teams on three small islands that guarded the mouth of the gulf. The rangers swiftly overpowered the Japanese garrisons, and then set up navigation lights to aid the amphibious convoys. Minesweepers began the painstaking work of finding and sweeping up about two hundred floating and fixed mines, clearing a broad channel to the landing beaches. Elite frogmen of the “Underwater Demolition Teams”—progenitors of today’s navy SEALs—hunted for undersea obstacles, but found none. Before dawn on October 19, Admiral Oldendorf’s fire support ships filed into the gulf and opened fire on the beaches, commencing a thirty-six-hour-long bombardment. Japanese shore batteries returned fire, landing a few hits on American ships. In firing, however, they advertised their positions, and all were quickly put out of action by the fleet’s superior firepower.

  On October 20, a dark and moonless night, the transport and amphibious fleet filed into the gulf unseen, like ghost ships, and maneuvered to their preassigned positions. Admiral Oldendorf’s bombardment group continued to pour destruction down on the beaches. At 6:00 a.m., as the new day dawned on the eastern horizon, the gunfire climbed in volume and intensity to a thunderous din.

  Watching the spectacle from the bridge of the cruiser Nashville, MacArthur did not mind admitting that he was awed. The barrage made a terrestrial mincemeat out of the shoreline; it was literally reshaping Leyte’s coastal topography. Great shells streaked into shore, chugging like freight trains and tracing long red arcs through the sky. Rockets made bright white vapor trails that remained etched against the sky in latticelike patterns. Coils of smoke rose from the beaches, and the hills above the beaches. Through binoculars, a witness on a transport offshore watched a destroyer aim 5-inch salvos at a Japanese pillbox on a high promontory. “The pillbox was split open like a walnut shell. We could see a few men attempting to climb out when the second salvo hit. That was all. What had once been a well-built fortification was now nothing but a white scar on the hillside.”6 Repeatedly throughout the morning, the naval guns fell silent just seconds before carrier planes swooped over the shoreline, pouring out bombs and rockets and .50-caliber tracers. The beaches themselves were all but invisible under the continuing assault. Layers of yellow and brown smoke hung heavily in the humid air; there was little or no breeze that morning to carry it away. Even on the decks of transports far behind Oldendorf’s ships, men had to shout to make themselves heard. Their khaki uniform shirts fluttered against their chests, and they could feel the stupendous concussions down low in their viscera. Distant detonations on the hills made a penetrating and resonant sound: crump, crump, crump. The entire horizon to the south and west was a ring of strobe-like flashes.

  At exactly 10:00 a.m., the first wave of landing boats departed for shore. The barrage rose to a new pitch. The air, the ground, and the decks of the ships seemed to vibrate like harp strings
. An observer offshore noted in his log, “It is impossible to distinguish one explosion from another; it is just a roar.”7 The LCVPs and LCTs were led by a vanguard of rocket-mounted boats that fired continuously—the rockets going off with a whoosh, whoosh—and these deadly little missiles fell upon the beaches and the terrain around the tree line. Timing and coordination had been refined to such a degree at this stage of the war, that the assault troops peeking over the gunwales of their boats witnessed a sight that none would ever forget. Seconds before the first boats scraped ashore, the curtain of destruction moved suddenly inland about half a mile, like a thunderstorm sweeping across a prairie, and came to rest on positions safely above their landing beaches.

  Out of the boats, racing up the beach, the assault troops threw themselves flat on the sand, or in the craters made by the great blasts. But they quickly realized that they were not under fire. A few isolated Japanese snipers remained among the burned and blasted remains of palm trees, and here and there one heard the rattle of machine-gun fire from a surviving pillbox, but opposition was otherwise negligible. Most enemy troops on the island had apparently pulled back into the mountainous country to the west. The first echelons pressed inland quickly, taking territory and clearing the beaches for the successive waves of boats. In less than an hour, the attackers had secured a beachhead to a depth of about a thousand feet along most of its length. To the extent that they were held up at all, it was more by the wet terrain than by enemy resistance.