The World War II Chronicles

by William Craig

  Years earlier, well aware of the dangers involved in war with the West, Higashi-Kuni had tried to impress upon his military friends the rashness of Japanese aggression. Posted to the Army as a general, he had violently opposed the coming crisis with the United States. When the disaster of total war engulfed the nation, he resigned himself to inevitable defeat. Finally, as it came, the Prince stepped forward willingly when Hirohito asked for help. He took up Suzuki’s title and set about restoring a measure of calm to a troubled nation.

  At Fukuoka, scene of the massacre of American fliers only four days before, officers at Western Army Headquarters listened to the Emperor’s broadcast and then made plans for the afternoon.

  A meeting was held and an order read: “There will be an execution of enemy fliers. The fliers are being executed because they are being held responsible for indiscriminate bombing …” The man who read the directive added, “The executions will be kept secret.”

  One vital reason impelled the Japanese to act against the remaining B-29 crew members in detention at the headquarters. The Americans knew too much. They could testify that other POW’s had been alive a few days before the war ended but had suddenly disappeared from sight.

  In the middle of the afternoon, another procession went down the road to Aburayama. In the back of a truck, sixteen American airmen sat surrounded by guards. None of the prisoners knew the war was over.

  In the field where eight fellow prisoners had been slaughtered four days before, they were stripped and formed into a ragged line. The commander of the Japanese execution squad stood nearby with his girl friend, invited to watch the spectacle. When he shouted an order several of his men closed around the first victim. They took him into the woods at the edge of the field and fell upon the defenseless man with swords.

  The brutal scene was repeated again and again on the dwindling group of captives, who were dragged individually or by twos and threes into the trees and cut into pieces. Unlike the previous “organized” deaths of fliers, this day of killing was an orgy, a frenzied destruction of human beings. Shouts of triumph rose from the throats of the excited Japanese, who ripped and slashed the prisoners in the secluded forest.

  While crowds of happy people roamed the streets of New York, San Francisco and New Orleans, sixteen Americans were dumped into hastily dug pits across the Pacific at Aburayama. They were unrecognizable. The men who killed them went back to headquarters to burn any records pertaining to the whereabouts of the victims.

  At Oita Airfield, the last kamikaze attack of the Pacific war was about to be launched. It was close to five o’clock in the afternoon. Admiral Matome Ugaki had listened carefully to the Emperor’s message. He had said goodbye to his associates in a brief ceremony where the traditional sake cups were drained by all. He had made his preparations for death. Finally he had stripped all insignia and braid from his uniform. Now he walked out of his hillside home toward the apron of the runway.

  Captain Miyazaki, resigned to his superior’s decision, raced up to him and asked to go along on the mission. Ugaki rebuked him gruffly: “You have more than enough to attend to here. You must remain.” Miyazaki burst into tears. The admiral walked on.

  When he reached the parking area, he was dumbfounded to see eleven naval fighter-bombers lined up ready for takeoff. Rear Admiral Tokiyushi Yokoi, Ugaki’s chief of staff, approached the group leader and asked him if the men intended to follow Ugaki to Okinawa. He said they did.

  Ugaki was deeply moved. “Are you so willing to die with me?” Twenty-two right hands flashed into the air as his flyers saluted him. Visibly moved, the admiral went to the lead plane and signaled for takeoff. Eleven motors coughed and caught, then roared loudly over the flat terrain. Just as the first plane moved onto the runway, Ensign Endo, whose place Ugaki had usurped, vaulted onto the wing and squeezed into the rear seat beside the admiral. They smiled at each other as the aircraft moved down the field. One by one, the ten other ships revved their engines and moved off into the shimmering heat of the August afternoon. In moments, Oita was quiet. The waiting began.

  Flying time to Okinawa was a little more than two hours. At twenty-four minutes past seven o’clock, the radio in the control tower at Oita airfield came to life. Ugaki delivered a final message to his men:

  “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.…”

  Static garbled most of the statement from here on. The last clear words reported that the planes were diving.

  Ugaki and his men were never seen again. The United States Navy had no record whatsoever of any suicide attacks on its ships that day. Where the mission went, no one ever learned. Admiral Ugaki left only an epitaph and an unsolved mystery.

  That afternoon, the body of General Anami, in full-dress uniform, was brought from his official residence to an office building on top of Ichigaya Hill. It was placed in a small room to lie in state between the corpses of Hatanaka and Shiizaki, which had been found in the pine forest near the palace. Fellow officers visited the three caskets and bowed in prayer. A stream of grieving soldiers shuffled through the room and cried bitterly.

  At twilight Anami’s body was taken from the building. A straggling line of mourners followed the coffin bearers across the top of the hill and down a slope to a freshly dug hole. Over the hole an iron grating had been placed. The casket was laid upon it, and twigs and sticks were heaped over and under it. Cans of gasoline were poured over the wood.

  In the soft light of the summer night, onlookers watched as a colonel struck a match and tossed it toward the corpse. With a whoosh, flames leaped up and out. The widow and five-year-old son of the general stumbled back from the pyre and stood staring. The soldiers saluted.

  The cremation lasted into the darkness of August 15. The torch shone from Ichigaya Hill for hours and then dwindled.

  When his wife and son moved away from the glowing pyre, they were followed by officers who would now turn to the painful duty of dismantling General Anami’s army.

  Within hours after Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast the enemy contacted Tokyo. For the first time since December 7, 1941, the United States military spoke “in the clear” to the Government of Japan.

  FROM: Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers

  TO: The Japanese Emperor

  The Japanese Imperial Government

  The Japanese Imperial General Headquarters

  ITEM [I] HAVE BEEN DESIGNATED AS THE SUPREME COMMANDER FOR THE ALLIED POWERS (THE UNITED STATES, THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA, THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS) AND EMPOWERED TO ARRANGE DIRECTLY WITH THE JAPANESE AUTHORITIES FOR THE CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES AT THE EARLIEST PRACTICABLE DATE.

  IT IS DESIRED THAT ABLE [A] RADIO STATION IN THE TOKYO AREA BE OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED FOR CONTINUOUS USE IN HANDLING RADIO COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THIS HEADQUARTERS AND YOUR HEADQUARTERS. YOUR REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE SHOULD GIVE THE CALL SIGNS, FREQUENCIES AND STATION DESIGNATION. IT IS DESIRED THAT THE RADIO COMMUNICATION WITH MY HEADQUARTERS IN MANILA BE HANDLED IN ENGLISH TEXT. PENDING DESIGNATION BY YOU OF ABLE STATION IN THE TOKYO AREA FOR USE AS ABOVE INDICATED, STATION JIG NAN PETER [JNP] ON FREQUENCY ONE THREE SEVEN FOUR ZERO KILOCYCLES WILL BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE. UPON RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE, ACKNOWLEDGE.

  MacArthur

  SIXTEEN

  Delayed Reactions

  In the early light of the morning of the sixteenth, a military truck drove slowly through the deserted streets of Tokyo. It bounced over the rough pavement and jostled a pine box lying in the rear. Inside the box lay the cramped body of the warrior Onishi, the founder of the kamikazes.

  The admiral had taken his own life the day before as an act of expiation for his failure to avoid defeat. In the last hours of war, he had tried desperately to avert surrender. His attempts had been met by scorn, rage and ill-concealed hatred on the part of those he had accosted. />
  After hearing of the Emperor’s final decision, Onishi had retreated to his official residence and committed hara-kiri. Refusing all help, he had lain on the bloody floor for nearly eighteen hours. When death came at last, he was gripping the hand of a friend. Now his body was being taken to a crematorium but his spirit was less quickly disposed of.

  Also on the morning of the sixteenth, two men came to the huge headquarters building on Ichigaya Hill. Colonel Ida’s father had been found, and Colonel Tsukamoto of the Kempei Tai was bringing him to see his son.

  Ida himself had spent a miserable twenty-four hours since deserting his fellow plotters in the abortive revolt. Shaken by the deaths of Mori, Anami and the others, he had returned to his home on the fifteenth and contemplated suicide. For most of the day he had lain in bed. At 6:00 P.M. he had said goodbye to his wife and told her to claim his body the next day at the War Ministry. Then he had gone to Ichigaya and prayed before the caskets of Anami, Shiizaki and Hatanaka. He had cried bitterly and determined to die as they had.

  When Tsukamoto and Ida’s father entered the War Ministry, the supposed widow had arrived just ahead of them, ready to claim her husband’s body.

  From an office down the corridor, loud laughter sounded. Colonel Arao emerged walking beside another officer. It was Colonel Ida.

  At the sight of him, alive and smiling, his wife flew into a rage. “You said you were going to kill yourself. You have no courage.”

  As the woman continued to scream at him, Ida smiled broadly and said, “Arao and others have talked me out of it.” He tried to convince her that he was not a coward, but to no avail. Through the halls of the War Ministry, the matter of family honor resounded. Ida finally turned from his embittered wife, his father, his friends, and walked away. He preferred to go on living.

  In Peking, China, OSS Major Jim Kellis had also heard the Emperor’s broadcast. Realizing that it was important to move quickly, he told Chinese “puppet” general Mung that he wanted to see the ranking enemy general in Peking as soon as possible. On the morning of the sixteenth, a Japanese colonel drove up to Mung’s home, where Kellis was staying, and delivered a note. General Takahashi would like to see the American major at his convenience. Immediately Kellis dressed in the uniform of the United States Army and walked out to his appointment.

  At Japanese headquarters, he was ushered into the general’s office. Takahashi rose and exchanged salutes with Kellis. The American spoke:

  “I am Major James Kellis, acting as liaison officer for General Wedemeyer. I have come here to effect the prompt release of Allied prisoners in the area.”

  Takahashi listened, then smiled and said, “Welcome to Peking. I will cooperate with you completely.”

  The two men sat down and began to go over details of repatriation. Kellis and his team of OSS personnel had surfaced exactly on time.

  Northeast of Peking, a single B-24 bomber rode high over the fields of Manchuria. It had come from far to the southwest, from Hsian. There, just after midnight on the sixteenth, Major Gus Krause, the OSS commander of that outpost, had said goodbye to six men as they climbed into the squat, four-engined plane for the long trip to the Hoten Prison Camp at Mukden, Manchuria. Krause had been apprehensive as he waved to the parachutists, for he knew that his own men, like Jim Kellis stationed behind the Japanese lines, were better trained to accomplish such a mission without trouble. He felt that Operation Cardinal, this attempted rescue of POW’s, could easily end in disaster.

  The B-24, carrying an extra gas tank in its belly because of the length of the flight, wobbled up into the night and climbed heavily into the star-filled sky. The members of the mercy team settled down in the rear and fell asleep.

  Major James Hennessy commanded the group. He was nervous but dared not show it. Major Robert Lamar, a combat doctor, was also nervous but managed to nap in the cold interior of the plane. He was the only man aboard who had ever jumped from a B-24. Three enlisted men dozed in the cramped quarters. They were Sergeants Edward Starz, Harold Leith and Fumio Kido, a Nisei interpreter. Another member of the team was a Nationalist Chinese guide, Major Cheng-Shi-Wu, who was not happy about the idea of dropping into the midst of the Japanese Kwantung Army.

  As sunlight streamed into the plane, the pilot called Lamar to the cockpit. He told the doctor that only two passes—one for the men and one for the equipment—could be made over the jump zone because of the fuel situation. Lamar went back to alert his group, and instructed them once more on the problems of leaping out of the bomb bay of the B-24.

  At the Hoten camp, POW’s gathered in the courtyard for their regular morning recreation period. The prison housed over seventeen hundred men who had managed to survive for years by pitting their inner strength against the privation and humiliation of a Japanese concentration camp.

  Ingenuity born of desperation had kept their spirits and bodies reasonably sound. Enlisted men had become master thieves, capable of filching almost any food or equipment from under the noses of their captors. When the Japanese made the mistake of having prisoners unload trucks or railroad cars, sometimes over half of the merchandise on board disappeared into pockets, up sleeves, or down the inside of pants. The Japanese were always mystified at the resultant discrepancies and sometimes tried to beat the truth out of innocent-looking captives. They invariably failed to get to the source of the looting.

  A brisk black-market business was conducted with susceptible guards, who would bring delicacies into the camp in exchange for watches and other valuables. An over-the-wall trading routine was established between enlisted men and local civilians, and food was sold at tremendous prices to Allied officers. Cigarettes brought five dollars a pack.

  Prisoners received some news of the war from papers smuggled into the camp at a price. The reports in them reflected a steady Allied advance toward Japan, but few at Hoten realized how greatly it had accelerated.

  In the second week of August, the situation in the Mukden area was tense. Large fires were visible outside the prison. Intermittent machine-gun and rifle fire was heard in the distance as Russian armies pressed closer. Guards had been doubled at the camp itself, and Japanese officers seemed to be in a highly excitable and ugly mood. The Allied prisoners read these signs and realized that something big was about to happen. Local peasants added substance to the mounting rumors by reporting that the town of Mukden itself was a scene of rioting and martial law.

  General George Parker, a senior American officer, was terribly concerned about his men. When the Japanese issued orders to the prison bakery to prepare an extra supply of “travel bread,” he deduced that some part of the camp population was about to be moved. Parker was appalled at the thought, for he knew that a march at this point could only result in the death of many of the undernourished and exhausted POW’s.

  On August 16, in the yard of the compound, several Americans lounged in the warm sun. When a plane roared over, they looked up curiously. When parachutes spilled out into the sky, the prisoners got excited. Jumping up, they asked each other what it could mean. Someone suddenly said, “Say, I remember back at Fort Benning they used to use those colored chutes.” The yard at Hoten Camp came alive.

  Major Lamar had been first to go through the hatch of the B-24. At a signal from the jumpmaster, he plunged forward and down into the Manchurian morning. Behind him, five other bodies hurtled through the hole in the belly of the bomber. Sergeant Ed Starz was the next to last out. When his chute opened, he relaxed a bit and looked below to see where he would land. The intended drop zone, a golf course, was nowhere in sight. Instead, the mercy team was drifting into a vegetable field. As he braced for a landing, Starz noticed several people running away from the area. When he hit, he rolled, stopped, and quickly unbuckled his reserve chute. Then, dropping his harness on the ground, he ran to the rest of the team, all of whom had landed safely.

  Major Hennessy stood in the middle of a cabbage patch and made a fast decision. He, Leith, Lamar and Kido would head down a nea
rby road toward the prison camp while Starz and Major Cheng remained to gather the equipment now being dropped by the B-24 on its last pass.

  As the OSS men talked, a happy crowd of Chinese approached them. Obviously in good humor, they clapped their hands as more parachutes floated down from the bomber and scattered supplies over the landscape. One peasant told the group that the men seen running from the field were Japanese soldiers, who by now must have reported the “invasion” to higher authorities.

  Hennessy wasted no time. He took his three men toward the road to camp. Starz and Cheng stayed with the equipment which the Chinese spectators had begun to collect for them.

  On the road the four Americans headed briskly toward the prison. Five minutes passed, then ten. Hennessy and the others seemed to be alone as they walked along.

  They were not. Up ahead, a company of Japanese troops appeared, running at double time. Hennessy ordered a halt. The Japanese slowed, then came on warily.

  Fifty feet away, a sergeant shouted something which Kido translated: “He says to kneel down.” The four Americans went to their knees. The Japanese moved in among them and made menacing gestures with their bayoneted rifles. They were particularly interested in the Japanese-American Kido.

  The sergeant commanding the enemy unit asked, “Who are you?” When Kido translated, Hennessy said, “Tell him we are Americans here to bring aid to the prisoners at Hoten. Tell him that the war is over.” Kido repeated this to the Japanese, who simply sneered. Hennessy realized that the Japanese had no idea the hostilities had ended and murmured: “Oh, God.”

  It began to rain. The Americans stayed in the road on their knees while the Japanese sergeant walked about, undecided, confused. His men stood poised with rifles pointed down at the OSS men.

  Hennessy finally asked if they could move under some shelter. The Japanese noncom listened to the translation, hesitated, then ordered the captives to stand up. They were escorted to a nearby factory outbuilding where they stood under an overhanging roof.