The World War II Chronicles

by William Craig

  Starz, Leith and Kido were bombarded with questions: “Who is this guy Truman?” “What about this new bomb?” “Where the hell did you guys come from?” “What happened at Midway?” “How does penicillin work?” The prisoners would not let their rescuers alone for a moment.

  Major Lamar sat down with a group of senior officers and conducted a briefing. The first question asked him was, “What is the stock quotation on U.S. Steel?” Someone at Mukden had retained a sense of humor during the long years of misery.

  At the commandant’s office, Hennessy received some upsetting news. General Wainwright was not at Hoten. He was detained in Mukden Camp Number Two at Sian, over one hundred miles away to the northeast.

  Arrangements were initiated to send Major Lamar and Sergeant Leith up to Sian as soon as possible. In the meantime, Major Hennessy would get acquainted with his newly acquired territory.

  In the midst of the babel in the Hoten compound, a chauffeured Japanese staff car drove up to the main gate. From the rear stepped a tall American soldier, Captain Roger Hilsman, who had come all the way from Burma for a special reason.

  Weeks before, he had asked his former commanding officer, Colonel Ray Peers, to allow him to go on any rescue mission into Manchuria. Hilsman wanted to look for his father, a colonel captured in 1942 in the Philippines and last reported at Mukden. It was not known whether his father was still alive.

  When Peers began to select men for the mercy missions, he remembered Hilsman’s request and sent for him. Dressed only in jungle fatigues, the captain hitched a ride to Kunming but missed the first flight to the advance base at Hsian.

  He was forced to linger a day at Kunming waiting for another plane. When he finally got to Hsian, he found he had missed again. Operation Cardinal had already gone on to Mukden.

  On August 17 Hilsman got a ride on a B-24 going into the Mukden area. As it came over the airport, he could see a Russian fighter parked on the runway. When his plane landed and he jumped down on the apron, he saw a Japanese general engaged in conversation with a Russian officer. Hilsman went up to the two men and asked for transportation to the Hoten camp. The Japanese general put a staff car at his disposal.

  Still dressed in his camouflage uniform, Hilsman leaped out of the car at the prison gate, ran inside, and asked the nearest man where he might find a Colonel Hilsman. The soldier stared at him, thought a moment, then said, “Yes, sir, that barracks there. Second floor.” He pointed at a building.

  The captain ran through the door and went upstairs. He scanned the beds and went up to one of them where a middle-aged man sat. The man was staring at him and murmuring, “My God, my God.” Captain Roger Hilsman’s search had ended.

  SEVENTEEN

  An Order From MacArthur

  At dawn on August 19, Kawabe’s Manila delegation assembled at the Navy Department building in Tokyo.

  The small group drove out to Haneda Airport past vast acres of flattened city blocks. The morning was beautiful. A bright sunshine filled the skies and caused someone in the group to remark, “Perfect shooting weather.” The kamikazes were never far from their thoughts.

  Though Kosono himself was no longer a problem, there were other fanatics at Atsugi still capable of launching an attack. There were also other airbases in Japan with kamikazes less flamboyant, perhaps, than Kosono, but as disinclined to accept surrender as he. An elaborate secret plan had therefore been concocted for the flight. From Haneda, the mission would fly to Kisarazu Airbase, across Tokyo Bay on the Bose Peninsula. There they would change planes and go south approximately one hundred miles over the ocean before swinging west toward the Ryukyus. En route they would be met by a convoy of American fighters and bombers which would guide them from the southern tip of Kyushu to the American base at Ie Shima off Okinawa. From there they would fly on to Manila. The roundabout course cut the risk of kamikaze interception from the Home Islands. As an added precaution, at the time of mission takeoff, decoy bombers would head out from Tokyo in another direction.

  At 6:00 A.M. the men took off across Tokyo Bay. They landed fourteen minutes later. Kisarazu was the main base of the Third Air Fleet under the command of Admiral Teraoka, the same man who had tried to reason with Kosono at Atsugi three days before. He greeted the delegates and invited them to join him in a meal. It had been prepared by cooks specially selected for the occasion, for Teraoka too feared mission sabotage, by poison.

  When the time came to board the two planes lined up on the runway, Teraoka had wreaths of flowers brought out. He asked Kawabe to drop them over Okinawa to honor the memories of the more than 100,000 Japanese servicemen who had died there. Then the delegation filed in two sections into the waiting bombers. These were of the slow two-engined type known as “Bettys” by American pilots. On MacArthur’s orders, both had been painted white and had a large green cross on each side of the fuselage. Each plane received eight members of the mission. As the officials settled into their places, the pilots opened their secret orders. Only then did they see the chart showing the route.

  The Bettys roared down the runway and up into the brilliant light. In their rear seats the delegates were uncomfortable and tense. On Kawabe’s plane, it was easy to look out at the sky because the sides were stitched with bullet holes from some previous encounter with American fighters. But Kawabe closed his eyes to everything around him and appeared to sleep. No one else slept, but none bothered to speak either.

  One hundred miles out, the two planes turned and flew west, approximately parallel to the long southern perimeter of Japan. The men in the planes stayed relatively quiet. Kawabe still appeared to doze. Others followed his example.

  At eleven o’clock, the mountains of southern Kyushu appeared on the right side. On this island the warrior race of Japan, the samurai, had emerged centuries before. On this same island today, descendants of the samurai, kamikazes, waited for the enemy occupation forces. There was no reason to believe they would wait peacefully. But then, those who could see out through the bullet holes in the lead plane’s fuselage saw to their relief that heavy cumulus clouds had appeared. Interception by fighter planes would be most difficult.

  At 11:15 A.M. the bombers were suddenly surrounded by fourteen planes coming up alongside to inspect them. Alarmed at first, the occupants of the Bettys soon saw that the strangers were two B-24’s and twelve P-38’s of the American Air Force. The two bombers were slightly ahead, the twelve fighters around, above and below. They performed acrobatics, diving past the white Bettys which lumbered along in the middle of this concentration of protective power. The threat from the kamikazes was over.

  One hour and fifteen minutes later, the island of Ie Shima appeared dead ahead. A huge white cross marked the runway. The Bettys circled over the base and proceeded into the landing pattern. American aircraft were massed below, and for a brief moment, Captain Ohmae, in the lead plane, wondered if perhaps his pilot would forget himself and dive straight into them. But his fears were allayed as he heard the pilot’s radio request for landing instructions. The pilot used the call sign “Bataan.” MacArthur had thought of everything.

  When the planes taxied up to the designated area, the delegates saw a large number of soldiers standing in a huge circle around the apron. A Nisei officer came to the door of the first plane and told them to move to a C-54 transport for the last leg of the journey to Manila. The sixteen men filed down the ramps into a blistering heat which seared their eyes. Kawabe looked particularly uncomfortable. Though American soldiers came close to snap pictures, no one spoke to the Japanese. There was complete silence as the forlorn group walked up to the huge four-engined plane.

  They boarded the transport and sat down in far more comfortable circumstances than they had expected. They began to relax as they realized that the Americans meant them no harm. Some had thought they might be killed. Now all but Kawabe began to chat and laugh. Sour and gloomy, he sat looking out a window while the rest pulled their boots off and settled down. Out the windows they saw G.I.�
�s wandering around the Bettys and staring at the Japanese crewmen who stood sweating in their heavy flying suits.

  At one thirty, the C-54 rose into the air. Its pilot, Colonel Earl T. Ricks, took it over the length of Okinawa to the south east, flying low to show the Japanese the vast strength concentrated on the island. Looking down from twelve hundred feet, the delegation was astounded at the arsenal displayed below. As the plane neared the southern tip of the island, a door was opened and Admiral Teraoka’s bouquets of roses were tossed into the slipstream. They tumbled down over the last fortifications manned by Japanese soldiers in the war. Inside the planes sixteen men bowed their heads and offered silent prayers.

  Lunch was served as the plane headed out over the water. A stewardess who moved among the Japanese caught their attention because of her blond hair which they found fascinating. The meal she and the stewards gave them consisted of bully beef sandwiches, cheese, hardboiled eggs, peanut butter, bread, cake, pickles and pineapple juice. Even the moody Kawabe ate.

  The weather worsened while the plane was still quite a way from the Philippines. It pitched and rolled in the turbulence but moved steadily southward. The Japanese nodded and dozed.

  Four and a half hours after taking off, the C-54 circled over the landing strip at Nichols Field southwest of Manila. Down below, an enormous sea of khaki stared up at the special plane as it swept down and onto the runway.

  Kawabe led the way down the ramp from the transport. It was six o’clock in the evening of a humid day in Manila, and the sun still shone in the west. At the bottom of the steps, he halted before an American officer. Behind Kawabe other members of the delegation stopped abruptly on the steps. They noticed the quiet crowd of servicemen surrounding the plane in a vast semicircle. All the Japanese were uneasy. One of the Foreign Office representatives, Katsuo Okazaki, was particularly discomfited by the hundreds of cameras clicking, going off like machine guns. The Air Force representative, Colonel Masao Matsuda, stood stiff as a pole, staring straight ahead. Mindful of the thousands of eyes upon him, he rose to his full height and gazed over their heads at nothing.

  At the bottom of the steps Kawabe stood, a short, rumpled figure, uncomfortable in his woolen uniform and his high collar. His sword dangled almost to the ground at his side. The spurs on his cavalry boots shone in the twilight.

  The American who greeted him was no stranger to Japan and its people. He was Colonel Sidney Mashbir, the friend of Captain Zacharias and the author of those broadcasts to his friends in Japan in July. Looking casual in suntans and no tie, Mashbir said in fluent Japanese, “I have come to meet you.” Kawabe saluted and Mashbir returned it. Then the Japanese put out his hand to Mashbir, who instinctively brought his own forward. At the last second, he realized that such a greeting was inappropriate, and jerked his hand back as though it were burned. His thumb swept over his right shoulder and pointed toward a line of waiting cars. Immediately understanding Mashbir’s predicament, Kawabe withdrew his hand and walked stiffly on. The other fifteen delegates filed across the concrete as cameras clicked and whirred.

  Bedraggled from the long flight, dressed in ill-fitting makeshift uniforms, the Japanese hardly looked like worthwhile foes. G.I.’s in the crowd wondered openly at the size and appearance of the enemy. Most of the opinions were good-natured. The procession was so forlorn that few servicemen could remember past bitternesses.

  Behind Mashbir, another group of officers waited for the Japanese. In the center stood the very tall, brilliant General Charles Willoughby, head of General MacArthur’s Intelligence Division. Willoughby was one of the inner circle, part of the small band of devoted men who formed a powerful buffer between MacArthur and the world outside. With the others, he had helped to foster the legendary aura that surrounded the pipe-smoking hero of many wars.

  Kawabe walked into the first car and Willoughby stepped in behind him. Mashbir went around the car and got in beside the driver. Willoughby was friendly and asked the Japanese in what language he wished to converse. Kawabe replied, “German,” which happened to be Willoughby’s native tongue; he had lived in Germany until the age of twelve. Warmed by the American’s pleasant manner, Kawabe felt the melancholia that had gripped him since morning begin to slip away.

  Several cars were filled, and slowly left Nichols Field, heading toward downtown Manila. In one of them, a startled Japanese officer tried to think of something to say to an American Nisei interpreter, who barely let him get comfortable before asking: “When the Japanese attacked Hawaii, why didn’t they land?” Still wary of Americans, the officer just stared back at him and kept silent all the way to the city.

  The trip through the center of Manila was not pleasant for the Japanese. If the group was apprehensive about meeting the Americans, it had all the more reason to fear the Filipinos. Only six months before, Manila, “Jewel of the Orient,” had been systematically burned to the ground by the desperate marines and sailors of the Japanese Navy, acting under orders to deny the capital of the Philippines to the enemy. During MacArthur’s three-week siege in February 1945, Filipinos had died by the thousands as Japanese troops, inflamed by desperation and reckless abandon, had used them mercilessly. Mass rapes, multiple assaults on young women and little girls, had been perpetrated in streets and hallways. Columns of men and women had been doused with gasoline and set ablaze. Others had been tied together and bayoneted to death. In hospitals, nuns, nurses and patients had been stripped, raped and killed. Mutilated corpses had lain everywhere among the ruins. Manila had paid a terrible price for its freedom.

  Now, as the delegation sped through the streets, Filipinos lined the route to stare at them. Stones flew out of the crowd. The air was filled with screams of “Bacayaro!”—“Stupid boy!”—to the Japanese, a vile epithet. Kawabe and the others looked neither right nor left as the citizens raged. Within minutes they arrived at the Rosario Apartments near the harbor.

  The accommodations were surprisingly pleasant. Two men were assigned to each of the rooms, which were clean and adequate. Some had windows overlooking the magnificent bay, now crowded with ships against a setting sun.

  Dinner was served in the dining room, where American officers sat and pointedly ignored the Japanese. The two factions ate in relative silence, separated by a few yards and a hundred battlegrounds.

  When the time came to go to the meeting with the American instruction committee, the first trouble developed. Told that officers could no longer carry their swords with them, Kawabe and the others objected strenuously, saying that they should be allowed to wear them at least into the building where the meeting would be held. After consulting, the Americans agreed.

  The Kawabe group was taken in the darkness to the City Hall, where the American delegation waited. Giving up their swords at the door to a second-floor conference room, they entered and sat down across from their conquerors.

  The American leader was General Riley Sutherland, Mac-Arthur’s Chief of Staff. Sutherland—tall, thin, austerely handsome—was to speak for the Supreme Commander, who had no intention of sitting down with the enemy. The two men had been associated since the late thirties, when Sutherland had been assigned to the Philippines as a staff officer. One of his fellow aides had been Dwight Eisenhower, with whom Sutherland reputedly clashed several times. When the unhappy Eisenhower went home in 1938, Sutherland became Mac-Arthur’s right-hand man, protecting his privacy, detouring people and problems away from his door. He was a perfect second-in-command, serving his general well, acquiring a reputation for ruthless efficiency. He had been heard to say, “Somebody’s got to be the bastard around here.”

  After introductions were made on both sides, the meeting began. Everyone was stiffly formal, conscious of the historical import of the moment. For the first time in its history, the sovereign nation of Japan was handing over its vital secrets, betraying its soul to an enemy. From this moment on it would cease to be independent.

  Sutherland’s voice was strong, his tone stern. He directed the Japan
ese to read the documents put before them, the instructions relating to the occupation and surrender. Soon a serious difference of opinion arose.

  The issue in question was the American plan to land at Atsugi Airbase on August 23, in four short days. Kawabe was horrified at the proposal since he knew that conditions in Japan were still tense and that his people needed time to dismantle the still potent war machine. He objected strenuously, saying to Sutherland, “The Japanese side would sincerely advise you not to land so quickly. At least ten days are needed to prepare.” As Sutherland listened impassively, he added, “Maybe you should know that we are having trouble at home with some of the kamikaze units. They delayed our trip, in fact.” General Sutherland did not bother to answer. Instead he began to discuss the harbor facilities at Yokosuka, just inside the entrance to Tokyo Bay.

  The original American plan called for small units of the Army and Navy to land on the twenty-third at Atsugi and in Sagami Bay southwest of Tokyo. On the twenty-fifth, the Navy would enter Tokyo Bay itself. MacArthur would land at Atsugi on the twenty-sixth as the Marines took over the Yokosuka naval base. The surrender would be formally signed on the twenty-eighth in Tokyo Bay.

  Fearing a clash between still-armed Japanese soldiers and combat-hardened American troops, Kawabe’s group continued to protest the speed with which the Americans intended to move. But Sutherland remained impervious, and next requested that the delegation break up into small sections to discuss various military questions. The Japanese were divided up into units according to their branch of service and the American officials proceeded to elicit information.

  One by one, the vital secrets of the Japanese Empire were exposed to the enemy. Sutherland wanted to know how many divisions were emplaced around Tokyo. When told, he wanted to know how many marching days it would take them to reach the capital. He was told.

  The number of planes available to the Japanese were listed. Airbases, gun emplacements, ammunition dumps, minefields, the basic components of warfare were spotted on maps of Japan.