The Conquering Tide

by Ian W. Toll

  Some of the Japanese had been dead from the first bombardment, the day before we landed. Their bodies were seared and bloated, and the stench was sickening. I saw one half buried in a pillbox. You could not tell whether he had on any clothes or not. The skin was burned off his back and his head lay a few feet from his body. Another looked like a bronze statue in Golden Gate Park. He lay forward in a crouch, helmet still on, both hands holding on to a coconut log of his pillbox. There were many, many others. I lie in bed at night remembering how they looked, and that awful sweetish sickening stench of powder, and kerosene and decaying human flesh, and I wonder, after all, what war is all about. I feel sorry for those Japs in a way. They died courageously after a stubborn, last-ditch, hopeless fight. They fought for the things they had been taught to believe in, with their poor little bundles with pictures of their wives and kiddies tied to their belts. . . . They can’t tell me war is a fine and noble thing.21

  In the week after the end of Operation FLINTLOCK, a deluge of high-ranking visitors descended on the battle-scarred islands of Kwajalein Atoll. Nimitz flew out from Pearl Harbor with an entourage of officers. On February 5, when fires were still burning on Kwajalein Island, he toured the blackened wastes with Spruance, Turner, Smith, and several other major commanders of the fleet and Amphibious Corps.

  Three weeks earlier Nimitz had been the guest of honor at a huge “Texas Picnic” in a Honolulu park. Walking among 40,000 sailors, soldiers, and civilians, the CINCPAC had pitched horseshoes, posed for photographs, and signed autographs. Afterward, the park looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane—clean-up crews had to cart away more than fifty truckloads of garbage and debris. An estimated 120,000 beer bottles had been left strewn across the grass. Now, upon setting foot on the lagoon beach at Kwajalein, Nimitz was waylaid by a mob of correspondents.

  “What do you think of the island?” one asked.

  The admiral drew a cheerful laugh by replying, “Gentlemen, it’s the worst scene of devastation I have ever witnessed—except for the Texas picnic.”22

  A destroyer carried the party across the enormous lagoon to Roi-Namur. Steaming at 20 knots, the ship still took more than two hours to complete the passage. The officers were conducted on a brief tour of the devastated pair of islands. None who saw the scene could fail to appreciate the combat efficiency of the “Spruance haircut” and the “Mitscher shampoo.” Looking down at Roi and Namur from an F6F circling overhead, one navy pilot thought it looked like “the moon,” or “plowed ground.” The beach and roads were strewn with the charred and misshapen remains of equipment, tanks, and armored vehicles. “I don’t think there was a stick of anything standing,” he said. “It looked just completely beaten up.”23 A sailor who visited one of the captured atolls observed that the “palms were shredded where shells and bomb fragments had made direct hits, leaving stumps that looked like old-fashioned shaving brushes stuck, bristles up, in the sand.”24

  Holland Smith did not appreciate the parade of sightseers. Kwajalein Atoll, he said, had become a “regular tourist haunt. . . . The big army and navy brass from Pearl Harbor descended on us like flies.” Undersecretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, dressed in a plain khaki shirt and trousers without insignia, rode shotgun in a jeep through the ruins of Roi and Namur. Admiral Spruance and General Schmidt sat in back. The garrison was taxed with hosting tours at a time when they should have been occupied in clearing the airfield, setting up barracks, burying their dead, and erecting new antiaircraft batteries. On Smith’s orders, no more marine drivers were supplied to the jeep pool, a decision that led to the unusual sight of generals driving their own vehicles. “The photographers had a gala day snapping pictures against the background of shelled buildings,” he recalled, “while visiting brass hunted for samurai swords and other souvenirs.”25

  The single battalion assigned to take Majuro had walked up the beaches unopposed. The Japanese garrison had pulled out a week earlier. Admiral Hill declared the atoll secure scarcely more than two hours after the initial landing. The huge anchorage would accommodate all the mobile floating logistical assets of Service Squadron Ten, and become (for the time being) the principal advanced base for the Fifth Fleet.

  Mitscher’s carriers began filing into the lagoon on February 4. On each ship, lookouts leaned out on either side of the bridge to identify the locations of shoals and reefs, which were easy to spot in the shallow pastel-colored sea. Except for a few ships requiring major repairs, none needed to cross the Pacific to return to Pearl Harbor. They were able to refuel, rearm, and reprovision in the lagoon from supply ships, oilers, and barges. These assets dramatically enlarged the operating range of the fleet and allowed for previously unknown feats of seakeeping.

  As Nimitz and his commanders considered the repercussions of the rapid and relatively low-cost victory, they elected to accelerate the schedule of future operations in the region. Eniwetok, the next major atoll on the program, had been slated for capture in May. But Japanese military power in the Marshalls was obviously crumbling more quickly than anticipated. Sherman’s Task Group 58.3 had made a shambles of the airfield on Eniwetok’s Engebi Island. According to the CINCPAC headquarters diary, aerial photos had “disclosed that the defenses were minor and in general the atoll undeveloped. The airstrip is in use but at present appears to be used as a staging base.”26 According to plans agreed to earlier with MacArthur’s SWPA headquarters, the fast carriers of Task Force 58 were to sweep south to support Halsey’s assault on Kavieng. When MacArthur agreed to allow Halsey to bypass Kavieng, the carriers were unburdened of that mission, and could therefore be employed in the central Pacific. Finally, a mother lode of valuable maps, charts, and documents related to Eniwetok were discovered in Japanese bunkers at Roi-Namur. These suggested that the Japanese garrison there ranged between 2,700 and 4,000 men, and they were racing against the clock to erect stronger fortifications on the main island of Engebi. Time was of the essence. For the moment, Eniwetok was low-hanging fruit; it could be captured with existing naval forces and amphibious troops. No intervening return to Pearl Harbor seemed necessary. Why not just take it right away?

  Credit for the proposal to pounce on Eniwetok in February, rather than waiting until May as earlier planned, was afterward claimed by a long roster of commanders, including Smith, Sherman, Turner, Hill, and Spruance. It appears that the idea presented itself to all of them simultaneously. Nimitz gave the operation his blessing. It would be carried out by a hastily assembled task force commanded by Admiral Hill. The 22nd Marines and two battalions of the 106th Infantry would provide the assault troops. Task Force 58 would strike the Japanese fleet and air base at Truk Atoll in the Caroline Islands, to coincide with the landings. The date for both operations was set for February 17. The capture of Eniwetok was designated CATCHPOLE; the carrier strike on Truk was named HAILSTONE.

  Reporting to Spruance at Kwajalein on February 5, Hill learned that he would command the Eniwetok Expeditionary Group (designated Task Group 51.11) and must complete the major operation in less than two weeks. The marine-army expeditionary troops, drawn from a floating reserve of 9,300 men that had not been needed at Majuro or Kwajalein, would be commanded by Marine Brigadier General Thomas E. Watson. Task Group 58.4, commanded by Rear Admiral Samuel P. Ginder and built around the carriers Saratoga, Princeton, and Langley, would continue to pummel the remaining defenses at Engebi and cover the landings from the air. High-and low-angle aerial photographs were combined with the captured Japanese charts and documents to provide an accurate picture of the objective. Importantly, the Japanese charts provided accurate information about the best deepwater channel into the lagoon at Eniwetok.

  Moving up the invasion of Eniwetok required stripping the new garrisons of Kwajalein Island and Roi-Namur of manpower and supplies. The landing boat crews were green and had not trained with the troops. General Watson reported that “the infantry, amphibian tractors, amphibian tanks, tanks, aircraft, supporting naval ships, and most of the staffs concerned h
ad never worked together before.”27 Nevertheless, the forces available for the operation were plentiful and well equipped. Having presided over the bloody assault on Tarawa, Admiral Hill was relieved to have adequate numbers of amtracs. The Army’s 708th Provisional Amphibian Tractor Battalion sailed with 119 LVTs, most of which were the heavily armored newer models. “At Eniwetok, I felt like a millionaire,” Hill later remarked, “but at Tarawa, I was a pauper.”28

  As in FLINTLOCK, the CATCHPOLE plan of operations called for capturing nearby islands and using them as artillery platforms to sweep the beaches of Engebi. At 6:59 a.m. on February 17, the cruisers and destroyers of the naval fire support group began bombarding the island’s defenses. Marine artillerymen landed on smaller adjacent islands and set up field batteries that could hit Engebi’s beaches. After twenty-four hours of this treatment, the first boatloads of marines landed on the island and quickly overran it. The flag was raised on the following morning. The islands of Eniwetok and Parry were seized in the following three days.

  The marines lost 254 killed and 555 wounded; the army, 94 killed and 311 wounded. Of the 2,700 troops of the Japanese garrison, only 66 were taken prisoner. With the huge lagoon of Eniwetok as its westernmost fleet anchorage, the Fifth Fleet now had a well-situated springboard to strike at the Marianas, which lay scarcely more than a thousand miles away.

  AS THE AMERICAN COMMANDERS took stock of what they had achieved in the Marshalls, their confidence and self-assurance rose to new heights. In less than three months’ time, the costly lessons of Tarawa had been refined and integrated into amphibious planning and doctrine, and the results had been more than satisfactory. To the extent that further improvement was needed, it was in the details of execution rather than any deficiency in the plans themselves. Holland Smith concluded in his final report, “In the attack of coral atolls, very few recommendations can be made to improve upon the basic techniques previously recommended and utilized in FLINTLOCK.”29

  Nowhere in the Pacific had the preinvasion bombardment and aerial bombing of islands been more effective. General Schmidt estimated that 50 to 75 percent of the Japanese garrison on Roi-Namur had been killed before the first marine set foot on the island. Those who had survived the barrage were apparently dazed, and patently less ferocious than their counterparts on Betio and other Pacific battlefields. Carrier airstrikes in the three days before the landings managed to knock out nearly every Japanese airplane in the entire archipelago. Upon departing from the targets, pilots noted that “ground installations were reduced to mounds of rubble; hardly a tree was left standing and those remaining were completely stripped of their foliage by the terrific bombardment.”30

  Most of the marine and army assault troops had never experienced combat before FLINTLOCK or CATCHPOLE, but their training had produced a first-rate performance. The only lapse in discipline had been on Roi, when several units had charged across the airfield and surged ahead to the north shore. The lines had been reassembled before the enemy could attack the exposed flanks. In any event, no ground commander could find much fault in troops who showed too much spirit on the attack. As in other such operations, Japanese stragglers and infiltrators remained a threat behind the advancing American lines, and infantrymen were obliged to do the grim work of cleaning out the bunkers, tunnels, and emplacements one by one with demolition charges, flamethrowers, and hand grenades. By 1944, however, not even the newcomers had any illusions about the enemy’s way of waging war.

  Nimitz’s decision to spring past the fortified outer islands and aim the main attack at Kwajalein had been vindicated. The Japanese, surprised by the landings, had been robbed of time to strengthen their defenses on the beaches. Japanese garrisons had been left in possession of several atolls in the southeastern Marshalls, but Nimitz was in no hurry to clean them out. The airfields were pressured by daily air raids, and whenever new planes were flown in from Truk or Rabaul, they were destroyed in short order. Daily “milk runs,” staging from the Gilberts or the Ellice Islands, continued until the end of the war. The routine bombing raids were conducted largely by F4U Corsair fighters escorting army medium bombers. Rarely did the raiders encounter any air opposition at all. The garrisons wasted away for lack of supplies and provisions. Many were killed in the relentless air bombardments; many others took their lives in desperation.

  Tokyo had staked its defense of the “unsinkable aircraft carriers” of the Gilberts and Marshalls on the concept of a network of mutually supporting terrestrial airfields. Within the overlapping radii of the nodes of that network lay a vast zone of ocean wastes and low-lying coral atolls. Over the breadth and width of that zone, so it was hoped, Japanese naval fighters and bombers would sustain local control of the skies. Any concerted naval or amphibious attack would be repelled with the help of air reinforcements moving freely and quickly between the nodes. That entire strategic concept, so vital to Japan’s hopes, had been exposed as a chimera by the concurrent expansion and qualitative upgrade of American carrier airpower. Impotently dispersed across dozens of atolls, subjected to a rain of ruin from the air and sea, the defenders could barely even delay the American advance. In less than three months and with relative ease, FLINTLOCK and CATCHPOLE had kicked down Japan’s mid-Pacific barricade.

  For the victors, possession of the western Marshalls brought a windfall of strategic rewards. Control of the spacious lagoon anchorages and fine coral airfields allowed American naval and air forces to stage from bases on the threshold of Japan’s new “absolute defense line,” which ran through the nearby Marianas. Admiral Lockwood’s submarines could be circulated back into their patrol areas more rapidly, with the effect of increasing the number of submarine patrol days in the sea-lanes south of Japan by approximately one-third. Admiral Koga had not yet committed his main fleet to a decisive stand, but he could not afford to hold it back indefinitely. The mighty Fifth Fleet was now poised to strike into Japan’s inner ring of defenses, and could be confident of forcing a major naval confrontation in the next stage of its westward drive. With overwhelming superiority in carrier aviation, the Americans stood a reasonable hope of scoring a victory on the scale of the great fleet battles of Tsushima or Trafalgar, an event that would guarantee the eventual defeat of Japan.

  OPERATION HAILSTONE, the carrier air attack on Truk, had been long on the drawing board. On December 26, 1943, Nimitz had informed King that he thought the operation would become feasible by the following April, but he pledged to do it earlier if circumstances allowed: “Much depends on extent of damage inflicted on enemy in all areas in next 2 months.”31 The crumbling of Japanese airpower in the Marshalls was just such a favorable development. CINCPAC headquarters had also been mulling over plans for an invasion of Truk, an operation that would have required five divisions plus an additional regiment, making it the largest amphibious operation yet attempted in the Pacific. HAILSTONE might or might not obviate the need to capture Truk—the raid’s outcome would do much to reveal whether the big atoll was a suitable candidate for bypass.

  Located 669 miles southwest of Eniwetok, Truk was another colossal atoll with a fringing reef enclosing a lagoon roughly thirty by forty miles in size. Its topography and appearance were different from those of the Gilberts and Marshalls. A cluster of about a dozen islands near the center of the lagoon ascended to 1,500-foot volcanic peaks, their soaring slopes alternately rocky and heavily forested. About 2,000 Micronesian natives lived on the islands, most in thatched-hut villages on the grassy plains above the beaches. Since mid-1942, Truk’s enormous lagoon had served as the Combined Fleet’s major southern fleet anchorage. It was so large, in fact, that high-speed fleet exercises had been held within its reef-protected confines. For most of the war, the superbattleships Yamato and Musashi had ridden at anchor behind torpedo nets, immobilized for the sake of fuel economy. The fleet’s administrative headquarters was located in a modest complex of wood-frame buildings on the island of Tonoas, south of Weno.

  The aviators and crewmen of Task Force
58 shared a sense of dread about the impending raid. The enemy’s “mystery base” at Truk had acquired the reputation of an unassailable fortress. In the past, carrier task force commanders had been wary of attacking major terrestrial airfields because the enemy’s long-range bombers could deliver devastating counterstrikes on the vulnerable flattops. Such raids had always been brief, followed by a speedy withdrawal. But HAILSTONE was to be a sustained foray deep into enemy waters. Task Force 58 would lie off Truk for two full days, well within range of aerial counterattack. The operation seemed considerably more dangerous than any previously attempted by the fast carrier forces.

  A dearth of intelligence about Truk had enhanced its mystique. The atoll’s distance from Allied bases had rendered aerial reconnaissance impractical before 1944. It was thought to be a major hub of Japanese airpower, defended by hundreds of crack airmen in Zero fighters. Its soaring peaks were supposed to bristle with antiaircraft guns. Its channels were reportedly treacherous to navigate, heavily mined, and amply defended by coastal artillery. Newspapers had nicknamed Truk “Japan’s Gibraltar” or the “Japanese Pearl Harbor.”

  Lieutenant James D. Ramage, a Bombing Squadron 10 pilot on the Enterprise, recalled his slack-jawed reaction to the news that his ship was bound for Truk: “Wow!” Ramage’s radio-gunner, David Cawley, added that the squadron was “tense and concerned” as Task Force 58 steamed into enemy waters—“For the previous two years of the war,” he said, “the very thought of approaching Truk seemed fatal.”32 Admiral Mitscher, according to a story that circulated through the crew of the Yorktown, had remarked, “The only thing we knew about Truk was in the National Geographic.”33 A mordant cartoon published in the Essex cruise book depicts the skipper speaking through a bullhorn from the bridge. He announces that the Essex is headed to Truk. In the next moment he is struck speechless by the sight of his entire crew diving into the sea.