The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  I have been working terribly hard for the last six months with very little respite. I am looking forward to the day when I arrive in New York and my big little sister can take me out and pour civilization all over me.

  Devotedly,

  Bill

  He reread the letter before sending it off, making minor edits here and there. He’d done the best he could and hoped at least that providing this update, such as it was, would bring relief from the anxiety of knowing nothing.

  His disappointment that Barton was no longer in the Philippines was acute, and now the Allied plan to invade mainland Japan brought new anxiety. The Palawan massacre of 150 prisoners was ordered by a camp commander who’d believed the island was under imminent Allied attack. In the Gilbert Islands, a group of prisoners was beheaded, another group at Ballale bayoneted to death, and another on Wake Island executed by machine gun—all following Allied bombing raids. Given this pattern of retributive intent, the incipient Japanese home-island invasions would place the 168,000 Allied prisoners still in Japanese hands in their gravest danger yet.

  Yet Bill still found reason for hope, both because Barton’s name was not on the Oryoko Maru’s casualty list and because of the relatively high number of fellow survivors of the sinking: 1,300 out of 1,619. With luck—if one could call it that—Barton might have been shipped to Korea instead of to Japan. In any case, Barton had, by all available accounts, survived three years of bestial enemy treatment. Bill prayed this meant his brother had developed both resilience and survival skills, just as he had at the Citadel and Annapolis. If only those instincts might serve him a few more months.

  39

  IN THE END, A QUESTION OF CASUALTIES—AND SEA POWER

  PRESIDENT TRUMAN WAS STILL on a steep learning curve in the summer of 1945. It seemed that Roosevelt had shared relatively little with his last vice president, including the very existence of the White House Map Room and the fact that the world war was being run out of it. Nor had Truman been told that enemy codes had been cracked and were supplying crucial intelligence to the Allies.

  To the surprise of his top military advisors, however, the new president, a onetime respected army colonel, took quick grasp of strategic options in the Pacific and their relative stakes in American blood and treasure. Daily “gloves off” Map Room briefings expedited the process, and it wasn’t long before Harry Truman had two seminal concerns.

  The first was Okinawa, by far the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War, which was still not won. The second was a looming shortage of combat-ready troops for a final assault on Japan—this despite a hundred thousand men a month being called up, double the rate twelve months earlier. Truman’s twin dilemmas weren’t Map Room secrets; they were front-page news across the war-weary country. By mid-June, these concerns—compounded by a growing fear of unprecedented casualties from an invasion of Japan proper—prompted him to make new inquiries. He started with his chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy.

  Fleet Admiral Leahy’s opinion mattered. He was a senior military strategist who had served in the Roosevelt White House since the dark days of 1942. He knew every aspect of this world conflict, and he was no advocate of a ground invasion of Japan. Admiral Leahy also favored the “bomb and blockade” option; to him the statistics seemed to prove the point.

  The air campaign was causing withering destruction: six hundred thousand tons of enemy shipping had been sunk in June alone. The strategic naval blockade was not only limiting the ability of resource-dependent Japan to wage war but also severely curtailing its ability to feed seventy-two million citizens. In a desperate act, Japan had begun to organize schoolchildren to gather a million tons of acorns to be ground for flour due to drastically declined stocks of rice and wheat.

  To Leahy, the collective evidence weighed heavily in favor of continuing this strategy. He believed it would force Japan’s capitulation and save countless American lives. This was the strategy preferred by most navy brass, and it was a hard-won point of view.

  After increasingly deadly amphibious campaigns to capture enemy-held islands across the Pacific, the navy had become well acquainted with Japan’s fighting spirit. Surrender was unthinkable, and in every Pacific campaign, they had fought nearly to the last man. The relative few still standing had shown a strong preference for hara-kiri over the shame of being taken prisoner.

  The navy knew that Japan would defend her home soil even more fanatically—to the last woman and child. Ever-rising casualties on Okinawa, with the largest toll among civilians, reinforced that view. And Admiral Leahy—in whose experience, honesty, and intellect President Truman placed great faith—firmly agreed.

  AT THE ABRUPT START of his presidency, Truman had vowed to carry on “the legacies of [his] illustrious predecessor.” One such legacy was a decision made in September 1944 at Octagon, the second Allied conference held in Quebec. At that meeting, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that an invasion of mainland Japan must follow Germany’s capitulation.

  By June 1945, however, Truman’s misgivings about this preordained course were too powerful to ignore. On June 17 he confided to his diary, “I have to decide Japanese strategy—shall we invade Japan proper or shall we bomb and blockade? This is my hardest decision to date . . . I’ll make it when I have all the facts.”

  The next day, he asked Admiral Leahy to call a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The topic would be the singular matter of casualties that might result from a ground invasion of Japan versus alternative solutions for ending the Pacific War. Leahy promptly dispatched a top secret memorandum:

  The White House

  Washington

  14, June 1945

  URGENT—IMMEDIATE ACTION

  MEMORANDUM FOR THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF:

  The President today directed me to inform the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he wishes to meet . . . in the afternoon of [June] 18th, in his office, to discuss details of our campaign against Japan.

  He expects at this meeting to be thoroughly informed of our intentions and prospects in preparation for his discussions with Churchill and Stalin.

  He will want information as to the number of men of the army and ships of the navy that will be necessary to defeat Japan.

  He wants an estimate of the time required and an estimate of the losses in killed and wounded that will result from an invasion of Japan proper.

  He wants an estimate of the time and the losses required and the losses that will result from an effort to defeat Japan by isolation, blockade, and bombardment by sea and air forces . . .

  It is his intention to make his decision on the campaign with the purpose of economizing to the maximum extent possible the loss of American lives.

  Economy in the use of time and money is comparatively unimportant.

  I suggest that a memorandum discussion of the above noted points be prepared in advance for delivery to the president at the time of the meeting.

  William D. Leahy

  The memorandum took the JCS and their war-planning staffs by surprise. The memo’s phrase, “it is his intention to make his decision on the campaign,” was especially unwelcome to army planners. As General George Lincoln put it, the army viewed Operation Olympic as “a matter of fact.”

  Olympic was to be the army’s—and Douglas MacArthur’s—glorious and climactic hour in the Pacific War. It would be the largest military assault in history: MacArthur was to lead as many as fourteen divisions against the Japanese, as opposed to Eisenhower’s nine at Normandy. Moreover, the invasion had already been approved by one commander in chief (and Churchill, too) and was deep into the planning phase.

  And regarding Leahy’s specific request on behalf of the president for prospective casualty estimates, there was a unity of reluctance. Quantifying casualty estimates to a sitting president ahead of an invasion? This would set a dangerous precedent, they feared, even though the army had already developed those numbers.

  Army planners had obtained casualty estimates from their surgeon general in or
der to assess invasion requirements for battlefield medical needs: corpsmen, morphine, plasma, bandages, scalpels, body bags. But army brass feared that disclosing even that relatively low casualty projection (135,000) might persuade Truman to alter or cancel Olympic—not to mention their recent order of an additional 500,000 Purple Heart medals.

  In the end, the army declined to comply with the request by their commander in chief. When the Joint Chiefs gathered in the Oval Office four days after receiving Leahy’s directive, they instead presented the president with more palatable ratios of Allied versus Japanese losses from previous campaigns. General Marshall presented the chart. It indicated that the Leyte campaign had resulted in the lowest Allied versus enemy losses (1:4.6) and the final days at Iwo Jima the highest (1:1.25). Okinawa, which was still going on, was a close second, 1:2.

  Taking exception, Admiral Leahy reminded the group that the president had asked for actual loss projections, and suggested US casualties resulting from an invasion of Kyushu (Olympic) would most likely resemble losses at Okinawa, currently running at 35 percent of total forces. Since the upcoming Olympic assault force size was known to meeting attendees—766,700—simple arithmetic would have yielded Olympic’s potential for loss of life. That number, 268,345 casualties—equal roughly to total American losses over the entire three and a half years on the European Front—would certainly have raised eyebrows. Curiously, however, that percentage was not converted into a casualty estimate at the June 18 JCS meeting.

  Truman asked instead whether more Japanese defenders at Kyushu than currently projected for Olympic—which Marshall estimated at 350,000—might be transported from other Japanese islands, thereby pushing the ratio of American casualties even higher. General Marshall confidently replied in the negative; daily air raids were preventing the Japanese from reinforcing the area. Marshall then read aloud from a telegram he had just received from General MacArthur:

  “I believe the [Olympic] operation presents less [sic] hazards of excessive loss than any other that has been suggested . . . and its decisive effect will eventually save lives.” General Marshall said he agreed with MacArthur’s stated position and a unanimous JCS vote to proceed with Olympic followed.

  After the vote, President Truman reluctantly assented to Olympic despite the fact he had been denied the requested casualty projections by his most senior military advisors. But he withheld approval of Coronet, the follow-on invasion of Honshu, saying he would revisit that decision at a later date.

  Admiral King voted with the majority at the Joint Chiefs meeting that day, but not because his position had changed on the wisdom of a mainland invasion. He simply understood the need to proceed with its planning. The chief of naval operations was as shrewd as he was cantankerous. He was merely postponing withdrawal of his support for Olympic until later in the summer. He knew his defection would result in a titanic army-navy clash over final Pacific strategy—and, denied unanimity among his military chiefs, would likely void Truman’s support for the invasion.

  Admiral King did, however, fire off a complaint-riddled memo to his fellow chiefs after the June 18 meeting. His first objection was that the army’s antiseptic casualty ratio presentation had omitted all of the navy’s casualty projections provided by Admiral Nimitz. Given the real-time horrors taking place on Okinawa, this was a particular irritant to King. He further stated that the overall casualty data presented to Truman was “not satisfactory.” “[I]t appears to me the Chiefs of Staff will [eventually] have to give an estimate of casualties expected in the operation,” King admonished.

  In response, General Marshall assured King that naval losses should and would be included in a revised casualty brief for the president. But there is no archival evidence that a revised brief was ever submitted to Truman—the man on whose shoulders the fate of those lives ultimately rested.

  On July 6, three weeks after the Oval Office casualty estimate meeting, President Truman, Admiral Leahy, and a contingent of White House staff boarded the USS Augusta for a transatlantic sail to Germany. Their final destination was Potsdam, for the thirteenth Allied war conference. During the twenty-two days it took for Augusta to reach its first port at Plymouth, England, Truman’s June 18 query regarding Japan’s potential to bolster its Kyushu defenses had become a reality. The developing scenario of massive new enemy reinforcements now mooted earlier troop strength estimates.

  But it was the arrival of a different piece of highly classified news that commanded the greater of President Truman’s attention: an urgent report confirming the success of an atomic bomb test in New Mexico’s Alamogordo desert. An astoundingly powerful new weapon, the president learned, had just been added to the US arsenal. It was, to borrow from MacArthur, a weapon of decisive effect—minus the potential for stratospheric American casualties.

  IRONICALLY, THE JAPANESE INTERCEPTS confirming skyrocketing enemy troop buildup on Kyushu had come from MacArthur’s own G-2 at Manila. Specifically, they had been provided by Central Bureau, his persistently autonomous intelligence operation, which had grown from dozens of cryptanalysts to thousands since its humble 1942 beginnings in Melbourne, Australia.

  Despite serial efforts by the War Department to bring Central Bureau under its control, MacArthur had resisted all attempts to tether it to Washington intelligence gathering. While similar intercepts suggesting the buildup on Kyushu may have been netted at the War Department’s listening posts, those analysts were not the ones to sound the alarm; it was MacArthur’s own intelligence chief, General Willoughby.

  In his July 29 analysis summarizing decrypted intercepts of the previous two weeks—distributed “locally” to senior Olympic planners in Manila—Willoughby made his dismay official: a full twelve weeks ahead of X-day (Olympic’s November 1 invasion date), enemy garrisons on Kyushu had already reached previously predicted invasion maximums—“with,” Willoughby wrote, “no end in sight.”

  Also confirmed was a vast arsenal of suicide weapons under development at Kyushu, as well as the training of a “Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps,” a millions-strong civilian combatant force. In addition, all schools would be closed in order to mobilize thousands of children for the defense. “There are no civilians in Japan,” read one decrypted message. In all, the Japanese were preparing for a “no withdrawal” water’s-edge defense—a marked shift from Okinawa, where defenders had lain in wait for Allied troops to move inland before pouncing.

  As July progressed, intercepts revealed more and more alarming data. The breadth and size of the suicide arsenal was as troubling as the massing of additional enemy troops. Admiral Turner’s landing craft, charged with ferrying hundreds of troops at a time to Kyushu’s beaches, were named as primary kamikaze targets. Also targeted would be Turner’s 1,500-ship amphibian-support force, expected to be anchored just beyond Kyushu’s breakers.

  At least ten thousand kamikaze planes were hidden across the island—in mines, under viaducts and railway tunnels, even department store basements. A large number of them were of such balsa-light construction that they would not be detectable by ships’ radar, rendering useless the crucial kamikaze detection and defense tactics developed at Okinawa. Thousands of suicide pilots were said to be in training, with emphasis on night operations.

  An assortment of other suicide weapons were also verified. There would be thousands of flying bombs (oka), human-manned torpedoes and suicide attack boats (kaiten and koryo), midget suicide submarines (kairyu), and navy swimmers transformed into human mines (fukuryu). These, too, would be capable of evading radar detection. The size and strength of the incipient suicide force at Kyushu already exceeded what had been hurled at the Fifth Fleet over three months at Okinawa. And X-day was still twelve weeks away.

  When the intelligence summaries on metastasizing troop and kamikaze strength landed on Admiral Turner’s desk, they hit Olympic’s amphibian commander like a one-two punch. Much the wiser following his three years of planning and executing ever-larger amphibious campaigns, Turner had deve
loped a powerful acumen for applying raw intelligence to invasion realities.

  To Kelly Turner, the revised intelligence boiled down to this: a recipe for American slaughter on an epic scale. He quickly calculated casualty estimates based on the new intelligence. The math was grim; he estimated at least 600,000 American casualties—more than quadruple the army estimate of one month earlier (which had not included potential navy losses). And with Leyte, Luzon, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa all as guides, Japanese casualties would run much higher, undoubtedly into seven figures.

  Turner sent for Bill Mott and got right to the point. Manila intelligence summaries were not routinely forwarded to Washington, and President Truman needed to see these numbers. As a former White House naval aide, could Bill get this new intelligence to the attention of the president? Turner believed that with these new battle ratios and casualty projections in hand, Truman would cancel Olympic in favor of options less costly in American blood and treasure.

  Bill replied that he was confident he could get the materials to the attention of the president. Turner told him to pack. Bill’s first stop would be Guam, where he would provide Admirals Spruance and Nimitz’s aides with the data; from there he would proceed to Washington.

  “Temporary Additional Orders, as orally assigned” were promptly drawn up:

  Upon receipt of these orders you will proceed aboard first available government transportation to the port in which the Commander of the Fifth Fleet may be [Guam]. Upon arrival at this port, report to the Commander Fifth Fleet for such temporary additional duty as has been orally assigned to you . . . Upon completion of this temporary duty you will further proceed and report to the following named places for such temporary additional duty as has been orally assigned to you in Washington, DC . . . Upon completion thereof, you will return to your present station.