In 1281, the kamikaze killed 150,000 Mongols who dared to attempt to invade the land of the gods. That typhoon left the Japanese mainland unscathed. It seemed to target the seaborne invaders.
The October 1945 typhoon also skipped the main islands of Japan. If the Flyboys had not brought Japan to its knees and it had continued with the war as the Spirit Warriors had insisted, the typhoon off Okinawa that day would have torn through a U.S. invasion fleet of thousands of ships and millions of American boys.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Casualties of War
If I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.
— General Curtis LeMay, quoted in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
WHEN Warren Earl was declared missing, it threw Evi into a nervous breakdown,” Evi’s niece Billye Winder told me. “Warren Earl was her only son and she worshiped him.” Warren Earl’s cousin Ethelyn Goodner said, “His mother lost her mind about him being a POW. She just lost it. It took the wind out of her life. She was never the same.”
Floyd Hall’s sister, Margie, remembered, “When we got the report he was missing, my mother went wild. She really fell apart. She was crying constantly. It was hard. When she was alone, she’d think about it and the tears would come.”
Kathryn Dye had her husband write a series of letters to the navy seeking more information on Jimmy. Mr. Dye even wrote to their congressman, Charles Wolverton. The navy responded politely to each inquiry, but the answer was always “No further information is available.”
Mr. Hall wrote the Navy about Floyd: “Since March 7 we’ve heard nothing further concerning our son’s welfare, and we are anxious to know if further info is not available at this time.” The response: “No further information is available.”
Evi wrote many letters to the Marine Corps, hoping her persistence would turn up information on Warren Earl. Each response noted, “I regret to advise you we have no additional information.”
Evi grasped at straws. In November of 1945, she bypassed the Marines and sent a picture of released American POWs from her hometown newspaper to the Treasury Department. She wrote, “The one with the circle drawn around it resembles my son. I am asking you to let me know if you have the names of those in the picture as I haven’t heard anything and it would help some.” She ended the letter, “I’m enclosing a self addressed envelope.”
The Treasury Department forwarded her letter to the Marines, who answered, “It is with regret that I must inform you that no additional report has yet been received regarding him. He will be continued on the records as ‘missing in action.’”
MIA. For over a year, each mother awoke to gray days of not knowing. Her boy was “missing.” When Laura Woellhof received Dick’s MIA telegram, she said defiantly, “That don’t mean dead.”
But if he wasn’t dead, where was he? On a life raft being roasted by the sun, slowly starving to death? Injured and in pain, crying for his mama? The mothers’ minds were stretched like rubber bands by the not knowing.
Two months into her nightmare, Evi wrote in a letter to one of Warren Earl’s buddies, “I still cling to the faint hope that Warren is alive, yet I do have my low moods in regards to him.”
“It was terrible because she didn’t know if he was dead or missing,” said Warren Earl’s cousin Madeline Riley about Evi. “She would cry a lot. The fact there was no further information about Warren Earl’s status had a profound, debilitating effect on Evi. She was never again the same person, living her life without joy or peace.”
Kathryn Dye literally could not sit still thinking about Jimmy. She contacted everyone who knew him and asked them to come visit her. If they couldn’t come, she hit the road to see them. She stayed a week with Grady York’s family in Jacksonville. She and Marie York shed tears together but had no new information to share.
Kathryn Dye and her husband drove to Wheeling, West Virginia, to see Jimmy’s buddy Ralph Sengewalt. They stayed for four days at Ralph’s parents’ home.
“Mrs. Dye was a distraught mother anxious for her son,” Ralph told me. “She said, ‘If he was killed and there was a body, I could accept it. But there was no body, so I can’t accept it.’ I couldn’t help much. All I could tell them was we saw Jimmy and Grady walking up on shore. I saw her cry many quiet tears.”
Glenn Frazier’s buddy Lyle Comstock visited Glenn’s mother in Kansas City after the war. They sat in the living room for a while and visited. Lyle showed Mrs. Frazier a knife Glenn had given him. “If something happens to me, you can have this,” Glenn had told Lyle. Lyle offered Glenn’s knife to Mrs. Frazier, but she told him to keep it. “I still have it,” Lyle told me.
Mrs. Frazier asked Lyle to come upstairs with her. On the wall of one room was a large map of the Pacific. “I can’t find Chichi Jima,” she told him. Lyle pointed to the tiny island on the map. Mrs. Frazier looked for a second and gushed, “Oh! It’s so far away.” Then she broke down and sobbed in Lyle’s arms.
On Saturday, October 6, 1945, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Trippe sailed into the harbor at Chichi Jima. It was commanded by Marine colonel Presley M. Rixey. His mission was to disarm the soldiers on Chichi Jima and repatriate them to the Japanese mainland.
Major Horie and an interpreter came aboard. After settling details, Colonel Rixey asked Major Horie, “And what became of the American flyers you captured on these islands?”
The Americans had no firm information that any flyers had been captured at Chichi Jima. As Rixey later wrote, “The American Navy probably thought that those lost in combat flights had gone down at sea.” The colonel was merely baiting Major Horie to see if he could get some information.
To Colonel Rixey’s “utter surprise,” Major Horie responded immediately.
“Yes,” Major Horie said. “We captured six. All Navy, I think. They received very kind treatment. Two were sent to Japan by submarine. The last four unfortunately were killed by your own bombs in an air raid against these islands during the capture of Iwo Jima. They were blown up by a direct hit. Nothing remains. I am so sorry this happened. I was very beloved of them and wished them no harm. We buried what remained of the bodies after cremation. This is Japanese custom.”
Rixey later wondered to himself, “Why did Horie admit that aviators had been shot down and captured? He must have suspected that we knew more than we did! Somehow his story did not ring true, yet we nodded our heads in belief.”
Rixey ordered that the Japanese officer who had been responsible for the prisoners appear on the destroyer the next day. Rixey was told the officer was Major Sueo Matoba.
When Major Horie and his party returned to Chichi Jima, the translator of the meeting on the Trippe, Cadet Oyama, warned him: “Do not be too sure. Maybe you have not fooled the Americans. They are thorough and you will hear more of this from them.”
“It is done,” Major Horie said. “We must stick to our words. I believe our prepared story will deceive them. They will find no evidence. Bones and belongings have been thrown into the sea by orders of General Tachibana.”
The next day, Major Matoba and Major Horie reported to Colonel Rixey on the Trippe. Rixey recalled Matoba as a large “cruel”-looking man with a “bull throat” and “very short cropped hair” who held himself “very erect,” bowed “only half as low as the others,” and “folded his hands on the table in an arrogant manner.” Rixey observed that Matoba had “the most cold-blooded eyes I had ever looked into.”
“Major,” Colonel Rixey began, “why did you not protect these flyers like you protected yourself and your men in air-raid shelters?”
“Sir, I regret the neglect of my troops,” Major Matoba answered stiffly. “My adjutant was given strict instructions to properly care for the Americans. I believe your raid came upon us so quickly that my men had little time to act.”
“You were responsible as Commanding Officer for their safe-keeping,” Colonel Rixey told him. “You should have quartered them in a well-protected shelter. Your neglect
has violated the rules of International Law. I shall hold you personally responsible. There will be further investigations. Tomorrow, you will produce the enlisted men who were actually on watch over the prisoners.”
As his words were being translated, Colonel Rixey watched Matoba closely. “Sparks seemed to jump from his eyes and he rubbed his neck vigorously.”
“Were the ashes of these Americans buried as prescribed by the rules of war?” operations officer Captain Kusiak asked Major Horie. “And did you or Major Matoba erect a cross over the site of the graves as is usually done in the Christian religion?”
“Yes, sir,” Horie answered. “A large cross was placed over the American grave. We rendered military honors.”
Colonel Rixey informed the two Japanese majors that he would come ashore the next day to view and photograph the grave. As they were being rowed ashore after the interrogation, Major Matoba asked Major Horie how to construct a Christian cross.
The next day, Colonel Rixey was escorted to the cemetery where Marve Mershon had been bayoneted. Rixey recalled, “Everything was in order as had been said. But the cross itself was of new wood. It bore no sign of having been exposed to the elements longer than the day before.”
Suspicious, Colonel Rixey had Matoba’s four enlisted men interrogated separately. “Each man questioned told exactly the same story of the unfortunate deaths of the flyers,” Rixey wrote. “Mind you, this had happened eight months previously yet each machine gunner recalled the exact spot, the exact time of day to the minute, the direction of flight of the American plane and the number of bombs dropped. Yet when questioned as to what the flyers were wearing, all remained mute and shook their heads. Their Major Matoba had forgotten to tell them what to say about this important point! They looked worried when they reboarded their wooden landing craft.”
The repatriation of Japanese from Chichi Jima was a low priority for the American military. Most navy ships were being used to return U.S. servicemen to the United States. Colonel Rixey’s men had destroyed some Japanese armaments on the island, collected others, and repatriated just 3,000 (out of 25,000) Japanese soldiers by the end of 1945. Rixey was suspicious about the fate of the Flyboys, but he had no leads.
Then, in December of 1945, a Japanese coast guard cutter arrived at Chichi Jima with civilians who had been evacuated from the island two years earlier. Among them was Fred Savory, great-grandson of the island’s founder, Nathaniel Savory. Fred approached Colonel Rixey with a startling story.
“Sir,” Fred Savory began, “in Japan I heard rumors spoken by the soldiers you shipped from Chichi Jima. They are saying that their officers executed American flyers. And there is a rumor that Major Matoba ordered his medical officer to remove an aviator’s liver after execution and to deliver it to his orderly. A member of this battalion believes that Matoba and a few of his officers ate this liver at a sake party the next day.”
“We were flabbergasted,” Rixey recalled. “We had suspected beheadings, of course, but never cannibalism!”
Rixey decided on a course of action. He singled out Major Horie for special attention, inviting him as the only Japanese to attend parties with American officers. Then, on New Year’s Day 1946, after a few bourbons, Colonel Rixey made his pitch.
“Major Horie,” the colonel began, “as a military man, I appreciate what you did for your Emperor and your country. I consider you my friend and I need your aid. You may not know it, but I have much information about what went on in these islands. I know of executions and other facts that followed. I also know that you are not involved. Those guilty must be punished. I will protect you because I know you are innocent of any wrongdoing. You lied to me on the Trippe but I forgive that. You were acting under orders of your senior officers and it is understandable. But now I appeal to your friendship and your honor as a true and brave solider.” Major Horie complied.
When the armed Marines dispatched to arrest him surprised Major Matoba in his hut, he was sitting in a chair, listening to a record on his phonograph. He was dressed in his favorite pink bathrobe.
Emperor Hirohito was a war criminal if there ever was one. Under the Meiji Constitution he had the “right of supreme command.” He was responsible for sanctioning military initiatives, promoting officers, and approving budgets. “Much of Japan’s aggression was formulated outside the cabinet in conferences involving only the military and its commander in chief.” Soldiers like Masayo Enomoto who garroted Chinese farmers were raised to believe they were performing these deeds in the emperor’s name and with his approval. No general could be promoted, no ship launched, without Hirohito’s knowledge and assent.
Many agreed with Prince Konoe, a former prime minister, when he proclaimed that Hirohito was “the major war criminal.” Some of the emperor’s staunchest western allies, like former ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, concluded, “Hirohito will have to go.” The president of prestigious Tokyo Imperial University “argued that Hirohito should abdicate on moral grounds.” Even those in court circles accepted “the notion that he should somehow assume responsibility for the war.” On August 29, two days before the conquering gaizin arrived in Japan, Hirohito spoke to an adviser “about abdication as a way of possibly absolving his faithful ministers, generals, and admirals of responsibility for the war.” The emperor “had his officials brief him on the practice of abdication in the British monarchy.” Hirohito’s uncle Prince Higashikuni—serving as prime minister—“met privately with his nephew and recommended that he step down,” and Prince Mikasa, the emperor’s younger brother, “urged the emperor to take responsibility for defeat.”
The Japanese public would have accepted Hirohito’s abdication. They had assented to his decision to surrender and would have obeyed his wishes regarding his own future. An American intelligence unit monitoring Japanese opinion reported, “Informed sources claim that many people have reached a state where it is almost immaterial to them whether the Emperor is retained or not. People are more concerned with food and housing problems than with the fate of the Emperor.” The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey found only 4 percent checked off “worry about Emperor, shame for Emperor, sorrow for him” when asked their feelings about Japan’s surrender. “A poll conducted in Osaka found over a quarter of respondents in favor of Hirohito abdicating right away or at an opportune moment.” Millions were dead as a result of the emperor’s “holy war.” Abdication would have enhanced the moral integrity of the imperial institution.
On the other side of the Pacific, a Gallup poll conducted just before the war’s end “indicated that 70 percent of Americans favored executing or harshly punishing the emperor.” Washington ordered General MacArthur to investigate the emperor’s culpability in the war, especially his approval of the attack against Pearl Harbor. If the emperor had the power to stop a war with one speech, wasn’t he also responsible for its beginning and continuation?
With the slightest effort, American authorities could have mustered voluminous evidence that “at the end of the war, at its beginning, and through every stage of its unfolding, Emperor Hirohito played a highly active role in supporting the actions carried out in his name.” Just a trip to a Tokyo corner newspaper stand would have done the trick. On October 9 and 27, the Asahi Shimbun published stories confirming that Hirohito had approved the decision to go to war and known of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor.
But when American war crimes prosecutors arrived in Tokyo, they “found the war leaders all saying virtually the same thing.” The line was the same whether spoken by a Japanese politician or an American general. Hirohito was innocent. He had opposed the war. He was a hero for single-handedly ending the conflict.
The fix was in. General MacArthur laid out the logic in a report to Washington:
His indictment will unquestionably cause a tremendous convulsion among the Japanese people, the repercussions of which cannot be overestimated. He is a symbol which unites all Japanese. Destroy him and the nation will disintegrate. . . . It is quite possible tha
t a million troops would be required which would have to be maintained for an indefinite number of years.
Tremendous convulsion? Japan disintegrate? Most Japanese had only been aware of their emperor for a small fraction of their 2,600-year history. When Perry’s Black Ships revealed the impotence of the Tokugawa regime, “the Japanese had discarded their feudal Shogunate . . . cast them off like worn-out garments after almost eight centuries of exalted existence.” Hirohito had proven himself more than impotent. He had been defeated by gaizin and allowed a foreign army into the land of the gods. Why would Japan disintegrate if a loser was replaced? Japan had lost a war and disarmed peacefully. There were no outbreaks of violence, no terrorist attacks on the American occupiers. But MacArthur, well in advance of the surrender, had apparently succumbed to the Spirit Warriors’ Oz-like hype about the emperor’s being eternal. Months before the war ended, General MacArthur approved the plan to save the emperor, reasoning that “unlike Christians, the Japanese have no God with whom to commune,” that the Japanese needed Hirohito as a Christ-figure, and that “it would be a sacrilege to entertain the idea that the Emperor is on a level with the people or any governmental official. To try him as a war criminal would not only be blasphemous but a denial of spiritual freedom.” American officials wrote, “Hanging of the Emperor to them would be comparable to the crucifixion of Christ to us.” MacArthur agreed: “You cannot remove their Emperor worship from these people by killing the Emperor . . . any more than you remove the godhead of Jesus and have any Christianity left.”
General Bonner Fellers had been one of the very first Americans in Japan after the surrender, a passenger on the plane that first brought MacArthur. General Fellers immediately “went to work to protect Hirohito from the role he had played during and at the end of the war.” He spent five months coaching war crimes suspects on how they should testify. In one conversation with a high-ranking Japanese official, Fellers pointed out that the Russians wanted to try Hirohito as a war criminal. Fellers said, “To counter this situation, it would be more convenient if the Japanese side could prove to us that the emperor is completely blameless. I think the forthcoming trials offer the best opportunity to do that. Tojo, in particular, should be made to bear all responsibility at his trial. In other words, I want you to have Tojo say as follows: ‘At the imperial conference prior to the start of the war, I had already decided to push for war even if his majesty the emperor was against going to war with the United States.’”
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