One day a rookie pilot named Hiroyoshi Nishizawa joined the squadron. Saburo was astonished to see with what skill Nishizawa shot down an enemy Airacobra on his first flight. Nishizawa was a natural, and Saburo wondered if he was not also better than he was. One thing Saburo did know: neither he nor his comrades were very fond of Nishizawa. Silent and surly, this skinny youth of twenty-three years kept to himself. He was rarely seen smiling, unless it was the bloodless grimace with which he reported a fresh kill. “The Devil,” they called him.
Another accomplished rookie pilot was Toshio Ota, who was even a year younger than the Devil. Sakai, Nishizawa, and Ota, Japan’s three top aces in that order, they were soon to become the scourge of New Guinea, kings of the air above the bright blue Coral Sea, and the squadron in which they flew was by far the most outstanding in the war.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Junichi Sasai commanded the squadron. The men loved him. Unlike most graduates of Eta Jima, the Japanese Annapolis, he had compassion for the enlisted men. He haggled with the quartermaster for the candy they needed to replace energy sapped by ceaseless combat, or he “procured” cigarettes for them. They called Lieutenant Sasai “The Flying Tiger,” not in allusion to the American Volunteer Group of pilots whom Saburo had met in China, but because of the roaring tiger carved on the big silver belt buckle he wore. In Japanese legend, a tiger prowls a thousand miles and always returns from his hunt. That was the meaning of the buckle. Sasai’s father, a retired Navy captain, had made three of them, giving one to his son and the other two to his sons-in-law.
One of these sons-in-law, Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Tashiro, was the pilot of a four-engined Kawanishi flying boat. He was, that April, based at Rabaul—flying bombing missions south to Tulagi.
Martin Clemens was sure that the big Kawanishis turning from their bombing runs at Tulagi could not possibly spot the red tiles of his roof. Still, they gave him the shivers when they thundered low over Aola Bay on Guadalcanal. It was not so much that there seemed to be more of them every day, it was that they had absolute control of the air. Clemens didn’t even bother to look up when he heard airplane motors. He knew that they would be Japanese. The Australian seaplanes, being much smaller than the Kawanishis, generally went and hid when they had wind of an air raid.
Clemens felt very lonely and exposed. He was not heartened by the fact that the Australians had already informed him of the code signal that would signify their departure. It was “Steak and eggs,” or, as the Aussies with their cockney accents pronounced it, “Styke ’n ayggs.”
It only served to remind Clemens that his food was running low.
Out in the “boondocks” at Onslow Beach in North Carolina the only eggs served were powdered—much to the disgust of Archer Vandegrift, who had never forgotten the reek of a Chinese powdered-egg factory—and the only steak was a soggy counterfeit which the cooks coyly called “Swiss steak” and for which the troops had coined more colorful names, the only printable one of which was “boiled boondocker,” boondockers being the crepe-soled buckskin boots which Marines wore while tramping the boondocks, or wild country.
In early April, Vandegrift’s division was beginning to coalesce. The boots had lost their frightened look and no longer said “Sir” to corporals or saluted anyone whose clothes seemed to fit. They had begun to swagger a bit. They were getting salty enough to speak of the floor or ground as “the deck,” to “shove off” rather than depart, to “go ashore” when they went into town, and to ask, whenever they were out rumor-mongering—the favorite pastime of all good armies since Agamemnon’s—“Hey, what’s the scuttlebutt?”
Even old-timers such as Master Gunnery Sergeant Lew Diamond, a white-haired Marine brahmin with a goatish goateed face and a bearish body, would concede grudgingly, “Them knotheads may not be so bad, after all,” and Sergeant Manila John Basilone had ceased to “snow” his machine-gun section with lurid tales of life on Dewey Boulevard in Manila and had granted that all of them had not been found under flat stones and might possibly have had an earlier and human existence elsewhere. These young Marines thought of themselves as the best fighters in the world, although the only fighting they had done had been with an occasional soldier or sailor unfortunate enough to come home on leave to New River or nearby Jacksonville, or with each other in the unpainted shacks which followed them to the boondocks and sold them beer at fifteen cents a bottle and canned patriotic ballads such as “Goodby Mama, I’m Off to Yokohama,” at five cents per sentimental song. Sometimes moonshiners visited the pine woods where the First Marine Division lived in pup tents and slept on the ground. The moonshiners sold the Marines jugs of that potent corn whisky called “white lightning.” Navy medical corpsmen and physicians who operated the battalion aid stations known as “sick bays” always could tell when the moonshiners had been around: there were twice as many men on sick call and the gentian violet had to be spread thin to cover all that bruised and battered flesh.
Even so, the interfamilial brawling was a good sign. The men were developing an esprit. Each squad thought itself the best in the platoon, each platoon the best in the company and so on up through battalions and regiments. Riflemen regarded machine gunners as second-wave softies, the gunners looked down upon mortarmen as “rear-echelon bastards,” while the sight of clerks and technicians—to say nothing of artillerymen, about as common as a colonel in a pup tent—filled them all with stuttering rage. This is what is called the mystique of the Marine: the one man who might possibly have been the point in a battalion attack contemplates everyone else not so engaged with withering contempt. A man perhaps as much as five yards behind the lines is asked, “Where were you when the stuff hit the fan?”
All of this, nevertheless, was mere training; it was all very lighthearted, and the real thing, the fiery crucible of combat, seemed far away.
It seemed to General Vandegrift to be very far away, for he still considered his division many months short of combat-readiness. None of the new arrivals—and few of the battalion commanders—had been through a full-dress ship-to-shore landing maneuver. They had to be content with a wooden mock-up of a ship built beside Onslow Beach. Cargo nets were thrown over the side of this ungainly Trojan seahorse and the men clambered down them in full gear. Worse than this, far worse, were the mid-April levees on the division.
Lieutenant Colonel Merritt (“Red Mike”) Edson had arrived from Washington with authority to comb Vandegrift’s division for the best officers and men to fill his First Raider Battalion. Vandegrift could only fume—silently. He knew that President Roosevelt fancied having an American counterpart of the British commandos, although the Marine Corps Commandant, General Thomas Holcomb, shared Vandegrift’s aversion to making an elite out of an elite. Unfortunately, FDR had become infected by Winston Churchill’s penchant for military novelty, and because Roosevelt was actually very fond of the Marine Corps—he sometimes said “We Marines” in conversations with Holcomb6—he conferred this unwelcome enthusiasm on his favorite service. FDR’s oldest son, James, was to be executive officer of the Second Raiders under the famous Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson.
After Edson departed from New River, leaving the Fifth Marines* slightly skeletonized, the worst blow fell. Vandegrift was ordered to beef up the Seventh Regiment with his best men, weapons and equipment and to send it to the Samoan Islands. The general despaired. Into the Seventh had gone many of his finest battalion commanders, tough and aggressive patrol officers from Haiti and Nicaragua, Marines such as Chesty Puller and Herman Henry Hanneken who knew how to handle troops in jungle warfare. Now Vandegrift had to build again. For what? More raids? Was he to spend the war training troops for other men to command?
On April 15—five days after the Seventh shipped out—Vandegrift’s gloomy doubts were joyously dispelled. He was notified that he was to take the rest of his division to New Zealand. He was to train there preparatory to going into action as the Landing Force of the newly established South Pacific Amphibious Force.
The South Pacific Area and Force had only just been established. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had already divided the Pacific Theater into the Southwest Pacific Area, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur from Australia, and the Pacific Ocean Area, commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz from Hawaii. But because Nimitz’s area was so vast, it was decided to subdivide it. The South Pacific Area was therefore created, with its commander responsible to Nimitz. This commander was to be Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley. On April 17, Ghormley received this vague and hardly inspiring message from Admiral King.
“You have been selected to command the South Pacific Force and South Pacific Area. You will have a large area under your command and a most difficult task. I do not have the tools to give you to carry out that task as it should be. You will establish your headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand, with an advanced base at Tongatabu. In time, possibly this fall, we hope to start an offensive from the South Pacific. You will then probably find it necessary to shift the advanced base as the situation demands and move your headquarters to meet special situations.”
For a striking force a single untrained and understrength Marine division, for support a shortage of ships and airplanes and hundreds of other invaluable items such as bulldozers and runway matting—and yet, Admiral Ernest King was already preparing the Pacific counteroffensive. He was adhering to his own admonition, “Do the best with what you have,” and he was waiting for the Japanese to overreach.
Unknown to King, he had already set in motion the operation that was to force the Japanese hand next day.
The lookout on the Japanese picket boat sighted airplanes overhead. He could not make out their identity, but surely, only 700 miles from Tokyo they could not be enemy. Nevertheless, he went below to wake the captain.
“Planes above, sir,” he shouted.
The skipper was not interested. He stayed in his bunk. The lookout went topside. An hour or so later he stiffened. He saw a pair of carriers on the horizon. Strange. He went below to wake the skipper again.
“Two of our beautiful carriers ahead, sir.”
The captain came on deck and studied the ships through his glass. Color drained from his face. “They’re beautiful,” he said. “But they’re not ours.” He went below and shot himself in the head, for he had failed in his duty to protect the homeland and the Emperor.7
The carriers he had seen were Enterprise and Hornet, under command of Admiral Bull Halsey, and the planes were Jimmy Doolittle’s Mitchell bombers speeding for Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Once they had dropped their bombs, they would fly on to Chinese airfields. Meanwhile, Enterprise and Hornet were streaking for home at top speed.
A few hours later, the American ships tuned their radios to Tokyo. An English-speaking propagandist came on the air. He explained that of all the countries then at war, only Japan was free from attack. Admiral Yamamoto and the invincible Combined Fleet would utterly destroy anyone foolish enough to approach the shores of the sacred homeland. How fortunate the sons and daughters of Nippon, enjoying today not only the Festival of the Cherry Blossoms, but two fine baseball games as well.
It was then that Bull Halsey heard the air-raid siren.
Japan was stunned. Not only Bull Halsey heard the sirens, but the haggling officers of Naval General Staff and Combined Fleet as well. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto burned with shame. He put on dress whites and called on Emperor Hirohito to apologize. And he came into Naval General Staff headquarters with his sword in his hand.
The Midway operation must be executed.8 Obviously, the threat from the east was more urgent than the operation to isolate Australia. The Americans must be pushed back so far that the possibility of another such insult to the Emperor and the Navy would be ended forever. This time Staff agreed without reserve. Its pride had been wounded and its chief, Admiral Osami Nagano, was also full of remorse.
With all obstacles removed, the Midway invasion was set for early June. But then, with a characteristic inflexibility so baffling to westerners, acting upon the national conviction that a course undertaken must be followed, Naval General Staff blandly continued its own operation against Australia.
Port Moresby and Tulagi were to be invaded and captured in early May. Once again, without being aware of it, Japan’s Naval General Staff was drawing closer to the island named Guadalcanal.
* The word “Marines” is interchangeable with “regiment.” It never denotes a division. Thus, to say First Marines is to mean First Marine Regiment, never First Marine Division.
CHAPTER
THREE
“STYKE ’N AYGGS, dammit, styke ’n ayggs!”
It came crackling over the teleradio in shrill and nasal urgency, this signal of imminent Australian departure, and it chilled the heart of Martin Clemens seated in his radio shack and watching the gray dawn of May 2 creep down the coast toward Snowy Rhoades on Cape Esperance at the western tip of Guadalcanal.
Though dismayed, Clemens was not entirely surprised. The day before the Japanese had hurled their most savage attack on the twin islets of Gavutu-Tanambogo in Tulagi Harbor. One of the RAAF’s remaining two flying boats had lumbered aloft with a huge hole in one wing, to disappear forever. The other had been caught on the water and smashed. It was later towed across the channel to Aola, where natives had dragged it out of sight and destroyed it.
So now the Japanese were truly coming and the Australians were leaving. Clemens and his handful of Europeans were all alone. How would the natives react to the Japanese?
Only last month a European had been murdered up in the Goldfields. One of the “bleddy boongs,” as most Australian planters described the natives, had done for Billy Wilmot with a long-handled ax. The interior of the poor old beachcomber’s hut had been spattered with blood, and the body, which Clemens had ordered exhumed, was a horrible, sickening sight. Luckily for most of the natives—the Christians—they had been at Good Friday services when the murder occurred. Of two pagan suspects, one of them owned just the ax to do the job; and on such flimsy evidence Clemens had taken the man into custody. But Clemens could not be sure. Moreover, the identity of the killer troubled him not so much as the fact of a European murdered at a time when plantations were being looted by rebellious natives and the Japanese were on their way. Through Clemens’s mind there flitted a phrase from one of the books on the Solomon Islanders: “These people are primarily and emphatically savages, with some good points certainly, but in their nature reigns unchecked the instinct of destruction.”1
Clemens was also having difficulty of a lesser though perhaps more irritating nature with the Catholic fathers at the Ruavatu Mission a few miles west of Aola. He had advised them to take refuge inland. But Father Henry Oude-Engberink, the Dutch priest in charge, replied that he and the American Father Arthur Duhamel and the three European nuns at the mission would remain with their flock. They were neutral. The war was not their concern. Clemens tried to explain that the Japanese would certainly not be “neutral” toward the nuns, that to remain on the coast was dangerous and foolhardy when the mission party might maintain its neutrality in the safety of the bush, but Father Engberink was obdurate: his place was with his flock. Bishop Aubin at the mission headquarters in Visale on the western end of the island had already decided to follow a policy of neutrality. To take sides, that was the charge always raised against missionaries: that they served a foreign power. It was the age-old excuse for persecutions. No, the fathers and the nuns would give the Japanese no grounds for such false accusations. They served no power but God.
That was that, and the interview had ended on a note of cool cordiality.
And now, the Japanese were coming south. Now the time of preparation and of worry was coming to an end. Soon he would find out if the natives were really to be trusted, if a policy of “neutrality” would really impress the bloodthirsty Knights of Bushido, and if he, Martin Clemens, would be clever enough to keep his life. Now, he thought, mentally quoting from his constant companion, his only book, Shakespeare’s Henry V,
now: “We are in God’s hands, brother.”
Next morning the Japanese invasion force under Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto glided into empty Tulagi Harbor. Goto put ashore troops of the Kure and Sasebo Special Naval Landing Forces—so-called Japanese “Marines”—as well as aviation and communications personnel to staff a seaplane base and radio station. Unhurried because unharried, Goto unloaded at his leisure; stocking the Emperor’s latest acquisitions with great quantities of oil and gasoline and an inordinately large supply of beer and sake,* hard candy for the fliers, and cases of canned beef, pineapple, and crab meat.
Later there arrived the first of twelve float Zero fighter-planes and twelve Kawanishi flying boats, one of which was piloted by Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Tashiro, the brother-in-law of Saburo Sakai’s squadron commander. Another arrival was Mr. Ishimoto, the former Lever Brothers carpenter who was now returning to Tulagi as a conqueror. Ishimoto wore the uniform of a petty officer in the Japanese Navy, but he was nevertheless identified and reported by Martin Clemens’s scouts. The presence of the entire invasion force—the southern arm of the operation to cut the Australian-American lifeline—was also reported to the American carrier force to the south under Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher.
Leaving the Lexington group to continue refueling, Fletcher hurried north with Yorktown and her group of screening ships. At dawn next morning, Fletcher swung Yorktown into the wind and flew off his strikes against Goto.
The Japanese in Tulagi were caught completely by surprise.
“Massa, massa!” one of Clemens’s scouts shouted, waking him. “Altogether Japan he catchem trouble!”2
Clemens rushed to the shores of Aola Bay. Surrounded by delighted natives, he saw the American dive-bombers come plummeting out of the sun in long straight dives. Explosions rolled over the water. Pillars of smoke rose into the sky. Cheers and cries of derision rose from the throats of the scouts. They shook their fists and howled, “Japan he die-finish!” And of course, the reports of enemy destruction were exaggerated. It was claimed that nine ships were sunk. Actually, Yorktown’s airplanes had put only a destroyer, two mine sweepers and a destroyer-transport on the bottom of those waters which, because of the scores of ships that were to perish in them, were to be known henceforth as Iron Bottom Bay. More important, Goto’s cocksure force had been sent racing north up the long straight Solomons sea corridor which was to enter history as The Slot.
Challenge for the Pacific Page 4