The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  The goal of The Pacific is to take the reader through the Pacific War, from first to last, through the eyes of a select few of the men who fought it. In this way, the reader enjoys the immediacy of the individual narrative, but sees the war as a whole. To achieve this goal, the five stories included here were chosen because they are representative of the experience. Between these men, they fought many of the great battles of the Pacific War. The coincidences and relationships that connect the five men allow their experiences to arrive in the context within which they occurred. The historical perspective emerges in a variety of ways. After carefully choosing the right stories, and developing them to their fullest, the author has chosen to provide only a thin skein of omniscience. Given its goal, this work is self-evidently not a definitive history of the entire war or even of the battles that it covers.

  Attempting to tell the story of individuals is fraught with perils. Sources contradict one another. The fog of war leaves mistaken impressions. The fog of time increases these misapprehensions. The documents are incomplete, sometimes inaccurate, and always more revealing of the aggregate experience than that of the individual. Relying on the letters, reports, and journals written during the war, though, solves most of these problems.

  History books relate what happened. This work focuses on what the men thought was going to happen, what they endured or witnessed, and what they believed had happened. Determining what someone thought at a particular time, before their understanding was shaped later by new information, is highly problematical. Contemporaneous accounts remain the best source. These accounts form the basis of this book. For reasons that will become obvious, I chose not to distinguish between remarks made at the time and those made many years later. Instead, I took great care to prevent the rosy glow of memory from obscuring the facts.

  The diaries, letters, and reports of Austin Shofner, Sid's friend John "Deacon" Tatum, John Basilone, and Eugene Sledge are new to the war's scholarship. They are rare and extremely valuable documents. They have made possible the vivid and unrelenting stories told herein. They also offer new insights and new information on key events and important individuals, as the avid military historians will discern.

  The basis of research for four of the individuals whose lives appear in this book (Sidney Phillips, Austin Shofner, Vernon Micheel, and Eugene Sledge) amounts to a core group of documents: their respective military records, letters, journals, memoirs, memoirs of friends, photos, and interviews. Since this book intends to tell the story of these men in their words as much as possible, these sources are quoted and paraphrased liberally (except in the case of Eugene Sledge's memoir). In order to make the endnotes of this book less cumbersome, these sources will be cited in the first endnote of each story, in a "super endnote." The additional material used will be cited in the text as necessary. The story of the fifth veteran, on the other hand, could not be handled in this manner. John Basilone's story was pulled together from a hundred different sources, none of which offers more than a piece of the whole.

  THE CAST

  THE VAST AND COMPLEX WAR AGAINST JAPAN CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY FOLLOWING five individuals through it. On the day the Pacific War began, they were (in order of appearance):

  Lieutenant Austin C. "Shifty" Shofner--the scion of a prominent family with a long record of military service, he considered himself a professional marine. He had seen the barbarity of Japanese occupation up close and looked forward to leading men in combat.

  Ensign Vernon "Mike" Micheel--the prospect of being drafted had forced him to leave the family farm and complete the navy's flight school in the fall of 1941. The challenge of being a naval aviator deepened at every turn.

  Sidney C. Phillips--the easygoing teenager went down to enlist when the war started because his buddy William "W. O." Brown said they should do it. They thought they would join the navy because Mobile, Alabama, was a navy town.

  Sergeant "Manila John" Basilone--the son of immigrants had found happiness in the rough-and-ready life of a marine. Having previously served overseas, John had already experienced America's postcolonial foreign policy. He thought it was worth fighting for.

  Eugene B. Sledge--the serious, intelligent son of a famous doctor, he watched as his best friend, Sidney Phillips, enlisted without him. The sight mortified him. For a year he deferred to his parents, who insisted that his elder brother Edward's service would represent the family's contribution to the war effort.

  Robert "Lucky" Leckie--viewers of the HBO miniseries The Pacific will note that one of the miniseries's central characters, Robert Leckie, appears briefly in this text. Viewers will also notice that this volume features two men, Austin Shofner and Vernon Micheel, who are absent from the miniseries. The explanation can be found in the imperatives of print versus those of film. While the book and the miniseries share a core story, they are different mediums. Each must do what it does best.

  ACT I

  "HOUSE OF CARDS"

  December 1941-June 1942

  AS THE 1930S GAVE WAY TO THE 1940S, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES thought little of the Empire of Japan. Americans worried about their economy, which had wallowed on the brink of collapse for a decade, and wished to stay out of the world's problems. The speed at which Nazi Germany had come to dominate Europe had, however, provided President Franklin Roosevelt with enough political capital to take a few steps toward preparing the country to defend itself. Roosevelt and his military leadership also opposed the Japanese drive to dominate vast stretches of China. The Japanese government, ruled by a military cabal that included Emperor Hirohito, had created an ideology to justify its colonial conquest and built a military to enact it. Japan obviously intended to seize other valuable areas along the Pacific Rim. The United States controlled some of these valuable areas and it expected to keep the region open to trade. Roosevelt endeavored to curb Japan's expansion by a series of economic and diplomatic measures backed up by the U.S. military--the smallest and least-equipped force of any industrialized nation in the world.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT AUSTIN SHOFNER WOKE UP EXPECTING ENEMY BOMBERS TO arrive overhead any second. Just after three a.m. his friend Hugh had burst into the cottage where he was sleeping on the floor and said, "Shof, Shof, wake up. I just got a message in from the CinCPAC saying that war with Japan is to be declared within the hour. I've gone through all the Officer of the Day's instructions, and there isn't a thing in there about what to do when war is declared."1 With the enemy's strike imminent, Lieutenant Shofner took the next logical step. "Go wake up the old man."

  "Oh," Hugh replied, "I couldn't do that." Even groggy with sleep, Shofner understood his reluctance. The chain of command dictated that Lieutenant Hugh Nutter report to his battalion commander, not directly to the regimental commander. Speaking to a colonel in the Marine Corps was like speaking to God. The situation required it though. "You damn fool, get going, pass the buck up." At this Hugh took off running into the darkness surrounding the navy base on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines.

  Shofner followed quickly, running down to the docks, where the enlisted men were billeted in an old warehouse. He saw Hugh stumble into a hole and fall, but he didn't stop to help. The whistle on the power station sounded. The sentry at the main gate began ringing the old ship's bell. The men were already awake and shouting when Shofner ran into the barracks and ordered them to fall out. The bugler sounded the Call to Arms. Someone ordered the lights kept off, so as not to give the enemy's planes a target.

  His men needed a few minutes to get dressed and assembled. Shofner ran to find the cooks and get them preparing chow. Then he went to find his battalion commander. Beyond the run-down warehouse where his men bunked, away from the rows of tents pitched on the rifle range where others were billeted, stood the handsome fort built by the Spanish. Its graceful arches had long since been landscaped, so Shofner darted up the road lined by acacia trees to a pathway bordered by brilliant red hibiscus and gardenias.2 He found some of the senior officers of the Fourth Marine Reg
iment sitting together.a They had received word from Admiral Hart's headquarters sixty miles away in Manila that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Their calmness surprised him.

  Shofner should not have been taken aback. Every man in the room had been expecting war with the Empire of Japan. They had thought the war would start somewhere else, most likely in China. Up until a week ago, their regiment had been based in Shanghai. They had watched the emperor's troops steadily advance in China over the past few years as more and more divisions of the Imperial Japanese Army landed. The Japanese government had established a puppet government to rule a vast area in northern China it had renamed Manchukuo.

  The Fourth Marines, well short of full strength at about eight hundred men, had been in no position to defend its quarter of Shanghai, much less protect U.S. interests in China. The situation had become so tense the marine officers concocted a plan in case of a sudden attack. They would fight their way toward an area of China not conquered by Japan. If the regiment was stopped, its men would be told essentially to "run for your life."3 The officers around the table this morning were thankful the U.S. government finally had yielded to the empire's dominance and pulled them out in late November 1941, at what now looked like the last possible moment.

  Upon their arrival at Olongapo Naval Base on December 1, the Fourth Marines became part of Admiral Hart's Asiatic Fleet, whose cruisers and destroyers were anchored in Manila Harbor, on the other side of the peninsula from where they were sitting. Along with the fleet, U.S. forces included General Douglas MacArthur's 31,000 U.S. Army troops as well as the 120,000 officers and men of the Philippine National Army. Hart and MacArthur had been preparing for war with the Empire of Japan for years. The emperor must have been nuts to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Now that he had, his ships and planes were sure to be on their way here, to the island of Luzon, which held the capital of the Philippine government and the headquarters of the U.S. forces. The enemy's first strike against them, the officers agreed, would likely be by bombers flying off Formosa.b

  With all this strategic talk, Shofner could see that no orders were in the offing, so he went back to his men. His headquarters company had assembled on the parade ground along with the men from the infantry companies. The word being passed around was succinct: "japs blew the hell out of Pearl Harbor." He confirmed the news not with fear, but with some relish. Lieutenant Austin "Shifty" Shofner of Shelbyville, Tennessee, had always loved a good fight. Of medium height but robust of build, he loved football, wrestling, and gambling of any kind. He did not think much of the Japanese. He told his men that an attack was expected any moment. Live ammunition would be issued immediately. Next came a sly grin. "Our play days are now over and we can start earning our money."4

  The marines waited on the parade ground until the battalion commander arrived to address them. All liberties were canceled. The regimental band was being dissolved, as was the small detachment of marines that manned the naval station when the Fourth Marines arrived. These men would be formed into rifle platoons, which would then be divided among the rifle companies.5 Every man was needed because they had to defend not only Olongapo Naval Station, but another, smaller one at Mariveles, on the tip of the Bataan Peninsula. The 1st Battalion drew the job of protecting Mariveles. It would depart immediately.

  The departure decreased the regiment by not quite half, leaving it the 2nd Battalion, Shofner's headquarters and service company, and a unit of navy medical personnel. The riflemen got to work creating defensive positions. They dug foxholes, emplaced their cannons, and strung barbed wire to stop a beach assault. They located caches of ammunition in handy places and surrounded them with sandbags. Defending Olongapo also meant protecting the navy's squadron of long- range scout planes, the PBYs. When not on patrol these flying boats swung at their anchors just off the dock. The marines positioned their machine guns to fire at attacking planes. Roadblocks were established around the base, although this was not much of a job since the only civilization nearby was the small town of Olongapo.

  The men put their backs into the work. Every marine had seen the Japanese soldiers in action on the other side of street barricades in Shanghai. They had witnessed how brutal and violent they were to unarmed civilians. Most of them had heard what the Japanese had done to the people of Nanking. So they knew what to expect from a Japanese invasion. Shofner felt a twinge of embarrassment that these preparations had waited until now. The biggest exercise undertaken since their arrival had been a hike to a swimming beach. Shofner thought back to the day before, December 7, when he had spent the entire day looking for a spot to show movies. He let those thoughts go. His assignment was to create a bivouac for the battalion away from the naval station. The enemy's bombers were sure to aim for the warehouses and the fort. As noon on the eighth approached, he moved with the alacrity for which he was known. He took his company across the golf course, forded a creek, and began setting up camp in a mangrove swamp.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE, THE AFTERNOON OF December 7 found Ensign Vernon "Mike" Micheel of the United States Navy preparing to do battle with the Imperial Japanese Navy. He carried a sheaf of papers in his hands as he walked around the navy's air station in San Diego, known as North Island. Despite the frenzy around him, Mike moved with deliberate haste. He stopped at the different departments on the base: the Time Keeper, the Storeroom Keeper, the Chief Flight Instructor, and so forth, endeavoring to get his paperwork in order. A few hours before he and the other pilots of his training group, officially known as the Advanced Carrier Training Unit (ACTU), had been told that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Their pilot training was being cut short. They would board USS Saratoga immediately and go to war.

  The Sara, as her crew called her, could be seen from almost anywhere Mike walked. She was the navy's largest aircraft carrier and towered over North Island, the collection of landing strips and aircraft hangars on the isthmus that formed San Diego Harbor. She was the center of attention, surrounded by cranes and gangways. Several squadrons, which included maintenance personnel as well as the pilots, gunners, and airplanes, were being loaded aboard. Most of these crews had been scheduled to board the Sara today. The big fleet carrier had been refitted in a shipyard up the coast and, strangely, arrived a few minutes before the declaration of war.6 But new guys like Mike had had no such expectation.

  Micheel prepared himself for active duty without the burning desire for revenge on the sneaky enemy to which most everyone around him pledged themselves. He knew he wasn't ready. He had not landed a plane on a carrier. Most of his flight time had been logged in biplanes. He had flown some hours in single-wing metal planes, but he had only just begun to fly the navy's new combat aircraft. Even when the Sara's torpedo defense alarm sounded and an attack appeared imminent, it was not in Mike's nature to let anger or ego overwhelm his assessment.7

  Mike did not consider himself a natural pilot. He had not grown up making paper planes and following the exploits of pioneers like Charles Lindbergh. In 1940, the twenty-four-year-old dairy farmer went down to the draft board and discovered that he would be drafted in early 1941. If he enlisted, he could choose his service. His experiences in the ROTC, which had helped pay for college, had instilled in him a strong desire to avoid sleeping in a pup tent and eating cold rations. On a tip from a friend, he sought out a navy recruiter. The recruiter assured him that life in the navy was a whole lot better than in the infantry, but then he noticed Mike's college degree. "You know, we've got another place that you would fit, and that would be in the navy air corps. . . . It's the same thing as being on the ship with the regular navy people, but you get paid more."

  "Well, that sounds good," Mike replied without enthusiasm. He had ridden on a plane once. "It was all right. But I wasn't thrilled about it." The recruiter, like all good recruiters, promised, "Well, you can get a chance to try it. If you don't like it, you can always switch back to the regular navy."

  More than a year later, Mike arri
ved at North Island with a mission that placed him at the forefront of modern naval warfare. When civilians noticed the gold wings on his dress uniform, they usually assumed that he was a fighter pilot. The nation's memories of World War I were laced with the stories of fighter pilots dueling with the enemy across the heavens at hundreds of miles an hour. That heady mix of glamour and prestige also had fired the imaginations of the men with whom Mike had gone through flight training. Each cadet strove to be the best because only the best pilots became fighter pilots. When they graduated from the Naval Flight School at Pensacola, the new ensigns listed their preferred duty.

  Though he had graduated in the top quarter of his class, and been offered the chance to become an instructor, Ensign Micheel listed dive- bomber as his top choice. While few had heard of it before their training, the dive-bomber was also a carrier-based plane. It served on the front line of America's armed forces. Instead of knocking down the enemy's planes, its mission was to find the enemy's ships and sink them. Mike wanted to fly from a carrier. In his usual quiet way he figured out that the surest way for him to become a carrier pilot was to become a dive- bomber. Many of his fellow classmates had listed fighter pilot as their first choice. Most of them would later find themselves behind the yoke of a four-engine bomber. Although officially ordered to a scouting squadron, he essentially received his first choice. Scouts and bombers flew the same plane and shared the same mission. Mike came to North Island to improve his navigation enough to be a great scout, but also to learn the art of destroying ships, especially enemy carriers.

  Now he filed his paperwork and walked to the Bachelor Officers' Quarters to pack his bags without once having attempted the difficult maneuver of dive-bombing. As the sun set, a blackout order added to the confusion and tension. Men who had been on liberty or on leave continued to arrive, full of questions. Micheel and the other new pilots headed for the Sara and the moment they had been working toward. They boarded an aircraft carrier for the first time. Every space was being crammed with every pilot, mechanic, airplane, bullet, and bomb that could be had. Rumors ran wild. The new pilots found their way to officer country, the deck where officers' staterooms were located.