by Paul Hynes
Roosevelt was a spirited and vocal opponent of the use of Chemical Weaponry, however as the Japanese openly made use of gas against China, and war with Germany drew inexorably near he had acquiesced to the pleas of his advisors for America to be prepared for an all-out Chemical war with enemies who had shown a willingness to use such devices in the past. In typical American fashion this was soon on its way to building itself into the largest Chemical weapons program that the world had ever seen. With a workforce of tens of thousands, and hundreds of millions of dollars, the United States had literally produced millions of chemical grenades, shells, bombs alongside 87,000 tons of Mustard, Chlorine, and Lewisite gas that could be delivered by more than 110,000 spray tanks from American aircraft. Despite his protests, Roosevelt had become the reluctant father of a Chemical arsenal larger than the rest of the world combined.
Despite this newfound ability, Roosevelt remained unflinching in his opposition to deploying Gas weaponry without the Axis having used them first and the Chemical Warfare Service, responsible for this vast array of Chemicals, would complain that Roosevelt would immediately reject any proposal they would make, often without even reading them. This was despite the fact that large testing grounds they had access to in Utah had allowed them to perfect strategies to be used in cave warfare and against German and Japanese cities, and reports that up to 2500 thousand American lives could have been saved on Iwo Jima had he been willing to use gas, Roosevelt would take his staunch opposition to his grave.
Truman was now the inheritor of this burden , he did not have any enthusiasm for gas warfare, having experienced it during the First World War but he did not have the same moral disgust for the weapon that his predecessor had had. The American people were growing more positive towards the concept as well, were fear of the quiet, sudden, death that gas would bring had once brought revulsion, stories of Japan’s own gas atrocities against America’s Chinese allies and heavy casualties of the Pacific conflict had gradually eroded this opposition. The continuing bloodbath on Kyushu had finally created majority support for the use of gas against the Japanese and amongst banners demanding more atomic attacks there were also those beginning to appear that read “You can Cook ‘em better with Gas!”. If public support for the invasion was fragile, how could he explain the continued disuse of a potent weapon, one that had cost the tax payer half a Billion dollars to develop?
The military had already had plans underway in case the contingency had arose that the United States would ever need to use their mammoth arsenal, and whether to dread or relief he would finally authorise in the name of ending the war as quickly as possible. He had promised the Japanese that every righteous weapon would be used to against them, now he was going to unleash those of Hell.
Most Japanese troops had arrived on Kyushu during the summer months of 1945 as the Army had amassed troops on the island for the upcoming ‘Decisive Battle’, the combination of the finest new recruits, and the most battle hardened veterans had arrived in a land of tropical beauty where Banana’s fell from the trees and sugarcane could be snapped off and eaten whilst gazing out into the endless horizon of mountains. Given top priority in terms of food, equipment and in virtually every other aspect of military life, morale was high as they trained in the hills and caves that they would soon be defending.
The bombing came, relentless and meticulous, forcing soldiers to dive for cover that would often be no use, then there were the Atomic Bombs, forcing them to watch as the beautiful landscapes they had fallen in love with was incinerated and scorched. Then the Americans themselves had come, unleashing the largest naval barrage in history to accompany larger and more widespread bombing raids than ever before. The carefully hoarded reserves inside the coast, waiting to throw the Americans back into the sea, had been incinerated by further Atomic attacks and those now facing the Americans could only now fight until their ammunition was exhausted and their knives and sickles blunted, with those in the next caves preparing to do the same as the Americans crept towards them. They had killed tens of thousands of Americans, injured hundreds of thousands more, it never seemed to matter, no matter how many were killed more would arrive, with heavier arms, and the knowledge that the men holed up in their caves had little left to fight them with.
Their own casualties had been nothing short of nightmares, both by Allied domination of the skies and the seas, those who had sacrificed themselves in their Kamikaze craft and those condemned to the slow Kamikaze of cave fighting in the south. The artillery fired and bombs fell night and day. Supplies were forced onto secondary roads until scarcity of fuel had begun to require an even greater use of couriers to carry food, water, and ammunition by foot, reducing supply to a trickle.
Life at the front had become a cold and hungry struggle for survival not only against the Americans but against the elements themselves as black rain and ash fell from the sky and the night seemed perpetually present. Some chose to charge against the Americans so that they would grant them death’s sweet release, other surrendered, praying that their families would understand the absurdity of trying to remain at post for another waking moment. The majority muddled on in depressed silence, blessing the few times it was safe to sleep or when there was enough food to eat. Drinking the black rain was discouraged officially, advice that was ignored for mouths so parched that they could barely whisper and croak, if it was indeed dangerous to their health they did not care, having lost all concern for such matters, as they contorted themselves into the monosyllabic and unthinking machine men that helped shut out the pain of their surroundings.
On January 10th there was a change, a passing of something, as the day grew brighter and the air clearer. The Americans simply stopped coming. At first it was expected that it was only a local delay, but then reports around the front came in and rumour spread. It had become clear by January 12th that the American advance had indeed halted across the island whilst bombing raids and artillery where also reported to be dying down. As they enjoyed the silence they entertained hopes that perhaps the propagandists that came around from time to time had been correct in asserting that the American public would eventually grow tired of horrendous casualties and acquiesce to continued Japanese independence. The couriers could travel faster, practically uninhibited by bombings, and for the first time in in weeks those at the fronts ate adequately and slept soundly, their cotton pods seeming like velvet quilts in the knowledge that at any moment a large American officer would brandish a large white flag and inform them that the American and Japanese governments had agreed it was a war crime to allow anyone to try to survive on this wretched mass grave.
As they awoke to an artificial sunrise they realised how naïve such hopes had been. As the citizens of Kumamoto finally met the fate determined for them on November 12th, on the other side of the island the stone Buddha statues of Uzuki were torn apart with the rest of the city, as those left within its walls, including the last Japanese reserve division in the southern part of the island, burned in their sleep. As the guns began to bark once more and the planes swooped overheard discharged yellowish smoke from their hulls, the Americans did indeed appear, but not the ones of their dreams. A nightmare army clad in emotionless, inhuman masks charging towards them as the confused defenders felt their throats begin to seize up before the bayonets pierced through their bodies, never to leave, to line its mass graves for eternity.
From the moment the first spray canister was attached and the first Chemical mortar shells were loaded, the Operation has been plagued by enduring controversy of the scale, the effects, and the enduring casualties one where too favourable an advocacy or too harsh a condemnation has been known to provoke fist fights and divide families for decades. Yet for all of the historiographical debate over the morality and decision making process of Sandman, the most important factor in its formation has often been the most forgotten.
America was running out of time.
The Kanto Plain, where the majority of the Japanese population lived a
nd where Operation Coronet would fall was historically vulnerable to the seasonal monsoons that struck in the mid-April where the pleasant sub-tropical landscape would be battered by thunder storms, coastal fronts, cold air damming and tornados turning the much of the terrain into an environment of vast pools of rice, muck, and water combining into an often impassable sludge. Roads would become elevated with makeshift bridges being likely to shatter. Instead of exploiting their advantages in armour and mobility, American troops would have to rely on little more than the artillery they could carry into the rugged, well-defended foothills.
For two years meteorologists had studied the prevailing weather conditions over the area and had concluded that the most opportune time to avoid this debacle would be a landing in March, before the worst of the rains, where an armoured thrust would smash the largely static Japanese defences and occupy the entire Kanto Plain before the summer. The original [i]Majestic[/i] had foreseen a campaign of 90 days and had been moved forward to November rather than December to ensure completion of the operation before the beginning of February, providing a month to build the airfields necessary to support [i]Coronet[/i] before it was scheduled to begin on the 1st of March. The destruction wrought by Typhoon Louise had complicated these plans however, delaying the invasion of Kyushu by two weeks, whilst heavier than expected Japanese resistance on the island, exacerbated by vast numbers of Kamikazes, had considerably slowed the invasion despite a relentless aerial bombardment that had included the destruction of over three Japanese divisions with three Atomic Bombs.
By the beginning of 1946 it was clear that the Japanese on the island were a spent force, low on supplies and ammunition, reports of delirious skeletal Japanese troops with nothing to fight with but bayonets and spears began to increase and it was suggested that soon the Japanese forces on the island might simply starve to death in lieu of a retreat from their cave-ridden mountains. As attractive an option that would have universally been under normal circumstances, there was no time to wait for the enemy to simply fade away, the US advance had pushed the Japanese north to frontline roughly stretching between Miyanojo, Kobayashi, and Sadohara with thousands of square miles inside the southern third deemed the minimum amount of land needed for airfield construction, still in Japanese hands. Even if the Japanese on the island had only a month left before complete exhaustion, it would be enough to potentially delay Coronet and with it, the end of the war by several months, months that ensure even more American casualties. Thus it’s quite possible that Truman would have found the solution into breaking this deadlock in Mustard Gas regardless of Jeussen’s actions, considering the growing popularity in public and especially military opinion. The strength of the latter’s advocacy can be seen by the fact that Sandman had been in development meticulously since December.
Built up of endlessly studied photos of Japanese supply routes and even the smallest supply dumps, a frequency chart had been drawn over Japanese held territory and taking into account the wind patterns of the area targets for the mass dispersal of Mustard Gas over a two-day period had been concluded. The Operation involved three stages, and preparations had taken almost a fortnight as American troops and bomber crews had to be supplied with sprayers, shells, grenades, and gas masks. The dropping of Atomic Bombs over Uzuki and Kumamoto had been the first stage, removing their status as major transport hubs as they had burned. This denied any major attempt to retreat from the vast fumigation that was the second stage whilst also preventing any significant medical aid from entering the affected zones before it was too late. Though they lay more than twenty miles from the limit of the gas dispersal, many survivors of the bombings would stagger towards the front, hoping that the concentrations of water, food and medical supplies would give them a better chance of surviving their ailments. These shuffling masses, the couriers bringing supplies to the front, and the endless number of civilians and troops busy retrenching areas adjacent to the front in the knowledge that they would soon become battlegrounds, all found themselves in contact with the mass of planes flying overhead and the layer upon lair of the gas that they were emitting from their sprayers. The gas covered deep trails, sank into gorges, drifted into caves and penetrated the skin, in dispersed quantities, the tens of thousands of tonnes dropped between Marushiro and Nobeoka led to very few of the painful seizures and quick deaths that direct exposure brought. As most correctly identified Mustard gas as it was dropped there was panic as hundreds of thousands across hundreds of square miles scrambled to conceal themselves or to get access to the small supply of gas masks the Japanese had on the island, many screaming hysterically or crying out as the yellow-ish clouds dispersed and drifted down to the Earth, settling over the landscape
What followed was a sense of mass relief for those who had been exposed, they were neither dead nor blind and indeed seemed to be unscathed. Some celebrated that the American gas had ‘failed’ due to their poor knowledge of the weapon. Most were encouraged to return to work by soldiers who knew that the time bomb was ticking. Two hours later the irritation began, most of those exposed began to become intolerably itchy in the preceding hours as their skin began to redden. As night fell those in affected areas had come over with violent cases of fever whilst from the raw skin boils began to appear. The panic and hysteria returned, for those overflowing the hospitals already unable to cope with conventional casualties, they were left shivering on the ground. Many still able to walk had turned blind with their eyes swollen, irritated, and torn to the point that sight had become impossible. Amongst the screams and the shivers continuously tripped and stumbled in their attempts to seek help, Doctors and Nurses, coughing blood, could only reply that there was none to give.
At the front artillery, mortar and bombs blazed over the Japanese defenders, the vast majority of them without masks, as the Americans troops, in a resemblance of the mass offensives of the First World War, stampeded over blistered, writhing, bodies of those condemned and didn’t look back as they advanced further than they had for weeks.
The battle for Kyushu was over, except for the shivering.
On the 27th of January the Supreme War Council gathered in the mountains outside Nagano under which the war had been directed ever since the completion of the vast underground complex in Matsushiro that had been designed for such a purpose. By January 1946 the council had been significantly reduced following the events of the last 5 months. The Emperor officially remained at its head but now took little part in proceedings as he languished under de facto arrest in his quarters, usually choosing to be absent from meetings in which he knew his presence would only further legitimise the Anami regime. Due to practical concerns over the need for two positions for a branch of the Imperial Armed Forces that had lost her last surface ships of any significance during the short lived naval battle that preceded Operation Majestic, the roles of Navy Minister and Chief of Navy General Staff had been merged under Matome Ugaki, who had been moments from suicide when he heard of the coup.
From out of exile and irrelevance, Yōsuke Matsuoka had returned as Foreign Minister, who was favoured for the same virulent hatred of the Soviet Union that had been his downfall in 1941, as the last foreign embassies began to make plans to leave Japan as the imminent threat of an American invasion grew closer, his role was also significantly reduced to being the messenger of the Anami regime. Without any room allowed for compromise or independence of office, his aesthetically remarkable return from retirement in fact left him in a role better suited to a parrot or a broken record, and he found himself subsequently receiving little more regard than either of those two objects might have expected.
Anami had combined the roles of War Minister and Prime Minister, and had established himself in an essentially sovereign position above the group, allowing for little discussion when his mind had been made up beforehand, and ending any disagreement with a firm declaration as to his own opinion. Many resented this arrogant spectacle, fearing that Anami was indeed preparing to crown himself Emperor after he ha
d defeated the Allies, though no-one would speak aloud these thoughts, and often chose to reluctantly agree with his assurance that this was only a temporary measure in regards to the criticality of Japan’s situation, and that he would step down after the emergency had passed.
That seemed a bleak prospect from the information relayed by General Yoshijirō Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, to his four peers. After finally being able to make contact with Sixteenth Army Headquarters of Kyushu, he had been one of the first on Japan’s largest Home Island to hear of the massacre that had taken place only a few days beforehand and had been shocked as Isamu Yokoyama relayed to him the events of Operation Sandman. The American’s mass use of Mustard Gas had finally buckled the Japanese defences that had checked their advance for over two months, with tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers alike having succumbed to exposure, with over a hundred thousand more continuing to suffer and likely to die due to the inability to move medical aid into the area. He already been consistently warning that he was about to run out of ammunition since the beginning of January, but now with the American seizure of many of his supply dumps and the collapse of his complex supply network of secondary roads and couriers, the little ammunition he had left he could no longer transport, with a similar situation regarding food and water. He concluded that he had no means of counter attack without new troops and now supplies of food fuel and ammunition, and that the Americans could likely occupy the entire island if they had continued to advance, and that the only reason they hadn’t was due to them already having occupied the necessary space to construct a sufficient number of airfields for an invasion of the Kanto Plain. Even with harsh static interrupting many parts of their radio communication, Umezu could tell that he was speaking to a broken man, one that had had all the fight drained from him after witnessing his troops be hit by more force than in the rest of the Pacific War combined. He had cursed the Americans, and Umezu cursed them tenfold, for their use of gas had now guaranteed the operation that he had so desperately tried to prevent would now go ahead. He did not like to dwell on how insignificant the battle for Kyushu might look when the Americans took vengeance on Japan after they realised that they had been infested with plague.