by Paul Hynes
He now had his own plans however, and whilst he was now informing Anami and his politically castrated pawns, it had been the head of the Ist General Army whom he had contacted first. In the knowledge that he had set wheels in motion, he was happy to pretend to nod in agreement with the rest of the Council as Operation PX was officially endorsed and timetables where laid out. He could only hope that his own little operation would not be beaten to the finishing line by the lust for national suicide exhibited by the men around him.
The February Counter-Coup
In many ways the beginning of February had been the quietest period that the Japanese people had seen in quite some time. On Kyushu the guns had fallen silent in late January after the nightmarish Sandman had ensured them enough territory to begin construction of the airfields that would support their landing on the Kanto Plain. From across the Tsugaru Strait the Soviets had sent little other than occasional bombs, shells, and seditious music, and though this remained a situation of some concern from the people of the North, it was a relative relaxation compared to the strategic bombing offensive of the previous, one that the United States had greatly scaled back as its value had grown more and more dubious. They had subsequently surgically struck at individual logistical and strategic targets, though even this was drawing to a close as targets began to become less and less frequent. The Japanese people knew that this was a calm before the storm, that the Americans would almost certainly launch another mass invasion soon and that the Soviets might join them from the north, but for now they were at least in the eye of the storm and even as many began to grow painfully hungry they basked in the relative peace and quiet that had allowed them to pray for loved ones overseas and dream of peace soon to come, either from Anami’s deliverance or in the wake of his departure. Unbeknownst to the Japanese people the impression of temporary peace was only a mist to disguise the fact that their government was unveiling the most dangerous escalation so far.
With the Nuclear Age still in its infancy, the 400 foot long I-400’s were easily the largest submarines yet created, weighing over 3,500 tons, large enough to carry small aircraft, and with tanks capable of storing enough to fuel to carry her crew around the world. The ships had been the brainchild of Admiral Yamamoto designed with the goal of enabling Japan to bomb the West Coast of America, and though the legendary Admiral had been dead for two years, they now prepared to set sail on a mission that would hopefully honour the successes of the Kido Butai that had laid waste to Pearl Harbour, whilst at the same time greatly overshadowing the raid in terms of military significance. Achieving the latter aim would seem to be immensely difficult as each unit could carry 3 Aichi M6A Floatplanes who in turn could carry 2 bombs each. Though the original plan had initially been to build 18 1-400’s, the death of Yamamoto lost Submarine Aircraft Carriers their foremost advocate and the commission’s had consistently lowered until only three would be built. Of these three one ship, 1-402 had been converted into a transport submarine in June 1945 rendering it useless for the operation and leaving the Japanese with only two units, six planes, and twelve bombs to carry out a mission intended to end the war.
The Anami government placed its faith in the fact that the contents of these bombs, as well as the other pathogens the crews of the monster submarines would come ashore with, did not need to come in large quantities, initially. The human body could produce a might arsenal of germs, and soon those of the American people would be put to work in reproducing the pathogens created by others, recycling the initial assault over and over again. Yamamoto had once stressed that the only way Japan could ensure peace with America was if Japanese troops occupied Washington D.C. and all other cities along the way. Borne by the divine wind itself, Japan’s microscopic allies would now fulfil that mission on their own.
The real issue was of getting the bombs to their target in the first place. The choice of targets were a populous American cities to avenge the mass murder of Sandman but the capacity to get there was reliant on Japan’s supply of diesel, now at its lowest extent since the industrial era. Though enough could be spared to ensure a one-way journey to the American west coast, the destruction of Japan’s road and rail network had ensured that by the time the order to proceed had come through, the refuelling of the Submarines was nowhere near completion. The breeding of the plague fleas that were to be dispersed had also ensured delays to the point that it would only be on the 10th of February that the mission was finally ready to go underway. The submarines, I-400 and I-401 were set to undertake a treacherous journey that would see them crawl though thousands of miles of first Soviet and then Anglo-American dominated waters. Using their snorkels they could move whilst submerged, but at only six knots, ensuring almost certainly that the American invasion of the Kanto Plain would have begun by the time they had arrived at their target. Nonetheless they set sail, some hoping that Japan might hold out long enough for them to carry out the vengeance of the Japanese people, others praying that the war would end before they reached their destination, so that they might yet survive the suicide mission they had been assigned. The Kempetai officers on board loudly endorsed the former view, and beat out any sign of the latter. General Doihara was a strategic genius unmatched in the Imperial Army, or any armed forces for that matter, was the assurance that they relayed to the sceptical time and time again, it was impossible that he could be defeated so easily.
From dry land, Doihara might have ironically agreed as he and his newfound ally Umezu put together the final touches of their grand scheme. In comparison to Operation PX, the assassination of Korechika Anami would be very simple indeed.
The coalition of those willing to oust Anami from office covered a broad section of upper echelons of Japanese society and her military hierarchy. Since the late 19th century a form of ‘State’ Shinto had been actively promoted by the Japanese government only intensifying further with the coronation of Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese state declared the Emperor as a ‘Kami’ amongst men, a powerful spirit those worship had become national duty and though it would be incorrect to refer to this period of Japanese history as Theocracy, the Kannushi priests would become organs of state encouraged dogma and in turn grew in their influence on the state itself. Several of these had grown to despise Anami as the effective kidnapping of the Emperor spread across the higher levels of state institutions, first as a rumour, then as a poorly kept secret, whilst few openly protested, many were willing to facilitate any scheme that might remove the great blasphemer.
Members of the Imperial family, including even the most fanatical advocates of Japanese expansion such as Prince Yasuhiko Asaka also scorned Anami with silent outrage at his willingness to bring embarrassment on their dynasty, as well as the Imperial system that had elevated Japan from a feudal embarrassment to a global power. These feelings were all the more exacerbated by the worried reports of some officers to claimed that Anami was preparing to remove the Imperial system altogether and bring about a regression to the pre-Meiji era, with himself as a monolithic Shogun ruling over the former Empire. Whilst there were some who scoffed at these claims members of the Imperial family took them very seriously indeed, the question whispered between Princes and Princesses was just exactly how much worse the Americans could be.
There had been Army officers willing to give Anami the benefit of the doubt, for an institution hopelessly insecure about its own role in Japanese society, it was very comforting to blame the defeats of the past on the Navy. Japan had been strong on Kyushu, and it did not take to a fanatic to believe that the Americans could be defeated, or at least bled by a thousand cuts until American public opinion buckled. It was now clear that that strategy had failed, the armies that had conquered Manchuria and defeated the Chinese time and time again had not been able to hold back the tide of American firepower, gas, and Atomic Bombs. Comparably few were readily confident about Japan’s ability to do anything more than delay an American advance into the Kanto Plain and wished to cease the conflict before more Japanese civil
ians reaped what their leaders had sown. Others were provisionally willing to fight on to the end but feared that the use of biological weapons against the Japanese would only entail an American response that would surely be far worse than anything Operation PX might inflict. Some were willing to commit national suicide in fighting off liberal capitalism, where the Japanese people, or a people similar to the Japanese who had inherited their history, might rise from the ashes to exploit western complacency, but with the high possibility that the Soviet Union, and their anathematic Socialism, might occupy and infect Japanese society, they were willing to consider an American occupation as the lesser evil.
Complementing this network of opposition were Doihara’s own officers who in conducting appalling crimes together had fused themselves to the superior who had kept them sane by assuring them of their virtuous patriotism and the necessity of their deeds. These were men who would die for their General and would carry out any task he requested of them because they believed that he would do the same for him, the fact that they would be rescuing the Emperor from the clutches of a seditious demagogue only emboldened their belief in their mission. Others had become heavily addicted to Opium as they had aided its spread across China and now relied on Doihara’s illicit contacts with the Opium underworld that would keep them supplied with enough to chase their individual dragons. Whilst the Priests, the Royals and the Officers would all be vital in ensuring the installation of a new regime under Doihara, it would be these men who would form the handle of the knife that would be forced and twisted into Anami’s back.
On February 12th, with confirmation that Operation PX was underway, and in mind of the increasingly narrow window of time to contact the foreign diplomats preparing to leave Tokyo, it was agreed between Doihara and Umezu and they could not wait any longer.They had been warned of what had happened when German officers had attempted to remove Hitler in a similar fashion that he now planned for General Anami, that despite careful planning over months if not years their former ally had survived absent his trousers. The architect of this ‘Counter-Coup’ was not blind to these concerns, he did however have his own suspicions as to where their spiritual German brethren had failed.
Though the late Reich’s Propaganda Ministry had been vague on the details of the attempted assassination it had been revealed that the bomb had been detonated in a shed in a light, quite possibly wooden building. Though the Germans had attempted to explain the Fuhrer’s survival as divine providence of some sort or the other it made far more sense that the structure wasn’t strong enough to contain a blast powerful enough to kill anyone other than those directly in the face of it. Here the bomb would detonate inside the depths of the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters were the blast would have nowhere to go other than to incinerate its target.
Unlike the target of the German plotters, it was far more reliable to know exactly where the General would be. Korechika Anami was, by his very nature, militaristic, with a regime of determined activities which could be worked around with little room for error. Breakfast, archery, briefings from the fronts, further meetings, and then office work in his private quarters before rest. Though these quarters were guarded, Doihara’s own soldiers had found it easy enough to be placed on a rota in which they could be left to themselves without the bother of either the General or other guards, enough time to place the explosives destroy the Anami regime from the inside. Timed to when Anami retired, it would all be over in one night.
Umezu was less concerned with the death of Anami himself but rather with what would come afterwards. Even with the Prime Minister gone he had woven a structure of loyalists around himself that would survive to see the morning in at least some parts of the nation, giving rise to an individual perhaps even more fanatical who would execute the plotters before driving Japan down an even more suicidal path. However Doihara’s 1st General Army was now the largest military force left in Japan and though even it would have been considered woefully weak merely two years beforehand it could nonetheless crush any other formation that might come to arrest its commander. To bolster military force, political and cultural leaders would soon rally around both Doihara and Umezu in the wake of Anami’s death, neutralising any serious opposition to the new Government, in an eerily similar fashion to the events of August 14th.
It was all too good to be true.
Doihara had in fact been too clever by half in mobilising so many figures together, for as they chattered against Anami, the also found an forum for their doubts, ones which would often only exacerbate said doubts into suspicion. It is still not known whether this was the cause, if someone informed an Anami loyalist to the plot after discovering Doihara’s true intentions he has never revealed himself, though as Anami was practicing his archery he found himself being informed of the bomb at had been placed in his office, and that two guards were in custody, suspected of involvement in its planting.
Unfortunately for the General they were not the only men on Doihara’s staff, as one overly paranoid guard revealed as he shot Anami in the back, twice, as he had given an order to secure the facility. In a panicked hail of gunfire the makeshift assassin was cut down, as others rushed to the wheezing, heavily bleeding, General.
News of the bomb did not come to the telephone of Doiahara’s headquarters, but the shooting had, and with several hours before the planned events were supposed to go into motion, the would-be Prime Minister decided to that even now events were too far gone. If Anami was dead then he would have a far better chance of still succeeding in his coup, if not, he could always assure his demise by the guns the General had granted him and those of their mutual enemies. Under the pretence of sighted American landing craft, the large defensive army was mobilised.
The Swiss Legation, patiently filing down to their bunker with the rest of Tokyo’s remaining civilian population also found themselves drafted, as they were driven to Doihara’s Headquarters. As night fell, they had already managed to achieve contact with Douglas Mac Arthur on Kyushu.
General Douglas MacArthur had considered whether it might make a good photo opportunity for him to be pictured striding onto the beaches of Kyushu as he had done in the Philippines, not returning this time but swaggering onto Japanese turf itself to underline the climax to the conflict that Operation Downfall would inevitably bring. He had been informed that the Kamikaze threat was simply too great for him to spend too much time on the beaches and was instead huddled towards less exposed ground into a tragically unceremonious fashion.
By the time he had arrived the island of once subtropical beauty was already an ashen ruin, a state which only worsened, and worsened still. Out of all the horrors that the Second World War had provided, Kyushu was a dark masterpiece. From both Japanese and American combined, the island had seen the equivalent power of 150,000 tonnes of TNT used upon it, flattening cities and leaving the infrastructure wrecked and decaying. Even then the Japanese had continued to fight, going through horrific conditions to delay the American advance as long as possible, surviving on the dwindling supplies of food and water available.
To ensure the battle would be over before the rainy season, the Americans had turned to the one weapon still unused in their arsenal, gassing much of what was left of Japanese held territory in the south, breaking the back of what was left of the defence, and leaving few alive. Now the Japanese lay silent, the portions of gas that the US had left unoccupied that formed a vast no-man’s land and without railway lines or proper roads the Japanese could not probably re-occupy it even if they had had the fuel necessary. The only recognition that they were still fighting for Kyushu was the two individual Kamikazes that had appeared on the horizon, both of whom being destroyed in the air by P-80 jets that swept down upon, far from any worthwhile target. A significant Japanese counter-attack on Kyushu was not considered to be a serious possibility but nonetheless tensions on the island remained high, with the knowledge that soon they would have to land on another island, and experience the same horrors yet a
gain.
From the ruins and barely usable port facilities of Ariake Bay, General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief of U.S. Army Forces Pacific, had been deeply focused on the vast construction and reinforcement efforts now going on in the southern third of Kyushu. The plan had been to build eleven vast airfields and American engineers were now working to ensure they would be ready in time for the more than thirty air groups that would be assembled to cover Operation [i]Coronet[/i], the invasion of the Kanto Plain, and hopefully the end of the entire mess
Mac Arthur had confidently predicted that the casualty estimates for the invasion Kyushu had been overblown by those fearful or ignorant of large scale combat operations, he had assured his troops of such and had sent them off eagerly to face the numerous divisions and Kamikazes that Operation [i]Majestic[/i] had never accounted for. They had fought heroically, but the price had been nightmarish, over 120,000 Americans dead and over 350,000 wounded, with the majority being unable to return for combat. The detractor’s had not called for his head, but for Truman’s though he feared it would only be too long before they were both being put on trial by the grieving parents and wives of America. [i]Coronet[/i] was not projected to be as bad as Kyushu, already there were fresh American troops arriving from Europe, to bolster his force into 22 divisions. Alongside him would be the Commonwealth Corps, with the Australians, British, and Canadians each contributing one division. Mac Arthur had been hesitant to use them in favour of American troops, but the appalling casualties had settled the matter, he would need every Pacific veteran he could muster. Intelligence stated that the Japanese would be heavily outnumbered, and would lack the mass of Kamikazes that had been used so devastatingly on the American invasion fleet but he was nonetheless cautious of proceeding. Intelligence had also been blind of the speed with which the Japanese had amassed forces on Kyushu, if they were wrong again he would be sending both his boys and the British into another bloodbath. It had been estimated that it would all be over by early May, but if the same casualty rates applies that would still mean tens of thousands more Americans dead and countless more wounded, with even more casualties down the line if the Japanese people, heavily concentrated in the area, chose to join their armies in fighting to the last. And what if the Japanese didn’t surrender when the Kanto Plain was occupied? Then there would be an even longer period of combat as northern and western Japan was conquered with further unknown quantities of casualties.