The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (Modern Library War)

by Toland, John

  On Christmas morning Roosevelt took his guest to church, remarking, “It is good for Winston to sing hymns with the Methodies.” He sang one he had never heard of before—“O Little Town of Bethlehem.” After the service he spent hours preparing a speech for Congress. What mood would he find his listeners in the next morning? Some were not at all friendly to the British.

  They were captivated from the moment he said, “I feel greatly honored that you should have invited me to enter the United States Senate Chamber and address the representatives of both branches of Congress. I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.” A loud shout erupted when, speaking of the Japanese, he cried, “What sort of people do they think we are?” He continued, his voice rising above the din, to speak movingly and effectively of the task that lay ahead. “It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.”

  There was a spontaneous and unreserved burst of applause.

  The American military leaders, however, were in no such mood. They had just been informed that their impulsive President had had himself wheeled into Churchill’s room the previous night for an impromptu meeting—and agreed to consider giving the British the reinforcements promised to MacArthur if the line of supply to the Philippines was cut. The outraged American Chiefs appealed to Stimson, who became so “extremely angry” that he immediately phoned Hopkins to say the President would have to get a new Secretary of War if he kept on making such quixotic personal decisions. Roosevelt hastened to deny that “any such proposition had actually been made,” and swore he had never considered siphoning off any supplies from MacArthur.

  The first plenary session of “Arcadia” met that afternoon in an edgy, uneasy atmosphere, and it was Roosevelt himself who jolted the British by saying he was not satisfied that available resources were being put to their best use. Had the Chiefs of Staff discussed the possibility of a unified command in the Far East? He was echoing the suggestion of General Marshall, who the day before had told the British and American Chiefs of Staff that “there must be one man in command of the entire theater—air, ground, and ships.”

  Churchill violently disagreed. Unity of command was fine if there was one continuous front, as in World War I, but in the Far East some Allied units were a thousand miles apart. “The situation out there is that certain particular strategic points have to be held, and the commander in each locality is quite clear as to what he should do,” he contended. “The difficult question is the application of resources arriving in the area. This is a matter which can only be settled by the Governments concerned.”

  Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Supply, passed a note to Hopkins:

  You should work on Churchill. He is being advised. He is open minded and needs discussion.

  Encouraged by this, Hopkins privately told Churchill, “Don’t be in a hurry to turn down the proposal the President is going to make to you before you know who is the man we have in mind.” It was General Archibald Wavell.

  The next evening the British Chiefs of Staff called on Churchill to say they were ready to accept a unified command in principle. They suggested that an American officer be chosen to head the ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) command. Churchill imagined his Chiefs would be as delighted as he to hear that the Americans were willing to accept Wavell. But they interpreted this suggestion as a Roosevelt trick—the Far East was crumbling and Wavell would be blamed for the defeat.* Let some American take the post.

  Their attitude did not set well with Churchill. He could not believe Roosevelt was “attempting to shift disaster onto our shoulders,” nor did he want to surrender responsibility for Singapore to the Americans. Think what the Australians would make of that! Prime Minister John Curtin had recently stated in an article: “Australia looks to America, free from any pangs as to traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”

  As he argued, his indignation grew. The Chiefs’ suspicions were insulting to the President—whose offer had been a friendly, generous gesture—and he would not stand for it. Argument ended, but not resentment. The British Chiefs felt they were becoming minor partners under the polite but forceful domination of their juniors.

  Ironically, out of this squall came one of the most significant developments of the war—reaffirmation of a previous decision, the creation of a unified command system, a Combined Chiefs of Staff with headquarters in Washington, the new capital of Western democracy. This remarkable achievement, fathered by Marshall and fostered by Roosevelt, was made possible by the open-mindedness of Winston Churchill. He saw beyond the objections and suspicions of his own Chiefs, to solidify Anglo-Saxon unity and achieve what he had come for: confirmation that Hitler was the main enemy and realization that the war in the Pacific would have to be, for the time being, a holding action.

  On New Year’s morning Roosevelt turned his mind from the military to global politics. He was wheeled into Churchill’s room with a draft of a joint declaration by twenty-six nations fighting the Axis powers “to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as other lands” by waging common war against “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.” According to Hopkins, Churchill burst out of the shower stark naked. (“I never received the President without at least a bath towel wrapped around me,” said Churchill.) Roosevelt apologetically made as if to leave but Churchill said, “The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.”

  The two men agreed on the draft, which was the genesis of the United Nations, and later in the day both signed it in the President’s study, along with Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov and Chinese Foreign Minister T. V. Soong.

  “Arcadia” lasted for another two weeks. Much had been accomplished, but some of the British left disgruntled. “The Americans have got their way and the war will be run from Washington,” Lord Moran wrote in his diary, “but they will not be wise to push us so unceremoniously in the future. Our people are very unhappy about the decision, and the most they will agree to is to try it out for a month.”

  Churchill himself went home in great good humor, exulting over the final joint production estimates reached at the conference: 45,000 tanks and 43,000 planes in 1942, and 75,000 tanks and 100,000 planes the following year. “He is drunk with the figures,” commented Moran.

  The decisions at “Arcadia” were picked up by a Japanese secret agent almost as soon as they were made. “Sutton,” the cashiered American major, pumped this information from friends at the Army-Navy Club on Farragut Square and passed it along to Commander Wachi, the spy master in Mexico City. Sutton revealed that America’s initial intentions to wage all-out war against Japan had been drastically altered and that the Allies would concentrate on defeating Hitler while holding Japan as best they could. He even had details of the final plan to defeat Japan by co-ordinated attacks of submarine packs and fleets of huge bombers; the latter would hit Kyushu from bases in China while the submarines cut all sea lanes to the homeland.

  It was a major coup, as significant as any of Sorge’s. Wachi sent it to Japan through two channels: a local German agent who dispatched reports to Berlin almost every night in code; and by ordinary airmail (the message was written in invisible ink bought from another German agent for $2,000) to the Japanese naval attaché in neutral Buenos Aires.

  The information industriously gleaned by Major Sutton reached Tokyo from both sources, but naval headquarters was so intoxicated by recent victories that the report was merely glanced at, and forgotten.

  * Informed of his appointment, Wavell wryly said, “I have heard of men having to hold the baby, but this is twins.”
r />   10

  “For a Wasted Hope and Sure Defeat”

  1.

  New Year’s, the favorite Japanese holiday, was celebrated as usual in Tokyo. Debts were paid up; an endless parade thronged into the Meiji Shrine to throw coins at a donation chest on the stroke of midnight and, for good luck, buy red daruma dolls with weighted bottoms. The gaiety was not dampened by the war; on the contrary, it fostered a mood of expectancy. When would the next triumph come?

  General Muto, chief of the Military Affairs Bureau, called on Shigenori Togo at the Foreign Ministry and after several cups of toso (New Year’s wine) said, “The people are enjoying the victories too much. It won’t do.” It was going to be an arduous war. “Your policy, therefore, should be to end it as soon as possible.” The first step was to replace Tojo as prime minister, said Muto, and left to tell the same things to a former premier who had long opposed military aggression, Admiral Okada.

  The Japanese in the Philippines celebrated the day by converging on Manila from two directions. General Homma was just seventeen miles from the capital with little in front to stop him. The troops in the south had been slowed up some forty miles away because dynamiters had destroyed so many highway and railroad bridges, but they too faced almost no opposition. Homma halted his columns, ordering his men to clean themselves and tighten their formations. Unkempt troops, he knew, did not parade with pride and were more likely to loot and rape.

  Stores were boarded up in the city. Near the dock area Carl Mydans of Life magazine watched looters rifle warehouses of everything from automobiles to unexposed movie film. When he returned to the Bayview Hotel his wife, Shelley, handed him a cable from Life. It requested: ANOTHER FIRST-PERSON EYEWITNESS STORY BUT THIS WEEK WE PREFER AMERICANS ON THE OFFENSIVE.

  She showed her answer: BITTERLY REGRET YOUR REQUEST UNAVAILABLE HERE.

  Smoke seemed to permeate Manila. The Pandacan oil fields as well as all Army and Navy installations were ablaze. At five forty-five Major General Koichi Abe led three battalions of his 48th Division into Manila from the north. They were greeted with silence by lines of sullen Filipinos. The cheers came from a handful of Japanese freed from internment.

  From their hotel room the Mydanses watched three companies of Japanese soldiers and sailors form ragged lines on the lawn in front of High Commissioner Francis B. Sayre’s residence across the boulevard. The American flag was lowered from a pole and three small cannon boomed as it fluttered to the ground. A sailor stamped on it and fastened in its place the emblem of the Rising Sun. As the new flag rose, the band spiritedly played the Japanese national anthem, “Kimigayo.”

  The Emperor’s reign will last

  For a thousand and then eight thousand generations

  Until pebbles become mighty rocks

  Covered with moss.

  Across Manila Bay, General MacArthur’s troops still streamed into Bataan for the final battle, but Homma and most of his staff concluded that this mass migration to the peninsula was merely a disorganized flight. He was confident, as were his superiors in Saigon and Tokyo, that Manila was the key to total victory. The Philippine campaign was over even if MacArthur did hold out on Corregidor and the tip end of Bataan for several weeks.

  From Saigon, General Hisaichi Terauchi sent word to transfer the 48th Division to the Java invasion force. The successes in the Philippines and Malaya had exceeded all expectations and Terauchi could invade Java a month ahead of schedule.

  Despite his easy victory, Homma was disturbed. Mopping-up operations would be difficult and the loss of the 48th, his best division, would place an unwarranted burden on the remaining troops. He asked to keep the division another month but was refused.

  The 48th was on the front line in Bataan. Its replacement was the 65th “Summer” Brigade from Formosa, an occupation force of seventy-five hundred, comprised mostly of older men almost totally unprepared and unequipped for front-line duty. The unexpected assignment dismayed its commander, Lieutenant General Akira Nara, who had spent many years in the United States, where he attended Amherst College as a classmate of President Coolidge’s son and graduated from the Fort Benning Infantry School.

  On the night of January 5 Nara—a stocky, middle-aged man—led his troops toward the front on foot. Behind him, stretching halfway back to Lingayen Gulf, straggled his weary men, already delayed for days by American engineers who had left 184 destroyed bridges behind them.

  The tropical evening was beautiful, the air fragrant with the exotic scent of frangipani. Bushes clustered with fireflies reminded Nara of Christmas trees, but those who trudged behind were too miserable to savor the beauties of the tropics.

  They approached a Bataan crammed with some 15,000 Americans and 65,000 Filipino troops. Ten thousand of the latter were professional soldiers, the elite Philippine Division; the rest was a conglomerate ill-equipped group almost totally untrained. With this force and barely enough unbalanced field rations for 100,000 men for thirty days, MacArthur was supposed to hold out for six months. His greatest asset was the terrain. The peninsula, fifteen miles wide and twice as long, was almost completely occupied by the ancient remnants of two great extinct volcanoes, one in the north, one in the south. In between was thick jungle. There were but two roads. One was a semibelt highway coursing down the flat, swampy east coast, around the tip and two thirds of the way back up the other side of the peninsula. The other was a cobblestone road cutting across the midrift of Bataan through the valley between the two volcanoes.

  MacArthur intended to make his first stand at a line about ten miles down the peninsula, running from Manila Bay across the northern volcano, whose mouth, after thousands of years, had been eroded into four jagged peaks. The eastern and highest peak was the precipitous Mount Natib.

  By the morning of January 9 MacArthur’s men were in position, and morale was high though they were already on half rations. They were tired of retreat and wanted to stand and fight. MacArthur split his battle line in two, assigning the left (the western half) to Wainwright, whose men were in no shape for immediate combat after their chaotic flight from Lingayen Gulf. It was obvious that the Japanese would first attack on the right side, down the east coastal highway. This sector was turned over to Major General George Parker, commander of the twenty-five thousand men who had escaped from the south with relative ease.

  His right flank, the east coast, was flat and swampy, with fish ponds and rice paddies extending inland for about two miles. Then came gradually rising cane fields and little bamboo groves for another five miles. At this point Mount Natib began to rise dramatically. Since no military force on earth could possibly march across the complex of crags, ravines and cliffs, all matted with dense jungle growth, Parker’s left flank ended abruptly at the foot of the rugged mountain.

  This was the Abucay line, named after a cluster of nipa shacks for sugar-cane workers. The Filipinos were anxious to show MacArthur they deserved his faith and to prove that the rout on the humiliating retreat had been no fair test. Their American instructors were not as sanguine. But there was one advantage to the Abucay line—retreat would be difficult. It was fight or die.

  A few miles to the north, General Nara’s overaged and underarmed troops had just moved into position, relieving the cocky veterans of the 48th Division. At the War College, Nara had warned his pupils never to attack without accurate maps. Here he had a road map and several large-scale maps. Nor did he have a plan of attack; his instructions from 14th Army had merely been to “pursue the enemy in column down the highway,” with the help of two artillery regiments and the 9th Infantry Regiment of the 16th Division.

  He had been assured that there were no more than twenty-five thousand disorganized enemy troops on Bataan and that they would retreat pell-mell to the little town of Mariveles on the tip end of the peninsula at the first rattle of gunfire. Here they would make a brief stand before trying to escape to the island of Corregidor. All the same, Nara asked for time to make a survey. He was ordered to attack immediately.
He hastily drew up a plan. It was perforce simple, with only a day for organization. He instructed his own 141st Infantry, under Colonel Takeo Imai, to attack straight down the coastal highway while the 9th Infantry, commanded by an old and trusted friend, Colonel Susumu Takechi, headed down the peninsula toward the slopes of Mount Natib. He would cross the supposedly impassable mountain and cut back to the coastal highway, thus encircling the enemy.

  That afternoon, after an hour-long artillery barrage, Imai started down the highway while Takechi struck off into the tangled jungle. Imai had scarcely gone a hundred yards before the road ahead erupted with a series of thunderous roars. It was Parker’s artillery. The Americans were not going to cut and run at the first volley.

  The Filipinos weren’t either. They fell upon the Japanese dispersed by the artillery bombardment and in the next forty-eight hours cut Imai’s regiment to a third. Accordingly, Nara was forced to replace the remnants with a reserve unit. His troubles were just beginning. Not a word had come from Takechi; he should already have crossed Mount Natib and circled behind the enemy. Darkness came and he still had not appeared. The jungle had swallowed him up. Nara did not report this to Homma, neither did he record it in his war diary or brigade report; it was the least he could do for a classmate at the Academy. It meant the end of Nara’s bold plan. Now he turned his efforts to rebuilding his lines. He shuttled Imai’s exhausted troops to the west to fill in the hole vacated by Takechi and sent out orders to begin probing for a weak spot in the Abucay line.

  That same day, January 13, Quezon sent a radiogram to Roosevelt through MacArthur complaining that the President had failed to keep his pledge to send aid to the Philippines. He urged him to direct the full force of American strength against the Japanese at once. His indignation carried over in an accompanying note to MacArthur: