by Toland, John
“Have you ever been to the fighting front?” Tsuji said accusingly. “Do you understand what’s going on out there today?”
Tomioka, who had pleaded again and again for sea duty, plunged toward Tsuji. Fukudome intercepted him and said, “I am sorry, Tsuji-kun. What you say is true.”
It may have been true, but Nagano still insisted on map games. They demonstrated again what everyone knew—that less than one fourth of any reinforcements and supplies would arrive intact. The argument went on, with each service continuing to blame the other for the situation on the island. The Army wanted to know how it could win without ammunition and food. “You landed the Army without arms and food and then cut off the supply. It’s like sending someone on a roof and taking away the ladder.”
The Navy sarcastically wanted to know how long this business of reinforcements would go on. The Army replied in kind that it could win if it were given half of what the enemy had. “Up till now we’ve only received one percent.”
There was no way out of such a bitter debate—until Colonel Joichiro Sanada arrived on December 29 from Rabaul with a report which was supported by almost every Army and Navy officer he had interviewed in the Solomons, including Imoto and Imamura’s operations officer: all troops should be withdrawn from Guadalcanal as soon as possible. The island could be retaken “only by a miracle,” and future military operations “must not, out of eagerness to regain Gadarukanaru, be jeopardized by following previous plans and by continuing a campaign in which neither the high command [17th Army] nor the front-line commanders have any confidence.”
Sanada’s report settled the matter for both the Army and the Navy. Sugiyama seemed “rather relieved” and Nagano, without further argument, agreed to remove Hyakutake’s troops from the island by destroyers by the end of January if possible.
The two Chiefs of Staff reviewed the problem for the Emperor at an imperial conference on the last day of the year, then formally recommended the evacuation of both Guadalcanal and Buna in New Guinea. The Emperor turned to Nagano and observed in his expressionless manner that the United States seemed to have won by air power, then asked an embarrassing question: Why was it that it took the Americans just a few days to build an air base and the Japanese more than a month or so? “Isn’t there room for improvement?”
“I am very sorry indeed,” Nagano acknowledged humbly; the enemy used machines while the Japanese had to rely on manpower.
But it was apparent that His Majesty was not pleased with the answer. For two hours he continued to probe the defeat, to the discomfort of the two Chiefs. Finally he raised his already high-pitched voice: “Well, now the Army and Navy should do their best as they have just explained.” He approved withdrawal from Guadalcanal and Buna.†
Aboard Yamato that night Admiral Ugaki made the final entry in his diary for 1942:
… How splendid the first stage of our operations was! But how unsuccessfully we have fought since the defeat at Midway!
Our strategy, aimed at invasion of Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia as well as domination over India and the destruction of the British Eastern Squadron, has dissipated like a dream. In addition, the occupation of Port Moresby and Guadalcanal has been frustrated. A welter of emotions are awakened in my breast as I look back upon the past. In war things often do not turn out as we wish. Nevertheless, I cannot stem my feeling of mortification. The desperate struggles of our officers and men are too numerous to mention.
I express my heartfelt thanks to them and at the same time offer my condolences to those who died a glorious death at the front.
Even in defeat the Japanese had left an indelible impression on the victors of Guadalcanal and New Guinea. Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, chief of the Allied Air Forces in the southwest Pacific, reported to General H. H. (“Hap”) Arnold, head of the U. S. Army Air Forces, that those back home, including the War Department, had no conception of the problems in the southwest Pacific.
… The Jap is still being underrated. There is no question of our being able to defeat him, but the time, effort, blood and money required to do the job may run to proportions beyond all conception, particularly, if the devil is allowed to develop the resources he is now holding.
Let us look at Buna. There are hundreds of Bunas ahead for us. The Jap there has been in a hopeless position for two months. He has been outnumbered heavily throughout the show. His garrison has been whittled down to a handful by bombing and strafing. He has had no air support, and his own Navy has not been able to get past our air blockade to help him. He has seen lots of Japs sunk off shore a few miles away. He has been short on rations and has had to conserve his ammunition, as his replenishment from submarines and small boats working down from Lae at night, and, once, by parachute from airplanes, has been precarious, to say the least. The Emperor told them to hold, and, believe me, they have held! As to their morale—they still yell out to our troops, “What’s the matter, Yanks? Are you yellow? Why don’t you come in and fight?” A few snipers, asked to surrender after being surrounded, called back, “If you bastards think you are good enough, come and get us!”
… I’m afraid that a lot of people who think this Jap is a “pushover” as soon as Germany falls, are due for a rude awakening. We will have to call on all our patriotism, stamina, guts, and maybe some crusading spirit or religious fervor thrown in, to beat him. No amateur team will take this boy out. We have got to turn professional. Another thing: there are no quiet sectors in which troops get started off gradually, as in the last war. There are no breathers on this schedule. You take on Notre Dame, every time you play!
4.
On the afternoon of January 13, 1943, ten destroyers carrying a thousand men and supplies left Shortland. In one was Colonel Imoto. He had helped Imamura’s staff and several naval officers hastily draw up a plan of evacuation, Operation KE. His present assignment was to transmit the order to Hyakutake and assist him as a member of his staff.
The first thing Imoto saw as he disembarked near Cape Esperance was a dead body; the beach that led to 17th Army headquarters was a trail of corpses. It was midnight when he finally reached Hyakutake’s camp—a complex of tents and jerry-built shelters near Tassafaronga Point.
He blundered around in a chilling rain until he found Colonel Haruo Konuma and several staff officers in a leaky tent. They were lying on beds made from coconut leaves and covered with mosquito netting. All, that is, but Major Mitsuo Suginoo, who was shaving by candlelight. He and Imoto had served in the same regiment and he greeted his friend with enthusiasm. “I’m preparing to die tomorrow,” he said half in jest.
“That’s an admirable attitude,” Imoto replied in the same spirit.
Konuma led Imoto to the next tent to meet the new chief of staff—Futami’s replacement—Major General Shuichi Miyazaki. Imoto sat down stiffly facing the general and said, “I have brought General Imamura’s order for the Seventeenth Army to withdraw from Guadalcanal.”
“How could we go home after losing so many men?” Konuma broke in. He had ordered the men to die in their foxholes.
Miyazaki was equally outraged. “In a situation like this, to consider such an operation would be unthinkable even in a dream! We don’t mean to disobey the order but we cannot execute it. Therefore we must attack and die, and give everyone an example of Japanese Army tradition.”
Imoto’s arguments had no effect on the two emotional officers. Konuma doubted that any withdrawal was feasible; the men out front were too entangled with the enemy, and if any of them did manage to get on ships they would end by drowning. “It’s impossible, so leave us alone!”
As a last resort Imoto drew out the order from Imamura. “Don’t you realize that this is an order of withdrawal from the commander of the Army Group based on the Emperor’s order!” They had no right to oppose it.
Miyazaki finally got control of himself. “You are correct,” he said. “This is not our decision. The Army commander must make it.”
Imoto was broug
ht to General Hyakutake at dawn. His tent was snuggled at the roots of a huge tree. He was sitting Japanese style on a blanket before a table—a biscuit box—meditating. He opened his eyes. Imoto explained why he was there. Hyakutake stared wordlessly at him for a minute and closed his eyes again. Finally he said quietly, “This is a most difficult order to receive. I cannot make up my mind right now. Give me a little time.”
The morning lull was broken by a rumble of explosions; the Americans were resuming their daily bombardment. It was almost noon before Imoto was summoned to Hyakutake’s tent.
“I will obey the order,” the general stated with dignity, “but it is very difficult and I can’t say if the operation will succeed. At least I will do my best.”
Konuma knew the men in the front lines felt even more strongly about retreat than those at headquarters and would find it unbearable to leave dead comrades behind. He volunteered to go up front. The commanders of the 2nd and 38th divisions accepted the orders but it would be necessary to tell their men it was simply a strategic withdrawal, not that they were being taken off the island.
On the night of January 23 the troops up front began stealing from their foxholes and back through the next line of defense toward Cape Esperance, where they would be evacuated in three sections over a period of one week. Incredibly, the Americans—fifty thousand strong now—did not pursue. The following night the leapfrogging continued. Again there was no pursuit. Finally the rear guard itself started pulling back a little at a time. Still the Americans failed to press forward and within a week Japanese scouts alone, keeping up a deceptive volume of fire, maintained contact with the foe. By the end of January the remnants of the 38th Division had reached Cape Esperance. The following night, February 1, nineteen destroyers would stand less than a thousand yards offshore and flash blue signals to Hyakutake’s men hiding in the coconut groves with their landing craft.
By dusk on February 1 the Americans still imagined they faced an enemy in force. They did know a fleet of destroyers was coming full speed down The Slot but assumed it was another troop convoy which had to be stopped. At six-twenty, when the Japanese were halfway to Guadalcanal, twenty-four bombers covered by seventeen Wildcats converged on the destroyers. They were driven off by thirty Japanese fighters after damaging but one ship.
At Cape Esperance the landing craft were brought out of cover and the men lined up to get aboard. Colonel Imoto admired the beautiful evening and wished he could enjoy it in peaceful times. In his pocket he had a letter from Hyakutake addressed to General Imamura. Several PT boats careened in toward the beach, but their pilots saw nothing in the dark and swung off. The minutes passed slowly. It was after ten o’clock. Had the first evacuation been postponed? From the blackness in the direction of Savo Island blue signal lights flashed.
While four destroyers patrolled cautiously, the other fourteen crept silently to within 750 yards of the shore. They stopped their engines but didn’t drop anchor. The commander of the little fleet, Tomiji Koyanagi—promoted to rear admiral after his shelling of Henderson from Kongo—paced the bridge of his flagship, anxiously watching landing craft emerge from the gloom. One bombing attack, even if it failed, could cause havoc.
A destroyer’s gun thundered nearby and there followed a blaze of light. A PT boat had been set afire. Had they been discovered? Other PT boats began boring in. Two were sunk, the rest driven off. But where were the planes frorn Henderson? By this time the destroyers were loaded; it had taken little more than half an hour to get 5,424 men aboard. Emaciated, eyes sullen, they stared without expression, overcome by the bitterness of defeat and the humiliation of leaving behind comrades who had not been given proper burial rites.
The destroyers pulled out into the night, still unopposed by the Cactus Air Force, leaving the Americans with the belief that their enemy had again been reinforced. Army Major General Alexander M. Patch, who had relieved Vandegrift early in December, feared that a new Japanese offensive was being mounted, and his three divisions continued their unwarranted respect for the thin shell of Hyakutake’s rear guard.
In the afternoon on February 4 the second rescue column, nineteen destroyers, came down the Solomons passage to evacuate 4,977 men. A single ship was damaged. Admiral Koyanagi attributed success largely to “heavenly assistance,” but feared the third and last rescue mission would meet with disaster. At nine-thirty in the morning on February 7, eighteen destroyers left Shortland. Koyanagi was so apprehensive that he ordered ten of them to provide cover. Once again a destroyer was damaged en route and had to be towed off by another, leaving but six for transportation. Four headed for Guadalcanal and the others for nearby Russell Island.
The last troops, including Hyakutake and his headquarters, were waiting on the beach along with several hundred sick and wounded who had managed to make their way to the evacuation area. Pfc. Tadashi Suzuki, one of the few survivors of the Ichiki Detachment, was unable to climb a rope ladder and had to be boosted aboard a destroyer by two sailors. On the deck he felt safe, as if he were on Japanese soil. But he couldn’t forget the hundreds of sick comrades he had left lying along the beaches, too feeble to be saved and equipped only with grenades to blow themselves up at the last moment. Rice balls mixed with green peas were passed out. Although Suzuki couldn’t taste the food, he gulped it down, vowing to send his sons and grandsons into the Navy; sailors were well fed until they died.
Not a single American plane attacked the convoy on the long trip back to Shortland; 2,639 more men had been evacuated.‡ In all, more than 13,000 were saved. It was cold comfort: 25,000 others, dead or within hours of death, had been left behind (1,592 Americans died—1,042 Marines and 550 GI’s). Many thousands of tons of shipping had been lost in repeated efforts to supply the island. Moreover, although the Imperial Navy had fought well and gallantly, sinking about as many warships as were sunk, the vessels Japan lost were irreplaceable.
In a Manila hospital a skeletal little man approached the cot of General Kawaguchi, who was slowly recovering from malaria and malnutrition. At first the general did not recognize Nishino, the correspondent. They grasped hands and stared at each other. The general confided that on his arrival in Rabaul from Guadalcanal he had been treated as an incompetent and a coward; his career was over—all because of Tsuji.
“I know how you feel better than anyone else,” said Nishino. “But the day is bound to come when the truth about Guadalcanal will be known and people realize you were right.”
Bitterly the general blamed Tsuji for the defeat on Guadalcanal. “We lost the battle. And Japan lost the war.” Tears spilled onto the pillow.
Nishino gripped the general’s feeble hand. “You must think of yourself and get well.” He gave him a box of sushi, a concoction of rice, raw fish and other delicacies.
To be polite Kawaguchi took a mouthful. A smile came over his face. “Wa!” he exclaimed. “Umai!” (Delicious!).
* The U. S. Navy thereafter never assigned more than one member of a family to a single ship.
† Contrary to widespread belief, the Emperor took a lively, personal interest in military operations. On January 9, 1943, His Majesty told Sugiyama, “The fall of Buna is regrettable, but the officers and men fought well. I hear the enemy has ten tanks or so; don’t we have any tanks in that area? And what is the situation in Lae? … I am very pleased with the improvement made by antiaircraft units throughout Burma.” When Sugiyama reported to the Throne several weeks later on the failure of transporting reinforcements to Lae, the Emperor said, after offering the Army Chief of Staff a chair—an indication of favor, “Why didn’t you change your mind at the last minute and land on Madang [a port northeast of Lae]? We must admit we suffered a setback, but if we take it to heart I believe it will be a good lesson for future operations. Make every effort so I don’t have to worry in the future. Increase air support, build roads where our troops can pass safely, and gain firm footholds step by step. Give enough thought to your plans so that Lae and Salamaua don’t become ano
ther Guadalcanal.”
‡ According to Lieutenant Commander Haruki Itoh (the signal officer who had warned his superiors in vain of the American invasion of the Solomons), it was no miracle but the result of a fake message he sent out from Rabaul at 4 A.M., February 8. Pretending it came from a Catalina patrol boat and using American call signs, he radioed: HENDERSON, HENDERSON, URGENT SIGNAL, THIS IS NUMBER 1 SCOUT PLANE CALLING. When Henderson acknowledged the message, Itoh “reported” that he had sighted a Japanese task force of two carriers, two battleships, ten destroyers. A little later Itoh’s men heard the fake message being relayed to Nouméa and Pearl Harbor and concluded that they had lured American planes away from the returning destroyers. U. S. naval historians, however, discount the story, pointing out that nothing in their records substantiates such a claim.
PART FIVE
The Gathering Forces
18
Of Mice and Men
1.
If 1943 was the Year of the Sheep in Japan, it was the year of the conference to the Allies, with sites ranging from Casablanca to Cairo and from Quebec to Teheran. Before the agonizing battle of Guadalcanal ended, Roosevelt and Churchill had made plans to meet their partner, Stalin, at Casablanca. It seemed the perfect setting for a momentous convocation, the name itself synonomous with mystery and intrigue, but what should have been the first memorable Big Three conference of the war began with a disappointment. A suspicious Stalin politely refused to attend, on the grounds that he was too busy holding back Hitler’s legions.
And there was even pressure by American Secret Service agents to keep Roosevelt from the conference. They objected to his presence in an active war theater replete with German spies and saboteurs. But the danger itself must have appealed to the President; he had often remarked how he enjoyed escaping, if only for a few days, from the dreary politics of Washington.