by Toland, John
Takagi feared that if he submitted this information to Shimada, his own life would be endangered—and the report itself shelved. He met in secret with former Navy Minister Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai and Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, both advocates of peace, and told them what he had uncovered. They encouraged him to share his findings with Admiral Okada and others who were in a better position to act. But weeks passed and Tojo still remained in office. Impatient, Takagi assembled half a dozen Navy men he could trust—commanders and captains—and persuaded them that the nation could not survive unless they assassinated Tojo. But how should it be done? Surreptitious inquiries were made to right-wing organizations (experts on assassination). On the basis of their suggestions and personal investigation of Tojo’s daily routine, Takagi concluded that an automobile “accident” would ensure success with such a prominent target. The assassins, in three cars, would intercept a Tojo motorcade. One vehicle would crash into Tojo’s car, bringing it to a halt; the other two would pull alongside and gun down the Prime Minister with automatic revolvers. The conspirators would all wear uniforms. The others would escape to Formosa in a Navy plane, but Takagi would remain behind and take all the responsibility.†
Ironically, Tojo himself had begun the search for peace. Before the fall of Singapore he had been involved in an attempt to negotiate with the Allies. On February 12, 1942, he was summoned to the Palace and instructed by the Emperor (at Kido’s prompting) “not to miss any opportunity to terminate the war.” Tojo sent for the German ambassador, General Eugen Ott, and made him promise not to reveal what he would hear to anyone but Ribbentrop and Hitler: Tojo suggested that Germany and Japan secretly approach the Allies with an offer of peace; he would fly to Berlin to represent the empire personally, if Hitler would send a long-range bomber. The reply from Berlin was polite but lukewarm. Hitler could not take the risk of Tojo crashing in a German plane.
Tojo was discouraged by the German lack of enthusiasm but was not averse to further efforts in the same direction, although he was naïve about how peace might be achieved. On Ambassador Kurusu’s return from America later that summer (the Japanese diplomats in Washington were exchanged for Grew and his subordinates), Tojo took him aside at a party given in the diplomat’s honor, and in Sugiyama’s presence said, “Please arrange to end the war at an early date.” Startled by the Prime Minister’s “simplicity of mind,” Kurusu remarked, “It is easier to start a war than end one.”
Japan’s fleet and merchant shipping losses were as catastrophic as Takagi’s secret report indicated. Most of this tonnage had been sent to the bottom by marauding American submarines and little was being done in the Imperial Navy to counter this, the gravest of all threats to Japan’s supply lines.
The unpreparedness on the part of the Navy was the result of a combination of tradition and of reluctance to engage in defensive warfare. British naval officers had helped establish the Imperial Navy, which adopted all things English so readily that the Naval Academy at Etajima became a replica of Dartmouth. Bricks were brought from England, and a lock of Lord Nelson’s hair enshrined in Memorial Hall. Imitation extended to the galley, and once a day a Western meal, complete with knives, forks and spoons, was served throughout the Navy. In battle, Japanese captains followed British tradition by going down with their sinking ship. More important, the Japanese inherited the British aversion to wage war on commercial vessels, and their submarines were designed to support the fleet and do battle against enemy warships rather than go after defenseless shipping. But such a policy could succeed only if an enemy shared it. The Germans did not, and when their submarines launched devastating raids on British merchantmen in World War I, the British had been forced to retaliate in kind as well as create an efficient antisubmarine service.
The Japanese did neither. They were still using their outmoded, outsized submarines almost exclusively against enemy warships and had virtually ignored, antisubmarine warfare; it had little appeal to young officers just starting their careers who wanted more dashing duty. By the fall of 1941 there were but two full-time officers on the Navy General Staff assigned to “rear-line defense”—which included mining, antiaircraft defense and antisubmarine warfare. Operationally such duty was considered as unimportant as it was undesirable.
A single officer, with the derogatory title of “Staff Officer for Training,” was responsible for protecting all shipping along six hundred miles of the Honshu coast, in addition to the vast area between Tokyo Bay and Iwo Jima. Moreover, when hostilities broke out there were no provisions for organizing merchant ships into convoys. Most shipmasters wanted to sail alone, anyway, but within six months American submarines had torpedoed so many solo merchantmen that the First Convoy Escort Fleet was established, with headquarters on Formosa. This emergency unit, comprised mostly of overage naval reserve officers, had eight destroyers with which to cover an extensive area. Combined Fleet was reluctant to release any more ships, out of sympathy for destroyer commanders, who detested the monotonous task of herding transports.
By the end of the first year since Pearl Harbor, U. S. submarines had sunk 139 cargo vessels, 560,000 gross tons in all, and at last Imperial Headquarters realized that the war was being lost through an oversight. At home there were pleas for more gasoline, bauxite and other vital production materials. At the front, commanders were begging for food, ammunition and reinforcements. But there weren’t enough merchant ships to satisfy anyone’s needs, and every week more were going down. It wasn’t until March 1943, however, that the Second Convoy Escort Fleet was organized, with headquarters on Saipan. The total resources of both convoy fleets were still pitiful—sixteen destroyers, five coast defense frigates and five torpedo boats.
These stop-gap measures would have been ineffective in any case, but in the meantime the Americans had markedly raised the quality of their own underwater service. Scores of improved submarines were built and manned by well-trained crews; drastically redesigned torpedoes replaced the early, faulty ones, which had occasionally run in a circle and too often had failed to detonate. Accordingly, in September the Japanese suffered a record 172,082 gross-ton loss. The time for drastic measures was long since past, but none were taken until mid-November when Grand Escort Command Headquarters was created. Its commander, Admiral Koshiro Oikawa (who had been navy minister at the time Tojo took over two years before), was given four escort carriers and the 901st Naval Air Group. Unfortunately, all four of the big ships needed extensive repairs and the airmen had no training in antisubmarine tactics. The convoys continued to run haphazardly, each escort-ship commander acting as he thought fit. Losses climbed to 265,068 gross tons in November, but still the government was averse to the adoption of a full-fledged convoy system. Commanders at the front needed supplies too urgently, and small groups of from two to five ships would get there faster. These smaller groups, however, remained easy prey, and the heavy losses continued into the first two months of 1944.
There was no alternative. The “big” convoy system (twenty merchant ships, as compared to Allied convoys of seventy in the Atlantic) finally went into operation early in March. At first it appeared to have wrought a miracle. In the first month, losses dropped drastically. But the elation at Imperial Headquarters was ill-founded. The U. S. Navy was also implementing a new system and had recalled numerous submarines for training. They would soon be sent out again to launch “wolf pack” raids.
3.
Admiral Togo’s epic victory at Tsushima had left future Japanese admirals with an unenviable heritage: the concept of the Decisive Battle, wherein all issues would be settled at one stroke. Unlike his predecessor, the new commander of Combined Fleet, Admiral Mineichi Koga, was cool and conservative—an efficient, plodding officer governed by logic. Yet he too was obsessed by the dream of a battle which would change the course of the war. Being a pragmatist, he was also aware that chances of success were small, but it was Japan’s last hope. On March 8 he issued his battle plan, giving it the name of Operation Z. Once the
advancing American fleet broke into the Philippine Sea by way of the Marianas or the Palaus or New Guinea, the Combined Fleet would sally forth in full strength. In his efficient, methodical way, he set about concentrating the bulk of Japan’s surface force, and near the end of the month gave orders to transfer his headquarters from the battleship Musashi, anchored at Palau, to the Philippines.
“Let us go out and die together,” he said to his chief of staff, Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, before they flew south. Yamamoto, he added, had died “at exactly the right time” and he “envied him that fact.” At nine o’clock on the last day of March they took off separately in two four-engine Kawanishi flying boats and headed due west for the three-hour flight to Mindanao. But before reaching the Philippines, they encountered a storm and Koga’s plane disappeared. The fate of Admiral Koga (like that of Amelia Earhart) remains a mystery.‡ Within a year Combined Fleet had lost two commanders, both while flying near the front.
Fukudome’s plane banked to the right to skirt the storm and changed course north toward Manila, but strong headwinds continued to impede the flying boat’s progress and by two o’clock in the morning it was almost out of fuel. The pilot sent word back to Fukudome to prepare for an emergency landing. To the left in the moonlight the admiral could see a long narrow island; it looked like Cebu. During their descent the moon abruptly disappeared from sight; below, the sea was lost in blackness. The pilot became disoriented and lost control. Fukudome, an expert flier himself, groped his way forward, still gripping a briefcase which contained a detailed copy of Operation Z and its cipher system. He reached over the pilot’s shoulder and yanked back on the controls to try to bring the bulky flying boat out of its dive. But he pulled too far. The Kawanishi stalled. It fell off on one wing and cartwheeled heavily into the sea.
Fukudome felt water engulf him. He accepted death—the war was lost, anyway—but then he surfaced, still instinctively clinging to the briefcase. The water was bright with flames. He and ten others were free of the wreckage, but the admiral, weighted down by the briefcase, could not stay afloat. He clutched at a seat cushion and started kicking toward the dim shoreline of Cebu. Hour after hour he struggled against the strong current. By dawn he was alone. The others must be far ahead. In the distance Fukudome made out the silhouette of a tall chimney. He recognized the Asano Cement Plant, which was only six miles south of Cebu City, Japanese headquarters for the central Philippines. It was fairly safe territory, even though the island was infested by guerrillas.
He flailed wearily in the water for another hour, close to the limit of his endurance, before he saw several bancas (fishing canoes) approaching. He hesitated. Were they guerrillas? He had to chance capture but let the briefcase go. As he was dragged aboard the first banca, one of the fishermen—they had seen the flames—caught a glimpse of the slowly sinking briefcase and retrieved it just before it disappeared.
The admiral was taken to Balud along with eight of his comrades; the other two escaped to Japanese headquarters in Cebu City. The captives were delivered to the nearest guerrilla unit, where they told Captain Marcelino Erediano, who had studied at Tokyo Imperial University for a year, that they were unimportant staff officers from Japan on a routine inspection of the area. Erediano, however, noticed that one of them (Fukudome) was treated with considerable deference by the others. Perhaps he was a high-ranking general? Moreover, the papers in the briefcase with their red TOP SECRET markings were of obvious import. A runner was sent with this information to the commander of all Cebu guerrillas, Lieutenant Colonel James Cushing, an American mining engineer, half Irish, half Mexican. Cushing was an ex-boxer—a hard-drinking, impish individualist. He would have preferred sitting out the war in the mountains with his Filipino wife and child, enjoying life, but the people of Cebu had persuaded him that he alone could unify the quarreling groups of guerrillas on the island.
Cushing immediately radioed MacArthur on his little ATR4A that ten Japanese, including a high-ranking officer, had been captured along with a “whole case” of important documents, some of which looked like a cipher system. The message was picked up by Colonel Wendell Fertig, an engineering officer who had become commander of all guerrillas on Mindanao, and he relayed it to Australia. Here it created such a “tremendous stir” that the Navy offered to divert an operational submarine from its duties as soon as possible and send it to Negros, the island just west of Cebu, to pick up the prisoners and the documents.
Fukudome, his leg injured in the crash, had to be carried on a litter. It took over a week to reach Cushing’s mountain hideout in Tupas, ten miles west of Cebu City, and by that time the admiral, under incessant questioning by Erediano, “admitted” that he was Admiral Koga and could even speak some English.
Shortly after Fukudome was delivered to Cushing, Japanese troops from Cebu City, alerted by the two men who had escaped, launched an attack on Tupas. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Seito Onishi, threatened to burn down villages and execute civilians in reprisal unless the prisoners were promptly realeased to him. Cushing retreated farther in the mountains and radioed MacArthur that he could get the documents to Negros but doubted he could deliver Admiral Koga and the other prisoners.
MacArthur replied: ENEMY PRISONERS MUST BE HELD AT ALL COSTS.
It was an impossible order. Cushing had twenty-five men, and Onishi’s troops were closing in. He sent the documents to Negros with two runners but informed MacArthur that he would be forced to release “Koga” to avoid continued reprisals. The enraged MacArthur relieved Cushing of command and reduced him to the grade of private.
But “Private” Cushing was still in command, and had to negotiate with Onishi without delay. He asked “Koga” to compose a note requesting Colonel Onishi to refrain from further punitive action in exchange for himself and the others. Fukudome signed the note using Koga’s name. It was delivered to Onishi by a civilian, who returned with the colonel’s written promise to abide by the proposal. Fukudome was again loaded on a litter. Cushing warmly shook his hand; by now they were friends and even Cushing’s fierce mastiff, who bristled at the other Japanese, allowed the admiral to pat him. It was only a moment but it was unique in such a relentless war. An unarmed platoon, led by Lieutenant Pedro Villareal, escorted the prisoners down the mountain path to their freedom.
Fukudome’s briefcase found its way to MacArthur via submarine. Its contents were among the most significant enemy documents seized during the war, but Jim Cushing was in disgrace and subject, he imagined with some justification, to worse punishment when MacArthur returned to the Philippines.§
Koga was replaced by Admiral Soemu Toyoda, formerly commander at Yokosuka Naval Base. A brilliant man, he was noted for being so meticulous and sarcastic that more than one subordinate had suffered a nervous breakdown. Moreover, he had been ashore since the start of the war and it was imperative to select for him a chief of staff with broad experience at sea at the highest level. The obvious choice was Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, Nagumo’s former chief of staff, and now serving under his cousin Admiral Junichi Kusaka at Rabaul. Before leaving Rabaul, he was given a farewell party—a banquet consisting of two cans of sea eel, two slices of broiled eggplant mixed in bean paste, weed soup, and rice boiled with barley. General Imamura contributed half a dozen bottles of sake.
There was one way to get out of Rabaul—by air—and risk the fate of Yamamoto and Koga. American fighters patrolled overhead almost constantly. For safety, Kusaka’s plane took off in the dark, its occupants cheered by a final toast—this time Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey. At four o’clock the bomber swept low over the harbor, its exhausts lengthened to hide the flames. With dawn their fears of discovery were borne out. A flight of enemy fighters flashed by so close that Kusaka could see the pilots. Inexplicably, the Americans continued on course—without firing a round at Admiral Toyoda’s new chief of staff.
The Kusaka plane refueled at Truk and went on to Saipan. Here the admiral held a reunion with Nagumo, who, after Midway and Guad
alcanal, had been reduced to commanding a small area fleet. After Rabaul with its Draconian regime, Kusaka was appalled by the meager defenses on such a strategic island and recommended that much more be done. The next morning Kusaka took off for Iwo Jima, where he inspected the little volcanic island during refueling. It was well fortified but lacked sufficient machine guns and artillery. He promised the island commander—Captain Tsunezo Wachi, the secret agent and assistant naval attaché in Mexico City before Pearl Harbor—that he would send more weapons, and wished him a good fight.
Upon arrival at Combined Fleet shore headquarters outside Tokyo, Kusaka’s immediate problem was to determine once again where and how the next major battle should be fought. Like his predecessors, Kusaka was imbued with the idea of the Decisive Battle, and inevitably his plan of operation was similar to Koga’s. In March the Navy had been drastically reorganized, and now its main force, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s First Mobile Fleet, was anchored at Lingga Roads, off Singapore, close to its fuel supply but far from the critical area of the Philippines. Kusaka recalled an old Chinese proverb: “No matter how strong the bow, an arrow in long flight cannot tear the sheerest cloth.” It would be necessary to bring the Mobile Fleet forward “in a hop, skip and a jump.” The hop would be to Tawi Tawi, one of the southernmost of the Philippine islands; the skip the center of the Philippines; and the jump to the Palaus or Saipan. Kusaka’s plan was hand-carried to Toyoda, who was still at Yokosuka. It was approved, and emerged as A-Go (Operation A).