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

by Toland, John

  Kusaka recalled the neglected defenses of Saipan, and since the island’s strength was essential to the operation, he hounded Army officials who were responsible. Tojo, annoyed by Kusaka’s persistence, wrote him: “I personally guarantee with ‘a large seal’ the defense of Saipan!” The messenger, a colonel, added that the Army hoped the Americans would land at Saipan; they would be wiped out.

  By the end of April the technical details of A-Go were resolved and a few days later Admiral Toyoda issued the general orders. The “decisive” battle area would be the Palaus, and if the Americans headed straight for the Marianas, they would have to be “lured” south (to save Mobile Fleet fuel and be closer to land air bases), where “a decisive battle with full strength will be opened at a favorable opportunity.” The enemy would be “attacked and destroyed for the most part in a day assault.” But first the 540 land-based naval planes of the First Air Fleet would destroy “at least one third of the enemy task-force carrier units.”

  On May 10 Kusaka’s “hop, skip and jump” started; Ozawa’s Mobile Fleet pulled out of Lingga Roads and headed for Tawi Tawi.

  4.

  The next American target was Saipan, the most strategic island of the Marianas; Nimitz would be in command. In the meantime MacArthur had already taken another long step toward his objective, the Philippines, by jumping all the way from eastern New Guinea to Hollandia, an important harbor area near the northwest end of the island, in an ambitious amphibious operation that completely surprised the 11,000 defenders. The roar of Allied naval guns sent most of the Japanese flying—90 percent were service troops—and the 52,000 invaders had little trouble in clearing the area. At minimal cost MacArthur had secured an excellent air, naval and logistics base. A week after the Mobile Fleet left Lingga Roads he took another stride toward Tokyo—this one a 120-mile lunge farther west to the Sarmi area, which was served by two excellent airfields, with another under construction. There were 14,000 Japanese on hand, but less than half were combat troops and they were caught as unawares as their comrades in Hollandia. They put up little resistance—two Americans were killed on the first day—and MacArthur had another valuable base.

  His next objective was Biak, a small island to the west, strategically located in the mouth of New Guinea’s largest bay. Biak was forty-five miles long and twenty miles wide, and had three serviceable airstrips which the Japanese considered important enough to defend with 10,000 men. On May 20 the Americans began a week of bombing, but this failed to alert the Japanese commander to the impending invasion, and the 41st Division landed on the island against almost no opposition. The first waves of GI’s came ashore at the wrong place but by noon they had established a strong beachhead.

  On the Combined Fleet’s new flagship, the cruiser Oyodo, Toyoda’s staff was shaken by the “suddenness” of the Biak landing; it had come on the thirty-ninth anniversary of Tsushima. Kusaka, however, saw it as an opportunity. “If we take it back,” he said, “that will draw the Pacific Fleet in sufficiently close so that we can have the Decisive Battle near Palau.” His reasoning swayed everyone except the intelligence officer, Commander Chikataka Nakajima, who was of the opinion that MacArthur’s landing at Biak was secondary and that the main offensive, completely supported by the Pacific Fleet, would be directed at Saipan. But Kusaka prevailed, and almost overnight a hasty plan to reinforce Biak, Operation KON, was devised.

  Nakajima was, of course, right. The three divisions that would land at Saipan in nineteen days—on June 15—had finished arduous training and rehearsed co-ordinated landings in Hawaii; and a flotilla of 110 naval transport vessels, together with an entire division of Liberty ships, was assembling to transport them, along with 7,000 corps and garrison troops, the thirty-two hundred miles to the landing area.

  The Marianas, a chain of tropical volcanic islands, were discovered by Magellan in 1521. He was so impressed by the native boats and their rigging that he named them the Islands of the Lateen Sails, but to his less poetic crew they were known as the Islands of the Thieves. In the seventeenth century they were officially renamed to honor Mariana of Austria, widow of Philip IV of Spain, but with the years the Spanish influence waned. America seized Guam, the largest of the islands, during the Spanish-American War. A few months later, in 1899, the harried Spaniards sold the rest of their holdings in the Carolines, Marshalls and Marianas to Germany for some $4,000,000. America could have had the islands, but the McKinley Administration thought they weren’t worth that much money.

  During World War I the Japanese occupied all these islands, and being on the winning side, were afterward given the mandate over them by the League of Nations. In 1935 they built Aslito Airfield at the southern end of Saipan, and a little later constructed a seaplane base on the west coast and a fighter strip at the northern tip. Some Americans accused Japan of using the island as a military and naval base contrary to the League of Nations Covenant, but there was no more than a handful of troops on the island.ǁ

  All native children—they were Chamorros—were required to attend a Japanese school for at least six years, and the brightest boys were encouraged to study at a specialized agricultural training school. Sugar cane was the main crop and production increased under the South Sea Development Company. By the time of Pearl Harbor, Saipan had become a little Tokyo; of its more than thirty thousand people, fewer than four thousand were Chamorros. The island was the length of Manhattan but more than twice its width. Between 1,554-foot Mount Tapotchau in the center and Mount Marpi at the northern end stretched a jagged ridge, pocked with thousands of caves and marked by numerous little peaks and escarpments. This rugged area, as well as the cane fields which covered 70 percent of the island’s eighty-five square miles, was ideally suited for defensive warfare.

  During the first two years of the war Saipan was nothing but a supply and staging area. Even after the fall of Tarawa and Kwajalein the garrison continued to be little more than a token force, and except for construction of scattered pillboxes, almost nothing was done to fortify the island that was Nimitz’ next target.

  On the morning of February 23, 1944, his carrier-based bombers attacked the island’s airfields. Civilians heard the firing of their own antiaircraft guns, but where were the Japanese planes? Daily they had flown so low and in such numbers that it was almost impossible to teach school. Seventy-four Japanese planes from Saipan, Tinian and Guam did get into the air, but they couldn’t prevent the enemy from destroying 101 planes on the ground. They did manage to shoot down six Americans, but only seven of the seventy-four returned safely to their bases.

  On Saipan, quiet life was gone for good. Schools and plants were closed to allow the civilians to build shelters and help construct another airstrip. With work their spirits rose and they regained confidence. But orders came to repatriate old people, women and children to Japan. On March 3 Amerikamaru sailed with seventeen hundred passengers, most of them families of officials of the South Sea Development Company or influential citizens. It never reached the homeland. Three days later torpedoes sent it to the bottom. Troop transports bound for the Marianas were also torpedoed, and survivors, arriving in Saipan dejected and without weapons, brought with them the feeling of doom.

  In an attempt to stem the succession of American victories in the central Pacific, Imperial Headquarters reorganized the entire command structure of the region and sent Admiral Nagumo to Saipan to command a newly created Central Pacific Area Fleet. Theoretically Nagumo was supreme commander of all forces in the area, Army as well as Navy, but guidelines from Tokyo were so vague that he was virtually a figurehead.

  Late in May the 43rd Division, around which the defense of Saipan would be centered, sailed from Japan in two echelons. The first arrived safely, but the second—a convoy which was carrying more than 7,000 troops—was subjected to a series of submarine attacks, and five of the seven transports were sunk. The other two crammed their decks with survivors and continued on. About 5,500 finally reached Saipan with many badly burned or wounded.
Few had equipment or weapons. The division was so disorganized that one staff officer, Major Takashi Hirakushi, reported that it would be six months before it could conduct any kind of defense.

  Nor were the positions they would defend yet prepared. Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata of the 31st Army, who commanded all ground troops in the Marianas from headquarters in Saipan, officially warned Admiral Nagumo. “Specifically,” he wrote, “unless the units are supplied with cement, steel reinforcements for cement, barbed wire, lumber, etc., which cannot be obtained in these islands, no matter how many soldiers there are they can do nothing in regard to fortifications but sit around with their arms folded, and the situation is unbearable.” The situation now would not improve. Thousands of tons of building materials had already been sunk in transit and no more was on the way.

  Time had also run out on the 31,629 defenders (25,469 Army, 6,160 Navy personnel). A massive armada of American ships—535—was converging on Saipan. They carried 127,571 troops, two thirds of them Marines. At sea on June 7, they received word of another mighty assault. On one ship filled with Marines the loudspeaker voice said, “The invasion of France has started. That is all.” There was silence. “Thank God!” someone finally said.

  D-Day passed almost unnoticed in Japan. Combined Fleet was preoccupied with Operation KON. The first attempt to reinforce Biak had failed; destroyers and transports were turned back by persistent air attacks. A second attempt by six destroyers was already under way. Near noon of June 8 one of these was sunk by bombers, and the remaining five scuttled back north upon encountering a single American destroyer at midnight.

  Admiral Ozawa, commander of the Mobile Fleet, was not as easily intimidated. He radioed Combined Fleet that the airfields of Biak were too valuable to lose and reminded his superiors that another attempt to retake the island “might draw the American Fleet into the anticipated zone of decisive battle and enable us to launch A-Go.” Kusaka needed no urging—it was his own plan, after all—and he persuaded Toyoda to let Ozawa make a final endeavor in greater force. KON was strengthened with a light cruiser, six destroyers and the two great battleships, Musashi and Yamato. On the afternoon of June 10 this redoubtable force left Tawi Tawi for the south.

  While Japanese attention was focused on Biak, the Americans were approaching their primary target, Saipan, more than thirteen hundred miles to the northeast. At midday, June 11, they launched a strike of 208 fighters and 8 torpedo bombers against Tinian and Saipan. Ignoring inaccurate antiaircraft fire, they descended on the two islands, which were separated by a narrow channel, strafing and bombing. On Saipan, they left more than a hundred planes smoldering and flames sweeping through the four-foot-high savannah grass on the slopes above Garapan, the largest town on the island.

  The whole purpose of Operation KON was suddenly negated. The Marianas were the main target. Combined Fleet suspended KON and ordered its commander to rendezvous with Ozawa in the waters west of Saipan.

  Before the two forces met, seven American battleships and eleven destroyers began bombarding Saipan and Tinian. It was June 13, two days before the landing. During the day they expended fifteen thousand 16- and 5-inch shells, but the gun crews had limited experience in shore bombardment, which called for slow, patient adjustment on specific targets, and little damage of military importance was inflicted. Before dawn they were joined by a more practiced fire-support group—eight battleships, six heavy cruisers and five light cruisers. This time the aim was deliberate and accurate.

  In Garapan a young volunteer nurse by the name of Shizuko Miura—a tomboy with a round merry face—flinched as the first shells landed. She peered out the window of the first-aid station into the dim light. The Americans were bombarding the town again. As the explosions moved closer she helped transfer those wounded in the earlier shelling to a dugout. With daylight came enemy planes and an even more violent barrage from the ships. It is June 14, Shizuko thought calmly. I have lived for eighteen years and my time to die has come. A shell shook the dugout like an earthquake and knocked her to the ground. She staggered outside. The first-aid station was obliterated. She saw a piece of red metal—it was shrapnel—and, curious, touched it with her finger. It burned her. Planes droned overhead but no one was firing at them. Garapan was aflame. The heat was so intense that she could hardly breathe. She started to make her way through the rubbled streets strewn with bodies.

  Offshore two 96-man underwater demolition teams were boldly exploring the reefs south of Garapan. They found no obstacles but their presence helped convince Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito, commander of the 43rd Division, that the invasion was actually at hand and would come on the west coast. He concentrated his troops to meet the attack, shifted his artillery and set up new headquarters on the west coast. Saito was eminently unsuited by nature and training to lead combat troops. He was a stodgy, colorless cavalryman whose previous command had been a horse procurement unit. That his division was chosen as the nucleus of Saipan’s defense proved how unimportant the island was considered by Tokyo.

  Many of the other troops on Saipan were random units salvaged from sinkings. They were poorly organized, lacked leadership and were without weapons. Admiral Nagumo was the titular head of this haphazard defense force, but he always deferred to General Obata of 31st Army—and he was away on an inspection trip of the Palaus, and his chief of staff, Major General Keiji Igeta, was outranked by Saito.

  This put the tactical command of the island under the hapless Saito. He was saddled with the philosophy that had governed and depleted the defense against every invasion to date. Tokyo had decreed that as usual, Saipan was to be defended primarily on the beaches, not in depth.

  Transports and LST’s carrying the 2nd and 4th Marine divisions were drawing close to the west coast of Saipan and would be in position for debarkation the following morning, June 15. On the island they would encounter more than one kind of enemy. As the medical officer of one unit warned: after facing sharks, barracuda, sea snakes, razor-sharp coral, poison fish and giant clams in the surf, they would find worse hazards ashore—leprosy, typhus, filariasis, typhoid and dysentery as well as snakes and giant lizards.

  “Sir,” one private ventured, “why don’t we let the Japs keep the island?”

  A more ominous admonition came from a graduate of UCLA, an American girl of Japanese descent who had been visiting a sick aunt in Japan when the war broke out. Nicknamed “Tokyo Rose” by the Americans, she first went on the air as “Ann,” short for “announcer,” and currently called herself “Orphan Annie, your favorite enemy.”

  “I’ve got some swell recordings for you,” she was broadcasting, “just in from the States. You’d better enjoy them while you can, because tomorrow at oh-six-hundred you’re hitting Saipan … and we’re ready for you. So, while you’re still alive, let’s listen to …”

  The dark ships slowly drew nearer to Saipan, the skies overhead glowing red from burning buildings, grass and woods. Marines on deck could barely make out the formidable silhouette of Mount Tapotchau through the early-morning haze. As the sky lightened, the island—a shadowy purplish land mass—looked like “a great monster rising out of the sea.” Charan Kanoa emerged detail by detail; the two divisions would land on a four-mile front centering on the little town. Five miles to the north Garapan, too, took form. There a diversionary force would pretend to land.

  Battleships, cruisers and destroyers began the final bombardment at five-thirty. The dug-in defenders along the beaches and on the slopes crouched through the ordeal, prepared to fight to the death. One made a final notation in his diary: “We are waiting with ‘Molotov cocktails’ and hand grenades ready for the word to rush forward recklessly into the enemy ranks with our swords in our hands. All that worries me is what will happen to Japan after we die.”

  Twelve minutes later Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, in command of the Joint Expeditionary Force, issued the order: “Land the Landing Force.” Over loudspeakers boomed the chaplains’ last prayers and
blessings. On Time correspondent Robert Sherrod’s ship, Chaplain Cunningham was saying, “… most of you will return, but some of you will meet the God who made you.” A lieutenant colonel named Tompkins turned to Sherrod and remarked, “Perish-the-thought Department!”

  Winches lowered boats; hatches were cleared. At seven o’clock the shelling ceased and thirty-four LST’s churned up to the line of departure, a little over two miles from shore. The huge bow doors of the bulky vessels yawned open and amphtracs, loaded with Marines, crawled out and began circling in the water like great water bugs. Planes—the first of 155—were already bombing the Charan Kanoa area to keep the beach defenders pinned down; when they left half an hour later the entire shoreline was veiled by clouds of smoke and dust. The bombing was a “thrilling” sight to Sherrod but he wrote in his notebook: “I fear all this smoke and noise does not mean Japs have been killed.”

  Soon after eight o’clock 719 amphtracs, filled with eight battalions of Marines, started for shore preceded by gunboats and amphibian tanks. Officers passed out chewing gum and warned their men to be ready to discard their heavy cartridge belts in case they had to swim for it.

  The four-mile-wide flotilla raked to within eight hundred yards of the shore before a shower of mortar and artillery shells rained down upon the invaders. Eighteen amphibian tanks clambered like crabs over the barrier reef. Behind them several amphtracs were sunk but the rest followed over the reef and into the shallow blue-green lagoon. Dozens of planes coming in low strafed the beach while warships pounded shore defenses for the last time with their 5-inch guns. It was a spectacular sight, organized bedlam.

  The landing plan was original. The tanks were to crawl up on the beach and cover the amphtracs, which would transport the troops all the way to high ground. The first wave hit the beach at eight forty-four, and within twenty minutes, more than eight thousand Marines had landed. It was soon evident that all the intense preinvasion bombardment had not silenced the Japanese. Innumerable machine-gun nests and mortar emplacements between the beaches and the ridge opened up a withering fire which did not stop until their crews were blasted to bits. While it lasted it was so accurate that most of the amphtracs had to discharge their load at the edge of the beach. The ones getting through encountered another kind of obstacle: they got bogged down in the sand or were caught in craters and didn’t have the power to climb out.