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

by Toland, John

  The barge grounded on Red Beach, some five miles below Tacloban. The ramp flapped down and MacArthur stepped into knee-deep water. He was followed by Osmeña, General George Kenney and the others. The diminutive Romulo, who was wearing new shoes, had difficulty keeping up with MacArthur’s long strides.

  The shore was encumbered by four damaged landing craft, one still burning, and occasionally the party heard the rattle of machine-gun and rifle fire. Corncob pipe in mouth and armed with an old revolver of his father’s which he kept in his back pocket, MacArthur searched a palm grove for the 24th Division commander, Major General Frederick Irving. “This is what I dreamed about,” Romulo heard him mutter.

  Prone GI’s were concentrating fire on something ahead. “Hey, there’s General MacArthur,” said one.

  His buddy didn’t even bother to look up. “Oh yeah? And I suppose he’s got Eleanor Roosevelt along with him.”

  After a brief chat with General Irving, MacArthur returned to his party. He motioned to Osmeña, put a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. President, how does it feel to be home?” he asked. They sat down on a fallen tree. “As soon as we take Tacloban I am turning the administration over to you. This may be sooner than we planned, things are going so smoothly.”

  “I am ready whenever you are, General.”

  They were interrupted by a Signal Corps officer who extended a hand microphone. The “Voice of Freedom” was back on the air. As MacArthur began to talk, his voice charged with emotion and hands trembling, a few drops of rain fell. “People of the Philippines, I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil … At my side is your President, Sergio Osmeña, worthy successor of that great patriot, Manuel Quezon, with members of his cabinet.”

  In the background, trucks were noisily grinding across the beach, and planes roared overhead. There was an occasional distant boom from ships offshore shelling inland positions. His voice rising, the general called on the people to rally to him in the spirit of Bataan and Corregidor. “As the lines of battle roll forward to bring you within the zone of operations, rise and strike.… For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! In the name of your sacred dead, strike! Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of divine God points the way. Follow in His name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory!”

  Osmeña took the microphone. The liberation of the Islands would be a joint enterprise of the Americans and Filipinos, and he urged the populace to co-operate. “We have the word of America that our country, which has been ravaged by war, will be reconstructed and rehabilitated. Steps have already been taken to this end. With the return of normal conditions, law and order will be fully re-established and democratic processes of constitutional government restored.”

  Romulo also praised the Americans. “You must continue keeping faith with them. You cannot let America down.”

  Euphoric, MacArthur wandered around the wet grove talking to GI’s until an officer nervously said, “Sir, there are snipers over there,” and pointed to nearby trees. MacArthur seemed not to hear. He sat down on a log and stared into the distance, at the land he had sworn to liberate.

  A few miles to the north, troopers of the 1st Cavalry had reached the outskirts of Tacloban. They dug in, setting up mortars and machine guns in case of a night attack. Instead they were overwhelmed by the liberated. Filipinos crowded past the sentries. There were old people, young mothers with babies; Robert Shaplen of The New Yorker saw an aged, wrinkled-faced woman standing, arms outstretched toward the GI’s with a beatific smile on her face. She seemed to be in the middle of a dream, too stunned to believe that she was wide awake.

  The Americans had a substantial beachhead in the middle of the Philippines along with more than 100,000 tons of cargo. The cost was minimal—forty-nine GI’s had died. Roosevelt radioed his congratulations to MacArthur: YOU HAVE THE NATION’S GRATITUDE AND THE NATION’S PRAYERS FOR SUCCESS AS YOU AND YOUR MEN FIGHT YOUR WAY BACK.

  The invaders’ losses had been light because the defense system had been shattered by the three-day bombardment. Their forward positions destroyed, their ranks thinned by shelling and strafing, the Japanese had fallen back, often leaderless. Few of the units were in communication with Division headquarters. That night Colonel Kanao Kondo of the 22nd Artillery Regiment accused the commander of the 1st Battalion of retreating without orders. Kondo refused to accept the excuse that almost the entire battalion had been killed or wounded, and their guns destroyed. “Why didn’t you die?” he raged and ordered the survivors to fight to the end where they stood.

  General Makino had no details of the progress of the fighting. On the eve of the invasion he had hastily evacuated his headquarters in Tacloban and was heading inland when the Americans came ashore. He had not yet been able to report what little he knew to his superiors.

  At Fort McKinley, Yamashita was trying to evaluate the scanty information from Leyte. Just after ten o’clock his new chief of staff, Lieutenant General Akira Muto, arrived from Sumatra, where he had been “exiled” by Tojo. He was without baggage and wore a grimy uniform—during a bombing at an airfield he had leaped into a muddy ditch to save himself.

  Yamashita told him of the invasion. “Very interesting” was his remark. “But where is Leyte?” They were joined by Colonel Ichiji Sugita (Yamashita’s interpreter at Singapore), who had just flown in from Tokyo with distressing news for both of them: Imperial Headquarters ordered the 14th Area Army to fight the Decisive Battle on Leyte.

  The next day, October 21, MacArthur’s four divisions continued to press forward against little resistance. Dulag’s airfield was overrun; most of Tacloban was liberated, and a special town meeting was scheduled for the following morning to welcome the victors and to recruit native labor for the Philippine Civil Affairs Unit. Filipinos crowded the market place, ignoring occasional bursts of fire in the outskirts. “We had to obey the Japanese to save our necks,” said Saturino Gonzales, a member of the Provincial Board. He spoke to the audience but his words were directed to the Americans—in English. “But there was never any doubt, as you know, what our feelings were beneath. I ask you to consider now what the policies of the American government were like before the Japanese came and how they are to be compared to the Japanese administration. You will now understand the famous democratic ways of the United States.”

  The next speaker held up a can of K ration. The crowd got the point and cheered in English: “Long live the Americans! Lovely Americans!”

  An American colonel told the crowd that the Philippines were theirs: “Your Commonwealth Government will be set up under your own president, President Osmeña. We are going to see that you get food and clothing. We want you to be patient. We need labor. You will get paid for the work you do in Philippine currency and with it you will be able to buy the rice and the other products we will bring. But, by God, you’ll do it as free men!”

  The New Yorker man, Shaplen, doubted that the audience understood everything the colonel said, but their enthusiasm was such that the next speaker, an ex-governor of Leyte, pledged that they would work for the Americans “three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and we will work for nothing.”

  The colonel’s protests were overridden by cries of “Lovely Americans! We will work, we will work!”

  In Manila, 340 miles to the northwest, Yamashita was making a final attempt to persuade Field Marshal Terauchi to protest Tokyo’s order to make Leyte the site of the conclusive land battle of the Philippines. How could reinforcements break through the American air and submarine blockade around the island? Besides, before sufficient troops and supplies reached Leyte the battle would be over. And was it MacArthur’s primary target? Perhaps this was merely a feint before the full-scale invasion of Luzon.

  But his arguments came to naught; Terauchi never wavered in his belief that the imminent naval-air counterattack would sink the enemy invasion fleet in Leyte Gulf. The marshal (Muto character
ized him as being “in extremely high spirits and optimistic”) ordered the 14th Area Army “to totally destroy the enemy on Leyte.” Reluctantly Yamashita passed on the order to Suzuki, and promised to send substantial infantry reinforcements to Leyte. Naval support could be expected to reach the island “on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of October.”

  On Leyte, Makino had been forced to split his 16th Division into the Northern and Southern Leyte Defense Forces. His orders were couched in aggressive prose, but privately he hoped his troops would not collapse before help arrived.

  By the next day the Tacloban area was secure enough for the invaders to permit the public appearance of the Allied leaders. Early in the afternoon a Filipino brass band roamed the streets of Tacloban in a weapons carrier; a loudspeaker repeated interminably that MacArthur and Osmeña were coming and there would be ceremonies. Led by the band, an impromptu parade formed and by three o-clock a crowd clustered around the steps of the capitol building.

  The MacArthur party disembarked at the old wharf from two PT boats, and with the general in the lead, marched to the capitol. From the steps of the building MacArthur formally announced the establishment of the Philippine Civil Government under President Osmeña and promised to liberate the rest of the Islands. It was a short, unemotional speech, but the fiesta crowd cheered every sentence.

  A bugler sounded To the Colors as American and Philippine flags were raised simultaneously. MacArthur shook hands with Osmeña and Romulo. “I and my staff will now retire,” he said and started back to the wharf.

  * There were almost a hundred U. S. fleet and escort carriers in the Pacific by late summer of 1944.

  † These rumors had no basis in fact, but there was some justification for complaints. Tojo did misappropriate power in his utilization of the kempeitai to control dissidents. Known pacifists such as Konoye were under strict surveillance, and many citizens had been jailed and a few tortured to death for espousing Christianity or fomenting political opposition. Seigo Nakano, an avowed Nazi, was arrested after making a public speech against Tojo. Soon after his release he committed hara-kiri under such mysterious circumstances that it was commonly believed kempei agents had “persuaded” him to kill himself.

  The impression was real and caused widespread public indignation, but the extent of the repression was exaggerated.

  ‡ He was referring to the Marshal Pietro Badoglio government, which had surrendered Italy unconditionally to the Allies the previous summer.

  § “It was the Ishihara-Tsuji clique—the personification of gekokujo,” General Suzuki told a fellow officer, Major Yoshitaka Horie, after leaving Malaya, “that brought the Japanese Army to this deplorable situation. In Malaya, Tsuji’s speech and conduct were often insolent; and there was this problem of inhumane treatment of Chinese merchants, so I advised General Yamashita to punish Tsuji severely and then dismiss him. But he feigned ignorance. I tell you, so long as they [Tsuji, Ishihara, and their like] exert influence on the Army, it can only lead to ruin. Extermination of these poisonous insects should take precedence over all other problems.”

  ǁ Pelelieu was defended with such determination that it took a statistical average of 1,589 rounds of heavy and light ammunition to kill each Japanese soldier. American casualties were extremely heavy. In one month of bitter combat, 1,121 Marines were killed.

  The Marines were feuding with their own Navy and Army in equal proportions. Just before disembarking for the assault, Marines on correspondent Tom Lea’s transport left this notice on the ship’s bulletin board in the Ship’s Officers Wardroom:

  A MESSAGE OF THANKS

  From: Marines aboard U.S.S. Repulsive

  To: Officers and Men aboard U.S.S. Repulsive

  1. It gives us great pleasure at this time to extend our sincere thanks to all members of the crew for their kind and considerate treatment of Marines during this cruise.

  2. We non-combatants realize that the brave and stalwart members of the crew are winning the war in the Pacific. You Navy people even go within ten miles of a Japanese island, thereby risking your precious lives. Oh how courageous you are! Oh how our piles bleed for you.

  3. Because of your actions during this voyage it is our heartfelt wish that:

  a. The U.S.S. Repulsive receives a Jap torpedo immediately after debarkation of all troops.

  b. The crew of the U.S.S. Repulsive is stranded on Beach Orange Three where Marine units which sailed aboard the ship may repay in some measure the good fellowship extended by the crew and officers during the trip.

  4. In conclusion we Marines wish to say to all you dear, dear boys in the Navy: “Bugger you, you bloody bastards!”

  a The Toho Motion Picture Company constructed a lake in Setagaya and filled it with six-foot models of U. S. warships. Atop a tower a movie camera on a boom took pictures of the vessels from various angles, simulating different speeds of approach. These films were shown as a substitute for flight training in order to save fuel.

  22

  The Battle of Leyte Gulf

  1.

  The Mobile Fleet and First Striking Force—the remnants of the Combined Fleet—were approaching the Philippines from the north and west. Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa commanded the Mobile Fleet, whose air power had been shattered in the Marianas and whose remaining planes had proved so ineffectual in the three-day air battle off Formosa. Still, it made a formidable appearance, with the large carrier Zuikaku, light carriers Zuiho, Chitose and Chiyoda, and the battleships Ise and Hyuga, remodeled into semicarriers. But it was a hollow striking force. There were only 116 planes distributed among the six ships.

  The First Striking Force, coming from Singapore, was under the command of Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita. He came from a family of scholars—his father had compiled a distinguished history of Japan—but he was a man of action. He had skippered five destroyers and twice commanded torpedo divisions, then a cruiser division. He had escorted the troops who were to land on Midway, and after participating in the battles around Guadalcanal (including the bombardment of Henderson Field by Kongo and Haruna), took over the Second Fleet in time to participate in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. His new fleet was strictly a surface force but its fire power was truly redoubtable. It included the two largest and most fearsome battleships in the world, Musashi and Yamato, as well as five old but serviceable battleships—among them Haruna, so often reported sunk, and her sister ship, Kongo—eleven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and nineteen destroyers. The First Striking Force could throw more tons of shells than any fleet afloat.

  It arrived at Brunei, Borneo, on October 20 as the Americans were landing on Leyte. Early the next morning Kurita received orders to enter Leyte Gulf at dawn of October 25 and destroy enemy amphibious shipping. Combined Fleet suggested a two-pronged attack: one group would work its way through the confining waters of the Visayans, debouch into the Pacific through San Bernardino Strait, turn south past Samar and enter Leyte Gulf from the east; the other group would break into the gulf from the south through the narrow Surigao Strait between Mindanao and Leyte.

  On the long approaches to the battle area, both groups might easily be discovered and ambushed by American submarines and surface units as well as aircraft. Kurita and his staff were willing to accept these perils. What they objected to was the mission as such. They were eager to die in a battle against carriers, but why risk His Majesty’s greatest battleships for transports that would already be unloaded? Combined Fleet sympathized with these objections but stood firm. It was too late for any alternative. Kurita, however, was given permission to engage carriers if they came within range.

  Kurita decided to bring the major part of his fleet through San Bernardino Strait in order to keep it beyond the range of enemy search planes as long as possible. A detachment of two old battleships and four destroyers under Vice Admiral Teiji Nishimura would take the much shorter southern route. Both groups would enter Leyte Gulf at dawn on the twenty-fifth and converge on the enemy transports and their c
overing force.

  Kurita was resigned to the loss of at least half his ships, but so many of his junior officers openly protested this calculated risk that he abandoned his usual reticence to address his division commanders and their staffs on the deck of the flagship, the heavy cruiser Atago. He told them that the war situation was far more critical than they could possibly know. “Would it not be a shame to have the fleet remain intact while our nation perishes? I believe that Imperial Headquarters is giving us a glorious opportunity. You must remember that there are such things as miracles. What man can say that there is no chance for our fleet to turn the tide of war in a Decisive Battle?”

  Kurita’s words, calm but forceful, were greeted with cries of “Banzai!”

  At 8 A.M. on October 22, the main body of First Striking Force sortied from Brunei and began steaming northward, followed by the smaller Nishimura detachment, which turned east at the tip of Borneo and headed toward the south entrance to Leyte Gulf, Surigao Strait. The main body continued northeast through the darkness on a zigzag course at 18 knots, skirting the west coast of the long narrow island of Palawan in the 25-mile-wide passage formed by uncharted reefs (aptly called “the Dangerous Ground”) and the island itself. In these swift waters near the reefs, two American picket submarines, Darter and Dace, patrolled the surface side by side. At sixteen minutes past midnight the conning tower of Darter reported: “Radar contact, one three one true, thirty thousand yards—contact is doubtful—probably rain cloud.”

  Rain cloud hell! thought the captain, Commander David McClintock, who was topside. That’s the Jap fleet.

  The radar operator’s report confirmed his guess, and he relayed the information by megaphone to the skipper of Dace, Commander Bladen Clagett. “Let’s go get them,” Clagett called back and both submarines gave chase at flank speed with Darter in the lead.