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

by Toland, John

  On Yamato’s bridge Executive Officer Nomura noticed red lights flash on the warning board. He approached to see where the danger was. Half a dozen lights glowed—gun turret No. 1 and at least five ammunition storerooms. Were they going to have a chain explosion? Of the 1,170 rounds for the big guns, 3 had been fired. If the remaining shells detonated, the “unsinkable” Yamato would burst at the seams. A backup warning device began its ominous buzzing, then another, and another and another. He heard Ariga shout at him, “Can’t we pump water into the ammunition rooms?” and his voice seemed to be “tearing his throat.” It was impossible. The water control command post was destroyed. Nomura waited for the explosion that would obliterate them all. He thought with a measure of satisfaction, Well, that’s all right. It will be a samurai’s hara-kiri.

  Shortly after 2:15 P.M. the twelfth torpedo struck the port side, as if, Nomura thought, “we had received the coup de grâce.” If the order to abandon ship wasn’t given without delay, the crew would be lost. But no instructions came from Admiral Ariga. Nomura lurched up the narrow spiral staircase to the second bridge, where he could survey the ship. Normally the top deck was twenty-five feet above water level; the port side of the deck was awash. It was incongruous to see men sitting at the bow smoking and eating hardtack. Inexplicably, Nomura was annoyed at their nonchalance.

  Towering water columns geysered on either side of the ship. Nomura’s eyes swept the superstructure. Something was missing. The flag! He took another look; the mast itself was gone. Were the pictures of the Emperor and Empress safe? During a battle they were kept in the main gun command post, the most armored place aboard ship. Nomura phoned the gun commander and learned he had locked himself in his cabin with the pictures lest they float away when the ship sank.

  With Yamato listing more than 30 degrees, Nomura phoned Ariga. “The end is near,” he said. It was time for the entire crew to come topside. Ariga, in turn, informed Admiral Ito over the voice tube that there was no longer any prospect of correcting the list.

  “Fleet Commander, your person is valuable. Please leave the ship with the crew. I alone will remain.” Ariga gave orders to assemble on the upper deck, then phoned Nomura, who was still on the second bridge. “Executive Officer,” he said hoarsely, “leave the ship immediately and report the details of the action to Combined Fleet.” Nomura’s protest was curtly ignored by Ariga. “I’m remaining with the ship. Be sure to get home alive.”

  “Captain,” Nomura insisted, “I’m staying with you.”

  “Executive Officer, that is an order.” He hung up and told a crewman to lash him to the compass post. Sailors started tying each other to the bridge binnacle. “What are you doing?” Ariga shouted angrily. “You young men jump in and swim for it!”

  Ito refused to leave the ship too. He shook hands with Chief of Staff Morishita, and while his staff looked on “with ten thousand feelings,” the admiral balanced his way along the listing deck, opened the door of a spiral staircase and disappeared. His aide made a move to follow but Morishita shouted, “Baka! Young men should live to serve the Emperor!”

  At 2:25 P.M. the listing increased rapidly until the great ship was rolling on her beam ends. Cries of “Banzai!” were drowned out by the rush of water. Yamato was on one side, like a foundered whale. Lights blacked out as gun wreckage, ammunition, pieces of bodies slid inexorably into the sea. Men struggled up the almost vertical deck, slipping on their comrades’ blood. At the top they clambered over the starboard rail, where they clustered on the side of the ship.

  Executive Officer Nomura felt himself being pulled under water by a titanic force. In the clear sea he saw other men “dancing about” in the whirlpool. Below was a bottomless dark blue. The light above diminished. Close to death, he felt his sense of awareness becoming unexpectedly clear. He tumbled deeper and deeper in agony. Bright red flashes shot through the water. A series of concussions slammed him like battering rams. It was as if “heaven and earth were blowing up.” The ammunition was exploding under water. Nomura was propelled to the surface. Balls of fire arched across the waves. He rolled over on his back and floated. The end of Yamato, he thought; the end of the Imperial Navy.

  Aboard the destroyer Yukikaze its captain, Commander Tochigi Terauchi, watched in despair as Yamato—it stood for “Japan”—rolled over and disappeared. He signaled Captain Masayoshi Yoshida, the new senior officer of the fleet, who was aboard the destroyer Fuyutsuki: “Recommend we proceed with mission.”

  “Pick up survivors and then we will decide course of action” was the answer.

  Yukikaze’s torpedo officer wanted to lower a cutter for survivors but Terauchi stopped him. “This is no ordinary mission,” he shouted. “This is a suicide attack. Even with Yamato gone we should continue.” He signaled Yoshida again, requesting reconsideration, then ordered his men to pick up survivors but only those who could be used in the attack. “Ignore the wounded!”§

  Those in the water faced a double hazard—abandonment and bullets from strafing American planes which systematically stitched a pattern of death across the battle area. Hara watched in wonder as a flying boat skimmed the surface and settled to taxi speed nearby. It churned toward a patch of water dyed green. An American pilot scrambled out of a life raft into the plane, and as it heaved out of the sea like an aged goose, Hara felt envious.

  It was hours later, near dusk, when Hara himself, along with Admiral Komura and other survivors of Yahagi, was finally picked up by the destroyer Hatsushimo. Komura took time to clean his oily face and put on a borrowed uniform before he wrote out a message for Combined Fleet: “We are now heading for Okinawa.” His entire fleet consisted of two sound destroyers; two other destroyers had survived and both of them were limping back to Japan. But before Komura’s message could be transmitted, Combined Fleet canceled the entire Okinawa mission. Hatsushimo reversed course for home. It was Komura who had sent the first planes over Pearl Harbor—the search planes from Chikuma—and he had survived the last sortie of the Japanese Navy. He had seen the beginning and the end. “I’ve had enough,” he muttered.

  4.

  In Tokyo that night Hajime Suzuki, the only son of the next prime minister, could not sleep. His father, who had miraculously survived the 2/26 Incident (the bullet that had pierced his heart was still lodged in his back), undoubtedly faced danger from radical young officers again. But Hajime was no longer a child and felt he should become his father’s shield. Early the next morning Hajime told Suzuki that he would quit his job at the Agriculture Ministry and become his personal secretary. “Don’t accompany me to death,” said the admiral. “I have come a long way but you still have far to go.” Hajime could not be dissuaded—personal aspirations would be meaningless in a defeated Japan.

  Suzuki summoned Admiral Keisuke Okada to his house and asked him to serve as munitions minister in the new cabinet. Okada was as appalled by the suggestion (he had been retired from the Navy for seven years and remained anathema to the radical officers) as he was by the confusion in the Suzuki household. The admiral was surrounded by well-meaning amateurs who could hardly use a telephone properly, let alone help him select a cabinet. Okada phoned his son-in-law, Hisatsune Sakomizu, who had spirited him out of the Prime Minister’s (Okada’s) official residence in 1936. “I am now at Admiral Suzuki’s, helping him form a cabinet,” he began. Sakomizu, with his shrewd grasp of both politics and the military, was “the only one” who could prevent Suzuki from making disastrous mistakes. Within the hour Sakomizu left his post at the Finance Ministry to become cabinet secretary.

  Suzuki’s greatest strength was a conviction that he was best qualified to end the war, but he had not yet made up his mind how to go about it. If he announced such a “defeatist” policy, even to his cabinet, he would be forced out of office or assassinated. For a while he would have to play haragei (the “stomach game”), that is, to dissemble, to support the war while seeking peace. As a result, Konoye refused a cabinet post when Suzuki would not give any assura
nce that he would “work for peace.” On the other hand, he was quick to promise Marshal Sugiyama that he would carry on the war to its ultimate end, and moreover, told reporters, “Now is the time for every one of the hundred million people to cast away what holds them down and to become the glorious shields for the defense of the national structure. I, of course, will deal with the national administration and am prepared to fall as the spearhead of you, the people. I ask you, the people, to manifest a new fighting power with the courageous and furious will to drive ahead over my body, and thus to put the Imperial Mind at ease.”

  At the time, Suzuki did not reveal his stratagem to anyone, but his son, Hajime, intuitively understood his father and informed close friends, in a written announcement, of his true intentions.

  The Cabinet was invested on April 7, though the most significant position, that of foreign minister, had not been filled. The other selections had been based on advice by fellow jushin and Sakomizu, but after considerable thought Suzuki’s preference for the man who would have to engineer peace negotiations was Shigenori Togo. Investigation indicated that Togo, who had held the post at the time of Pearl Harbor, had opposed going to war and later resigned in opposition to Tojo’s “dictatorial and high-handed policies.”

  Togo was rusticating in Karuizawa, the favorite resort town of diplomats near the Japanese Alps, when he got a phone call from a go-between—the governor of Nagano Prefecture—transmitting Suzuki’s offer. Togo’s reply was blunt: Not until he had discussed the matter with the new Prime Minister and “reached an agreement of views.” He would not return to public life unless he had a free hand. In Tokyo, however, he found Suzuki unwilling to abandon haragei, even in a confidential conversation with someone who shared his own views. “I assume you took office with some definite things in mind,” Togo told him in his heavy Kyushu accent, “since it will be anything but easy to manage the affairs of state now, with the war effort in its last throes.”

  Suzuki’s answer could not have alienated Togo more: “I think that we can still carry on the war for another two or three years.”

  Togo declined the post. “Even if I felt able to accept the grave responsibility of our diplomacy, the Prime Minister and I would be unable to co-operate effectively so long as we held divergent views on the prospects for the war.”

  But the matter did not end there. Too many others saw Togo as an advocate for peace and each in turn brought pressure upon him. Within twenty-four hours he was importuned by half a dozen leaders, including two jushin and the Emperor’s chief adviser. Admiral Okada, for instance, argued that Suzuki’s policy was not “necessarily rigid” and Togo could “help mold it,” and Okada’s son-in-law, Sakomizu, excused Suzuki: it would have been too hazardous for him to speak of an early peace at their initial meeting. “Such language, coming from one in the Prime Minister’s position and in those circumstances, might have had undesirable repercussions.”

  Togo could not understand such circuity. If Suzuki had agreed with him about peace, why couldn’t he have let him know in their private conversation? If Suzuki did not even trust the man he wanted as foreign minister, how could they possibly co-operate in the critical days ahead?

  The next appeal came from the office of the Privy Seal. Matsudaira, Kido’s chief secretary, revealed that the Emperor himself was hoping the war would end. This concerted effort brought Togo a second time to Suzuki, who now realized he must be more candid. “So far as the outcome of the war is concerned,” he told Togo, “your views are quite satisfactory to me. And as to diplomacy, you shall have a free hand.”

  Togo remained reluctant. He demanded assurance that the Cabinet would support peace negotiations if a study showed that the war could not be continued for three more years at least. Suzuki dropped all pretense. Without qualification he accepted Togo’s condition. To the rest of the world, however, the admiral continued haragei, pretending to be as dedicated to a fight to the bitter end as a Tojo.

  5.

  After a week on Okinawa, the two American Army divisions pressing south had still encountered nothing but enemy outposts and were far ahead of schedule.

  Admiral Turner was so confident that he radioed Nimitz at noon on April 8:

  I MAY BE CRAZY BUT IT LOOKS LIKE THE JAPS HAVE QUIT THE WAR, AT LEAST IN THIS SECTION.

  DELETE ALL AFTER “CRAZY” was Nimitz’ sardonic reply.

  The Army troops were about to encounter the formidable defense system above Shuri. Here the island was four miles wide, a series of rolling limestone hills pocked with natural caves, dotted with burial tombs and broken by terraces, escarpments and ravines. Since the hills ran generally from east to west, the Americans faced successive natural lines of defense.

  That afternoon, persistent enemy fire brought Buckner’s east flank to a complete halt while his west flank was delayed by a hill mass extending east for a thousand yards from the coast to Highway 5, a road running through the middle of the defense system all the way down to Shuri. This land elevation was Kakazu Ridge, two hills connected by a saddle. It didn’t look like much of an obstacle, for it was neither high nor jagged, merely a squat hump covered with grass, brush and small trees.

  But this chunky, ugly hill was one of the keys of the Shuri defense, and when the Americans stormed up to its crest on the morning of April 9 they were met by a spirited defense. By late afternoon, out of ammunition and their ranks decimated, they fell back. The next two days were a bloody stalemate as the Americans on both flanks repeatedly attacked and were thrown back.

  It was the battle Ushijima wanted, but being on the defense rankled his impatient subordinates; they had persuaded him, against his better judgment, to approve a six-battalion assault the following night, April 12, in conjunction with another mass kamikaze raid. The 22nd Regiment (of the 62nd Division) would attack on the left, and on the evening of the eleventh its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Masaru Yoshida, who had been in Okinawa less than a month, assembled his officers to outline the mission. “You will be traveling in darkness over bad roads and under heavy shelling; the secrecy of our plans must be maintained to the last. March in a sinuous ‘eel line.’ Although you are going to an unfamiliar place, do not make any noise when you arrive, but dig takotsubo in hard ground and camouflage them skillfully by dawn tomorrow.”

  It was raining heavily as the men, toting 110-lb. packs, started toward the front on the muddy roads.

  Early the following morning 185 kamikaze, accompanied by 150 fighters and 45 torpedo planes, began assaulting the ships around Okinawa. Then came 8 two-engine bombers; underneath them hung a new weapon, the oka (cherry blossom) bomb. Powered by three booster rockets, this one-way glider looked like a torpedo with small wings, and the pilot could dive its ton of tri-nitro-anisol explosives at more than 500 knots.ǁ The new suicide weapon was nicknamed baka (“stupid”) bomb by the Americans, but it didn’t lessen the terror it spread instantly throughout the fleet. At about 2:45 P.M. one dropped from the belly of its mother ship and arrowed into the destroyer Mannert L. Abele, which had just been staggered by a kamikaze hit. The ship jackknifed in two and sank almost instantly. Another oka exploded on the destroyer Stanly. In the meantime, kamikaze and conventional planes sank LCS(L)-33 and damaged a battleship, three destroyers and eight other ships.

  The assault on the ground was less successful. It opened with a concentrated artillery and mortar barrage, which lifted at midnight. Japanese infantrymen began infiltrating into the American positions, but the glare of NGF star shells caught them in the open and within an hour the counterattack faltered. For the first time Warrant Officer Kaname Imai of the 22nd Regiment, the son of a Shinto priest, heard the word “retreat” from his battalion commander. He repeated it, but his men stood uncomprehending. “After me!” called Imai and started trotting forward as if on the attack. His men followed and so did several other platoons, as he swung back to the rear.

  In Warm Springs, Georgia, it was still April 12. After lunch President Roosevelt sat for a water-color p
ortrait at the clapboard cottage called the Little White House, two miles from the Warm Springs Foundation. At 1:15 P.M. he closed his eyes and said quietly, “I have a terrific headache.” He slumped over unconscious.

  Dr. James Paullin, former president of the American Medical Association, arrived, after a two-hour race over back roads, to find the President “in a cold sweat, ashy gray and breathing with difficulty.” His pulse was barely perceptible and four minutes later his heart sounds disappeared completely. Dr. Paullin gave him an intracardiac dose of adrenalin. The President’s heart beat a few times, then stopped forever. It was 3:55 P.M.

  The Nazis looked upon his death as a last-minute reprieve from defeat. “Fate has laid low your greatest enemy. God has not abandoned us,” Goebbels feverishly told Hitler over the phone. “Twice he has saved you from savage assassins. Death, which the enemy aimed at you in 1939 and 1944, has now struck down our most dangerous enemy. It is a miracle!”

  Japan’s new leader, on the other hand, did not rejoice. Prime Minister Suzuki broadcast his condolences to the American people, expressing his “profound sympathy” over the loss of a man who was responsible for the “Americans’ advantageous position today.”a Japanese propagandists did take advantage of the situation, however, to promote a story that Roosevelt had died in anguish—and altered his last words from “I have a terrific headache” to “I have made a terrific mistake.”