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

by Toland, John

  6 Operation Z

  Interviews with Admirals Ryunosuke Kusaka, Shigeru Fukudome and Sadatoshi Tomioka; Captains Naohiro Sata, Yasuji Watanabe, Tsunezo Wachi, Kazunari Miyo, Atsushi Oi and Eijiro Suzuki; Commanders Heijiro Abe, Yoshio Shiga and Suguru Suzuki; Lieutenant Juzo Mori; Ensign Takeo Yoshikawa; Mitsuharu Noda, Heijiro Omi, Yoshio Kodama, Sayao Otsuka; Mrs. Chiyo Iwamiya; Generals Kenryo Sato, Minoru Genda; and Admiral Sadamu Sanagi; Colonels Kumao Imoto and Takushiro Hattori; Lieutenant Colonel Shigeharu Asaeda; letter from Carl S. Sipple to Walter Lord (February 28, 1957); “The Combined Fleet and My Memoirs of the Navy,” a magazine article by Heijiro Omi; “The Inside Story of the Pearl Harbor Plan,” by Robert E. Ward, in U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings—hereafter referred to as USNIP (December 1951); “Combined Fleet Secret Operations Order No. 1”; Tora, Tora, Tora, by Gordon Prange (published in Japan in 1966); The Great Pacific War, by Hector C. Bywater; Isoroku Yamamoto, by Hiroyuki Agawa; Get Yamamoto, by Burke Davis; Day of Infamy, by Walter Lord; The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, by Masanori Ito; The Emperor’s Sword, by Noel F. Busch; FARAGO; Singapore: The Japanese Version, by Masanobu Tsuji; History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol III, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, by Samuel Eliot Morison; The Fall of the Philippines, by Louis Morton; DEAKIN & STORRY; and WILLOUGHBY.

  7 “This War May Come Quicker Than Anyone Dreams”

  See Notes for Chapter 3. There were also interviews with Admirals Ryunosuke Kusaka, Keizo Komura, Kazutoshi Kuhara, Sadatoshi Tomioka, Kichisaburo Nomura, Gunichi Mikawa and Harold Stark; Captains Yasuji Watanabe, Naohiro Sata and Kazunari Miyo; Commanders Yoshio Shiga, Hirata Matsumura, Saguru Suzuki, Heijiro Abe; Lieutenant Juzo Mori; Ensign Takeo Yoshikawa; Heijiro Omi, Mitsuharu Noda; Generals Minoru Genda, Kenryo Sato, Teiichi Suzuki and Hiroshi Oshima; Colonel Kumao Imoto; Lieutenant Colonel Shigeharu Asaeda; Frank Trammell; George Elliott, Jr.; Ambassador Haruhiko Nishi; Ikuko Kimura; Fumihiko Togo; Mrs. Saburo Kurusu; the late Bernard Baruch; Mrs. Yoshiko Kugiya; Marquis Kido; Naoki Hoshino; Okinori Kaya; United States Strategic Bombing Survey (hereafter referred to as USSBS) Navy interrogation #29 (Captain M. Fuchida); “Political Survey Prior to Outbreak of War,” a report by Admiral Sadatoshi Tomioka; IMTFE documents # 1079 (Kazuji Kameyama) and #2597 (Tateki Shirao); an interview with Vice Admiral Frank E. Beatty in the National Review (December 13, 1966); The Lost War, by Masuo Kato; A Song of Ascents, by E. Stanley Jones; PRANGE; Bridge to the Sun, by Gwen Terasaki; FARAGO; LORD; TOLISCHUS; ITO; The War against Japan, Vol. I, by Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby; Grand Strategy, Vol. III, Part I, by J. M. A. Gwyer and J. R. M. Butler; Chief of Staff Prewar Plans and Preparations, by Mark S. Watson; MORTON; MORISON, The Rising Sun; What Happened at Pearl Harbor?, by Hans Louis Trefousse; Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, by Roberta Wohlstetter; TSUJI; Sunk, by Mochitsura Hashimoto; The Puzzle of Pearl Harbor, by Paul S. Burtness and Warren U. Ober; and But Not in Shame, by John Toland. The last book was also used throughout Chapters 8 to 13.

  The rare conversation between Grand Chamberlain Fujita and the Emperor appears in Sun over the Raging Seas, the Suzuki Family Book, which was privately printed in 1969. Chamberlain Fujita revealed this information because he felt he would soon die and wanted it recorded for posterity.

  8 “I Shall Never Look Back”

  Interviews with Admirals Chester Nimitz, C. C. Bloch, Ernest Holtzworth, W. W. Smith, Harold Stark, Kichisaburo Nomura, Keizo Komura, Gunichi Mikawa, Ryunosuke Kusaka and Sadatoshi Tomioka; Captains Yasuji Watanabe, Eijiro Suzuki, Kazunari Miyo and Naohiro Sata; Commanders Heijiro Abe, Hirata Matsumura and Yoshio Shiga; Lieutenant Juzo Mori; Ensigns Takeo Yoshikawa and Kazuo Sakamaki; Generals Minoru Genda, Joseph H. Moore and Richard Carmichael; Colonels Susumu Nishiura, Takushiro Hattori, William Morse and William Welch; Lieutenant Colonel Shigeharu Asaeda; and Major Durward Brooks; Lieutenant Robert Overstreet; Heijiro Omi; Mitsuharu Noda; Jesse Gaines; C. O. Lines; Donald Briggs; Dwaine Davis; Baron Ian Mutsu; Marquis Kido; Robert Trumbull; Okinori Kaya; Morio Tateno; Yates McDaniel. Also USSBS Navy interrogations #6 and #29 (Captain M. Fuchida); memorandum by Ferdinand Mayor on his conversation with Kurusu on December 7, 1941; “Records of the Meeting of the Inquiry Committee of the Privy Council, December 8, 1941”; article on Pearl Harbor by Robert Trumbull in the New York Times Magazine (December 4, 1966); PRANGE; LORD; KATO; TSUJI; Way of a Fighter, by Claire Lee Chennault; The Flying Tigers, by John Toland; The Second World War, Vol. III, The Grand Alliance, by Winston Churchill; MORISON, The Rising Sun; WOHLSTETTER; TREFOUSSE; Ciano’s Diaries; MORTON; This I Remember, by Eleanor Roosevelt; As He Saw It, by Elliott Roosevelt; They Fought with What They Had, by Walter D. Edmonds; and BURTNESS & OBER.

  9 “The Formidable Years That Lie Before Us”

  Interviews with President Sergio Osmeña; Generals Hiroshi Oshima, James Devereux and Carlos Romulo; Admirals Chester Nimitz and Ryunosuke Kusaka; Captains Tsunezo Wachi and Masamichi Fujita; Commanders Katsusaku Takahashi and Choichi Koyama; Lieutenants Haruki Iki and Sadao Takai; and Carl Mydans; “Japanese Victory: The Sinking of Force Z,” by David Mason, in History of the Second World War magazine, Vol. II, No. 13; IMTFE document #4002 (General Oshima); The Turn of the Tide, by Arthur Bryant; From Suez to Singapore, by Cecil Browne; GWYER & BUTLER; KIRBY; Samurai, by Saburo Sakai; The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Vol. III, The Reckoning; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer; CHURCHILL; Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran; Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1941–1942, by Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell; and So Sorry, No Peace, by Arch Gunnison.

  10 “For a Wasted Hope and Sure Defeat”

  Interviews with Carl Mydans; Generals Akira Nara, Takeo Imai and Ichiji Sugita; Colonels Kumao Imoto and Susumu Nishiura; Antonio Aquino, President Sergio Osmeña; Lieutenant Colonel Shigeharu Asaeda; Admirals Sadatoshi Tomioka and T. H. Binford; Captains Ko Nagasawa and Kazunari Miyo; Commander Shukichi Toshikawa; correspondence with Admiral C. E. L. Helfrich; “Operations of Malaya Campaign, from 8th December, 1941, to 15th February, 1942,” official report by Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival; “Japanese Victory: The Conquest of Malaya,” by Arthur Swinson, in History of the Second World War magazine, Vol. VI, No. 11; “Malayan Campaign,” a report by Shigeharu Asaeda; “Statement on the Malayan Campaign,” by General Tomoyuki Yamashita at his trial in Manila; Battle Report: Pearl Harbor to Coral Sea, by Walter Karig, and others; The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire, by David H. James; Fortress, by Kenneth Attiwell; Singapore Is Silent, by George Weller; CHURCHILL, Vol. IV, The Hinge of Fate; Why Singapore Fell, by H. G. Bennett; TSUJI; KIRBY; The Japanese Thrust, by Lionel Wigmore; George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, by Forrest C. Pogue; MORISON, The Rising Sun; MORTON; Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders, by Carroll V. Glines; and MacArthur and the War Against Japan, by Frazier Hunt.

  Stories filed by Japanese reporters praising Colonel Takechi for his crossing of Mount Natib were approved by General Nara. He never revealed the facts—not until 1960, and then, he told me, “only because I went to Amherst and you went to Williams.”

  11 “To Show Them Mercy Is to Prolong the War”

  Interviews with Generals Albert M. Jones, Clifford Bluemel, Takeo Imai, Akira Nara and Carlos Romulo; Colonels Susumu Nishiura, Takushiro Hattori, Kumao Imoto and Nobuhiko Jimbo; Antonio Aquino; Roy Castleberry and numerous survivors of the Bataan Death March; correspondence with Captain John Bulkeley and Mark Wohlfeld; “A Strange Order Received at the Bataan Battle Front,” an unpublished article by Lieutenant General Takeo Imai; “Dawn of the Philippines,” privately printed pamphlet by Nobuhiko Jimbo; “Bataan Death March,” doctoral thesis of Stanley Lawrence Falk; the Homma Diary (unpublished); documents for the defense at General Homma’s trial; MORTON; I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, by Carlos Romulo; MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History, by Courtney Whitney; They Were Expendable, by W. L. White; The Dyess Story, by William Dyess; and General Wainwright’s Story, by Jonathan M. Wainwright.

  12 “But Not in Shame”
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  Interviews with General Takaji Wachi; Colonels Jesse T. Traywick, Jr., Nobuhiko Jimbo, Susumu Nishiura and Takushiro Hattori; Admiral Sadatoshi Tomioka; Captains Yasuji Watanabe and Kazunari Miyo; Lieutenant Hisamichi Kano; John H. Skeen, Jr.; Gen Nishino and Heijiro Omi; THE HOMMA DIARY; the Homma documents; “Corregidor—A Name, A Symbol, A Tradition,” by Colonel William C. Braly, in the Coast Artillery Journal (July-August 1947); POGUE; Corregidor: Isle of Delusion, by Kazumaro Uno; Corregidor: The Saga of a Fortress, by James H. and William M. Belote; WAINWRIGHT; and HUNT.

  In But Not in Shame I concluded that the atrocities committed on the Death March had not been “purposefully planned and executed.” Colonel Ray O’Day, one of the survivors of the march, took issue with me after publication of the book and put me in touch with Colonel Nobuhiko Jimbo. With new information from Colonel Jimbo and Gen Nishino I approached commanders on Bataan such as General Imai and received corroboration of Colonel O’Day’s charges.

  13 The Tide Turns

  Interviews with Admirals Ryunosuke Kusaka, Frank Jack Fletcher, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance, Keizo Komura, Sadatoshi Tomioka; Captains Ko Nagasawa, Kazunari Miyo, Yasuji Watanabe; Commanders Yahachi Tanabe, Heijiro Abe and Yoshio Shiga; Lieutenant Wilmer Earl Gallaher; Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki; General Minoru Genda; Colonels Susumu Nishiura and Takushiro Hattori; Mitsuharu Noda and Heijiro Omi; USSBS Navy interrogations #39 (Captain H. Ohara), #4 (Captain Taijiro Aoki) and # 1 (Captain Takahisa Amagai); “I Sank the Yorktown at Midway,” by Yahachi Tanabe, with Joseph D. Harrington, in USNIP (May 1963); “Never a Battle Like Midway,” by J. Bryan III in the Saturday Evening Post (March 26, 1949); “Torpedo Squadron 8,” in Life (August 31, 1942); Incredible Victory, by Walter Lord; Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command, by Vice Admiral E. P. Forrestal; Climax at Midway, by Thaddeus Taleja; Midway—The Battle That Doomed Japan, by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya; ITO; Combat Command, by Admiral Frederick C. Sherman; Queen of the Flat-Tops, by Stanley Johnston; MORISON, Vol. IV, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions; and The Code-Breakers, by David Kahn.

  In my version of the Battle of Midway in But Not in Shame, Gallaher and McClusky attack Akagi, while Best attacks Soryu and Leslie goes after Kaga. This account was based on interviews and after-action reports, but since then Walter Lord, while researching Incredible Victory, became convinced that the American fliers, who had only fragmentary information about the Japanese carriers, were mistaken. Mr. Lord’s conclusions, I believe, are correct. Incidentally, Mr. Lord and I interviewed several naval men in Japan simultaneously in 1966 and later exchanged notes.

  14 Operation Shoestring

  Interviews with Admirals Gunichi Mikawa and Sadatoshi Tomioka; Commander Haruki Itoh; General Haruo Konuma; Colonel Kumao Imoto; Haruyoshi Saima; Brian Hackman; J. C. Glover; and Gen Nishino; “A Brief History of Geological and Geophysical Investigations in the British Solomon Islands 1881–1961,” a report by J. C. Glover; Guadalcanal Diary, by Richard Tregaskis; The Coast Watchers, by Eric A. Feldt; SAKAI; and POGUE.

  The following books were used throughout Chapters 14 to 17: Isle of Death: Guadalcanal, by Gen Nishino; The Guadalcanal Campaign, by Major John L. Zimmerman, USMCR; Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, by Lieutenant Colonel Frank O. Hough, USMCR, Major Verle E. Ludwig, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr.; The Great Sea War, edited by E. B. Potter and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz; Semper Fidelis, by Marine Corps combat correspondents (hereafter referred to as SEMPER FIDELIS); 1942: The Year That Doomed the Axis, by Henry H. Adams; MORISON, Vol. V, The Struggle for Guadalcanal; Guadalcanal: The First Offensive, by John Miller, Jr.; Savo, by Richard F. Newcomb; The Big E, by Edward P. Stafford; Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A. A. Vandegrift, U.S.M.C., as told to Robert B. Asprey; Challenge for the Pacific, by Robert Leckie; The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. IV, The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, edited by Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate; ITO; The United States Navy in World War II and The United States Marine Corps in World War II, compiled and edited by S. E. Smith.

  15 Green Hell

  See Notes for Chapter 14. Additional sources were interviews with General Haruo Konuma and Gen Nishino; “Guadalcanal,” by Koji Mori, in the Mainichi (August 5, 1967); Guadalcanal, by Masanobu Tsuji.

  According to Brian Hackman, who recently mapped Guadalcanal for the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, two rivers near Henderson Field are spelled incorrectly by U. S. Army and Marine historians: “Matanikau” and “Lunga” should be Mataniko and Lungga.

  The Japanese operation to retake Guadalcanal was called KA. Some Western historians have assumed this stood for “Guadalcanal,” in the mistaken belief that it was the first syllable of the Japanese for “Guadalcanal.” Ka is merely a letter in the Japanese alphabet.

  16 “I Deserve Ten Thousand Deaths”

  See Notes for Chapter 14. Also, interviews with Gen Nishino; Generals Haruo Konuma and Hitoshi Imamura; Admirals Keizo Komura, Ryunosuke Kusaka, Jinichi Kusaka, Sadatoshi Tomioka and Tomiji Koyanagi; Captains Ko Nagasawa, Toshikazu Ohmae and Masahide Yamamoto; and Commander Yoshio Shiga; USSBS Navy interrogation #16 (Commander Masatake Okumiya); “Japan’s Losing Struggle for Guadalcanal,” by Vice Admiral Raizo Tanaka, with the assistance of Roger Pineau, in USNIP (August 1956); TSUJI, Guadalcanal; The Cactus Air Force, by Thomas G. Miller, Jr.; Admiral Halsey’s Story, by Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III; Marine! The Life of Lieutenant General Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller, by Burke Davis.

  17 The End

  See Notes for Chapter 14. Also, interviews with Gen Nishino; Generals Kenryo Sato, Hitoshi Imamura, Chikuro Yamamoto, Haruo Konuma and Teiichi Suzuki; Colonels Kumao Imoto, Mitsuo Suginoo and Susumu Nishiura; Major Einosuke Iemura; and Captain Masahide Yamamoto; Admirals Tomiji Koyanagi and Sadatoshi Tomioka; Captain Yasuji Watanabe; Commander Haruki Itoh; and Tadashi Suzuki; USSBS Navy interrogation #33 (Lieutenant Commander Horishi Tokuno); “Miraculous Total Evacuation of Japanese Troops from Guadalcanal,” unpublished article by Haruki Itoh; “The Retreat from Guadalcanal,” a memorandum by Rear Admiral Tomiji Koyanagi; IMTFE documents #62081 and #55452 (Colonel Joichiro Sanada); TSUJI, Guadalcanal; General Kenney Reports, by George C. Kenney; and Our Jungle Road to Tokyo, by Robert L. Eichelberger.

  To avoid standing trial as a war criminal, Colonel Tsuji went underground in Thailand, immediately after the surrender, disguised as a Buddhist priest. He made his way secretly to Japan and hid for thirty months with friends such as Yoshio Kodama. He surfaced when the tribunals ended, and in September 1952 was elected to the Diet from the first district in Ishikawa Prefecture. He was re-elected in 1956 but resigned three years later to run for the House of Councilors, to which he was elected. As he was taking his seat General Kawaguchi shouted at him, “Tsuji-san, you are not qualified to represent the people. Have shame!” Kawaguchi had been feuding with Tsuji ever since his emergence. “I can’t bear to see a man of such complete immorality writing best sellers, riding high and becoming nouveau riche,” he told Gen Nishino. “My patience is running out.” The two antagonists finally had a face-to-face debate before a capacity audience at Town Hall in Kanazawa. Kawaguchi not only accused Tsuji of lying about the Guadalcanal campaign but charged him with atrocities against prisoners in Singapore and the Philippines. Tsuji denied the accusations but admitted he had erred in calling Kawaguchi a coward for leaving his troops on Guadalcanal; he had not known the facts when he made the charge.

  In 1961 the Japanese government sent Tsuji to Southeast Asia to investigate the political and military situation. He arrived in Bangkok on April 4 and continued on to Laos where he vanished. Several months later it was reported that Tsuji had entered Red China, and in December the Japanese Red Cross requested the Red Chinese Red Cross to locate him. He never was found and his mysterious disappearance has resulted in numerous sensational rumors: he was working for the Communists; he was working against the Communists; he was in the Middle East; he was in Japan incognito. Mrs. Chitose Tsuji believes her husband is dead, but Shige
haru Asaeda—who had accompanied him on numerous postwar trips to interview Nasser, Mao, Chou En-lai, and other Asian and Middle East leaders—reports there is a slight possibility that he is in a Red Chinese prison.

  18 Of Mice and Men

  Interviews with Generals Hitoshi Imamura, Hideo Iwakuro and Kenryo Sato; Admirals Jinichi Kusaka and Ryunosuke Kusaka; Captains Atsushi Oi and Yasuji Watanabe; Hachiro Takahasi; Major Yoshitaka Horie; and Yoshio Kodama; “Fragments from F.D.R.,” by Edgar Snow, in Monthly Review (March 1957); “The Social Perception of Skin Color in Japan,” by Hiroshi Wagatsuma, in Daedalus (Spring 1967); letter from Pearl Buck to Mrs. Roosevelt, December 12, 1941 (in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library); “The Race Barrier That Must Be Destroyed,” by Pearl Buck, in the New York Times Magazine (May 31, 1942); Elmer Davis letter (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library); “I Shot Down Yamamoto,” by Colonel Thomas Lanphier, Jr., in Reader’s Digest (January 1967); “Why Japan’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Failed,” by Captain Atsushi Oi, in USNIP (June 1952); Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, by Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman and Byron Fairchild; Strategy and Command: The First Two Years, by Louis Morton; Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare: 1943–1944, by Maurice Matloff; America’s Concentration Camps, by Allan R. Bosworth; A History of the Minami Organization, by Hachiro Takahashi; Memoirs of an Interpreter, by A. H. Birse; I Was There, by Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy; KENNEY; DAVIS, Get Yamamoto; Fleet Admiral King, by Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill; The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians, by Brian W. Garfield; MORISON, Vol. VII, Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls; Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls, by Philip A. Crowl and Edmund G. Love; MORISON, Vol. VIII, New Guinea and the Marianas; Global Mission, by H. H. Arnold; HALSEY & BRYAN; KODAMA; Southeast Asia, Past and Present, by Nicholas Tarling; Breakthrough in Burma, by Ba Maw; EDEN; LORD MORAN; The Memoirs of General Lord Ismay; Triumph in the West, by Arthur Bryant; CHURCHILL, HINGE OF FATE, and Vol. V, Closing the Ring.