by King, Dan
They all headed back out to their own entrance for some fresh air. Yamaguchi introduced two more radiomen, Tanaka and Yamazaki, who had also graduated from Yokosuka Communications School. It felt like a reunion.
The six men sat down to an ocean breeze on a patch of thick grass. Yamaguchi said, "We're classmates here. Don't hesitate to speak up. After all, we've eaten rice from the same pot. We'll help you adjust." Tanaka and Yamazaki nodded in unison. "Buck up, don't look so glum," Yamaguchi said as he produced a canteen from behind his back. "It's nearly full, too," Yamaguchi said as he handed the green canvas-covered aluminum canteen to Akikusa who unscrewed the silver cap; it banged against the canteen dangling from a short chain. Akikusa held the canteen with both hands and raised it to his lips but balked at the faint rotten-egg odor. He shot a questioning look at Yamaguchi, who smiled and nodded approvingly. Akikusa took a sip of the warm liquid that instantly reminded him of water from a hot springs bath.
Yamaguchi said, "And we can drink the whole thing." There would be a time in the future when Akikusa would give his right arm for a swig of that sulfur-tainted water. He passed the canteen to Kageyama, who made a face as he took a sip.
Water had always been a problem for the pre-war inhabitants of Iwo Jima. They used rain gutters and concrete catch basins to collect water. But when the island's population blossomed with the arrival of so many troops, the issue of water became a matter of grave concern. The Army brought in a special irrigation unit to dig wells with limited success. While the Japanese soldiers on Guadalcanal, and other islands, suffered from starvation, the unlucky souls on Iwo Jima were tortured by both hunger and thirst.
Yamaguchi unbuckled the flap of his musette bag to reveal a handful of rice balls and slices of pickled daikon radish wrapped in paper.[30] Large flies buzzed about as Yamaguchi transferred the rations to outstretched dirty hands. Akikusa bodded his head in silent appreciation, swatted away a fly, and bit into his rice ball. It too, had an odd taste. Seeing his expression, Yamaguchi said, "The rice tastes different because of the water. You'll get used to it." The lack of water was the first thing all the Japanese soldiers and sailors observed. "Look on the bright side," Yamaguchi said, "a lack of standing water means no mosquitoes, and that means no malaria."
As they consumed their rations, Yamaguchi shared the duty schedule and added an overview of the island. Yamaguchi then walked them to the farmer's house that would be their billet. There was an air raid shelter nearby. Yamaguchi pointed to some trees, "Those are octopus trees."[31] Akikusa could see where they got their name. "See the little green pineapple things? They are ready to eat when they turn orange. They are fibrous and tough to eat, but taste like chestnuts," Yamaguchi said. The locals pressed them for cooking oil, or fed them to their pigs.
Prior to the war, many of the locals worked at the sugar processing plant (Tōkyō Seitō Kōjō) or the sulfur refinery (Iwo Kōzan Seirenshō). The plants were under the control of Iwo Jima Industry Inc.48 The rest of the inhabitants were fishermen or farmers who tended medicinal coca plants, sugar cane, lemon grass, bananas, pineapples, tomatoes and other crops. The residents couldn't grow their own rice because the climate was too dry, so they depended on supply ships for their staple food of rice.
Following the air raids in June 1944, the women and children were evacuated. An undetermined number of males between the ages of 16 and 40 were conscripted as gunzoku (civilian contract workers) and put to work farming and digging tunnels.
Akikusa, Kageyama and Kumakura settled in to their new home. However, the crews of the transport vessels that brought them were not so lucky. The empty Enjū Maru formed up with Transport Convoy No. 0408 and set sail for Japan on August 4. Since the carrier Zuihō and her complement of destroyers had returned to Japan ahead of the convoy, it had no air cover for the return trip. Iwo Jima's radar unit picked up an incoming formation of planes and warned the transports. The handful of surviving Zeros and search planes still on Iwo Jima were sent into the air, not to do battle, but to escape being destroyed on the ground.
The transports were spotted about twenty-five miles north of Mukō Jima by aircraft from RAdm Joseph J. "Jocko" Clark's Task Group 58.1; aircraft from the carriers USS Bunker Hill and USS Lexington caught the undefended convoy in open water. Naval gunfire from four light cruisers and seven destroyers, detached from RAdm Laurence T. DuBose's TG 58.1 and TG 58.3, sank the cargo ship Ryūkō Maru and RAdm Ichimatsu Takahashi's flagship Matsu. US aircraft sank the transports Unkai Maru No.7, Enjū Maru, Tonegawa Maru and Shōgen Maru. They damaged Coastal Defense Vessels CD-4 and CD-12, which escaped along with Sub Chaser No. 51 and the destroyer Hatakaze.
US naval gunfire and carrier planes combined to finish off Transport Convoy No. 0408 by sinking the cargo ship Hokkai Maru.49 Also sunk, possibly by a US submarine, was the Yayoi Maru.
The following day on August 5, the Americans returned to Chichi Jima to deliver the coup de grace to Fast Transports No. 2, No. 4 and No. 104, and the cargo ship Hinkō Maru, which ran aground.[32] A dozen shuttle vessels were also lost in the two-day air raid. Although the transports were empty when they went down, the loss of their tonnage and trained crews was a hard blow to the Japanese who were desperate to reinforce Iwo Jima. The US Navy's surface and air forces racked up a juicy kill tally, but the real prize, the aircraft carrier Zuihō, had slipped through their fingers.50
After the fall of Saipan and the death of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, Iwo Jima's Keibitai naval ground defense unit was transferred, on paper, from the Central Pacific Fleet to the Third Air Fleet. Commander Tsunezō Wachi would report to a new boss named Vice-Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru who would be arriving in August. Commander Wachi was going to be dropped to the No. 2 position in the naval organization chart for Iwo Jima.
However, before Admiral Ichimaru arrived, there was a twist; another senior navy man would be coming to Iwo Jima; a pilot named Captain Samaji Inoue. In December 1941, Inoue had led the Taiwan-based 753rd Naval Air Group bombers to victory in the Philippines. In February 1944, Captain Inoue was assigned to the ground defense of Hainan Naval Air Group.[33] On July 10, 1944 Captain Samaji Inoue landed on Iwo Jima to take command of the Navy's Nanpō Shotō Kaigun Kōkūtai (Southern Area Islands Naval Air Group). Since Nanpō was an air group in name only, with no organic aircraft, Captain Inoue was responsible for maintaining other units' aircraft that used Iwo Jima as a temporary air base or staging area. These were mostly bombers targeting the Marianas, and reconnaissance planes conducting anti-submarine patrols. Captain Inoue had an ample supply of maintenance personnel, radiomen, equipment, food supplies, bombs and other ordnance.
A problem soon arose because both Commander Wachi and Captain Inoue assumed that they were second-in-command of the island's naval forces. A rivalry began between Commander Tsunezō Wachi, the surface fleet man who had been Iwo's naval commander since March, and the newcomer Captain Inoue, the pilot who technically outranked Wachi but was a parallel in the organization chart. This new command structure became the source of friction.
As a result of the all-too-familiar lack of a clear direction that occurs in many organizations, a power struggle emerged between two men who didn't see eye-to-eye. One incident was Captain Inoue's annoyance with Commander Wachi's decision to release naval assets to the army without his permission. Wachi had granted a request from the 145th Infantry Regiment's commander to dismantle several wooden buildings, including the damaged elementary school. The lumber was used by the army to build shelves, tables and ammunition racks inside their tunnels. Captain Inoue learned about it after the fact and was angry that Wachi didn't come to him first. Commander Wachi didn't need to consult with Captain Inoue because the buildings, and all civilian property were under Wachi's jurisdiction as the keibitai commander.51 Wachi was not intimidated by Inoue's complaints and stated that he wrote the following in a memo to Inoue, "Why don't you come out of your bunker once in a while and actually meet with the
army commanders? With your poor attitude you can expect no further cooperation from me."52 Wachi's insubordinate statement flew in the face of both Japanese naval tradition and social protocol.
Working Underground
Tsuruji Akikusa, who was assigned to Captain Inoue's unit, said the island was honeycombed with miles of tunnels blasted out with dynamite and scratched out of the earth with picks and shovels. However, solid rock formations and steam vents made it impossible to connect all of the bunkers. The units worked independently to construct their own fortifications, bunkers, air raid shelters and fighting positions.53 As naval radiomen, Akikusa, Kageyama and Kumakura, were spared from the backbreaking excavation work. Akikusa said the wireless operators' fingers were too important to risk damaging them with manual labor. The silent radio room was located several stories underground; the only sounds were the subdued metallic clacking of Morse keys, and the whisper of dull pencils scratching on logs called ‘red books'. The wireless operators passed the coded messages to the decoders, who toiled in an adjoining area separated by a curtain of blankets to create a sense of normalcy. In one corner, a sailor stood watch over a bucket of water. The guard would dish out one cup of water per man, per shift. Akikusa wanted to plunge his head into the bucket and drink it dry. The small cup of water was just enough to prevent dehydration, but not enough to produce much sweat. "We radiomen didn't have individual canteens so we depended on that bucket," Akikusa said.
It was hot enough just being in the tunnels, but wearing a radio headset for six hours at a time was torture. His ears grew hot and moist under the rubber headset; a small bead of sweat would creep into an ear canal causing a itch; an itch that he didn't dare scratch for fear of missing a dot or a dash in an incoming message. It was brutal work, sitting in the hot, dry foul air listening intently for the next Morse code message.
Akikusa strained to jot down the dots and dashes that came racing through the receiver. There was pressure to get it right every time because a single missed syllable could mean disaster. There were three cardinal sins; dropped syllables, mistaken syllables, and extra symbols. "We had to listen hard for a specific symbol that marked the end of a message. It was harder at dawn and dusk when the radio waves were affected by atmospheric conditions," Akikusa said. "There was a feeling of relief when I heard the "end of message" symbol. I remember it well." To demonstrate to the author, Akikusa tapped out the code on the tabletop, "dot dot dot dash dot dash".
Both he and Kageyama were off duty one morning and decided to forgo sleep to explore the area. They exited the large main entrance and walked south down the long slope to the middle of the island. They walked past some bare papaya trees to the cheery tune of an uguisu bush warbler. In spite of the presence of so many men on the island, the little birds weren't afraid of humans. Akikusa said one could walk right up to the trusting little birds.
The pair of explorers passed a group of men digging an air raid shelter near a Chinese banyan tree. The laborers were coated with fine yellow dust, and paid no attention to the radiomen. The diggers hauled wicker baskets of soil and rocks from inside the dark hole. Akikusa counted himself lucky for being exempt from such tasks. The pair continued their stroll, passing under a torii gate that marked the path to the Iwo Jima Jinja Shinto shrine. The young men approached the shrine, bowed and reverently clapped twice to pay their respects. The shrine was used by the locals to celebrate the sugar cane harvest. The pair traveled further, crossing a forested area dotted with anti-aircraft emplacements and machine gun bunkers. They turned north and came upon a grassy plain that was to be the future Airfield No. 3. Akikusa said that it didn't even resemble an airfield. It was just a grassy flat plain with rocks and boulders here and there. Akikusa vividly remembered seeing a single wrecked aircraft, carefully camouflaged with nets and tree branches.
Friendly planes would occasionally fly in to reinforce the island, or use it as a staging point for attacks against the Marianas. It was common for Japanese planes to temporarily flee for safety when US bombers approached. Akikusa was on duty one day during one such incident. Akikusa received an urgent unencoded message tapped out by a friendly pilot who stated that he was running out of fuel and wanted permission to return. Akikusa scribbled down the message and presented it to the duty officer and waited for a reply to send. The pilot repeated his request for permission to return to Iwo Jima. The duty officer instructed Akikusa to tap the following response in the clear, "Permission Denied. Possible enemy activity. Seek out and crash dive into an enemy ship. End transmission." The pilot tapped a terse reply, "Please verify and report my death in battle." There were no further transmissions. "He probably flew around until he ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea. What a stupid waste of life. I often think about the pilot's final transmission," Akikusa said.
On August 13th, communication chief Lieutenant Yosaburō Takanō called Akikusa and Kageyama into his "office" which was a small carved out anteroom. He instructed them to head to the Tamana-yama Communications Unit bunker to deliver a personal letter and some supplies to the communications chief. The pair slung a heavy bag of uncooked rice over a bamboo pole and walked to the Tamana-yama Communications Unit to deliver the message and the supplies. They were delayed from immediately returning by B-24 bombers that blasted the airfields.54 While waiting for the air raid to lift, Akikusa noted that the Tamana-yama Communications bunker was built like a fortress with 3-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls and a 3-foot-thick roof covered by two yards of rocks and sand. The floors were concrete instead of dirt, and men slept on thick mats instead of on the tops of steel drums. The best thing was that the galley served hot miso soup, steamed rice and vegetables.
After the all-clear signal, the pair reluctantly returned to their Nanpō HQ bunker. Shortly after this incident, Lieutenant Takano told them he was lending their services to the Tamana-yama Communications Unit for two weeks. To Akikusa, it meant hot food and a proper bunk on which to sleep; two things that the enlisted men cherished.
On August 15, 1944, Rear Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru boarded a transport plane headed to the sulfurous island that would become his final resting place.55 In order to coordinate and control Iwo Jima defenses, Japanese IGHQ sent him to command the island's Navy units. The Admiral was no political appointee, but a grizzled, hands-on leader who paid his dues in blood, sweat and engine oil. Ichimaru graduated from the Naval Academy located at Etajima in 1913, and spent four years serving at sea. He was an aviation trailblazer who in 1917 joined the Naval Aviation School's third graduating class.56 In January 1925, Ichimaru became squadron commander at Kasumigaura Naval Air base. He was injured in a crash in May 1925 that nearly ended his career, suffering a broken leg and fractures to his face. After years of convalescing and several operations, Ichimaru returned to duty in 1929 as commander of the newly formed Yokaren aviation program. Ichimaru's Spartan-like discipline and demands for both physical and academic excellence earned him the moniker "Father of the Yokaren."
In the coming years, Ichimaru's career blossomed. In 1936, he was given command of the Chinkai Air Group, a reconnaissance and anti-submarine unit stationed in current day South Korea. Following this, he took over the Yokohama Naval Air Group, the Yokosuka Naval Training Base Naval Air Group, and then the Chichi Jima Naval Air Group. In November 1939, Ichimaru took the reins of the 13th Naval Air Group in China. Ichimaru raised eyebrows by often accompanying bombing missions over the continent. After his promotion to Rear Admiral, Ichimaru was given the 21st Air Flotilla, followed by a drastic change of scenery to New Ireland in New Guinea to lead the 13th Combined Air Fleet.
Ichimaru's final posting was to command the 27th Air Flotilla (Kōkū Sentai), a respectable sized organization with six Naval Air Groups that were spread out at Oita, Kisarazu, Katori and Iwo Jima.57 In reality, it was a paper tiger with little in the way of serious offensive capabilities.
Akikusa and Kageyama moved again on September 1, 1944, from Tamana-yama to
Rear Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru's Kitano Communications Unit bunker in the north. On September 15th, Akikusa received disheartening news over the wireless, the Americans had invaded Peleliu. It was clear that Iwo Jima was on the hit list, too. Akikusa told Kageyama, "The good news is that this bunker is in the perfect spot to survive the upcoming battle. If we can hold out here long enough, the Navy will sail in and destroy the US Fleet." They spent the next three months hunched over their radios deep inside the Kitano Communications Unit bunker in the north.
Ensign Satoru Ōmagari
Another officer who landed on Chidori Airfield on August 15, 1944, was Ensign Satoru Ōmagari. He was born June 1, 1922, in Fukushima Prefecture in the tiny farming town of Kodaka-chō. He was the third born to a family with seven children. Ōmagari's father died when he was twelve, so his grandfather, the town mayor, stepped in to help raise the four boys and three girls. His granduncle (a naval captain who fought in the Russo-Japan War) encouraged the boys to study hard. The oldest son graduated from a pharmacy college, served in the Army, and in 1941, opened his own pharmacy. The second son studied at prestigious Waseda University. Satoru Ōmagari studied engineering at Akita Mining College. The fourth son studied engineering at Tōhoku University.
The Pearl Harbor attack occurred while Ōmagari was a college student. "The war in Manchuria had been going on for several years, so I just figured we had opened another front in the Pacific," he said. He could have joined the military like hundreds of thousands of young men, but Ōmagari had no interest in wearing a uniform. He took advantage of his college deferment and thought, with any luck the war would be over soon.