by King, Dan
The navy troops helped Nishi's group unload the trucks and set up tents. "Despite so much destruction, there was no despair in their eyes. Their friendly smiles seemed out of place on that depressing island. They made me feel optimistic again," said Nishi.
A petty officer guided Corporals Nishi and Hachiya to their barracks, which was a wooden house that once belonged to a local family. The house had polished wooden floors and tatami straw mats. After stowing their personal gear, they climbed back in the trucks to attend a briefing at the airfield. The meeting was conducted in a musty canvas tent with the sides rolled up for ventilation and a ceiling that was well ventilated with shrapnel holes. Nishi learned that the command of the Army's fighters would fall under Navy Captain Samaji Inoue who attended the meeting in his white uniform. He stood out in contrast against the other officers in green uniforms. The army mechanics would be getting their water and meals from the Navy. This was good news for Nishi because he said it was well known that Navy chow was better than Army grub.
An naval enlisted man entered the tent and calmly interrupted the meeting by announcing, "Enemy planes are approaching." Unflustered, the naval personnel packed up their papers, folded the table and easel, and dropped the tent flat. The group walked towards a cave entrance in a small hill. Inside was a concrete and rebar reinforced U-shape tunnel with three-foot thick concrete blast walls protecting both entrances that faced the airfield. The tunnel had electric lighting and could hold about 100 men. In the center of the bunker was an angled shaft leading up to the crest of the hill. It provided ventilation and acted as an exit to the top of the mound that was crowned by a pole with a striped windsock, a 25 mm twin-mount anti-aircraft gun, and a modest wooden lookout tower. The Motoyama Command Center had a direct landline to the island's radar station, so it received constant news of all radar contacts. When the radar station picked up enemy aircraft sixty-miles out to sea, it would phone with the distance and direction. This information was fed up to the lookout that would announce it via megaphone to the ground crews working below on the airfield. He would update and repeat this announcement as the enemy aircraft advanced. This allowed the men to work as long as possible before heading for safety.
The briefing continued inside the bunker under the glow of electric lights. Minutes later Nishi heard a long eerie complaint from a hand-cranked siren. It was the five-minute warning from the observation tower; the Americans had approached to within thirty miles. Nishi said as the bombers drew closer, the lookout used high-power optics to observe the B-24s' bomb bay doors. Once the bomb bay doors rolled open, the lookout would issue a warning to the men inside the bunker using a sound power phone (like the kind used on ships). Once the bombs began their arching trajectory, the lookout would descend the steps of the angled shaft down into the safety of the bunker.
When the lookout slid into the bunker, Nishi mimicked the actions of the men around him. As a defense against the shock waves, the men crouched down, covered their ears and opened their mouths. Nishi got his first taste of war as dozens of 500-lb bombs crashed around the airfield. The concussive blasts spread out like ripples on a lake, only much faster. "The bombs didn't go ‘boom, boom' like in the movies, it was more like very fast thunder. It was terrifying," Nishi said. He felt the changing air pressure inside his chest; the ground trembled like an old wooden roller coaster. He recalled the cacophony of sounds; whistles, shrieks, whirring growls, and thunderclaps. "My ears were ringing so badly that I thought my ear drums had burst," said Nishi. The roars were mixed with a typhoon-like shower of debris falling back to earth. "I worried about losing my composure in front of my friend Hachiya, but neither he nor anyone else paid attention to me," said Nishi. The bunker's entrance was filled with the overwhelming acrid smell of gunpowder and fine, yellow dust.
After the all-clear signal, trucks jammed with troops rushed out of underground bunkers to fill in the bomb craters. They drove small tractor rollers to pack down the earth. "There were large pieces of heavy, jagged shrapnel everywhere, some were stabbed into the earth like tombstones," said Nishi.
As for the island's response to the attack, Nishi said, "We didn't send up any aircraft, and the enemy lazily flew back to Saipan." He added, "I still don't like the sound of fire truck sirens."
Following the raid, a mess steward brought food to the bunker. "The Navy ate better than us to begin with, but the naval aviators had it even better. We were issued delicious rations of canned pork, mackerel, sardines, and even beef," said Nishi.
The next day, November 30, brought the arrival of the twelve Oscar fighters. The aircraft wore camouflage coats of green speckles over unpainted aluminum skins. Their wings and fuselage bore the distinctive Hinomaru red circles on wide white bands. This new recognition system was a response to trigger-happy homeland gunners, much like the black and white invasion stripes on Allied aircraft in the Normandy invasion. The Oscar pilots touched down at Motoyama Airfield and were greeted by enthusiastic army troops who boiled out of the ground like ants. Nishi pushed his way through the eager crowd and heard something familiar; it was his native Kagoshima dialect. Nishi discovered that these Army troopers were from the Kagoshima 145th Infantry Regiment. "How wonderful it was to talk with men from home," Nishi said. One of those Kagoshima boys might have been Teruo Sasamine, an enlisted machine gunner who had been aboard the Noto Maru with Lieutenant Genichi Hattori.[43]
Like at Chidori Airfield, the troops gathered around the newcomers and asked questions about the home front. The 145th Infantry Regiment had been on Iwo Jima since July and they hungered for fresh news. The Kagoshima infantry boys pitched in to push the planes off the airfield into U-shaped revetments. In addition to transport vessel escort duty, the 23rd Sentai's fighters were expected to pick up where the Navy's Zero fighters left off.
At dawn, Nishi and the other maintenance men pushed the fighters out of their revetments in preparation for the expected mission. The maintenance men performed their walk-a-round inspections followed by an oral checklist. Nishi sat in one of the cockpits waiting for the attention of the starter truck. Once his radial engine sputtered and barked to life, Nishi carefully throttled it up while monitoring the gauges for abnormalities. After confirming all was in order, the Oscars were shut down, topped off with aviation gasoline and ready to go at a moments' notice.
At noon, a call came from the radar station that an enemy formation had been picked up sixty miles away. The ground crews started their fighters' engines as the pilots dashed to the flight line.[44] The sound of a dozen engines growling to life was inspirational to the defenders who resembled prairie dogs as they poked their heads out of their bunkers to watch the spectacle. It had been a long time since they had seen so many fighters start up at once.
Carrying the hopes of many on their wings, the Oscars rose to meet the incoming B-24 bombers. The Oscars had no luck in bringing down the large four-engine bombers. The only things that fell from the sky were American bombs. Some of the explosives were of the time-delay variety that would ignite up to two hours later. "We hated those bombs the most," said Nishi.
The 145th Infantry machine gunner, Teruo Sasamine, said the Japanese fighters were no match for the American bombers or fighters. "As a machine gunner, I could easily identify the different sounds of American machine guns and our own aircraft machine guns. Our planes had a much slower rate of fire," said Sasamine.70
A day or two later, the 23rd Sentai's pilots and ground crews were ordered to assemble at 8:00 a.m. for a greeting from the island's supreme naval commander, Rear-Admiral Rinosuke Ichimaru. As the airmen stood in formation outside the Motoyama Command Center bunker, a luxury car appeared. A door opened to reveal the figure of Admiral Ichimaru in his dark blue uniform, billed cap, white gloves and sword. The Admiral stepped out of the command car and climbed a short flight of steps to a wooden podium. He shot a long, purposeful gaze out over the small group of men, then he bellowed out in a foghorn voice
saying, "Officers and men of the Army's 23rd Sentai, the war situation is grave." Admiral Ichimaru paused to make eye contact to convey his sincerity. In a staccato military manner he said, "I ask you to act as with one beating heart, a heart pumping in fierce stubborn determination to fulfill your duty." He punctuated each syllable with emotion. "I beg of you, every man must do his best." Unlike other speeches Shinjirō Nishi had been forced to endure in the past, the Admiral's sincere words made a lasting impression on him.
The Attack on Saipan
On the evening of December 6th, a flight of seven Betty bombers (K704th Hikōtai) and ten Army Peggy bombers (110th Sentai) landed on Iwo to refuel. Each was armed with a single 1,600 lb bomb for a night raid against the B-29s parked on Saipan. Shinjirō Nishi joined the other maintenance men in gassing up the planes. There would be a few hours to kill, so the airmen gathered in a tent to eat and rest. The airmen were in high spirits as they passed the time. "They sang and laughed loudly, so I think some of them were drinking," said Nishi.
The Bettys and Peggys began taking off around 10:45 p.m., and arrived over Saipan four hours later. They identified the B-29s parked on the airfield easily because the area was bathed in floodlights. After dropping their bombs, roughly half of the aircraft failed to return; two of the Bettys and six of the Peggys were lost to American AA gunfire. The raid destroyed four B-29s, damaged an additional twenty-three B-29s and left approximately 200 Americans dead.
The ground crews hurried to get the aircraft back in the air because they knew there would be a retaliatory American strike. After the surviving bombers departed for the homeland, Nishi and the others waited in their bunkers as the sun rose on December 7th, but nothing happened. Bad weather over Saipan had prevented the Americans from striking back that day. On December 8th, Nishi and Hachiya rode bicycles over to their Oscar fighters to warm and check the engines in preparation for the expected mission. Nishi said that while Iwo Jima's radar station could provide ample warning of approaching enemy bombers; there was no defense against the marauding low-flying P-38s. The twin-engine fighters would zoom in under the radar to strafe the airfields. In the event fighters snuck in, the lookout, or whoever happened to spot them, would bang an empty oxygen cylinder or fire off several bursts from a machine gun. Nishi said, "Hearing either sound was terrifying. There was no time to get to safety because the Katsuobushi zoomed in, shot us up and disappeared like phantoms."[45]
Nishi completed the checklist and climbed down from the Oscar fighter. Nishi looked over to see the familiar site of his pal Hirō Hachiya performing the pre-flight warm-up on another fighter. Over the roaring of the idling Oscar aircraft engines, Nishi's attention was grabbed by a clanging sound piercing the air. He looked up to see the lookout banging on an oxygen cylinder. Nishi shut off the engine, jumped from the cockpit and dashed for cover as the P-38s plowed the airfield and vanished. After waiting several minutes, Nishi and the others rushed out of their holes to discover Corporal Hirō Hachiya on the ground lying in a muddy pool of blood.
Hachiya didn't hear the warning in time and was cut down as he bolted for cover. Nishi knelt over his friend's body as a medic stuffed gauze into the deep wounds.
Nishi accompanied Hachiya's crumpled body as it was lifted onto a truck and driven to the 2nd Mixed Brigade's field hospital. Nishi was distressed to discover that the so-called field hospital was a cave overflowing with the sick and dying. There were a few makeshift canvas lean-tos, but most of the wounded men were in the open. Stretchers were scarce, so the patients were rolled onto blankets outside the tunnel complex. Nishi did his best to comfort Hirō Hachiya, whose face had turned an ashen hue, and promised to return to visit him in the morning.
One of the medics assigned to work at the field hospital was Shūji Ishii, the pre-war cameraman who worked for Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. Ishii said that the medics did their best to work with ever dwindling supplies, but admitted the hospital was simply overwhelmed.
The following morning, Nishi rushed back to the field hospital to visit his friend. Corporal Hachiya's cold, lifeless body was right where Nishi had left it; someone had pulled the blanket over his face to keep the flies off. There was no wood available for a cremation, so Nishi said a prayer, borrowed a pickaxe, and scratched out a shallow grave in the rocky soil. He gently wrapped his friend in the bloodstained blanket and eased the body into ground with the promise, "I'll come back for you."
Corporal Hirō Hachiya was not the only wounded man who suffered from a near total lack of medical supplies. The arrival of the 23rd Fighter Squadron coincided with an outbreak of amoebic dysentery that swept the island. Due to the constant bombings and shelling, the men had to urinate and defecate in their caves. The cause of the rapid spreading of the illness was the blowfly.[46] Men, who were weakened by months of hard labor and reduced rations, were further decimated by diarrhea and dehydration. "The blockade meant that we ran out of medicine," said Ishii. Due to the American air raids and submarine action, the appearance of friendly ships carrying supplies was becoming a fond memory. However, in mid-December a glimmer of hope arrived on the wings of seven Japanese bombers.
Bad News
One of the patients languishing in the field hospital was Private Toshio Koshimura of the 2nd Independent Machine Gun Battalion, 1st Mixed Brigade. Thirty-four-year-old Koshimura was drafted in January 1944, and after six months of training was sent to Iwo Jima in mid-July 1944. He arrived on a decrepit cargo ship crammed with supplies and other greenhorn replacements. In the following half-year, Koshimura spent more time digging tunnels than doing anything else.71 That is, until November 1944, when he was diagnosed with typhoid fever and quarantined. He spent the next few weeks waging a losing battle against the illness. Sometime in mid-December, a medical orderly told Koshimura he would be among those evacuated back to the mainland.
There had been several attempts at getting the severely sick and wounded off the island by boat, but Koshimura's hopes had been dashed so many times he didn't dare believe it anymore. But this time it seemed different since the orderly passed out a stack of cotton hospital robes bearing a red cross on the sleeve. The orderly told the men to change into the robes because they were part of a larger group of twenty-three men who were being evacuated by plane.
Did he say plane? Could it be true? Koshimura pulled off his filthy uniform and slipped into the thin cotton robe. Why are we suddenly given hospital robes? Koshimura had been a patient for months but was never issued a clean uniform, let alone something like this.
Perhaps it was a psychological boost for those on the airfield who would witness a group of men who were outwardly identified as deserving evacuation. Or was there to be a reception in Japan as the sick and wounded came off the plane? Perhaps the powers-that-be didn't want the evacuees showing up in Japan resembling the walking dead, and thought the hospital gowns would give the impression, albeit totally false, of ongoing proper medical care.
As the sun was setting on November 30th, an orderly shouted for the evacuees to board a truck to the airfield. Once there, the patients were assembled for an early morning flight back to Japan.
The next morning, wearing a white cotton hospital robe, typhoid patient Private Toshio Koshimura scanned the skies for his deliverance from this tomb called Iwo Jima.
Koshimura first heard the planes, and then spotted them, "It felt odd to see planes and not hear air raid sirens," he wrote. He was startled to see several black puffs of smoke appear between the planes. It seems one of the AA gun crews failed to get the word about the inbound friendly aircraft. The seven planes circled Chidori Airfield, but one of them was trailing a wake of thick, ominous smoke.
As the seven bombers landed, an officer approached the evacuees holding a clipboard. He read their names aloud, forming the sick and wounded into seven boarding groups. Koshimura waited for his boarding group number to be called and grew anxious as he watched others board the bombers, and then
, one after another, five bombers took off. Something was wrong. The maintenance crews were busy examining the last two bombers.
Koshimura felt a pit in his stomach when the clipboard officer conferred with another officer. The clipboard officer sucked air through his teeth and then shared the bad news; due to repair work, the last two planes couldn't take off until the following morning. This news hit Koshimura like a ton of bricks. American bombers had attacked the airfields every day and night for the past month. If these two planes didn't get off the ground today they would surely be blasted to pieces. He watched in silent despair as the maintenance men evaporated from the stricken planes taking their tools with them. It was getting too dark to see, and using lights was out of the question. Koshimura's hopes of getting off the island were once again dashed. It was late to be trucked back to the field hospital, so he and the others spent the night in one of the airfield bunkers. Koshimura gave up hope. What's the use of praying? The Americans would come the next day to smash the airfield and the planes anyway.
According to Koshimura, at 5:00 a.m., the clipboard officer appeared and told the evacuees it would take five hours to conduct the repairs. A horde of naval maintenance men swarmed the planes. Like ants disassembling a dead grasshopper, they cannibalized pieces and parts from one plane to fix the other. Only one plane would be able to fly out, that is, if the Americans didn't show up first and destroy them both. The trigger-happy AA crew had ensured that an entire planeload of wounded men would not be going home. Koshimura deduced that even more of the wounded men would be left behind to make room for the crew of the damaged plane that could no longer fly.