MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

by Douglas Niles

  “Our own fucking planes are trying to sink us!” someone screamed.

  It was too much for Andy Sarnuss. He joined in, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” until the words stopped making sense to him. He was going to die. He knew he was going to die. He was helpless, trapped like a rat in a cage—it was a POW ship, but it was marked as any other Japanese freighter, and now it was a sitting duck for American planes. He looked desperately at the bolted hatch atop the metal ladder. There must be a hundred men in front of Andy, all massed together. It would take them forever to get through the hatch, even if it were somehow, miraculously, opened.

  A second torpedo hit the transport and the ship seemed to groan in physical pain. This time the blast lifted the ship into the air, then dropped it roughly back into the sea. It slammed down and continued to sink.

  Then came a new sound: rushing water. The sound came from behind Andy. The metal bulkhead creaked and buckled, admitted a gush of cold seawater with force like a fire hydrant unleashed. It surged around his feet, climbing to his ankles, chilling his calves.

  “Don’t let me die in the dark!” came another scream from a voice almost childlike. “Please don’t let me die in the dark!”

  Only vaguely did Andy realize that the sound was coming out of his own mouth.

  The burst of water grew into a torrent, white froth churning angrily into the compartment, picking men up, tossing them out of its path. The bulkhead a few yards behind Andy continued to give way. Cold seawater gushed into the hold, now swirling around Andy’s knees, icy fingers reaching higher and higher. The shriek of bending and breaking metal and the roar of rushing water drowned out the screams and cries. In the meantime, the deck angled downward, toward the breach, as the ship canted unevenly toward the depths. They were all going to drown.

  The hatch to their watery tomb tore away, and blazing light cut into the darkness like jagged glass. It was a flickering, dancing light. Fire. The ship was on fire.

  Although the ladder leading to the hatch was only ten yards away, it might have been a mile. Hundreds of desperate, screaming men blocked his way. They fought for places on the ladder, tore each other away from the rungs, they pushed and shoved and fought. The water continued to rush in from behind Andy, rising past his waist.

  “Take turns! One at a time! It’s faster that way!” Andy screamed. No one listened.

  He was too far back. Others might get out in time, but not he. Andy felt the rising waters climb his gaunt body, now reaching his chest. He screamed, but his cry was drowned out by the panicked begging of hundreds of others.

  The area around the hatch was on fire now, making further escape impossible, even if Andy could get through the mob. As the fire ate through the deck, the opening grew. Andy saw glimpses of the chaos above. Fires raged across the deck, silhouetting cranes and winches and on-deck cargo. Andy saw running, shouting Japanese seamen, some of them human torches, screaming their last as they plunged into the cold seawater to extinguish everything.

  The water was rising. It was up to his neck. It was swallowing his head. He couldn’t breathe. In a minute, he would open his mouth and the water would rush inside and…

  Andy woke up.

  Something was on his face—someone’s hand covering his mouth! He couldn’t breathe. He flailed around and more hands—several pairs of hands—grabbed his arms and legs and held them down.

  It was still dark, as dark as it had been in the hold, but this was not a ship, it was…

  It was Japan.

  He remembered where he was: Barracks #6, Camp Shinjuku, on the outskirts of Tokyo. He was still a prisoner of the Japanese. I didn’t drown in the hold of the Arisan Maru. I survived. His body sagged with relief. As it did, the hands released him, including the hand stifling his mouth.

  “Another bad one, Andy?” That was Mark, with a voice graveled by too many cigarettes.

  Andy’s heart was pounding and he gulped in huge breaths of air. He was covered in sweat. “I was back in the hold…,” he managed to choke out.

  Even in the darkness, he could sense reactions. People shifted position, they breathed differently. He wasn’t the only one with nightmares of that hold.

  “I had to put my hands over your mouth like that. You started screaming,” Mark said apologetically. “Didn’t want the Japs coming in to find out what the racket was all about.” That would have resulted in beatings, or worse.

  Andy nodded, dizzy from breathing hard. He didn’t want the Japs in either. He was terrified of the Japs. He reached over and patted Mark’s bony arm to signal his gratitude. It was another full minute before he was able to talk coherently.

  “Same nightmare?” Mark asked.

  “Same one,” Andy replied. “But I’m all right now.”

  “You sure?” asked Mark.

  “Yeah. Let’s get some sleep. We all need it. Sorry to have woken everyone up.”

  “No problem.”

  “S’okay.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Voices in the dark.

  Andy heard shuffling feet on the packed dirt floor feeling their way to nearby bunks, the rustle of rice husks in the burlap sacks used as mattresses as men climbed in. After a while, he heard steady breathing and the occasional snore. From outside the thin-walled barracks he could hear the wind.

  After a while, he slept again. This time, the dreams were too deep to trouble his limbs, to provoke any audible outburst. He lay silent, still, panting.

  And he was still in that hold.

  1945

  Condition and Conquest

  I knew that on every ship nervous men lined the rails or paced the decks, peering into the darkness and wondering what stood out there beyond the night waiting for the dawn to come. There is a universal sameness in the emotions of men, whether they be admiral or sailor, general or private, at such a time as this. On almost every ship one could count on seeing groups huddled around maps in the wardrooms, infantrymen nervously inspecting their rifles, the crew of their ships testing their gear, last-minute letters being written, men with special missions or objectives trying to visualize them again…. Late that evening I went back to my cabin and read again those [biblical] passages…from which I have always gained inspiration and hope. And I prayed that a merciful God would preserve each of those men on the morrow.

  —General Douglas MacArthur

  THIRTEEN

  Okinawa; Tokyo; Hiroshima

  • TUESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 1945 •

  CONFERENCE OF LANDING FORCE COMMANDERS,

  FORWARD HEADQUARTERS, SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

  AREAS (SWPA), OKINAWA, 1441 HOURS

  Newly minted Rear Admiral (lower half) Frank Chadwick was impressed in spite of himself. Douglas MacArthur’s forward headquarters—it was, naturally, named “Bataan House”—had a spectacular view of Haguchi Bay.

  Bataan House had been the private estate of a Japanese moneyman. And as it was by far the best estate in or near Haguchi, Mac’s dog robbers had grabbed it as soon as they found it, booting out the commander of Tenth Army, Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., in the process.

  The conference room formed the upper level of a two-story Japanese-style building. Many interior walls had been removed to open the space into a very large room. The lower level retained the original partitions and was used as offices for the Bataan Gang: MacArthur, Sutherland, Willoughby, and the others. There were two staircases inside: General MacArthur’s personal staircase, off-limits to everyone else, and one for the common man.

  You could reach the conference level either through the offices or up an outside staircase. The outside stairs led to a peaceful and shady veranda that surrounded the conference room. Chairs of rattan and teak with thick, soft cushions lined the side that faced the bay.

  The veranda was a great place to have a quiet smoke while sitting in a comfortable chair and looking out to sea. Whenever the planning for Operation Olympic—the upcoming invasion of Kyushu, one of the Home Islands of
Japan itself—got to the point where tempers began to fray, it was a place to cool off. It was also a good place for a quiet negotiation afterward.

  Chadwick had come out for the first reason. There was only so much MacArthur he could take.

  This February day it was sunny and crisp, like early spring weather back home. The sliding Japanese-style doors were half open, sending a fresh sea breeze through the room. Older flag officers almost inevitably smoked cigars or pipes, and oxygen could get scarce in a long meeting.

  From where he was standing, he could see the garden—also off-limits to mortals—that led to MacArthur’s private quarters. He could only imagine the splendor. Everybody knew the Supremo of the Pacific lived like a monarch. His native servants even wore, rumor had it, kimonos of red, white, and blue.

  “Nice view, eh?”

  The voice surprised Chadwick, who thought he’d been alone on the veranda. He turned to see a stocky, dark-haired man with a cigar in his hand, wearing stars and Army Air Force insignia.

  “General,” he said. He decided that the roof over the porch rendered this an indoor space and so he didn’t salute. He looked at the general’s name tag: LeMay.

  “Hello, Admiral…Chadwick,” General LeMay said, looking at Frank’s name tag in turn and gesturing with his stogie. “You probably came out here for the same reason I did.”

  “Fresh air, sir? It’s the nectar of life.”

  “Sure.” The Army Air Force general’s eyes crinkled into the hint of a smile. Chadwick didn’t know him, except by reputation, but that reputation was formidable. LeMay had commanded Eighth Air Force in England, where he had presided over the bombing campaign that had reduced Germany’s cities to rubble. Now he came here to oversee the operations of those amazing B-29s Chadwick had seen. Huge and silver—as if camouflage coloring was worthy only of lesser aircraft—the Superforts had been assembling in the Philippines for the last six months. They operated out of a network of air bases centered around Clark Field and could fly all the way to Japan and back on their missions of bombardment. Recently, one of the air bases on Okinawa had been designated as an emergency strip so that B-29s in danger of splashing into the ocean could land there instead.

  “All those plans—for an invasion that might not be necessary,” LeMay remarked, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke. He shook his head sadly and looked as though he might have been talking to himself.

  “Sir?” asked Chadwick, uncomfortable in the presence of virtual heresy.

  General LeMay shook his head. “Never mind, Admiral. It’s not like we’re going to wait around for some secret weapon we can use to blow all the Japs to smithereens. Just make the most of this fresh air.” Still carrying the smoldering cigar, the general returned to the planning room.

  Frank Chadwick stubbed out his Chesterfield, threw the butt over the side, took one final deep breath of sea air, and returned to the planning session. The room was illuminated by bright electric lights, with knots of men gathered around each of the six large tables. The buzz of conversation was steady, measured, and masculine.

  Planning, of course, had been going on for months. Individual commands had conducted practice beach assaults and various military maneuvers, and the individual planning documents, if put into a single volume, would put War and Peace to shame. Integration of such a mammoth operation was an additional challenge. At this conference, the individual landing force commanders were merging their plans, looking for and resolving conflicts, and bringing the final operation together into a whole. In spite of the years of experience, the enormous amount of staff preparation, and the extensive work that had already gone into this project, there was still a tremendous amount of work left. X-Day, as the invasion date was known, was only a month away. The planners were using X-Day for OLYMPIC and Y-Day for CORONET because the traditional generic “D-Day” was so associated with Normandy that it couldn’t be used for any other operation. That must have annoyed Mac no end, thought Frank with a smile.

  Worse, continued intelligence updates made the planning environment very fluid. The Japanese weren’t exactly going to sit still. Word of the Japanese buildup on Kyushu threatened to put many aspects of the operation in jeopardy. Chadwick was aware of many of the intelligence reports and knew that there were other sources of information that were classified far above his own Top Secret clearance. The data was so detailed and, during the course of the war, had proved so accurate that the young rear admiral had formed a hypothesis as to where it came from: American intelligence agents had obviously broken some very high-level Japanese codes and were, in effect, reading the enemy’s mail. Even as his suspicion had evolved into certainty, however, Chadwick knew better than to ask anyone about this, or to mention his idea aloud.

  The conference room had been set up with six large, rectangular planning tables, and no chairs—the chairs were all out on the veranda. Each table had a name tag. Five were types of cars: Station Wagon, Roadster, Town Car, Limousine, and Delivery Truck. The remaining table was Sixth Army.

  Frank was part of Roadster. This particular landing area consisted of a line of beaches along the southwest coast of Kyushu, leading to the cities of Kagoshima and Sendai. Major General Harry Schmidt, known as “the Dutchman,” commanding V Amphibious Corp, was the team leader. There were three other marine generals, the commanders of 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions, and three admirals.

  Vice Admiral Harry W. Hill commanded the Fifth Amphibious Force, with overall naval responsibility for the amphibious phase of the landing. Frank was commander of Amphibious Group Five, the fast-attack carrier force in support of the landing. He was responsible for preliminary bombardment and air operations. Rear Admiral (lower half) Theodore White commanded Amphibious Group Four, responsible primarily for transportation and ship-to-shore movement.

  All the tables were covered with maps, reports, and pads of paper with hundreds of scrawled notes. Two senior NCOs per table took continual notes during the working day and transcribed them onto mimeograph stencils during the night. By the start of each day, a mimeographed report was ready for each officer. The reports came in yellow clasp envelopes labeled OLYMPIC TOP SECRET. Every action, decision, and assignment was fully documented.

  The Roadster table was conveniently next to the Sixth Army table, which made it easy to eavesdrop on the big brass. General Walter Krueger was technically leading that team, but with MacArthur there, the commander was a subordinate at his own table. Sutherland lurked like a dark cloud over the General’s shoulder.

  The four major corps commanders shuttled between the headquarters table and their own tables. Also at the headquarters table were the air bosses, General George Kelley for tactical, and the new man, General Curtis LeMay, for strategic. They both reported to Mac, with a dotted line to Sixth Army for the operation. Vice Admiral Kelly Turner, commander of amphibious operations; Admiral Frank Fletcher, the commander of Naval Forces Pacific; Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, his number two, also serving as commander of Fifth Fleet; Vice Admiral Thomas Kincaid for Seventh Fleet, and Vice Admiral Mark Mitchner for Third Fleet were there for the navy.

  But all of them were under the command of Douglas MacArthur.

  Now the General himself threw a red-bound report down on the table.

  “I see no reason to give credence to these clearly inflated intelligence estimates. There aren’t that many potential soldiers left in all of Japan, and they’ve virtually exhausted their oil stocks and most raw materials. The idea that we will face opposition of this magnitude on Kyushu is absurd on the face of it,” MacArthur said stiffly. “Among the many reasons for doubt is the military performance of the Japanese both in the liberation of the Philippines and the island on which we now make our base. The MacArthur strategy of isolating and ignoring Japanese troop concentrations has kept casualties among our brave fighting men the lowest in any active theater of operations. Why, the Japanese don’t even defend the beaches!”

  Rear Admiral Frank Chadwick stole a quick glance at Spruance.
The man everyone said was actually running the Pacific Fleet listened stoically, then interjected. “Not logical, General MacArthur. This is their homeland and precedents are not reliable. In my judgment, this buildup is real.”

  “My dear Admiral,” MacArthur said, a wide smile on his face, “of course the Japanese are going to be more obstreperous than in the recent past. MacArthur is fully aware of that. But the numbers given here for reinforcements into Kyushu are so clearly inflated that one suspects those responsible for this so-called report have been sampling Chinese opium.” He looked around, smiling as if he were looking for a round of applause.

  “Not true, General,” said Spruance calmly. Everyone else got quiet. One did not tell MacArthur he was wrong, especially before an audience. “I personally reviewed the data gathering and analysis, and designed several verification experiments. The probability is well over ninety percent that this information is accurate.”

  General Sutherland stepped forward, his jaw jutting pugnaciously. “Admiral, we’ve been dealing with these Nips out here for the last three and a half years. I suggest you give the General the benefit of that experience.”

  “Facts trump experience, General Sutherland,” responded Spruance, his voice calm, monotone, logical. “Even if one assumes the potential error is larger than indicated, ordinary prudence argues for our planning to use the higher ranges for anticipated Japanese resistance. Any other strategy will result in far larger loss of life. Unnecessary loss of life.”

  “Are you accusing the General of callousness with the lives of his men?” demanded Sutherland, almost snarling. “That’s outrageous!”

  One of Spruance’s eyebrows went up, but before he could reply MacArthur spoke again, this time turning his attention to Fletcher, not Spruance. “Surely even the most cursory review of the forces arrayed here would demonstrate conclusively that regardless of whatever undertrained, underequipped, undersupplied, and ill-motivated cadres the Japanese Imperial Army is still able to muster in the field against us, they shall all be as naught against the invincible might of your good naval arm, Admiral Fletcher! Or are you less confident in your brave sailors than is MacArthur himself?”