The Twilight Warriors

by Robert Gandt

But only for a short while. With the Japanese again advancing toward him, Anderson broke out a case of his own mortar shells. Yanking the safety pin of a shell, he banged it on a rock to arm it, then threw the shell at the charging Japanese. He threw another, then reloaded his carbine. Alternately firing the weapon and hurling mortar shells, he forced the enemy to withdraw.

  When daylight came, twenty-five Japanese soldiers lay dead outside the tomb. Anderson himself was wounded by shrapnel. For his actions, he would receive the Medal of Honor.

  The fighting subsided during the day as each side took shelter beneath artillery barrages. At nightfall on April 13, the battle resumed. Again Japanese squads tried infiltrating the American lines. Again the battlefield was illuminated by ship-fired star shells, and the Japanese were repulsed in savage, close-quarters fighting.

  By dawn on April 14, it was clear that the counterattack was a failure. The impermeability of the Shuri Line extended in both directions. The Japanese were even less successful attacking from the south than the Americans had been from the north. In the gathering daylight, the survivors of the decimated Japanese battalions crept back to their defensive line. The bodies of hundreds of their fellow soldiers littered the northern slopes of the line, a net loss of almost four entire battalions. Fewer than a hundred Americans had been killed.

  Colonel Yahara, whose initial assessment had been proven correct, was disgusted. The architect of the failed assault, General Cho, remained unhumbled. He continued to insist that offensive actions, even if they failed, were preferable to a slow defeat.

  No one was willing to argue. In the gloomy atmosphere of the Japanese underground headquarters, the ancient code of bushido still had a romantic appeal.

  While the battle in the south of Okinawa was stalemated at the Shuri Line, it was a different story in the north. The 6th Marine Division had encountered only sporadic resistance as they raced to the northern tip of Okinawa.

  Still to be taken was the bulbous Motobu Peninsula, jutting from the upper west coast of the island. The 10-mile-long, 8-mile-wide peninsula was densely forested, with a 1,200-foot-high pinnacle in the southwest quadrant called Yae-dake. It was here that the Japanese defenders, led by veteran commander Col. Takehido Udo, would make their stand.

  Udo was a shrewd tactician. His defensive network on Motobu Peninsula was even more intricate than the tunnels and rabbit warrens of the Shuri Line in the south. As the Marines advanced across the peninsula, Udo’s troops waited in ambush, firing from concealed positions, then vanished like ethereal ghosts back into the dense foliage.

  Japanese snipers became adept at identifying the officers of American units. Maj. Bernard Green, a battalion commander of the 4th Regiment, was talking to his operations and intelligence officers when he was picked off by an unseen shooter. It was a lesson the Marines learned quickly: anyone carrying a pistol instead of a carbine, waving a map, or pointing with his finger as if giving directions was a sniper’s target.

  By April 15, the Marines were closing in on the summit of Yae-dake. The fighting grew more intense as they neared the crest. As the XXIV Corps had already discovered in the south of the island, the Japanese on the Motobu Peninsula had made the most of the terrain, concealing their positions in a honeycomb of tunnels and caves.

  Company A of the 1st Battalion was the first to gain the summit but was pushed back by a fierce Japanese mortar and small-arms attack. After calling in a heavy artillery barrage, they again assaulted the crest of Yae-dake, taking heavy casualties. Nearly out of ammunition, they were forced to hunker down while Marines below organized a frantic hand-to-hand resupply chain.

  The resupply came just in time. At nightfall, the Japanese launched a screaming, suicidal banzai counterattack. With the help of artillery, the Marines stopped the attackers, killing seventy-five of them at close quarters.

  Finally Yae-dake was secure. For the next two days, the Marines mopped up the rest of the peninsula. In a ravine on the slope of Yae-dake they stumbled upon Colonel Udo’s exquisitely concealed headquarters, outfitted with radio and telephone communications and connected to a network of caves.

  But Udo was gone. Instead of sacrificing himself bushido-style, the colonel had slipped away to fight as a guerrilla. Like a mythical Japanese warrior, Udo faded into legend, never to be found.

  The battle for Okinawa wasn’t front-page news back home. The Pacific war was being upstaged by the historic events in Europe. The Red Army was at the gates of Berlin. American and Soviet troops had linked up on the banks of the Elbe River. The end of the Third Reich was at hand. Okinawa was just another island in the Pacific war.

  On Friday, April 13, a day later than in Washington, came a flash that eclipsed all the war news. Everyone aboard the ships of the Fifth Fleet—sailors, officers, gunners, aviators—stopped in midstride.

  The announcement blared over every loudspeaker: “Attention, all hands! President Roosevelt is dead. Repeat, our supreme commander, President Roosevelt, is dead.”

  The news had the same impact as losing a parent. Roosevelt had been elected an unprecedented four times. For teenage GIs still not old enough to vote, he was the only president most could remember. He was a larger-than-life father figure whom they credited with lifting the nation from the Depression and guiding it through the crisis of war. In the minds of many servicemen, it seemed that the country was leaderless. Who was the bespectacled little man with the twangy voice, Harry Truman? How could he fill the shoes of a giant like Franklin Roosevelt?

  Of all the services, the Navy was most closely identified with Roosevelt. Appointed assistant secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, Roosevelt worked to expand the Navy and founded the U.S. Naval Reserve. Roosevelt had sent the Navy and Marines to intervene during skirmishes in Central America and the Caribbean. Roosevelt had steered the Navy through World War I, and it was Roosevelt who had fought against plans to dismantle it after that war.

  To the Japanese high command, the death of Roosevelt meant something else: it was a direct result of the war. The next day propaganda leaflets were scattered around U.S. positions at Okinawa.

  American Officers and Men:

  We must express our deep regret over the death of President Roosevelt. The “American Tragedy” is now raised here at Okinawa with his death. You must have seen 70% of your carriers and 735 of your B’s [presumably surface warfare ships] sink or be damaged causing 150,000 casualties. Not only the late president but anyone else would die in the excess of worry to hear such an annihilative damage. The dreadful loss that led your late leader to death will make you orphans on this island. The Japanese special attack corps will sink your vessels to the last destroyer. You will witness it realized in the near future.

  The weary Marines and soldiers on Okinawa got a good laugh from the leaflets. Orphans on this island? It was a rare moment of comic relief. Reading Japanese propaganda leaflets was almost as much fun as listening to Tokyo Rose.

  Most fighter pilots weren’t superstitious. To Lt. Mark Orr, the night of Friday, April 13 was no different from any other night off Okinawa—black, horizonless, vertigo-inducing. He was doing what he usually did on such nights—chasing another bogey through the darkness.

  This one was low, skimming the wave tops. More and more, the Japanese night attackers were coming in on the deck. By now they’d figured out that the ships’ radars wouldn’t pick them up until they were almost close enough to make their attack. The night fighters were reluctant to engage them that low because they risked flying into the water.

  Orr radioed that he had spotted his bogey. It was at low altitude, heading directly for the carrier task group. Orr eased the Hellcat down to the bogey’s altitude, close to the water, and slid in behind him.

  In the red-lighted CIC compartment aboard the screening destroyer, the FIDO was following the intercept on his radar. The two blips on the screen looked like glowworms in a column. With each sweep of the cursor, they came closer together. The Hellcat was gaining on the bo
gey, almost close enough to fire. Any minute now, he’d report that the bogey was dead.

  The FIDO waited for the call. Nothing came over the radio. In the next sweep on the radar, the blips had merged. On the next sweep, they were gone.

  The bogey and the Hellcat had vanished from the radar screen.

  The director radioed the night fighter pilot. There was no reply. Perplexed, he stared at the empty scope. What the hell had happened? It was if the blackened ocean had swallowed up both aircraft. Did Orr shoot down the bogey before inadvertently hitting the water? Did the airplanes collide?

  The answer was never learned. No trace was ever found of Mark Orr or the bogey.

  The next morning, April 14, Lt. Gen. Simon Buckner stomped onto the hard-packed beach at Hagushi, bringing most of his staff with him. His new command post ashore was nearly finished. He would no longer be sharing space aboard Kelly Turner’s flagship, Eldorado.

  Buckner’s patience was running out. His infantry divisions had ground to a halt in the south. No amount of sea, land, or air bombardment seemed able to dislodge the Japanese from their burrowed positions. In his booming, resonant voice, the white-haired general made it clear to everyone within earshot that he wanted this campaign to start moving again.

  Buckner gave the order that every available infantry unit was to be assembled for an all-out frontal assault, to begin on April 19. To back up the 7th and 96th Divisions, he would bring a third division, the 27th Infantry, out of reserve. Ironically, it had been the 27th Division commander who was fired by the Marine general, Howlin’ Mad Smith, at Saipan because Smith didn’t think the 27th was carrying its weight. It was the incident that had ignited the most recent feud between the Army and the Marine Corps, and, like a persistent headache, it was affecting decisions at Okinawa.

  Now the 27th Division was taking over from the 96th on the western flank, which included the bloody Kakazu Ridge. The 96th would take the center of the front, and the 7th Division would attack the eastern end of the line.

  The plan was straightforward. By sheer force of firepower and numbers, Buckner intended to break the enemy line. No flanking maneuvers, no amphibious landings behind enemy positions, no pincer attacks. Such tactics weren’t the style of the son of a Confederate general. Simon Buckner’s offensive would be an all-out frontal assault.

  The offensive began with the heaviest land-based artillery barrage of the Pacific war. Nineteen thousand shells rained onto the Japanese positions along the Shuri Line. While the cloud of smoke and dust was still rising, a bombardment from six battleships, six cruisers, and six destroyers pounded the same positions. Then came strikes by 650 carrier-based aircraft dropping bombs, firing rockets into cave entrances, and hammering the line with machine guns.

  The three assault divisions moved out. Their progress was mostly unopposed—at first. While the line was still partly obscured by the dust from the bombardment, the Japanese slipped back into the positions they had temporarily evacuated. With machine gun fire, mortars, and artillery, they began mowing down the Americans.

  The offensive faltered. On the eastern flank, units of the 7th Division, led by flame-throwing tanks, made it to the crest of a knife-edged feature called Skyline Ridge. Minutes later, they were hurled back by Japanese counterattacking from the reverse slope. Other units of the 7th Division were pinned down by murderous mortar and artillery fire in a swale called Rocky Crags.

  Not even the flame-throwing tanks were able to root out the Japanese defenders. They kept popping out from spider holes, hurling satchel charges and grenades into the faces of the Americans.

  In the middle of the line, the advance of the 96th Division ground to a halt. The only success came from the much-maligned 27th Division, which succeeded in making an end run around the deadly Kakazu Ridge and reaching the next objective, the Urasoe-Mura escarpment. But the simultaneous frontal attack on Kakazu Ridge was again repulsed, and the entire division’s gains were lost.

  A force of armored vehicles—thirty M4A3 Sherman tanks, flame-throwing tanks, and self-propelled howitzers—was hurled into the fray. Rumbling through Kakazu Gorge and onto the reverse slope of the ridge, they ran into a firestorm. Japanese popped out of spider holes to blind the tank crews with smoke charges and fling satchel charges under the vehicles. Others ran up to attach magnetic demolition charges. Antitank guns blasted them from concealed positions.

  It was a disaster. Separated from their protecting infantry units, the armored vehicles were picked off one by one. Only eight tanks escaped the massacre, making it the worst loss of armored vehicles in the entire campaign.

  By afternoon, heavy thunderstorms were drenching the battle zone, making the barren ground slippery and adding to the difficulties of the assault.

  Grim-faced, Simon Buckner received the reports. Each of his divisions had run into a wall of resistance. By evening the American line had advanced only about 1,000 yards on either end, with a heavily fortified enemy salient in the center of the line.

  With darkness falling, it was apparent to Buckner that the assault had failed. “Progress not quite satisfactory,” he wrote that night in his diary.

  From inside his fortified shelter at Kanoya, Admiral Ugaki listened to the explosions on the airfield. The American fighter-bombers were back. About eighty of them had slipped in through the cloud cover without being detected. The air raid alert hadn’t sounded until a few minutes before the enemy bombers arrived.

  Now they were bombing the base at Kanoya.

  Ugaki felt a deepening sense of frustration. The next “floating chrysanthemum” operation—kikusui No. 3—was supposed to have begun that morning, but the operation was delayed by the weather. Clouds and rain again covered the East China Sea. This afternoon, just as the cloud cover was opening, the enemy warplanes appeared.

  Ugaki was perplexed. Why did the enemy always seem to anticipate his next move? Where had the American planes come from? Most still had long-range belly tanks attached, reinforcing Ugaki’s belief that they must be coming from Kadena and Yontan, the recently captured airfields on Okinawa. The air raids went on for an hour. The American warplanes swarmed over the airfields on Kyushu, seeming to devote special attention to Ugaki’s headquarters at Kanoya.

  When the raiders finally withdrew to the south, a few Japanese Zero and George fighters took off to nip at their heels. It was mostly a symbolic gesture. The damage had already been done.

  Darkness was falling when Ugaki emerged from his shelter. In all, fifty-one aircraft had been destroyed on the ground, and another twenty-nine shot down. Despite the setback, he gave the order to proceed with kikusui No. 3. As an afterthought, he included the enemy-occupied airfields of Kadena and Yontan in their list of targets.

  In the waning daylight, Admiral Ugaki watched the first wave of kikusui No. 3 finally rumble into the sky. The next day at dawn, the attacks would resume.

  28 KEEP MOVING AND KEEP SHOOTING

  NORTHERN RADAR PICKET STATIONS

  APRIL 16, 1945

  One thing they would all agree on later: April 16 was a hell of a day. For the tin can sailors as well as the fighter pilots sent to protect them, it was the wildest day of combat most of them would ever experience.

  The day began with another massed kamikaze attack, the second phase of kikusui No. 3. Three divisions of Grim Reaper Corsairs were on CAP stations over the radar picket ships.

  One of the divisions was led by Lt. (jg) Phil Kirkwood. Still on his wing was Ens. Dick Quiel, who knew that staying close to Kirkwood meant you had a good chance of seeing action. Their second two-plane section was led by Ens. Horace “Tuck” Heath, whose wingman was a baby-faced ensign named Alfred Lerch.

  Photographs of Al Lerch showed a skinny, grinning kid who looked barely old enough to borrow his father’s roadster. Lerch was from Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, and he had become a Grim Reaper by accident. He was supposed to have joined VF-87 aboard USS Ticonderoga, but a broken leg caused him to miss their deployment. In January 1945 he was rea
ssigned to the re-formed VF-10 on Intrepid.

  Al Lerch was still looking for his first air-to-air victory. As he had already discovered, being the Tail End Charlie in a division meant that you got the leftovers. Two days earlier he had flown on Tuck Heath’s wing while Heath methodically shot up an incoming Betty bomber and sent it smoking into the ocean. Lerch, the Tail End Charlie, never got to fire his guns.

  But this was another day, and things were looking up for Lerch. En route to the CAP station, Heath developed radio trouble. It meant that Lerch was now the section leader. It also meant that he would get first crack at the bogeys.

  The action started twenty minutes after they reached the CAP station. Bogeys were reported inbound, passing the island of Amami Oshima. Lerch and Heath headed north, while Kirkwood and Quiel took a station a few miles behind them. Kirkwood stayed low, beneath the cloud deck, where he could pick off any wave-skimming kamikazes, and sent Quiel to a high perch at 8,000 feet. The assignment suited Dick Quiel, who was happy to be on his own. Any target he spotted was all his—if he was lucky.

  Minutes later, Quiel got lucky. He spotted the bogeys. They were high, heading south, and Quiel could tell by the fixed landing gear and the peculiar straight leading edges of the wings that they were Nakajima Ki-27 Nate fighters. The Nate was an obsolete warplane that had seen its heyday in the China battles of the 1930s. Now they were relegated to kamikaze missions.

  The Nates were spread out in a loose gaggle, two flights of three each. In a wide pursuit curve, Quiel swung in on their tails. He selected the furthest aft Nate fighter and opened fire. The unarmored Japanese fighter burned almost instantly.

  Quiel nudged the Corsair’s nose over to the next Nate and repeated the process. That Nate burned almost as quickly as the first. Both were leaving blazing trails down to the sea.

  But now Quiel was overtaking the rest of the slow-flying Nates. The Japanese pilots were all flying straight ahead, seemingly unaware that two of them had just been shot down.