The Storm on Our Shores

by Mark Obmascik

  The Military Police found an ugly sight: two soldiers with faces of bloody hamburger. The MPs didn’t want to deal with formal charges, so they threw Laird into a taxi and sent him back to his barracks.

  That night, word spread of Laird’s savage brawl. By reveille the next morning, troops were trying to catch a glimpse of the man who had fought so hard to uphold the honor of the Army.

  They were not disappointed. Laird showed up with one black eye, two blackened ears, and a cheekbone that looked as if it had been used as a battering ram against a hardpack of rocks and broken sea shells. Which it had been.

  The chaplain of his outfit gave Laird a nickname—Marine Killer. Laird shrugged it off, but the other men noticed, and the story circulated throughout his company and battalion. Sergeant Dick Laird was the guy you wanted fighting at your side. Company H had a celebrity.

  For the next months, through December 1943, Laird and the 7th Division trained intensively in Hawaii. They practiced shore landings and fast dig-ins and jungle warfare and moving heavy equipment across beaches. Captured Japanese weapons were fired for troops to be able to recognize them by sound. They knew there must be a reason for all this repetition. Soon after the New Year, they would find out.

  Remarkably, just twenty miles from Laird’s base at Schofield Barracks lived the in-laws of the man Laird had killed in Attu. Shohei and Toshi Miyake, parents of Taeko Tatsuguchi, had been in Honolulu for ten years. In 1940, they founded the first Japanese Seventh-day Adventist Church in Hawaii, across from Cartwright Park.

  Because of an inconsistency in United States policy, few Japanese in Hawaii were imprisoned in internment camps. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, about a third of the people living in Hawaii were of Japanese ancestry. That was 157,000 people. Yet fewer than 2,000 were sent to internment camps. By contrast, of the 126,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the United States mainland, about 110,000 were confined in internment camps.

  The only real justification for the detainment of Japanese Americans on the mainland was flat-out racism. Japanese Americans on the mainland were vastly outnumbered, and could be bullied politically in ways that German Americans and Italian Americans could not. However, Japanese Americans in Hawaii were by far the largest ethnic group, controlling many of the key business and government jobs that made the islands work. Hawaii’s economy could not afford to single out Japanese for persecution. Though some congressmen on the mainland grumbled about the favorable treatment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, the policy continued. To appease those racist congressmen, Hawaiians noted that their islands remained under martial law, with strict curfews for everyone to head off sabotage.

  Taeko’s parents made the most of their freedom. They cared about faith, not politics, and worked hard with the thirty founding members of their church to establish a strong foothold for Japanese Adventism in Honolulu. Taeko’s father served first as a pastor and then an elder for the church. He shuddered at the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The resulting clampdown on communications between Hawaii and Japan sickened him. He had no idea what was happening to his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter back in Tokyo. He and his wife could hope and pray only for a swift conclusion to the war.

  18

  * * *

  Fury

  For Dick Laird, the next thirteen months were a chaotic rush of blood, guts, and heartbreak. On February 1, 1944, Laird and more than 40,000 soldiers and Marines descended upon Kwajalein Atoll, a spit of coral and sand in the Marshall Islands about 2,400 miles southwest of Honolulu. It was one of the most intensive bombardments in the history of warfare. Onto an island only 2.5 miles long and 800 yards wide, Navy ships unleashed a torrent of 7,000 rounds of 14-, 8-, and 5-inch shells; the 7th Infantry blasted 29,000 rounds of artillery fire; and six B-24 bombers unloaded fifteen 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs. Another sixty warplanes from United States carriers flew ninety-six sorties against the Japanese.

  Kwajalein looked like a gravel parking lot after a cyclone hit. The dense jungle Laird and his men had trained to fight in had been converted instead into a moonscape of palms without fronds and shrubs without leaves. As veterans of Attu, however, Laird’s men knew the Japanese were tougher than any landscape.

  The Imperial Army had stationed 5,000 men on Kwajalein as a sacrifice squad. They held out for four days. In the daylight the Japanese retreated through a well-constructed defense of pillboxes, blockhouses, and logjams, and in the nighttime they sneaked behind U.S. lines with deadly sniper and grenade counterattacks.

  Laird was stuffed in a foxhole alongside his company clerk with a sheet of corrugated metal above for protection. A Japanese bullet somehow ricocheted off the edge of the metal and ripped a deep gash into the clerk’s buttocks. The clerk screamed in pain and panic as his blood splattered across Laird’s face and the rest of the foxhole. Hoping to muffle the noise, Laird gave the man a strap to bite on until the medics arrived. He survived.

  Another soldier in Laird’s company was lost to sniper fire. The Americans braced for another last-ditch suicide attack, but there may not have been enough Japanese survivors to mount one. After the initial American bombing onslaught, the little vegetation that survived on the island was dispatched by dozens of flamethrowers. So were the Japanese blockhouses.

  Of the 5,000 Japanese who defended the island, only 49 Japanese and 125 Korean slave laborers survived as prisoners of war. Once again, the bushido code of death before dishonor had prevailed. The first time Laird had seen bushido, on Attu, he was horrified. The second time, on Kwajalein, he felt dread. It meant the battle in the Aleutians was no fluke. Laird and his fellow Americans faced an enemy who would not surrender.

  On Kwajalein, 177 American lives were lost, with an additional 1,000 men injured.

  Even when the fighting was over, Kwajalein exacted a toll. As they exited the island, Laird and several men with full packs were climbing a rope ladder from a landing craft to a transport when the ladder gave way. Men high on the ladder fell backward onto men below. More than a dozen troops were hurt, including two with broken backs and several with serious fractures. Victory could be dangerous, too.

  All told, the Battle of Kwajalein extinguished about one human life per minute over the course of nearly four days, all for a remote tropical atoll with just 1.2 miles of surface area.

  For the United States, Kwajalein marked a significant strategic and psychological victory. It was the first time Japan had lost an outer ring defense island.

  For Laird, Kwajalein added a darker cloud to his nightmares. On top of his nightly dreams about the killings of his runner and Nobuo Tatsuguchi in Attu, Laird now heard the screams of his company clerk in the foxhole on Kwajalein. He could never be sure when the nightmares would strike. Sometimes the same dream would repeat twice in the same night. Sometimes he could go days without dreaming at all, but then be rocked by the worst yet night terrors. The winner of the Silver Star feared his bedroll.

  His superiors, however, knew nothing of Laird’s inner turmoil. They watched him fight on Attu and Kwajalein—and Hawaii—and came away impressed. His commander recommended him for promotion as an officer.

  “During the entire operation on Attu, Sergeant Laird proved himself to be an exceptional combat leader,” wrote Captain Robert Foulston in his recommendation letter. “During the recent operation on Kwajalein, he performed the duties of company executive officer in a superior manner. . . . Sgt. Laird displayed the highest type of individual courage and leadership at all times.”

  His lieutenant colonel concurred, and recommended Laird for Officers Candidate School.

  Laird had his doubts. He was flattered by the recommendations, but he worried about the “school” part of officer training. He was self-consciously Appalachian. What if he started officer’s school but flunked out? He couldn’t bear the shame.

  When Laird was interviewed about his nomination to officer’s school, he was too embarrassed to talk about his lack of schooling. Instead, he voiced doubts
about leaving battle for school in the middle of the war, and whether the Army life was really for him. “Although this non-commissioned officer undoubtedly possesses all requisites for commissioned grade, at interview he expressed doubts to desire to serve in that category,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Francis Pachler. He rescinded the recommendation. Laird remained a first sergeant.

  With the rest of his division, Laird returned to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii to heal and train. This time the work felt more urgent. Laird thought the troops were spending unusual amounts of time on nonbattlefield routines, such as marching in formation. On July 27, 1944, Laird and the other soldiers were ordered to assemble for two important visitors.

  “Officers and men of the 7th Division,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the troops while seated in a convertible with General Douglas MacArthur, “I want you to feel that, at least in theory, I am bringing to each and every man, greetings from his own family and his own home, at this spot, which thank God is still a part of the United States. I have heard much of what the 7th Division has done. We’re all proud of the 7th, in what it has done and what it is doing. And that’s another reason why I give you all the good luck in the world.”

  Between the 7th Division at Schofield and the Navy at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt witnessed a massive show of force on Oahu. The road along his drive to the Army base was lined with 40,000 troops. None of them missed the significance of the president meeting directly with General MacArthur. Twenty-eight months earlier, MacArthur had fled the Japanese invasion of the Philippines with his famous farewell promise: “I shall return.”

  Reporters in Honolulu pressed the president about the meaning of his meetings with the general. “When General MacArthur was about to leave the Philippines,” a reporter asked, “he said something to the general effect that ‘I will return.’ In view of the setting of this meeting with him, is there anything that you could tell us? Is that true now?”

  Roosevelt’s answer: “We are going to get the Philippines back, and without question General MacArthur will take a part in it.”

  Laird considered the president’s words. He saw his own future.

  Ducking bullets and leaping from mortar shells, Dick Laird was running for his life, when he heard a fearsome explosion behind him. He turned and saw that his landing ship was hit by a Japanese fighter plane. A vast hole opened, and the ship took on water. He could not retreat now.

  On October 20, Laird was one of 132,000 men invading the beaches of Leyte, one of the largest of 7,500 islands in the Philippines. He knew from the start this would be a beachhead like no other. For as far as Laird could see, there was United States naval power—carriers, battleships, destroyers, cruisers, PT boats—more than 300 ships in all, and one of the greatest displays of military and industrial might in world history. If the Japanese were intimidated, they did not show it. Gone were the days of granting the invading troops a foothold at the shore and then beating down on them from fortified positions in the heights. Now the Japanese were dive-bombing ships in the water and men on the shore. Laird and his men raced through the open sand and dove for cover.

  The first protection he found made him shudder. It was a cemetery outside the town of Dulag. Laird crouched behind monuments and pressed himself flat between graves. He did not want to dig a foxhole here.

  He and his unit managed to push beyond the graveyard to the edge of a clearing. He dug a slit trench with a Latino soldier from Los Angeles. Laird wasn’t sure of the man’s name, but with bullets crossing overhead, there was no time for introductions. A mortar crashed beside them. The other soldier, blown open, collapsed dead onto Laird, before another blast of shrapnel ricocheted and ripped into him. The body shielded Laird. The dead man saved his life. Laird froze in shock and horror. When the firefight ebbed, another soldier helped pull off the corpse. Laird had no choice: He had to move on. Leyte was much bigger and more complicated than anyplace Laird had fought before. One hundred ten miles long and forty wide, the island was bisected by a densely forested volcanic mountain range with peaks that jutted 3,600 feet. Leyte offered a million hiding places for snipers and bunkers, and the Japanese had garrisoned Leyte with 16,000 troops, though as the battle ground on they would be reinforced with another 45,000.

  A few hours behind Laird and seventeen miles up the beachhead, General MacArthur had waded through knee-deep surf to the beach on Leyte. “People of the Philippines, I have returned,” MacArthur announced. “The hour of your redemption is here.” His proclamation was followed by the largest battle in the history of sea warfare.

  On October 23, the Imperial Navy launched a massive counterattack in the Leyte Gulf. Already facing severe oil shortages at home and in their war effort, the Japanese correctly feared that an American takeover of the Philippines would cut off shipping lanes to their conquered East Indies petroleum supplies. Since its overwhelming victory at Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Navy had been rocked by devastating losses at the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The United States’ vast industrial capacity allowed it to rebuild its Navy. Japan, however, could not come close to matching the output of America’s steel mills and shipyards. Every passing week allowed the United States shipyards to add to the country’s advantage. The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the last chance for Japan to regain the upper hand in the Pacific War.

  The gambit did not work. After four days of furious fighting, the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, ten cruisers, twelve destroyers, 300 warplanes—and more than 10,000 men. The Allies suffered about one-third the destruction, losing one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, one destroyer escort, and 200 warplanes. About 3,000 sailors were killed or injured. Leyte Gulf marked the first time the Japanese made extensive use of kamikaze warplane pilots, sinking one ship and damaging at least seven others.

  It was the most costly battle in the history of naval warfare, and Japan’s military had been irrevocably crippled. Japan had entered the Pacific War with one of the world’s most advanced navies, but after the Battle of Leyte Gulf concluded on October 26, it would never again dictate the terms of a battle at sea. Japan also lost easy access to the oil fields of Indonesia, a deprivation that would throttle the remainder of Japan’s war efforts.

  The defeat at sea did not stop the battles on land. If anything, the Imperial Army redoubled their defense with tens of thousands of reinforcements.

  Then it started—rain. In the same way that Attu had fog and cold, Leyte had rain. On November 8, the island was engulfed in a typhoon, forty days of warfare drenched in thirty-five inches of rain. Trees crashed, mudslides ruined roads, and paths became wallowing trenches of knee-deep mud. It was as if the ocean had come ashore.

  When Laird dug a foxhole, it filled with water. He dug deeper and stacked ammo boxes on the bottom to keep his feet above water. That worked until he had to dig again. Trench foot was mostly a malady of the cold, which the Philippines did not have, but after Attu he never wanted to repeat that experience. He worked to keep his feet dry.

  The elements played with his mind. The pelting rain made it easy to mistake targets. Leyte was thick with wild pigs, monkeys, and flying fox (a bat with a five-foot wingspan), and more than one animal lost its life for moving too much like a Japanese soldier at the wrong time. Someone in Laird’s company accidentally shot and killed a domestic water buffalo.

  Laird was on patrol in a storm along a sugarcane field near Baybay on the western coast when he saw stalks quivering in an unusual way. He raised his rifle and braced.

  From the tall cane emerged two figures, dark in the rain, and staying pressed against the dense cover. They looked both ways. Laird saw them first. He was ready for them.

  His finger moved over the trigger when he noticed that one of the figures was unusually short.

  The two men raised their hands. Laird moved closer.

  They were two Filipinos, a teenager and his younger brother. One was maybe fourteen years old and the other was perhaps nine.
He was overcome with shame and anger. He had almost killed two innocent boys. Laird gave the boys rations and cigarettes, which were worth more than money, and sent them on their way.

  The boys didn’t want to go. For the next several days, they found Laird before sunset and built him a sleeping shelter with straw mats above the wet ground. Laird repaid them with food. They also gave him a set of teardrop pearls. Laird kept those for Rose. Before he slept at night, as he listened to the rain pelt the palm frond roof constructed by the boys, Laird could not get beyond the fact that he had nearly shot them to death.

  In the Philippines, Laird would acquire another medal, a Bronze Star, for bravery. He also acquired more grist for his mill of nightmares.

  By New Year’s Day 1945, Leyte had been secured by United States troops. The death toll for Japan was 49,000, or about four times greater than the combination of 3,504 dead for the United States, with an additional 12,000 casualties.

  Japan still had more than 250,000 troops stationed on the largest Philippine island of Luzon, the home of Manila. However, the crushing loss on sea and land at Leyte had limited Japan’s military options. With little naval or air support, the vast army on Luzon had few tools left to defend itself. By April 1945, the Imperial Army on Luzon was vanquished in the second-deadliest battle in the Pacific for the United States.

  Laird, however, was spared that fight in the Philippines. Instead, he was shipped out to a fight even worse—Okinawa.

  A large island just 350 miles southwest of mainland Japan, Okinawa was the linchpin to any U.S. invasion of Tokyo, the key stepping-stone to the final confrontation. It offered airfields for warplanes and anchorage for ships. Until this point in the war, Japan could fight a defensive war on perimeter islands without jeopardizing the homeland. Losing Okinawa would put the emperor in the crosshairs.