A World at Arms (127 page)

Before this ghastly spectacle had appalled the Americans, who tried to persuade the suicidal Japanese to surrender, the American navy had crushed the “A-Go” operation. Attacks on Japanese air bases had either destroyed the land-based planes or kept them at a distance, but their commander had falsely informed Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo (who commanded the whole operation) that his planes were inflicting great damage on the American fleet. In fact, the United States 5th Fleet had an undamaged seven large and eight escort carriers, protected by a massive screen of battleships, to deal with Ozawa’s three large and six smaller carriers. The Japanese carrier pilots were new and inexperienced; they were shot down literally by the hundreds by far more experienced and better controlled American pilots in what came to be called “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” Most of those not downed by American planes were brought down by the concentrated anti-aircraft fire of the battleships. In addition, American submarines had sunk several of the Japanese destroyers before the battle was joined and sent to the bottom two of the large carriers; one, the
Shokaku,
had been at the Pearl Harbor raid, the other, the new
Taisho,
blew up when the fumes of the volatile
Borneo oil exploded inside the portion of the ship sealed off after a torpedo hit.

On the afternoon of the following day, Admiral Spruance located what was left of Ozawa’s fleet and sent his own planes after it, sinking one carrier and damaging two more, many of the returning American planes having to ditch as they ran out of fuel in the dark. But the Battle of the Philippine Sea, as it came to be known, was a major American victory in which the Japanese navy lost enormously in ships and even more in planes and pilots it could not replace, while United States losses were very low. The Saipan landing was safe, and soon after, first Tinian and then Guam were taken.
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The victory in the battle, furthermore, made it impossible for the Japanese to cope with MacArthur’s advance on New Guinea. Though neither the latter nor the American navy might be willing to recognize it, the double thrust strategy had been dramatically vindicated. The commanders in both areas were more inclined to see opportunities, not only risks and obstacles, and in practice kept the Japanese off balance and incapable of concentrating effectively on halting either.

The American operation saved by the diversion of Japanese attention to the Marianas was that on the island of Biak off the northwest coast of New Guinea. MacArthur’s forces had reached this far after a series of bold and dramatic moves. In a gamble which paid off handsomely, the Americans had landed a reconnaissance force in the Admiralty Islands on short notice on February 29, 1944, and, in MacArthur’s personal presence, had reinforced the advance party at the moment when the Japanese were still confused. By-passing the bulk of Japanese units in central New Guinea, the Americans had then surprised them by going 600 miles up the coast to Hollandia on April 22, soon making this small community in the Dutch portion of New Guinea into a major base. Because it turned out that the land nearby was not suitable for airfields which could carry the heavy bombers of 5th Air Force, MacArthur quickly threw his forces forward, landing on the little island of Wakde to seize its airfield on May 18 and launching an assault on Biak on May 27, 1944.

While in the Admiralty Islands, at Hollandia, and at Wakde the Americans had surprised the Japanese, on Biak it was the other way around. The airfields which were the objective of the assault were on a narrow coastal plain overlooked by high ground marked by caves. The Japanese commander, who anticipated a landing, withdrew his troops from the beach and entrenched them in the rugged terrain from which they poured fire on the Americans. Sending in reinforcements and replacing the American division commander did not move the fight forward much
faster. The Japanese now acted to crush the landing force by reinforcements to deal with the American army; and the world’s two largest battleships, the
Yamato
and
Musashi,
to deal with the navy aspect. It was news of American preliminary bombardment of Saipan which led to the cancellation of this project so that Admiral Ozawa could have all the ships needed for the “A-Go” operation, which became the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Under these circumstances, the American troops eventually destroyed the Japanese force on Biak and secured the airfields by June 30.
¹⁸⁸

The purpose of seizing the Biak airfields and those on Wakde had been to provide air support for the last offensive on New Guinea-the seizure of points in the northwest, the area called Vogelkop, the “bird’s head,” by the Dutch because on a map that is what it looks like. In July 1944, American troops landed first on Noemfoor and then at Sansapor, establishing themselves quickly while the substantial and recently reinforced Japanese garrison in the area, the equivalent of two divisions, faded into the jungle until the 1945 surrender rather than fight it out. Only General Adachi Hatazo’s 18th Army of the by–passed Japanese on New Guinea would attempt a major counter-offensive against Aitape, one of the American coastal strongpoints. Beaten off with losses of over ten thousand men, the 18th Army in central, like the Japanese 2nd Army in northwest New Guinea, was left behind by the war. Their containment, and that of the by–passed Japanese garrisons on New Britain and Kavieng, was turned over to the Australians who had provided the majority of MacArthur’s ground forces in 1942 and 1943, being now overtaken by the Americans.

The battles in the Pacific theater interacted with the internal political situation in both the United States and Japan. In the United States, the steady stream of publicity about MacArthur, carefully controlled from his headquarters,
^r
stimulated both mid–western conservative Republicans opposed to the likely nomination for President of either Thomas Dewey or Wendell Willkie by their party, as well as miscellaneous right–wing kooks and fanatics, to push the general for the nomination. They looked to a deadlock between the two leading contenders for a chance to push MacArthur as a widely and even enthusiastically acceptable alternative, and the general’s most reliable biographer believes that some of the time in late 1943 and early 1944 MacArthur was very much interested.
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The vast majority of Republicans, however, preferred New York Governor
Thomas Dewey, whose rout of all opposition in the April 4, 1944, Wisconsin primary effectively ended the miniboom. In the preceding months, MacArthur had had detailed and satisfactory meetings with General Marshall and with Admiral Nimitz, and in Admiral Kinkaid (transferred from Alaska) he had a naval associate with whom he worked well. In spite of his Chief of Staff General Richard K. Sutherland’s quite extraordinary talent for antagonizing everyone, MacArthur himself was settling into his role much more successfully and looked forward to the last intermediate operations that would take him back to the Philippines as commander of an American invading force.

The most dramatic political repercussion of the Pacific fighting culminating in the American victory in the Marianas was the resulting crisis in Tokyo. The greater power Tojo had gathered into his own hands now made him the more vulnerable when Japan’s armed forces suffered set-backs. The Japanese army’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek after seven years of war could not off-set defeats in India, in New Guinea, and on and near the Marianas, the last named an area Japan had held long before the war. The tough–minded general tried hard to hold on to power, but he could not do so. The palace and most leading political and some military figures combined to assure his being dropped from all of his posts; he resigned formally on July 18, 1944.
¹⁹⁰
His successor, General Koiso Kuniaki, had been governor of Korea; he did not take over the other portfolios, such as War Minister, that Tojo had held and never attained the commanding position of his predecessor.
¹⁹¹
In July of 1940 he had wanted to lead Japanese troops into the Dutch East Indies,
¹⁹²
but now, so he claimed at his trial after the war, he feared that the war was lost.
¹⁹³
The public posture of the new government was, however, one of fighting on to victory. And, for the first time in the war, the Japanese army and navy began to plan jointly for the defense of the Philippines which they correctly saw as the next main American objective.
¹⁹⁴

The Japanese in looking toward defense of their empire also attempted further to improve their relations with the Soviet Union following the signing of the protocols and conventions of March 30, 1944. They hoped to have the duration of the neutrality pact with the Soviet Union extended, preferably well before its expiration, to work out some understanding on China, and to obtain Soviet agreement to a mission of important Japanese personalities to Moscow, a mission behind which there was the hope of bringing about a separate peace between the Soviet Union and Germany.
¹⁹⁵
While Molotov listened carefully on April 8, 1944, to Japanese Ambassador Sato’s explication of such projects, and discussed the proposals cordially, he always came back to the question
of whether there was any German initiative behind Japan’s projected commission of notable emissaries.
¹⁹⁶
Since there was not, the Soviet Union, which might have been interested in a negotiated peace with Germany at this time–otherwise why ask for details?-always waved off the mission idea. As for a deal with Japan to settle disputes about and in China, Molotov professed no interest at all. The Soviet Union was not about to bind itself by new and far reaching agreements with Japan, and the Japanese had to content themselves with the prior agreement.
¹⁹⁷
For the time being they could continue their redeployment of forces from Manchuria to the South Pacific, push the last stage of their offensive in China, and stand on the defensive elsewhere.
¹⁹⁸

ALLIED AND AXIS PLANS FOR VICTORY

The British planning for the Pacific War looking toward its victorious conclusion over a bitterly fighting Japan was to produce little impact on that war but instead the most heated dispute between Churchill and his three Chiefs of Staff of the entire war in March, April and May of 1944.
¹⁹⁹
Between Churchill’s argument for a major offensive in Southeast Asia and the Chiefs of Staff urging a push alongside MacArthur’s advance from New Guinea through the Philippines to Japan, the exigencies of war and timing rather than agreement in London would decide. The Japanese offensive into India led to plans for a major campaign in Burma while the continuation of the war in Europe into 1945 followed by an unanticipated early victory over Japan first precluded and then obviated further major British operations in either theater. A substantial British fleet would assist the Americans in the Pacific offensives of 1945, welcomed there by the Americans, in spite of Admiral King’s doubts, at the orders of President Roosevelt.
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The President also had had a very direct personal hand in the argument over American strategic planning for the Pacific War. He had, it would appear, played a major personal role in the decision to launch the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and the Guadalcanal operation, but these were not the only strategic choices he influenced. There had been lengthy and at times heated arguments over the most appropriate way to defeat Japan during the whole period from the spring of 1942 to the fall of 1943.
²⁰¹
The basic decisions had tended increasingly to favor the double thrust in the Pacific, downgrading any approach to Japan from the north and from China because of experience with the weather problems in the former theater and the ineffectiveness of Chinese military effort in the latter. These trends had been reinforced by the successes in the Pacific in the fall of 1943 and early 1944 at a time when Chinese resistance
was collapsing. It was increasingly clear that the two thrusts would converge in the central Philippines late in 1944 while the beginning of B-29 bombardment of Japan, first from bases in China and subsequently from the Marianas, was seen as leading either (in cooperation with the blockade of Japan) to the avoidance of an invasion of Japanese home islands altogether or to an effective preparation for such invasion if it proved necessary.

There were two categories of major remaining questions. One was the possible speed of the advance, and that depended on the success of operations in the Pacific and the timing of the defeat of Germany with the resulting release of forces from Europe for redeployment to the Pacific. The other was that of intermediate objectives, especially whether a major American effort should be made to retake the main island of Luzon in the Philippines or to head for Formosa (as Taiwan was then called) instead. On this issue, Roosevelt gave the nod though no final decision to Luzon in his conference with Nimitz and MacArthur in Hawaii on July 26–28, 1944.
²⁰²
The decision was finalized when Admiral King was convinced by Nimitz in September that this was the correct course; Formosa would be by–passed and the follow-up to the Philippines would be the Bonin Islands (Iwo Jima) and then the Ryukyus (Okinawa).
²⁰³

Before any of these plans could be implemented, the Americans would have to mount a series of preliminary operations to get into the Philippines at all. A landing on Leyte Island in the central Philippines was originally scheduled for December 20, 1944, with landings on several islands between New Guinea and the Philippines by MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific forces, and islands between the Marshalls and the Philippines by Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Area forces, preparing the way. Of the planned landings, several were eventually cancelled, but others were still considered necessary. MacArthur’s army units assaulted Morotai on September 15, completely by–passing the large Japanese garrison on Halmahera.
²⁰⁴
If this move cost few casualties, leaving some 25,000 Japanese soldiers stranded on Halmahera while the Americans built airfields to support the invasion of the Philippines on Morotai, the simultaneous attack by marines and soldiers of Nimitz’s command on Angaur and Peleliu in the Palau Islands proved terribly difficult and costly. The 81st Division had a difficult six weeks campaign to clear Angaur; the 1st Marine Division had to fight the Japanese on Peleliu until the end of November in a horrendous struggle which, with almost 7000 killed and wounded, cost the highest combat casualty rate of any of the amphibious assaults launched in the Pacific.
²⁰⁵
Admiral Halsey had been doubtful about the Peleliu operation from the start and many have questioned both its concept and its implementation since. It is, however, at
least doubtful whether the enormous fleet anchorage at Ulithi in the Palaus, which was seized unopposed by the 81st Division, could have been utilized effectively as a major base by the American navy without a firm United States presence in the islands.