A World at Arms (167 page)

If any who doubt the need for and wisdom of the campaign in the central and southern Philippines are likely to have the best of the argument, the other new series of landings MacArthur carried out, this time with the prior rather than the retroactive consent of the Joint Chiefs, needs to be seen in a different context. The landings in the Dutch East Indies, primarily on Borneo, grew out of discussions between the Americans and Australians and were, although it is difficult to prove, also influenced by concern that Japanese forces in the East Indies, drawing on the resources there, might well continue fighting an active war long after their home islands had been occupied.

The Australian army had replaced American divisions containing the by–passed Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific. The Japanese 18th Army on New Guinea, 17th on Bougainville, and 8th Area Army on New Britain still headquartered at Rabaul, presented no major threat; but the question of dealing with their approximately 160,000 to 200,000 soldiers remained. Though short of supplies, especially ammunition and medicine, these were still formidable numbers, and the key Australian military figure, General Thomas Blarney, ordered aggressive operations against the 17th and 18th Armies by the Australians facing them. Only on New Britain, where the Japanese 8th Area Army greatly outnumbered the Australian 5th Division, was a policy of containment rather than constant attacks followed. Whether these operations, and the casualties incurred in them, were wise is likely to remain a source of arguments.
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Even more arguments greeted MacArthur’s plans, code-named “Oboe I-VI,” for a series of invasions of the islands of Borneo and Java in the Dutch East Indies and of British Borneo as well. Though reluctantly approved by Washington and Canberra, one of these landings, that at Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo, was originally the subject of a serious controversy between MacArthur and the Australian government.
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In part observed personally by MacArthur, the first “Oboe” operations went forward successfully in June and July, 1945. The landing of two Australian divisions on Java was fortunately aborted by the Japanese
surrender before this most dubious project against greatly superior Japanese forces could be implemented.
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BOMBING THE HOME ISLANDS AND IWO JIMA

The bombing of the Japanese home islands from the Marianas–one of the main purposes of the American landings there in June 1944–had begun in the fall.
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The B-29 bomber had been especially designed for long-range attacks on Japan, and bases were being built on Saipan, Guam and Tinian to accommodate the big bombers as they became available from the factories, and when those previously assigned to Chinese airports were transferred to the Marianas in early 1945. But the first stages of the B-29 campaign did not go as well as hoped. The plane represented a major departure from earlier designs not only in being the first bomber with a pressurized cabin but in a large number of other ways. Not surprisingly, the plane had all sorts of teething troubles which took time to fix. The enormous distance, increased by the need to try to avoid Japanese fighters from the Bonin Islands, made navigation errors more likely. The tremendous strength of the jet stream and other causes of turbulence caused almost impossible aiming problems at high altitudes over Japan.
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The early raids from the Marianas–the first against Tokyo was flown on November 24, 1944–showed the Japanese people far more dramatically than the prior small air raids based on China that the American air force could now reach the home islands; but the weather and winds interfered with bombing from the high altitudes at which the B-29s flew. They were out of range of Japanese anti-aircraft fire and beyond the altitude most fighters could reach, but the distance and weather took their toll, while most of the bombs dropped from 30,000 feet and even higher missed the aircraft factories and other targets at which they were aimed.
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There was considerable damage, but as the Emperor was told at a meeting with senior statesmen on February 26, 1945, this was not at all as bad as what Germany had had to endure.
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Two American steps altered the situation in the air war against Japan dramatically. The landing on Iwo Jima on February 19 followed by the subsequent conquest of the island and expansion of the Japanese airports on it shortened the distance to be flown from the Marianas, because there was no need to depart from the direct route on account of Japanese fighters based on Iwo. The island provided an intermediate base on which B-29s could land, and allowed the stationing of fighters to escort the bombers to Japan.
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This latter became important because of a second measure adopted in March: flying low–and thus subject to
fighter attack–in order to carry masses of incendiaries to burn Japanese industry out instead of flying high to destroy factories with explosive bombs. The two operations proved dramatic indeed.

The Americans had long looked toward a landing on Iwo Jima as the best place in the Bonins for an intermediate base for the air, sea and land attack on Japan. The Japanese could readily see the identical geographic realities.
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They had evacuated the small civilian population and developed a complicated series of defenses, most of them underground, to fight any American landing force. It was assumed by the Japanese commander, General Kuribayashi Tadamichi, that the Americans could get ashore, but that, once on land, the Japanese would inflict enormous casualties on the assaulting Americans while the kamikaze would take their toll of the escorting and supporting fleet. If the Japanese could not defeat the invaders, they would die themselves after inflicting the greatest number of casualties possible by utilizing the underground defenses they had built, instead of the practice followed by other garrisons of losing vast numbers in futile banzai charges which disconcerted the Americans but led to a quick death for the Japanese.

The Americans knew in general that the Japanese planned a very hard defense of the island, but they could not know all the details. The prospect of extremely heavy casualties in the conquest of the island was daunting enough to lead to a recommendation to President Roosevelt that poison gas be used on the island: there were no civilians there; and the United States was not legally bound by the treaty banning the use of poison gas. The President, however, was totally opposed to its use except as a retaliatory measure, and he rejected the proposal made to him.
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The obvious alternative to the use of gas was an extremely heavy bombardment. Here there was a serious deficiency in American coordination of the operations in the Pacific. The continued use of many of the battleships in the Philippines and a major series of carrier plane assaults on the home islands of Japan reduced the naval bombardment substantially below that called for by General Holland Smith, who commanded the three marine divisions (3rd, 4th and 5th) assigned to the assault.
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With the landing already postponed a month because of the heavy fighting in the Philippines and the need for naval air to support operations still under way in those islands, there was a reluctance to
postpone any other action. Neither the weeks of bombing from the air nor the three days of naval gunfire provided instead of the requested ten days were to prove sufficient. The bombing was largely ineffective, and the naval bombardment was too short to deal with the vast number of targets, though many of these simply could not be reached by naval gunfire. And given the small size of the island–some 5 miles by 2.5 miles–there was little opportunity for naval gunfire to support the marines once they were ashore, as had assisted the landing forces in Normandy.
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The situation of the Americans would have been worse still had not a premature reaction of some Japanese gunners to the ships carrying the pre-invasion obstacle demolition teams on February 17, the second day of the American naval bombardment, revealed the location of some hitherto hidden Japanese gun emplacements.

On February 19 the marines landed and immediately ran into terrific opposition. Some units were literally pinned down on the beaches, while others began to make their way inland slowly. The loose ashes of the island–which had only appeared above sea level due to volcanic action half a century before–made progress difficult and defense relatively simple. A shallow beachhead was obtained on the first day, and in the following days the marines fought their way forward slowly and at great cost. By February 24, they had reached the crest of volcanic Mt. Suribachi, planting a flag which encouraged the marines struggling for control of the airfields and inspiring through a famous news picture the monument to the marines in Arlington today.

The seizure of Mt. Suribachi gave the Americans control of the southern end of the island and good observation on major portions of the rest, but the fight went on. In the bitterest of fighting, the marines slowly inched forward, first splitting the defenders and then destroying the remaining pockets of resistance. Of the Japanese garrison of slightly over 20,000, only 200 were taken alive; the rest were killed, with General Kuribayashi one of the last on March 24. The battle cost 6000 deaths and 25,000 wounded marines, the first and last time that American casualties exceeded Japanese deaths in the Pacific offensive .

The terrible price of victory pointed to ever higher casualties as the Americans approached the home islands. The great distance from Tokyo had held down the kamikaze attacks on the escorting ships which, during the weeks they were needed, would otherwise have been very vulnerable–a point the Japanese took into their calculations for the Okinawa campaign and which the United States navy would have done well to factor into its plans for Iwo Jima: a longer pre-invasion bombardment would have reduced, not lengthened, the time of naval exposure to attack
by Japanese submarines and planes. But the island had been won, and even before the last Japanese had been killed in the underground bunkers, the first American bombers were using the airfields on the island, which had been repaired and extended by the Seabees, the American navy’s construction experts.
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In addition, the American planes flying from the Marianas to attack Japan no longer had to skirt the Bonin Islands or worry about fighters from there.

The island base was useful not only as an emergency landing strip for the B-29s-by the end of the war, about 2,400 had made such landings–but it also helped with the organization of the elaborate air–searescue system being established to rescue crews from crashed or ditched bombers on the long routes to and from the targets in Japan.
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This was of special importance both to save large numbers of highly trained crew members and also because the Japanese had earlier publicly announced their killing of captured American air crews who had bailed out over Japan, and who now ordered that B-29 crew members who crashed at sea were also to be killed as a matter of policy, a policy known to the Americans who had intercepted and decoded it.
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The B-29 bombing effort from the Marianas had originally been something of a disappointment. From October 1944 into early 1945 a series of raids had produced some effects, especially on the Japanese aircraft industry against which it was primarily aimed, but not anywhere near the results hoped for and at considerable loss to fighters, anti-aircraft fire, and–most of all–weather, accidents, and other operational problems. General Arnold, the head of the army air force, replaced General Haywood S. Hansell, the commander of the 21st Bomber Command, with General Curtis Le May who had been heading the 20th Bomber Command in China. In United States Air Force headquarters there had been considerable discussion of using the B-29 not for daylight high altitude precision bombing but for incendiary attacks at night. The idea was that the vulnerable Japanese cities with their wood and paper structures densely clustered around decentralized industrial facilities might simply be burned out by massive loads of incendiary bombs.
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A few experimental fire raids had been mounted, primarily against Hankow by 20th Bomber Command and against Tokyo by the 21st.

With Arnold’s support, Le May now changed the tactics in the field. The target areas of Japan had almost invariably been covered by clouds in daytime and had to be bombed by radar, a system which with the technology of the time and the tremendous strength of the jet stream and winds over Japan almost guaranteed misses. At night the clouds were thinner, Japanese anti-aircraft fire was nowhere near as strong and
accurate as that over Germany, the Japanese had very few night fighters, and low–flying planes could carry far heavier loads of incendiaries.
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In addition, Le May decided to take a chance by removing the ammunition in the planes to increase bomb loads. The invasion of Okinawa was only three weeks off; the change in tactics would inaugurate a new bombing offensive preparatory to the next great landing operation.

On the night of March 9–10, 1945, Le May sent 334 B-29s over Tokyo. Flying low, unarmed, and without having to stay in tight formations against fighter attacks, the big bombers showered a huge load of incendiaries on the Shitamachi section of Tokyo. The Japanese were caught by surprise, and their preparations to deal with large-scale fires were in any case hopelessly inadequate. For over three hours, the procession of B-29s lumbered over Tokyo, turning the great mixed area of homes and industry into a raging inferno. Between 80,000 and 100,000 died in the flames, which consumed some 16 square miles of Tokyo’s built up area in the raid which probably caused the largest number of casualties of World War II. Dozens of large factories and hundreds of feeder–workshops had been destroyed. A new stage of the air war against Japan had begun.

On March 18, more than a week after the great fire raid on Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito himself inspected the tremendous damage.
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The 21st had by that time applied an essentially similar technique to Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. In several of these cities, modern buildings of stone and reinforced concrete held up somewhat better than the Tokyo tinderbox, but in each of them enormous areas were devastated, with industrial facilities, docks and shipyards being destroyed on a large scale along with vast residential districts. The well–informed German naval attaché reported to his government (and unknowingly to American intelligence) that these raids had been “amazingly effective,”
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and that the additional air attacks which followed were more damaging than had been expected and were crippling Japanese industry.
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