America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (30 page)

To do just that, the Americans employed a weapon that proved decisive in the Pacific War. The weapon was the submarine. Operating from bases in Australia and Hawaii, American submarines roamed the Pacific. After a slow start due in part to faulty torpedoes, the U.S. Navy’s submarine force scored success after success. In 1944 alone the boats (U.S. submarines are “boats” not “ships”) sank six hundred enemy ships. Men such as Slade Cutter, Richard O’Kane, and Howard Gilmore are today unknown to the American public. But these three submarine skippers and many others—seventy-six submarine captains sank five or more enemy vessels each—brought about the defeat of Japan. After the war, Admiral William Halsey, in ranking the tools of war most responsible for the victory over Japan, listed the submarine first. This victory, however, came at a price. Fifty-two U.S. submarines failed to return.

Howard Gilmore’s story warrants a few words. During a night action, his boat, the USS
Growler
, collided with a Japanese warship. Gunners aboard the ship fired down on
Growler
’s bridge, killing two men and wounding Gilmore. Apparently unable to move but fully conscious, Gilmore gave the command that sealed his doom, but saved his boat. It is an order that still resonates with the United States submarine service: “Take her down!” Posthumously, Howard Gilmore was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

American submarines did more than just sink ships. They also saved lives.

B-29s and other U.S. aircraft, either damaged or out of fuel, often ditched in the sea. Prospects for rescue seemed bleak. Imagine then the airmen’s relief when an American submarine surfaced and hauled them aboard. On lifeguard duty in the Pacific, U.S. boats rescued 504 airmen. One of them was a young naval aviator by the name of George H. W. Bush.

Having captured Iwo Jima and taken control of the Philippines, American strategists set their sights on Okinawa, an island just three hundred miles from Japan. For the United States, Okinawa would be the last stop on the road to Tokyo. Once Okinawa was secured, the next attack would target Kyushu, the most southern of Japan’s five major islands. Aware of what the loss of Okinawa portended, Japanese military leaders intended to make the Americans pay an extremely high price for the island.

On April 1, 1945, U.S. forces landed on Okinawa. Commanded by Lieutenant General Buckner (who no doubt was glad to be far from the bitter cold of Alaska and the Aleutians), the force eventually numbered some 169,000 men. Designated the U.S. Tenth Army, Buckner’s command included two U.S. Marine divisions in addition to four divisions of the army. It was a large force (the landings at Normandy involved five divisions), one that faced approximately seventy-six thousand Japanese troops. These troops were aided by an additional twenty-four thousand men in support roles, many of whom were native Okinawans.

The Japanese were well prepared. Most of them were deployed in well-protected caves and tunnels on the southern part of the island. The fight to remove them was both difficult and fierce, but making good use of tanks and flamethrowers, the U.S. troops took control of the island, killing most of the Japanese. The battle for Okinawa, the last campaign of the Pacific War, lasted eleven weeks. While the outcome never was in doubt, the cost to the Americans was high, just as the Japanese had wanted. On Okinawa, U.S. dead numbered 6,319. Americans who were wounded totaled 32,943. Among those killed was General Buckner, who was struck down by enemy artillery fire. He thus joined Lieutenant General McNair as the highest ranking American officer killed in action during the Second World War.

As American forces got closer and closer to Japan, U.S. commanders noticed that the Japanese defenders fought with increased determination. Indeed, as the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa indicated, the Japanese were fanatical in their efforts to halt the American advance. Nowhere was this more evident than with the kamikaze. These were suicide strikes in which Japanese pilots deliberately crashed their bomb-laden aircraft into enemy ships.

The kamikazes brought a new form of terror to the war on the Pacific. Eventually, they killed more than three thousand Americans. Their appearance off Okinawa and the Philippines, moreover, was not the result merely of a few crazed aviators. Kamikaze attacks were the result of deliberate decisions made by Japan’s senior commanders. Nor were the kamikazes few in number. Nearly four thousand Japanese pilots met their death in such attacks. Many more were waiting to take off when the war ended.

Helping to reduce the number of aircraft available to the Japanese was the newly arrived British Pacific Fleet. Once the war in Europe was over, the British were anxious to have the Royal Navy take part in operations against the Japanese. They wished to repossess Singapore and Hong Kong and, in general, to restore British influence in the region. Moreover, they wanted to avenge the loss of HMS
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
. Admiral King had no desire to see the British share in America’s victory, but he was overruled. By April 1945, British warships had sailed from Ceylon, attacked oil refineries in Sumatra and Java, and after refitting in Australia, had arrived off Okinawa. The fleet consisted of four large aircraft carriers, two new battleships, and a number of cruisers and destroyers. It was a formidable force, the most powerful Britain had ever put to sea. Yet it was but a fraction of the immense array of warships assembled by the United States. The task of the British ships was to intercept Japanese aircraft being ferried from Formosa to Okinawa. Employing mostly American-built aircraft, the British Pacific Fleet destroyed in total ninety-six of the enemy’s planes. While not a particularly large number, it represented a useful contribution to America’s victory at Okinawa.

The most spectacular kamikaze attack of the Pacific War involved not Japanese aircraft but a battleship, a very large battleship. The ship was the
Yamato
. She displaced 69,500 tons and carried 9 eighteen-inch guns (the most powerful American battleships—the Iowa class—weighed in at 45,000 tons and was armed with sixteen-inch guns).
Yamato
’s final sortie took place on April 6, 1945. With fuel sufficient for but a one-way trip to Okinawa, the massive vessel hoped to smash American warships in one last glorious engagement. The mission was suicidal. It also was a complete failure. American carrier-based aircraft put ten torpedoes into her well before she reached her destination. When she slipped beneath the waves, so did three thousand Japanese sailors. In sinking the
Yamato
the U.S. Navy lost twelve airmen. No doubt the Americans thought it a fair exchange.

Well before U.S. forces appeared off Okinawa, American strategists were planning the invasion of Japan. The plan consisted of two parts. The first was to have the U.S. Sixth Army, some six hundred thousand men commanded by General Walter Krueger, land on the southeastern coast of Kyushu. This was to be called Operation Olympic and take place on November 1, 1945. The second part, Operation Coronet, was scheduled for March 1, 1946. In this attack, two additional armies were to land on Honshu, near the port city of Yokohama. In overall command of all the armies would be Douglas MacArthur, a command he relished.

Of course, neither Olympic nor Coronet ever took place.

On August 6, 1945, a B-29 nicknamed
Enola Gay
left the Marianas bound for Japan. In the plane’s bomb bay was an atomic bomb. That morning, Hiroshima became the recipient of the first nuclear bomb dropped in anger (the first atomic explosion had taken place earlier on July 16, on American soil, in the desert of New Mexico). When the destruction of Hiroshima failed to secure the surrender of Japan, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Even then, Japan’s military commanders wanted to continue the war. They hoped to so bloody the Americans on the beaches of Japan that the United States would seek a negotiated end to the war, an end more favorable to Japan than the one likely to result from surrendering unconditionally. Fortunately for all concerned—Japanese as well as Americans—Emperor Hirohito took the unprecedented step of personally intervening in his government’s decision-making. On August 9 Hirohito said it was time to end the war and spare the people of Japan further harm. Reluctantly, Japan’s generals and admirals bowed to his wishes.

And so the Second World War came to an end. On September 2, 1945, representatives of the Japanese government and of the Japanese military signed the document of surrender. General MacArthur signed on behalf of the Allied Powers. Signing for the United States was Admiral Nimitz. The ceremony took place aboard the USS
Missouri
, one of the four Iowa class battleships. That day, she was anchored in Tokyo Bay, along with more than 250 other Allied warships. Today, decommissioned, she sits at rest in Pearl Harbor. Close by lies the wreckage of the
Arizona
, a battleship destroyed on December 7, 1941. For Americans, these two vessels mark the beginning and the end of the great war that took place in the Pacific years and years ago.

Why did Japan declare war on the United States by attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor?

In the 1930s, Japan hoped to expand its influence well beyond the Home Islands. Governed by zealots and convinced of its citizens’ racial superiority, Japan, by 1941, had subjugated Korea, seized Manchuria, invaded China, and taken control of what is now Vietnam. Japan also wanted its empire to include the petroleum-rich Dutch East Indies. The Americans opposed Japan’s imperial ambitions. In response to the Japanese actions, the United States froze Japanese assets in the United States. It also forbade the sale of oil to Japan, a step the Japanese considered tantamount to a declaration of war. Further, as both a precautionary measure and as a signal to Tokyo, President Roosevelt transferred the home base of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet from the west coast of America to Hawaii.

The two nations were on a collision course. To prevent a clash of arms, Japan would have had to reverse its policy and recall the troops, especially those fighting in China. But Japan could not do so without losing face, a step inconceivable to the military commanders running the government. If the United States would not peacefully step aside, so the commanders reasoned, it would have to be made to do so. Hence, with little dissent, Japan’s leaders chose to go to war.

Many senior Japanese commanders realized that the United States was economically much stronger than Japan. They believed, however, that Americans possessed little physical and spiritual toughness. If the Imperial Japanese Navy could destroy the Americans’ Pacific Fleet either at Pearl Harbor or in a subsequent battle at sea, the demoralized Americans, lacking the fiber of the samurai, would acquiesce to Japan’s territorial conquests. Rarely have the leaders of a country so miscalculated.

Was it likely that Japan would defeat the United States?

Not really. Japan might win occasional battles, which it did, but the island nation simply did not have the resources necessary to emerge victorious in a full-scale war with the United States. Neither in manufacturing nor in manpower could the empire match the capability of America. By mid-1944, American ships and aircraft were overwhelming their Japanese counterparts. What Japan did have, from the beginning of the conflict to its end, was determination and courage. But as long as the United States was willing to fight a long and costly war, Japan had little hope of winning. After the debacle at Pearl Harbor, the American people were willing to endure the hardship of war to see victory realized.

Did America’s insistence on unconditional surrender prolong the conflict?

Yes, it did. In Europe, America’s goal was not simply to defeat the German armed forces. It was the elimination of the Nazi regime. To be sure, such insistence stiffened Germany’s resistance. Had there been a willingness to strike a deal with Hitler, the fighting probably would have ended sooner and, consequently, with fewer casualties. But the war in Europe was not just a battle over national boundaries and political influence. It was a crusade, a campaign to rid the world of an evil that had infected continental Europe. In both 1940 and 1945, Germany would have been happy to negotiate a settlement that ended the fighting in the west, thus enabling the Germans to concentrate on their most hated enemy, the Soviets. Churchill and Roosevelt would have none of it. Their goal was to crush the Third Reich. Given what the Nazis had done and what they represented, this was entirely appropriate. If that meant additional lives lost, so be it.

Similarly with the Japanese. After December 7, 1941, America’s goal was the unconditional surrender of Japan. Leaders in Tokyo—generals, admirals, and civilians—had embarked on a path of military conquest. In so doing, they had caused thousands and thousands to die. The United States went to war determined to eradicate those responsible. The goal was not a negotiated settlement that allowed those in power to remain. It was victory, total and clear-cut. As with Germany, this had the effect of making Japan fight harder. But in the Pacific as in Europe, the Second World War was a fight to the finish.

Why did the Allies, principally Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, defeat Germany in the Second World War?

The Allies triumphed for several reasons: (1) America’s “arsenal of democracy” produced first-rate weapons of war in quantities Nazi Germany could neither match nor imagine; (2) the British intelligence services were superb; (3) the extraordinary talents of scientists in both the United States and Britain led to technologies that made a difference on the battlefield; (4) Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, unlike Adolf Hitler, provided political leadership of the highest caliber; (5) Allied military commanders were a talented lot; (6) the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces were superior to the much vaunted Luftwaffe, which, from the vantage point of history, turns out to have been woefully inadequate; and (7) British, Soviet, and American soldiers—the Tommy, Ivan, and the GI—proved equal to the dangerous and difficult assignments they were given.