The Final Storm (2 page)

C
ontrary to what many of us are taught, the Second World War does not begin on September 1, 1939, with Hitler’s army invading Poland. In fact, by that time, a war has already been fought on Asian soil for eight years.

In the summer of 1931, the most militant among the Japanese Imperial High Command fabricate an incident that, to them, justifies an all-out invasion of Manchuria, China’s northernmost province. More “incidents” are revealed, which lead to attacks against the major Chinese cities of Shanghai and Nanking. The primitive Chinese army is no match for the well-trained and well-equipped Japanese, and in mere months, vast swaths of Chinese territory fall into Japanese hands. By the mid-1930s, Japanese aggression has inspired the League of Nations to offer what amounts to a slap on Japanese wrists. But the Chinese begin to counter, and under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese army begins at least to slow the Japanese down. Though the political ramifications of a war between such distant (and foreign) cultures produce few concerns in the West, it is the massacres of Chinese civilians that begin to draw Western attention. The numbers of dead and the ferocity of the Japanese soldiers are staggering, reports causing President Roosevelt to issue a partial embargo on raw materials allowed to enter Japan. As the brutalities against Chinese, Korean, and Southeast Asian peoples escalate, Roosevelt ups the ante by freezing
Japanese assets held in the United States. The Japanese respond with loud indignation and claim the need for self-protection from such aggression. They sign the Tripartite Pact, aligning themselves with Germany and Italy, each nation pledging to come to the aid of the others in the event of further hostility from their new enemies.

In 1940, with war now spreading across Europe, a new power emerges in the Japanese government, whose civilian voices have grown increasingly weak. The army assumes increasing authority, and from that army comes General Hideki Tojo. Tojo is vehemently anti-American, a philosophy he imposes on Japanese culture whenever possible. Tojo also commands the Japanese secret police, a force that stifles dissent among the moderates, whose voices are all but snuffed out. In September 1940, building upon a reputation for ruthlessness in Manchuria, Tojo becomes war minister. Immediately he puts his harsh feelings for the United States into strategic planning. Tojo believes that both America and Britain have been weakened considerably by the war in Europe, and all signs point to Germany’s eventual victory. Thus a confident Tojo begins to plan for the ultimate achievement, a war to conquer the vast resources of the United States. It is not a view shared by the Japanese navy. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto delivers a scathing report that calls any engagement with the Americans utter foolishness, and he is supported by many of the admirals who know they will be on the front lines of a fight that must inevitably span the entire Pacific. Despite Yamamoto’s reluctance, Tojo orders him to create a plan that will ensure a swift and decisive victory. Yamamoto knows that boldness and surprise are the twin ingredients of success against a formidable foe. He plans to make exceptional use of both. Despite discussions between Japanese and American diplomats in Washington, Tojo has no intention of reaching any peaceful solution. Aware that Yamamoto’s plans call for a sneak attack at the very moment their diplomats are talking peace, Tojo remarks, “Our diplomats will have to be sacrificed.”

What the Japanese do not know is that the Americans have broken their communications code and are fully aware that soothing words in Washington belie what is taking place in the Pacific. American intelligence knows that Japanese warships have put to sea, but there is no specific word of their mission. Regardless, on Hawaii, the two Americans in command, Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short, are informed that hostilities with Japan could begin at any time. Though he is warned that the Japanese seem poised to attack the Philippines or Borneo, Admiral
Kimmel never receives word that Washington believes Hawaii to be a target as well. Thus his preparations are minimal, ordering two attack aircraft carriers away from Hawaii to ferry aircraft to Midway and Wake islands. It is the only stroke of luck the Americans will experience. With no reconnaissance planes searching for trouble anywhere close to Hawaii, the American commanders are blissfully unaware that nine major Japanese warships, along with six aircraft carriers and a scattering of smaller escort ships, are steaming toward the U.S. fleet from the northwest. At 6
A.M
. on December 7, 1941, the first of two waves of Japanese dive bombers, fighters, and torpedo planes begins an attack at Pearl Harbor that will cost the United States twenty-one ships, more than three hundred aircraft, 2,400 dead, and 1,100 wounded. Despite the isolationist sentiment that still pervades the mind-set of a vast number of Americans, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shatters American complacency. America is in the war.

Even while the smoke rises from Pearl Harbor, Japanese invasion forces surge into the Philippines, virtually obliterating a powerful force of American heavy bombers and fighter planes commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur’s ground troops, totaling 100,000 Filipinos and 25,000 Americans, are routed completely, and despite a valiant American defense on the Bataan Peninsula and the island fortress of Corregidor, the Japanese prevail. Though MacArthur escapes, the combined forces, under American general Jonathan Wainwright, are forced to surrender, and thus begins the transfer of the prisoners to Japanese prison camps in what will become known as the Bataan Death March. Sixty thousand Filipinos and fifteen thousand Americans endure unmasked brutality and torture along a sixty-mile course that transforms how most Americans view their new enemy. Where barbarism and massacres in China had seemed a distant problem, now the realities of Japanese atrocities come home to the United States.

Throughout late 1941, the Japanese surge engulfs Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, and Indochina. In the Pacific, the American island of Guam falls, as well as the great chains of islands spreading all across the south and central Pacific, which now become Japanese strongholds. To the south, the Japanese conquer the British fortress at Singapore and sink two British battleships,
Prince of Wales
and
Repulse
, which were thought invincible. The combined blows are a knife in the morale of the British, who had believed their power in that part of the world was unassailable. But the Japanese continue to press forward, and by early 1942 they occupy and fortify the
Dutch East Indies, the Solomon Islands, and New Guinea. Though Wake Island also falls, some five hundred Marines on the island make a valiant though hopeless effort to hold the Japanese away. What is only a minor thorn in the Japanese side becomes a significantly heroic symbol that gives hope to the Americans that the Japanese might not be unstoppable after all. That optimism is further fueled by two enormous engagements, one at sea, the other in the air. In May 1942, the two opposing navies engage in a slugfest in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia. Though the American and Australian navies suffer the greater loss in warships, the fight ultimately prevents the Japanese from carrying out their planned invasion of Australia. Farther north, in June 1942, the Americans confront a massive Japanese fleet attempting to complete the work begun at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attempt to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap near Midway Island, northwest of Hawaii. But planes from those carriers instead devastate the Japanese fleet. The loss of their largest and most modern warships, including most of their aircraft carriers, is a blow from which the Japanese will never recover.

At home, the Japanese people and much of their military are being told that the engagements against the enemy are one-sided victories, that the Japanese effort is meeting only with success. With senior commanders believing the tale, the Japanese military loses the sense of urgency that their situation ought to demand, and little effort is made to shore up the devastated fleets. The same is true for Japanese airpower, which has been badly shaken by the increasing skills of American pilots and the improving technology of American aircraft.

On April 18, 1942, the Japanese people receive their first taste that what their government is feeding them might not be the complete truth. Sixteen American B-25 medium bombers are launched from the carrier USS
Hornet
, and make a one-way bombing run over Tokyo. The raid, led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, is both success and tragedy. All but one of Doolittle’s planes are lost, though many of the crews survive. The raid has no real tactical effect, but to the Japanese people, the sight of American bombs falling on the Japanese capital is eye-opening in the extreme.

In Washington, the American strategy begins to gel. If there is a push to be made against the vast territories now in Japanese hands, it will come from two spheres of control. The more southerly sphere, based in Australia, is commanded by General Douglas MacArthur. The more northerly,
because of the vast amount of ocean involved, will be commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz. Thus begins a two-prong campaign aimed at driving hard into the Japanese bases, which both men believe are overextended. In August 1942, the American First Marine Division, led by General Alexander Vandegrift and supported by troops from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, launches an invasion of a part of the Solomon Islands anchored by the island of Guadalcanal. The goal is to drive a wedge into the Japanese supply lanes that threaten Australia, and isolate Japanese troops based on New Guinea and surrounding islands. Moreover, the Japanese are rapidly constructing a major airfield there, which will only enhance their presence through that entire part of the Pacific. What begins as an invasion of a single island eventually grows to a fight that involves the ground, air, and sea arms of both sides, and becomes the first extended combat action of the Pacific war. The losses to the Japanese are horrific, and when the fighting ends, the Japanese must face the reality that the tide has turned against them. Both Nimitz and MacArthur realize this as well.

On the mainland of Asia, a different war is being waged. Beleaguered Chinese forces under Chiang Kai-shek are surviving only with the assistance of the British and Americans, who have created two supply routes for sustaining Chiang’s army. One, through Burma, is too vulnerable to Japanese attack and so can barely be sustained. The other, far more dangerous, is “the hump,” an air route from India across the Himalayan Mountains to China, where fleets of planes and some of the most illustrious pilots in American aviation history haul much needed supplies for the Chinese. But Chiang’s army is receiving help from ground and air forces as well, led from India by American general Joseph Stilwell, and inside of China by the Flying Tigers, an American fighter plane wing led by General Claire Chennault. But the two Americans never work effectively together, and Stilwell in particular alienates the British, whose assistance he needs to continue the flow of supplies out of India. Seeds of dissension are sown as well by Chiang, whose corrupt officers and brutal training methods cannot ever put a fighting force into the field to match the Japanese. Worse for Chiang, in China’s north there is a new rival leader emerging, whose own army is doing what it can to combat the Japanese. His name is Mao Tse-tung.