More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ian W. Toll
Started reading
September 1, 2020
Nine square miles of Osaka were burned to the ground. Among the important targets destroyed was the Osaka Arsenal,
That concluded the March 1945 firebombing blitz, at least for the moment. Everyone involved—including the pilots, aircrews, administrative staffs, and ground support personnel—was completely worn out.
The ultra-long-range attack highlighted a tactical advantage possessed by the kamikazes: without need to conserve fuel for the return flight, their flight radius was effectively doubled.
Therefore, Ugaki took the decision, upon his own authority, to counterattack with the Fifth Air Fleet’s “whole strength.”
Six carriers had been hit and damaged, of which three (Enterprise, Wasp, and Franklin) needed major repairs at a rear base.
the invasion of Okinawa, to commence on April 1.
The transport and logistical fleet consisted of more than 1,200 ships.
Although Okinawa was a fully incorporated prefecture of Japan, the island’s people were culturally, racially, and linguistically distinct from the Japanese.
It was roughly equidistant to Formosa, the coast of China, and Kyushu, and within an easy flight radius of them all.
In Allied hands, Okinawa would provide a logistical backstop for the invasion of Japan,
American forces were organized under the overall command of Admiral Spruance, Fifth Fleet commander, whose arguments for the Okinawa invasion had persuaded Nimitz and King to back the operation.
While Task Force 58 was retiring from that fight, on March 19, Ugaki’s Fifth Air Fleet had launched its first major effort to attack the enemy with the manned suicide missiles called the Oka (“cherry blossom”).
This tactical Achilles Heel of the Oka—that its sluggish, overloaded mother plane could be intercepted and shot down before reaching launch range—had never been seriously considered by the Japanese.
In hindsight, much of the effort was wasted.
As on Iwo Jima and Peleliu, the Japanese had chosen a defense-in-depth strategy, concentrating their major forces in high rocky terrain well back from the beachhead, and digging deep into the earth against superior U.S. airpower and offshore naval gunfire.
The Imperial General Headquarters had envisioned Okinawa as a 60-mile-long “unsinkable aircraft carrier.”
How could this network of island airfields be defended against the relentless American naval-air-amphibious juggernaut, which had never failed to capture any island it had targeted, and which was growing steadily larger, stronger, and more proficient with each passing month?
total regular Japanese troop strength on the island amounted to about 76,000. Local Okinawan militias and draftees, some trained for combat and others mainly for labor, raised the total number of uniformed troops on the island to about 100,000.
The fortifications spanned the island in a continuous line, coast to coast, across a forbidding landscape of ridges, ravines, and sheer escarpments.
But many civilians had been frightened by Japanese propaganda, which had asserted that any who fell into American hands would suffer death by torture.
The Fifth Air Fleet mustered about six hundred planes, including about four hundred in dedicated kamikaze units.
Given the state of Japanese air forces, the only method that might succeed was to overwhelm the U.S. air defenses with sheer mass, which meant launching hundreds of airplanes at once, in the hope that at least a few would get through the fighter and antiaircraft defenses to score.
On March 25, as the U.S. invasion force gathered off Okinawa, Combined Fleet headquarters in Hiyoshi issued orders to initiate the “Ten-Go” Operation. This plan called for all-out massed suicide and bombing attacks on the U.S. fleet.
The sixth of April
Mitscher sent word to the carriers to stow all bombers in the hangars, freeing the flight decks for fighter operations.
The American fighters tore into the Japanese air formations, sending at least sixty planes down in flames in the first stages of the long day’s battle.
But given the size of this first “floating chrysanthemums” attack—about seven hundred planes, of which more than half were kamikazes—more than two hundred got through the fighter screen to attack the American fleet.
By the end of the day, twenty-six American ships had taken kamikaze hits. Six had been sunk,
A few flattops took some nerve-racking near-misses, but none was hit or damaged.
This was the battleship Yamato with her screening group of one light cruiser and eight destroyers, the last seaworthy remnant of the Imperial Japanese Fleet.
Just as in the earlier case of Sho, the Japanese “victory” plan for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the fleet was being asked to immolate itself for abstract considerations of honor.
The one-way sortie was a pointless sacrifice of ships, fuel, ammunition, and trained fighting men who were needed to defend the homeland.
More than 4,000 Japanese sailors had perished
April 6 was only the first of ten Kikusui “floating chrysanthemum” operations
In the end, the soldiers and marines had to dig their enemies out of the ground and kill them. There was no other way.
The fierce scrap on Ie Shima also claimed the life of Ernie Pyle, the famed and much-loved war correspondent, whom the GIs had nicknamed “the Soldier’s Friend.”4
This, I thought, is what Verdun and Passchendaele must have looked like.
There was no room for a flanking operation; the Pacific Ocean lay to the east and the East China Sea to the west.”7
But Cho’s desire to seize the initiative resonated with the division and field commanders, who foresaw that Yahara’s defensive tactics must lead eventually to total defeat.
The Japanese had lost at least 6,000 troops,
In a tearful encounter in the Shuri bunker, Ushijima told Colonel Yahara that he had been right, and pledged to stick to defensive attrition tactics for the remainder of the battle on Okinawa.
But the balance of power along the line had shifted, and the Americans moved immediately to exploit their advantage.
“If the results achieved are going to be so underestimated, there is no justification for the deaths of my men.
Having blundered into a second typhoon in six months, Halsey knew that his command was hanging by a thread. He lost no time in laying the groundwork for his defense.
Task group commanders Clark and Radford gave harshly critical testimony.
The court of inquiry recommended that “serious consideration” be given to relieving both Halsey and McCain of their commands, and reassigning them to other duties.
(The war ended before McCain was relieved,
More than on any previous Pacific battlefield, the Americans attempted to persuade their enemies to give up the fight.
In all, some 11,000 prisoners of war were taken on Okinawa, including more than 7,000 regular Japanese soldiers.
many Japanese soldiers dressed like civilians, some even trying to disguise themselves as women, to slip through the lines by hiding among the civilian population.
