Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

Although Okinawa was a fully incorporated prefecture of Japan, the island’s people were culturally, racially, and linguistically distinct from the Japanese. On average, they were shorter of stature and more round-faced than their neighbors to the north. For centuries, the island had been the monarchical seat of the “Great Loochoo” kingdom, which had spanned the Ryukyuan archipelago.

Younger Okinawans had learned Japanese in school, and spoke it fluently, but older and less educated inhabitants spoke only Okinawan. Japanese soldiers tended to treat the locals as members of an inferior caste. Since the start of the Pacific War, the Japanese had required hundreds of thousands to evacuate to Formosa and the Japanese home islands, but tens of thousands of Japanese troops had arrived during the same years, so that the net population in 1945 was between 450,000 and 500,000, of whom 100,000 were Japanese military personnel or local militias under Japanese army command.

As the largest and most important island in the archipelago known as the Nansei Shoto, which stretched almost 800 miles from Kyushu to Formosa, Okinawa sat at a strategic crossroads. 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...

The invasion force was organized as the Tenth Army. It was under the overall command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr. of the U.S. Army. Major elements of this force were the army’s XXIV Corps, including three infantry divisions (the 7th, 77th, and 96th) commanded by Major General John R. Hodge, and the III Amphibious Corps, comprising the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, under the command of Major General Roy S. Geiger. Two additional divisions, one army and one marine, were kept in floating reserve. The British Pacific Fleet, designated Task Force 57, was assigned to cover the region to the south, between Okinawa and Formosa.

On March 26, Love Day minus 5, three battalions of the 77th Division landed in the Kerama Islands, 15 miles west of southern Okinawa. The small Japanese garrison, numbering about five hundred troops, was quickly overpowered. The hilly islands of this little archipelago offered no terrain suitable for airfields, but a semienclosed interior waterway ran north to south between its largest island (Tokashiki) and five smaller islands to the west. This “Kerama Roadstead” would function as an advanced fleet anchorage, large enough to accommodate about seventy-five large ships in depths of twenty to thirty fathoms.

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”).

As in previous amphibious landings, the workhorses of this fire support mission were the venerable “OBBs”—the “old battleships”—several of which had been knocked out of action in the raid on Pearl Harbor, and later salvaged and rebuilt. Too slow to operate with the carrier task forces, but still packing a tremendous punch, they were commanded by Rear Admiral Morton L. Deyo, whose fire support group included nine cruisers, twenty-three destroyers, and 117 LCI gunboats armed with rockets and mortars.

Twenty-two Shermans were destroyed; it was the single worst one-day slaughter of American tanks in the Pacific War. To the west, the 7th Infantry Division was caught in the open under artillery and mortar fire that had been preregistered to hit the lower slopes.

Buckner and his subordinates began to understand that a long, hard, bloody battle lay ahead. The enemy’s line of fortifications was well constructed, and it crossed the island from coast to coast. The terrain offered scant prospects for flanking or field maneuvers, and many sections were too steep and broken to accommodate tanks.

According to the army’s official history of the battle, the land was “utterly without pattern; it was a confusion of little, mesa-like hilltops, deep draws, rounded clay hills, gentle green valleys, bare and ragged coral ridges, lumpy mounds of earth, narrow ravines and sloping finger ridges extending downward from the hill masses.”2 For the Americans, control of the air and superior firepower were valuable advantages, but they were not decisive. The dilemma was similar to what the marines had faced on Iwo Jima, but on a larger scale. The Americans would have to use brute force, advancing uphill into some of the most onerous terrain in the Pacific.

Naval gunfire and air support were valuable on Okinawa, but they never superseded the bravery, initiative, and grit of individual infantry units. In the end, the soldiers and marines had to dig their enemies out of the ground and kill them. There was no other way. Rarely could they gain an advantage through flanking maneuvers. On the constricted terrain around the Shuri ridges, each battalion was wedged into a densely populated section of the line—on average, a thousand troops for every 600 yards—and the only way to hit the enemy was by frontal assault.

On the Motobu Peninsula, which protruded from the coast of northwest Okinawa, the 6th Marine Division had gradually hunted down and destroyed two battalions of Japanese troops.

Three regiments of the 77th Infantry Division had landed on Ie Shima, a small island just off the western cape of the Motobu Peninsula. Reconnaissance flights had failed to determine the extent of Japanese troop strength on the island, and the army ran into unexpectedly stiff resistance on a terrain feature they called “Bloody Ridge.” Five days were needed to quell resistance on Ie Shima. The Americans suffered 258 killed and 879 wounded; virtually the entire garrison of 4,700 Japanese troops was wiped out.

None had been hit by that first burst, but Pyle made the mistake of raising his head to have a look. He was hit in the left temple, just below his helmet, and died instantly. Later, soldiers erected a wooden sign: “On this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945.”

Marching north, the other way, were the bloodied veterans of the 27th Division, whom the 1st Marine Division would be replacing in the line. “Tragic expressions revealed where they had been,” wrote Gene Sledge. “They were dead beat, dirty and grisly, hollow-eyed and tight-faced. I hadn’t seen such faces since Peleliu.” One passing soldier told Sledge what to expect: “It’s hell up there, Marine.”

Corporal William Manchester, gazing ahead from a rise at the top of a hill, thought the scene looked “hideous, but it was also strangely familiar, resembling, I then realized, photographs of 1914–1918. This, I thought, is what Verdun and Passchendaele must have looked like. The two great armies, squatting opposite one another in mud and smoke, were locked together in unimaginable agony. There was no room for a flanking operation; the Pacific Ocean lay to the east and the East China Sea to the west.”7

IN THE JAPANESE THIRTY-SECOND ARMY COMMAND BUNKER, deep below Shuri Castle, the rain of U.S. artillery shells and bombs was little more than a nuisance. The blasts were comfortably muffled, as if they were a long way away. But the bunker was clammy and stifling, and smoke sometimes drifted down the ventilation shafts, sending everyone scrambling for their masks.

he was for continuing the defensive attrition tactics that had bled the American forces for three weeks. Yahara observed that the enemy’s advance toward Shuri had been held to a pace of about 100 meters per day. To send the Japanese troops out of their secure fortifications, to expose them to the enemy’s vast array of artillery, naval firepower, and air power, would be “reckless and would lead to certain defeat.”8 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.

After hearing the views of all his subordinates, General Ushijima ruled in favor of the attack. It was scheduled for predawn on May 4. The final order urged: “Display a combined strength. Each soldier will kill at least one American devil.”9 The operation

The Japanese had lost at least 6,000 troops, and the Twenty-Seventh Tank Regiment had only six remaining medium tanks. The Japanese artillery battalions had lost many guns and also had expended a great deal of their remaining ammunition. 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. However, as Colonel Yahara said, “There was no miracle medicine to heal the critical wounds of the May 4 debacle.”10 A feeling of despair spread through the Japanese ranks.

The two U.S. Army divisions had suffered 335 casualties on May 4, and another 379 casualties on May 5. But the balance of power along the line had shifted, and the Americans moved immediately to exploit their advantage. General Buckner informed his division and corps commanders that he expected to break through to Shuri in another two weeks.

ON APRIL 14, THE IMPERIAL GENERAL HEADQUARTERS in Tokyo had announced that air attacks on the Allied fleet off Okinawa had sunk or crippled 326 ships. Among the “fully confirmed” sinkings were six aircraft carriers, seven battleships, thirty-four cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and various auxiliary vessels. According to the official communiqué, the true figures were thought to be even higher—but out of an abundance of caution, in order to avoid haste and error, unconfirmed claims were being withheld pending “further checkup.”11 A week later, Radio Tokyo reported that the enemy had lost half of the 1,400 ships he had brought to Okinawa, including four hundred sunk, with casualties of no fewer than 800,000! These shocking losses, the announcer declared, had driven the Americans “into the black depths of confusion and agony.”

The reports made Tokyo’s earlier flights of hyperbole seem picayune by comparison. Ugaki’s second-in-command, Admiral Toshiyuki Yokoi, later explained that air commanders in Kyushu felt pressure from down the ranks to certify the grossly exaggerated claims. When Yokoi cast doubt on one such report, a kamikaze squadron commander told him: “If the results achieved are going to be so underestimated, there is no justification for the deaths of my men.

Yet it seems that leaders in Tokyo really did believe that the kamikazes might be winning the fight for Okinawa. The Naval General Staff estimated that the U.S. fleet was in “an unstable condition and the chance of winning now stands fifty-fifty.”14 IGHQ ordered more Kikusui operations, in hopes of scoring a knockout blow.

Teenaged girls of the local labor service corps looked after their laundry, cooking, and housekeeping. These “labor service maidens” became emotionally bonded to the kamikaze pilots—in a chaste sense, it seems—revering them as “the older brothers,” and calling themselves “the younger sisters.” Before a mission, the maidens worked all night to decorate the kamikaze planes with cherry blossoms, and left cloth dolls and origami figures in the cockpits. They attended the send-off ceremonies on the flight line, tearfully waving cherry blossom boughs or Rising Sun flags to the departing aircraft. They collected the pilots’ hair and fingernail clippings and mailed them to the families with letters of gratitude.

In the early days of the kamikaze corps, there had never been a shortage of volunteers. But in the spring of 1945, air commanders noted a shift in attitudes among the new crop of suicide pilots. Many had been “asked” to volunteer in circumstances that made it impossible to refuse. According to a naval staff officer, “there developed a pressure, not entirely artificial, which encouraged ‘volunteering,’ and it is understandable that this change in circumstance would effect a change in the attitude of the men concerned.”

About half of the kamikaze pilots of 1945 had been drawn from the ranks of university students. Many were cosmopolitan intellectuals who had been exposed to foreign ideas and influences, including Western philosophy and literature. These traits had not endeared them to their officers and NCOs in military training camps. Many young scholars had been singled out for special abuse, including vicious beatings—leaving them with feelings of contempt and loathing for military authority, and for the tyrannical regime that held the nation’s fate in its grip. In diaries and letters, many of these future kamikazes identified themselves as political liberals and democrats. Some found much to admire in the American model of society and government. Others harbored radical, utopian, pacifist, or even Marxist views.

Some did not want to go. Gestures of defiance, overt and covert, became more common as the conflict wore on. Admiral Yokoi recalled attitudes ranging “from the despair of sheep headed for the slaughter to open expressions of contempt for their superior officers.”21 On the night before embarking on a last mission, the kamikaze squadrons held riotous bacchanals, guzzling sake and vandalizing their furnishings. A witness recounted one such scene: “The whole place turned to mayhem. Some broke hanging light bulbs with their swords. Some lifted chairs to break the windows and tore white tablecloths. A mixture of military songs and curses filled the air. While some shouted and raged, others cried aloud. It was their last night of life.”22 After taking off, mutinous pilots sometimes flew low over the quarters of their superior officers, as if to crash or strafe them. If they went on to fulfill their mission, the offense could not be punished.

Increasingly, in the later phases of the Okinawa campaign, kamikaze planes turned back and returned to land at their bases. The pilots reported baffling engine malfunctions, or claimed that they had been unable to locate enemy ships. Others ditched their planes at sea, near islands between Kyushu and Okinawa, hoping to get ashore and survive until the end of the war. Pilots were known to sneak out to the flight line in darkness, on the night before a scheduled departure, and sabotage their own planes. They might simply unscrew the gas cap, intending to run low on fuel, an excuse to turn back. After returning to base nine consecutive times, one pilot (a graduate of Waseda University) was executed by firing squad. In another infamous case, a kamikaze dove his plane into a railroad embankment near his family’s neighborhood in Kagoshima, apparently choosing to die close to home.

Historians have concluded that Truman grew into the role of commander in chief, and eventually proved more than equal to the job. But in the spring and summer of 1945, the growing pains were evident—and the decisions he must confront during those early weeks were among the most important of his presidency.

In his diary and his subsequent memoir, Leahy betrayed no sense of responsibility or culpability for the new president’s relative ignorance. One is struck by this lack of self-awareness in a Washington statesman otherwise respected for his wisdom and good judgment. Whatever he knew or did not know about the state of FDR’s declining health, Leahy had been at the late president’s elbow for most of the last year of his life. He certainly knew enough to anticipate that Truman might be thrust into the role of commander in chief at any moment. Leahy was the White House chief of staff and the chairman of the JCS. What steps did he take to ensure that the vice president was properly briefed? Who else had that duty, if not himself? No adequate explanation has ever been provided for this breakdown in the basic procedures of sound constitutional government.

Even now, at this late stage of the campaign, basic questions of military strategy and foreign policy in the Pacific remained unresolved. Would an invasion of Japan be necessary, or would the intensifying blockade and bombing campaign be enough to force surrender? Should the Allies land on the coast of China? Did they still need or want Russia in the war? How strong was the “peace party” in the Japanese ruling circle, and could it be strengthened? Must the late FDR’s doctrine of unconditional surrender be unbendingly applied? Did Hirohito wield the power and influence to put an end to the war—and if so, should the Allies signal that he could keep his throne?

Defeating Japan was only the most immediate problem. Looming ahead was the creation of a new postwar order in Asia, with its implications for the territorial ambitions of Stalin, the red menace in China, and the status of former British, French, and Dutch colonies.

our political objectives in the Far East.” Given Stalin’s recent backsliding on the political independence of Eastern Europe, they should be wary of Soviet ambitions in the Far East. Forrestal asked: “Do we desire a counterweight to that influence? And should it be China or should it be Japan?” If the latter, the United States must have a plan to rebuild Japan’s economic power and regional standing. In subsequent meetings, the cabinet considered the future status of Korea, Hong Kong, Indochina (Vietnam), and Manchuria. Entries in Forrestal’s diary leave the impression that these questions were being confronted for the first time.

Leading figures in the navy and the Army Air Forces roughly agreed on one point: that an invasion of Japan was unnecessary and should be avoided. They stressed the cumulative effect of the air-sea blockade, which promised to cut off virtually all remaining maritime traffic into Japan. Without this last dribble of imported oil, raw materials, and food, the Japanese economy would seize up and its people would starve. Concurrently, the destructive intensity of the aerial bombing campaign would surge to new heights.

While these punishing blows took effect, some argued in favor of landing troops on the Asian mainland. Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. Army commander in China, wrote that “establishment of a lodgment on the coast would of course electrify the Chinese and cause them to redouble their efforts to gain land contact and thus open communications.”7 Admirals Nimitz and Spruance advocated seizing the Chusan Islands group, southeast of Shanghai, and the nearby Ningpo peninsula, on the southern side of the Yangtze river estuary. Their objective was to establish a bridgehead into China, throw a lifeline to Chiang Kai-shek, and provide more time (said one of Nimitz’s top planners) to “build more airfields and just bomb Japan to its knees.”8 This prospective “Operation LONGTOM” won the provisional backing of the JCS, and was assigned a tentative launch date of August 1945.

MacArthur argued for a direct invasion of Japan at the earliest possible date. Pecking away at the coast of China, he said, would only waste time, lives, and treasure. The Japanese could not be defeated by blockade and bombing alone, he said—and he pointed to the example of their German allies, who had refused to surrender even after their cities had been reduced to rubble. “The strongest military element of Japan is the Army which must be defeated before our success is assured.

From his headquarters in Manila, MacArthur told Marshall that he could take Kyushu with forces already in the Pacific. If it became necessary to invade Honshu and capture Tokyo, he would require reinforcements from Europe and the United States.

Operation DOWNFALL, as it was codenamed, aimed at conquering and pacifying Japan within eighteen months of the final defeat of Germany. An early version of the plan, developed by the JCS planning staff in Washington, was presented to FDR and Churchill in February 1945 at the Argonaut Conference on Malta. downfall consisted of two phases: an invasion of southern Kyushu in late 1945 (olympic), to be followed by an invasion of Honshu in the spring of 1946 (coronet). Each of these great amphibious assaults, especially coronet, would dwarf the previous year’s invasion of Normandy. downfall would require the combined strength of all branches of the military services and all forces within both MacArthur’s and Nimitz’s theaters, with a supporting role by British and other Allied forces. The assault on Kyushu would be handled by the veteran Sixth Army under General Krueger, veteran of the Philippines campaign.

The decisive second-phase coronet would be aimed at the heavily populated and industrialized region of the Kanto Plain. It would be spearheaded by the Eighth Army under General Eichelberger, whose forces would land on beaches at the north end of Sagami Bay. The coronet assault would involve no fewer than twenty-five divisions, with additional reinforcements to be brought into action as needed. If an overpowering pincer attack on Tokyo did not force a surrender, Allied forces would occupy the capital—and then fan out from that hub, attacking in every direction, wiping out organized resistance in one province after another, until the entire nation lay prostrate and subjugated.

The initial timetable, fixed by the JCS in late March 1945, envisioned an OLYMPIC landing on December 1, 1945, followed by a coronet landing on March 1, 1946. On Nimitz’s recommendation, considering the risks to the fleet posed by winter storms, the target date for olympic was moved forward to November 1, 1945.

Nimitz kept a framed photograph of MacArthur prominently displayed in his office in Guam. Visitors naturally assumed that it was a gesture of respect. When the Pacific fleet intelligence officer, Ed Layton, asked why the photograph was there, Nimitz smiled and replied, “Layton, I’ll tell you. It’s to remind me not to be a horse’s ass.”

The JCS issued a directive assigning “primary responsibility” for DOWNFALL to MacArthur, with the face-saving proviso that Nimitz or his designated fleet commander would have broad leeway, if not autonomy, during the amphibious phase of the operation.22 Operation longtom, the proposed landing on the China coast, was scrapped.

ADMIRAL BARON KANTARO SUZUKI, the prime minister who assumed power in April 1945, was a decrepit old man of seventy-seven years, hard of hearing and prone to nod off in meetings. Long retired from the navy, he had served for nearly a decade as a grand chamberlain of the imperial court, and was personally close to Hirohito. During the aborted army coup d’état of February 1936, he had been shot and nearly killed. Privately, there seems to have been an understanding between Suzuki and the emperor that the new government must find a way to end the war, even if it meant acquiescing to harsh Allied demands. When the time was ripe, it was agreed, the emperor would be invited to issue a “sacred decree” to end the war.

In a sense, the peace party’s struggle to end the war was a conspiracy that had to be kept secret long enough for it to succeed.

The same institutional defects that had produced Japan’s irrational decision to launch the war in 1941 now prevented a rational decision to end it. There was no real locus of responsibility or accountability in Tokyo. Power was dispersed in piecemeal fashion across various military staffs and bureaucracies. Army and navy leaders were figureheads who could be manipulated, deposed, replaced, or even killed by younger officers down the ranks. A sudden turn from war toward peace would require the compliance of many widely scattered interests and players, including officers in the middle ranks of both services. A stubborn lack of consensus, combined with the chronic threat of revolt, explained what the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey called the “unusual time-lapse between the top civilian political decision to accept defeat and the final capitulation.”

The secret report, entitled “Survey of National Resources as of 1–10 June 1945,” was presented on June 6. The conclusions were spelled out with culturally atypical directness—not only was defeat inevitable, but the national economy was headed toward a crackup, and the Japanese people were losing faith in their leaders. Statistics told the story of shipping losses, production declines, depletion of oil stocks, disruption in rail transportation, and a worsening food situation. With the pending loss of Okinawa, sea communications with the Asian mainland would be severed, and entire industries would have to suspend operations. Shortages of consumer goods would cause skyrocketing inflation, and the food situation would reach the point of crisis by the end of 1945, with the “appearance of starvation conditions in the isolated sections of the nation.” As for the military situation, all remaining warplanes would be deployed as kamikazes, but critical shortages in aviation gasoline loomed. Even assuming that the suicide planes and submarines managed to sink one-fourth of the U.S. invasion fleet, “it would be difficult to defeat American plans through annihilation on the sea.” The report detailed the overwhelming power of American fleets and air forces, and warned that “about one-half of the approximately 60 divisions assigned to the Western European Theater of Operations have been redeployed against Japan.”

“Ketsu-go,” the operational plan to repel an Allied invasion of the homeland, was circulated the same week the Suzuki government came to power. It involved a climactic, spasmodic effort to pour substantially all of the nation’s remaining military and economic resources into countering an invasion. Ketsu called for a massive troop buildup, to be accomplished through the mobilization of new and reserve army divisions; the deployment of forces to the regions considered most likely as points of invasion; the construction of coastal fortifications behind the expected invasion beaches; and an unprecedentedly large kamikaze assault on the Allied fleet. The plan correctly anticipated that the invasion would occur before the end of the calendar year 1945. The Japanese were also right in assuming that the first landing would come in southern Kyushu, to be followed in the spring of 1946 by a larger invasion of the Kanto Plain and the Greater Tokyo region.

As recently as January 1945, there had been only eleven fully mobilized army divisions in Japan. In April and May, as U.S. forces overran Okinawa, the Imperial Japanese Army began transferring units from Korea and Manchuria, and mobilized new and reserve divisions at home.

At the same time, Tokyo stepped up efforts to organize, arm, and train civilian militias. All men between the ages of fifteen and sixty, and all women between the ages of seventeen and forty, were drafted into these local fighting organizations, whose enlistment roles officially topped 25 million. Many were equipped with nothing better than spears or household weapons. Every citizen-fighter was exhorted to kill at least one barbarian invader before dying in turn. These preparations proceeded under the new national slogan: “The Glorious Death of the 100 Million.”