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

by Ian W. Toll

In the event that the regime in Tokyo did surrender, would Japan’s vast overseas armies—in Manchuria, Korea, China, and elsewhere—also lay down arms? Or would they fight to the last man, as they had done in every battle of the war? Many Allied military commanders stated flatly that no Japanese ground force would ever willingly surrender, even if the government in Tokyo gave up—and predicted that they would have to be eradicated root and branch in whatever territory they occupied. If that was the case, the Americans badly wanted the Soviets to invade Manchuria and destroy Japan’s million-man Kwantung Army. Likewise, they wanted the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek to do most of the fighting (and the dying) in China. On the other hand, if Hirohito could be persuaded to order his far-flung armies to capitulate, and if those armies would obey the distant man-god’s command, the Pacific War might be won more quickly and with less bloodletting than the pessimists anticipated.

Russell Baker, an eighteen-year-old from Baltimore (and a future New York Times columnist), was told that flying an airplane was like driving a car. Baker had never driven a car, but he did not dare to admit it, fearing that the instructor would think less of him, or perhaps even expel him from the program. Later, after a bumpy flight in the Stearman, the instructor told him to ease up on the control stick. “Baker,” he said, “it’s just like handling a girl’s breast. You’ve got to be gentle.” Baker did not dare to admit that he had never touched a woman’s breast, either.

The sack of Manila exposed the worst pathologies of Japan’s military culture and ideology. It was a glaring indictment of the “no surrender” principle, revealing the depraved underside of what the Japanese glorified as gyokusai, “smashed jewels.” Iwabuchi’s troops knew that they only had a few more days left to live. They were under direct orders, by officers whose authority was absolute and even godlike, to execute every last man, woman, and child within their lines. Many were instructed to perform the ghastly work with bayonets, or by burning their victims alive, in order to save ammunition. Trapped in this lurid nightmare, stewing in their own fear and hatred, they went berserk and abandoned themselves to a primordial blood orgy that the world will not soon forget.

If the Pacific War had been a game of chess, played between grandmasters, there would have been no endgame. With the outcome no longer in doubt, neither grandmaster would have felt the need to play to the end. Foreseeing that his king was soon to be checkmated, the Japanese player would have laid it down on the board and shaken hands with his opponent. But this was war, not a board game, and conditions in Japan did not allow for the possibility of a negotiated truce until long after defeat had become inevitable. Another 1.5 million Japanese servicemen and civilians were to be sacrificed, like so many pawns, before the checkmate in August 1945. Those 1.5 million deaths, in the final year of the conflict, represented nearly one-half of the total Japanese killed in the wars of Asia and the Pacific from 1937 to 1945.88