The Hughes and Monaghan set off in pursuit, and at 7:05 they opened fire. Bracketed by shell explosions, the submarine soon disappeared into the sea. On the Monaghan Fireman Edward Creighton was sure they got her. That night he wrote in his diary, “We had a 15 or 20 minute gun battle, and she finally went down. There were no survivors.”
COMMANDER Tanabe had one last trick up his sleeve. He dived into his own smoke and went right under the destroyers that were chasing him. They throbbed by overhead, and the crisis was passed.
He breathed easily for the first time since torpedoing the carrier. Except for a brief moment of exhilaration—the banzais, the touching gift of cider from all hands—the whole afternoon had been hell. Lieutenant Tomita counted 61 depth bombs altogether. The I-168 finally had to break surface at 6:30, but happily the American destroyers were now far astern. They gave chase soon enough, but Tanabe stayed up as long as he dared, gulping in air and recharging his batteries. He also took the occasion to radio Yamamoto the good news about the carrier.
On the Yamato the Admiral now had bigger game in mind. All morning his radio had crackled with the troubles of the Mogami and Mikuma. Apparently the U.S. force was moving steadily west, farther and farther from home. Perhaps he could trap it yet. Around noon he sent Admiral Kondo south with the carrier Zuiho, six cruisers and eight destroyers. They were to join up with the Mogami and Mikuma and lure the Americans into a night battle.
At 3:50 P.M. Yamamoto broadened this plan into an all-out effort. The Yamato was also ordered south with the Main Body and what was left of Nagumo’s fleet. Land bombers were ordered up from the Marshalls and put on Wake. These plus his own scattering of planes would give him real air power again. His heavy ships would do the rest. All that remained was for the Americans to walk into the trap.
ADMIRAL Spruance had a feeling (“an intuition perhaps”) that he had pushed his luck far enough to the west. He was over 400 miles from Midway, and he was determined to keep out of the range of Japanese planes based on Wake. Besides, he was low on fuel, short on destroyers, and had lost a lot of good pilots. From his long walks on the flight deck, he also sensed how weary the others were.
Shortly after 7:00 P.M.—as soon as the two planes returned from photographing the dying Mikuma—Task Force 16 turned and headed back east. Astern lay the remnants of Japanese hopes; ahead lay good things like oil, sleep and ultimately home.
For Midway, too, it was over. A final flight of B-17s on the afternoon of the 6th reported sinking an enemy “cruiser” in 15 seconds; but this turned out to be the U.S. submarine Grayling, crash-diving to escape the bombs. During the evening Major General Clarence L. Tinker—just in from Hawaii—led four Liberators in a long-range attempt to neutralize Wake, but the effort was in vain. The bombers never found the target, and Tinker himself was lost.
By dawn on the 7th, all was quiet again on Midway.
“MY GOD, she’s going right on over, isn’t she?” Boatswain Forest Lunsford gasped to Ensign J. T. Andrews, as they stood on the Benham watching the Yorktown in the first light of day, June 7. For the men in the destroyer screen, the sight of the carrier at dawn ended any hope they still had of saving her.
Some time during the night the Yorktown had heeled back heavily to port, and by 4:30 her flight deck slanted into the water. Great bubbles were foaming up, and loud cracking noises came from somewhere inside her. From the halyards her last signal hoist hung straight down— “My speed, 15.” Captain Buckmaster’s American flag was still flying, but it almost touched the sea.
At 4:43 she lay on her port side, revealing a huge hole in her starboard bilge—the result of yesterday’s submarine attack. The end was near, and at 4:54 all ships half-masted their colors; all hands uncovered and came to attention. Two patrolling PBYs appeared overhead and dipped their wings in salute.
At 5:01, well down at the stern, the Yorktown slowly sank from sight. There were the usual noises, the veil of smoke and steam, but to most of the men she went quietly and with enormous dignity— “like the great lady she was,” as one of them put it.
On the Hughes Signalman Karetka fought to hold back his tears. He was very young and wanted to appear grown up. Then he saw that even the old-timers were crying, so he didn’t feel too badly when he wept too.
CHAPTER 13
Home Again
ONLY THE LITTER OF battle was left: the empty shell cases … the oil slicks … mattresses … the black rubber rafts of the Japanese, the yellow of the Americans. And occasionally—not too often, but sometimes—a bedraggled, sunburned figure, hoping and waiting.
Right from the start Captain Simard had his PT boats and PBYs looking for survivors. By noon on June 4 PT 20 had already picked up three of the Marine pilots. On the 5th Lieutenant “Pappy” Cole put his PBY down on the open sea and scooped up Ensign Gay, none the worse for his day with Nagumo. On the 6th Lieutenant Norman Brady brought back some of his own kind: four survivors from the only PBY caught by the Japanese. They had been shot down, strafed, and spent 58 hours bailing out a leaky raft. Brady spotted them some 400 miles west of Midway.
But a man in the ocean is hard to see, and sometimes those adrift thought help would never come. It wasn’t so bad at first for Pat Mitchell, Stan Ruehlow and Dick Gray. When Fighting 8 ran out of gas, they managed to land close to each other. Mitchell didn’t salvage his raft, but the other two did, and they tied them together about 12 feet apart. For food they had pemmican, malted milk tablets and a canteen of water. Planes were flying all around, and they felt sure they’d soon be picked up. They settled back and waited that night and all the next day.
It was the second night when the shark came. He nudged the raft where Gray was sleeping—that brought a yell—then headed for the one shared by Ruehlow and Mitchell. His dorsal fin knifed through the bottom, dumping them both into the water. Ruehlow, in fact, came down on the shark’s back, slashing his hand on the fin. He set a new swimming record getting to Gray’s raft, while Mitchell scrambled back into the one just attacked. It was now half-swamped, and he lay sprawled across it, his legs dangling in the water. Ruehlow wrote him off as a goner, but for some reason the shark swam off.
In the morning they patched the raft with a tube of cement and managed to get it reasonably seaworthy again. Then they went back to their waiting. June 6 … June 7, and still no rescue. Occasionally planes flew overhead, and once they saw a destroyer in the distance, beautifully silhouetted against a line squall. As always, they flashed their hand mirror, but again no one spotted them. To keep their spirits up, they played “Ghosts.” Ruehlow’s favorite word “syzygy” served him as well in mid-Pacific as it ever did at home.
June 8 started like the other days. Then a PBY appeared, and this time it came directly overhead. They waved wildly, and their hearts almost stopped when it seemed to fly by. But at the last minute it circled back, and the pilot, Lieutenant Frank Fisler, brought it down to a beautiful landing. He taxied over, and three more fliers were saved.
And so it went. In ten days the PBYs picked up 27 airmen altogether, and on June 9 the submarine Trout added to the collection a pair of Japanese from the Mikuma. Fireman Kenichi Ishikawa and Chief Radioman Katsuichi Yoshida were all that were left of the 19 originally on their raft.
There remained the men in the Hiryu’s cutter. Commander Aiso had long since given up waiting for Admiral Yamamoto. When the great battleships failed to appear, he decided to head for Wake instead. He had no maps, charts or compass—only the sun and the stars—but with six good oars and a blanket for a sail, they could get there just the same. To sustain and encourage them they also had a little food and 48 bottles of beer.
Day after day they saw nothing but ocean. Mostly it was calm, but they had three storms—wild, violent affairs in which four men had to hold an oar at right angles to keep the boat from rolling over. Then it would be calm again, brilliant and blazing hot. During the nights they wrangled over food; Aiso was far from generous with the rations. During the day the men talke
d of home, good times and milk shakes. Ensign Mandai promised to treat all hands after they got back to their home port, Sasebo. The milk shakes at Sasebo Naval Base were the best in the world, something worth living for.
The tenth day, June 14, a man died of exhaustion. They said a prayer for him and gently lowered him over the side. Eventually four men went the same way.
On the twelfth day they sighted a big patrol plane, and another on the thirteenth. They were overjoyed, certain that these planes were Japanese. Next afternoon one flew very close. It circled, and to their dismay they saw painted on the side a large white star.
Finally on the fifteenth day a ship appeared. She was a four-stack U.S. warship, and as she drew near, the men in the cutter debated whether to surrender or not. They finally talked themselves into it. Maybe, they agreed, they could capture the ship. Fantasy, perhaps, but it made the decision easier. The vessel, which was the seaplane tender Ballard, came alongside. A sailor tossed them a line, and their war was over.
Speaking to interrogators later, they said politely but firmly that they did not wish to return to Japan under the circumstances; that they did not wish Tokyo to be informed of their capture; and that they preferred to have it believed that they sank with the Hiryu.
IT WAS hard to imagine anything worse than going home this way. Admiral Yamamoto had finally given up the game early on June 7, then promptly took to his bed. Chief Steward Omi brought a tray of rice gruel, but the Admiral really wasn’t hungry.
On the 9th there was an interruption—one of those moments everybody dreaded but had to face. Admiral Kusaka was coming over to the Yamato to make a report. About 11:00 A.M. a launch bobbed alongside, and a crane hoisted a bamboo stretcher aboard.
Kusaka was still in his battle-stained uniform, limping badly from his injuries. Accompanied by Captain Oishi and Commander Genda, he hobbled to the bridge, where he faced Yamamoto and his staff. To Yeoman Noda, quietly watching in the background, Kusaka looked like a suitor who had just lost his best girl.
Yamamoto was most considerate. He patted Kusaka on the shoulder and thanked him for his efforts. He urged that everything possible be done to restore the men’s morale; he arranged for cakes, pocket money and even fresh underwear to be sent to the survivors.
Kusaka then asked for a word in private. In a small room just off the bridge he told Yamamoto how personally crushed Nagumo’s staff felt—there was all this talk of suicide—and he begged the Commander in Chief to reorganize the carrier fleet and give them all another chance. Yamamoto’s eyes filled with tears; he answered simply, “I understand.”
This ordeal over, the fleet continued its gloomy retreat. The operations room on the Yamato was like a wake. The air officer, Commander Sasaki, sat in a daze at the back of the flag bridge. He was said to be drinking far too much sake.
On the Nagara Admiral Nagumo turned morose again. Word was passed to keep an eye on him, see he didn’t do anything foolish. Admiral Kusaka dreamed of revenge; Commander Sasabe felt utterly drained of energy; the staff surgeon brooded over all the valuables he could have saved but left behind. Listening in the background, Commander Genda grunted to himself, “It’s no use talking about might-have-beens now.”
He could have added a few: if only the Tone’s No. 4 plane had gotten off on time, they would have discovered the U.S. fleet before rearming for that second attack on Midway … if only the enemy dive bombers had attacked a few minutes later, Nagumo’s own strike would have been launched … if only they had attacked the American carriers right away, as Yamaguchi wanted, instead of holding back until all the planes were ready… .
There were deeper weaknesses too. In the last analysis the whole Midway plan depended too much on the U.S. fleet reacting exactly the way the Japanese expected. It frittered away Yamamoto’s great strength all over the Pacific, instead of concentrating his ships where needed. And finally it reeked of overconfidence—of a dangerous contempt for the enemy—that the Japanese perhaps best described as “victory disease.” It would have been so easy to have had a better submarine cordon, a stronger air search, an extra carrier on the scene. But these post-mortems lay in the future. Right now the problem was how to handle this stunning defeat. As Yamamoto turned homeward, he radioed a full summary to Admiral Nagano, Chief of Naval General Staff. Nagano contacted Army General Staff, and a small top-drawer meeting convened on Monday, June 8. It was here that they broke the news to Prime Minister Tojo. He had only three comments to make: no one was to criticize the Navy; materials would be made available at once to replace the losses; and finally, the facts of this disaster must not go beyond the doors of the room.
June 10, a blare of trumpets and the now familiar strains of the “Navy March” told Tokyo radio listeners to get ready for another great naval victory. And great it was: two American carriers sunk … 120 planes downed … landings in the Aleutians … heavy damage to American installations at Midway. Japanese losses amounted to a carrier sunk, another carrier and a cruiser damaged, 35 planes down.
Next day Masanori Ito, Japan’s leading military commentator, examined the victory. “The brilliant war results obtained are beyond all imagination,” he declared. In another analysis Captain Hideo Hiraide, chief of the naval press section at Imperial Headquarters, ventured an interesting thought: the enormous success in the Aleutians was made possible by the diversion at Midway.
“You may not go back to Tokyo. If you dare to return, you’ll be arrested by the military police,” newsreel man Teiichi Makishima was told after the Nagara reached Kure on June 14. For weeks he languished in what he called a “stragglers’ camp”; then he was packed off to sea again. The carrier crews were isolated at Saheki or Kanoya Air Base, and Yeoman Noda wasn’t allowed ashore at all when the Yamato returned to Hashirajima. He couldn’t even get a day to see his girl in Kure.
It was hardest on the wounded. Commander Ohara spent ten weeks in the hospital recovering from his burns on the Soryu, but during the entire time he was never allowed a visitor, or even to see the other patients. When Commander Fuchida was carried ashore, he was handled like a victim of some medieval plague. He was landed at night, carried to the hospital on a covered stretcher, and whisked inside through the back door.
THE ambulances waited in the afternoon sunshine, lined up in neat rows at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nimitz was there too, standing on the pier with some of his staff. The destroyer Benham was coming in—the first ship back that had been in the battle, arriving on June 9 with most of the Hammann’s injured.
As she glided toward her berth, the other ships dipped their flags in salute. The men on the Benham felt self-conscious but infinitely proud of the shrapnel holes in her hull, the antenna loose and hanging.
As the ship tied up, Admiral Nimitz came aboard. He greeted the skipper, Lieutenant Commander Joseph Worthington, then turned to the men standing on the deck. He shook hands with them individually, thanking them for what they had done. The work of unloading the injured began—50 stretchers transferred to the ambulances and off to the Navy Hospital.
The Enterprise and the rest of Task Force 16 filed in on June 13, flying their largest flags from the main. Navy Yard workers, ships’ crews, everybody who could make it lined the piers and decks. It was a quiet crowd—no bands, no cheering—and one man on the Pensacola wondered whether something was “wrong.” He needn’t have worried. Pearl Harbor’s appreciation was too deep to express.
A little later there was a smaller welcome in Admiral Nimitz’s office. Captain Simard was on his way home from Midway—reassigned to new responsibilities—and had dropped by to pay his respects. Nimitz thanked him and congratulated him on the spot promotion sent out on the eve of battle. Pointing to Simard’s new silver eagles, the Admiral observed, “I sent you the flowers before the funeral.”
Some time during this period—the exact date is uncertain —another visitor turned up at CINCPAC with a special mission to perform. It was the Army’s General Emmons, who solemnly presented the Admiral with a
magnum of champagne, decorated with ribbons of Navy blue and gold. He just wanted to say, the General announced, that he had been wrong and the Navy right in the crucial planning before the battle. Now he wanted all to know it.
Someone thought of Joe Rochefort down in the basement where all that solid-gold intelligence came from, and Nimitz sent a message to get him. As usual, Rochefort was deep in his files and scratchwork, puttering about in his smoking jacket and carpet slippers. By the time he straightened up, it was like his last appointment with the Admiral: he was again half an hour late. But today the Admiral didn’t bawl him out. Before the assembled staff, Nimitz declared that the victory was due to the great work done by Rochefort’s Combat Intelligence Unit. Rochefort said something about just doing what they were paid to do—he was never much at this sort of fancy exchange.
The initial glow would wear off. The Army and Navy pilots soon fought a pitched battle at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel over who deserved the most credit. Men from the Enterprise and Yorktown wrangled over the first day’s honors. The intelligence outfits went back to their Byzantine infighting. The high-level and dive-bombing enthusiasts sniped at each other. (It only became clear after the war that the B-17s dropped 322 bombs, yet failed to score a hit.)
The second-guessers were soon at it too. Strategists argued, perhaps correctly, that the submarines were badly deployed … that the scouting was poor … that communications were slow and overly complicated … that there wasn’t enough coordination between the Task Forces … that the Yorktown might have been saved … that Task Force 16 was too slow in following up the first day’s success;