Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

  Chapter Eight

  TO KOICHI SHIMADA, A STAFF OFFICER WITH THE ELEVENTH AIR FLEET, the plans drawn up before the war for Japan’s southern offensive had resembled a “railroad timetable.” They were thousands of pages long, meticulous in detail, and scheduled down to the hour. Was it possible, he had wondered, to run a war in such an orderly fashion, “completely at the will of the one side?”

  By April 1942, it appeared that Shimada had his answer. Not only had the southern offensive been run like a railroad, but the trains were arriving at the stations ahead of schedule. In four months, Japan had conquered one of the greatest empires ever to be brought under one flag. Its vast perimeter now stretched from the Kurile Islands in the north to Timor in the south, and from the Gilbert Islands in the east to the frontiers of India in the west. Pockets of Allied resistance remained, notably on Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines, but they could not hold out much longer. Japan, poor in natural resources, had secured bountiful sources of oil, rubber, tin, and bauxite, and could feed those vital inputs into its war machine ad infinitum. Most extraordinarily, the new empire had been won at a negligible cost. Casualties had run to only about 10,000 men. Total merchant shipping losses had amounted to just 25,000 tons. The Imperial Japanese Navy remained virtually unscathed, having lost nothing larger than a destroyer.

  In Japan, elation gave way to ecstasy. Three days after the fall of Singapore, the emperor appeared before a rapturous throng outside the walls of the Imperial Palace. Dressed in military uniform and mounted on a white horse, he rode out across one of the bridges spanning his moat, and sat impassively as the thousands below shouted: “Banzai!” In Hibiya Park later that day, Tojo announced that Singapore had been renamed Shonan Island, while a crowd of some 30,000 shouted their acclamations and waved hats and flags in the air. The patriotic fever expressed itself in music, which was blared to distortion on loudspeakers turned out toward the streets. The war songs were numerous, and they were virtually all one ever heard: “Annihilating the Enemy,” “Until the Enemy Raises the White Flag,” “The Divine Soldiers of the Sky,” “Companion Cherry Blossoms,” “If You’re a Man,” and above all, the “Battleship March.” In the navy town of Kure, all the restaurants and teahouses had been reserved for celebratory parties and dinners, and the geishas were working overtime. Destroyer skipper Tameichi Hara, whose ship and crew had returned in triumph from the Java Sea, recalled that no geishas were available to perform at his ship’s banquet, so several of the enlisted men performed their own drunken singing and dancing routines. “I don’t know how much sake I consumed in the process,” he wrote. “Nothing but my rugged physique pulled me through the chain drinking that lasted until the banquet ended around midnight.”

  With very few exceptions, the Japanese people now embraced the war wholeheartedly. Whatever doubts and fears they might have privately entertained before Pearl Harbor had been utterly refuted by subsequent events. Evidently it was true that Japan was a nation of destiny, chosen by heaven to rule over Asia. At home, the tyranny of the militarist regime was unbridled. Elections were not yet abandoned, but political parties were dissolved and replaced with an über-party known as the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, which vetted and approved all candidates for elective office. The lives of ordinary Japanese were intricately controlled through the tonarigumi, or “neighborhood associations,” which were supervised by the Home Ministry and largely staffed by women. The tonarigumi distributed rations, promulgated slogans, organized air-raid drills, stood fire watches, and reported unorthodox behavior or opinions to the police. Rationing of basic goods grew steadily more stringent. Rice had been rationed in the cities since 1940, but now soy sauce and miso were added to the list, followed soon afterward by eggs, fish, tofu, and other grains.

  For all outward appearances, the Japanese people seemed perfectly willing to endure those privations. They hulled their own rice using beer bottles, a difficult and dirty job that tore their clothing and blistered their hands; they foraged for food to supplement their meager rations; they cheerfully recited the slogans, sang the songs, and marched in the festive lantern parades that commemorated each new triumph overseas. Departing recruits were lavishly fêted by their families and neighbors. They wore white sashes with red suns across their chests, and marched in procession to a Shinto shrine to be ritually purified. Afterward they were toasted and exhorted in speeches and songs. “When my eldest brother went,” recalled a schoolgirl in Numazu, “the block association marched to the station waving rising-sun flags and wearing white sashes boldly inscribed with the message ‘Congratulations on Being Called to Service.’ . . . When other men in the neighborhood had been called, we all went waving our flags. Now, it was brother’s turn and I was bursting with pride.” Tears were strictly taboo, and no one was allowed to voice the fear that a departing recruit might never be seen again. Parents, wives, and siblings were expected to appear overjoyed. “No one could reveal their deepest emotions,” said a military clerk who distributed call-up notices in Tonami during the war. “The public sent them off with cheers. ‘Banzai! Banzai!’ You had to say it.”

  The Japanese people were rapidly succumbing to what would later be called shoribyo, or “victory disease”—a faith that Japan was invincible, and could afford to treat its enemies with contempt. Its symptoms were overconfidence, a failure to weigh risks properly, and a basic misunderstanding of the enemy. The syndrome was fanned by an inflammatory state-controlled news media. But the boasts and taunts were unassailable: the facts spoke for themselves, and required no embellishment. The Japanese people could see, with their own eyes, the photographs of American battleships burning at Pearl Harbor, or those of British battleships sinking off the coast of Malaya. They watched newsreel footage of the surrender of Singapore, where a British general had supplicated before his Japanese counterpart and a sea of British prisoners had marched under the guns of their Japanese conquerors. When the editors of the New Order in Greater East Asia predicted that the “disgrace” of Pearl Harbor would “long be remembered by the world,” who could deny it?

  The Japanese had tested Allied strength in the Pacific and found it surprisingly feeble—so feeble that it seemed the deficiency could only be explained by some inherent flaw in the enemy’s fighting spirit. Allied soldiers and sailors were dismissed as weak, craven, and interested only in saving their own lives. “Many United States troops suffer from bomb-phobia,” reported the Japan Times & Advertiser on April 17, 1942. “They are astounded at the iron nerves of the Japanese soldiers.” Back in January, the editors had judged that Britain was a “parasite prolonging her precarious existence by sucking the life-blood of others. But there is a question as to how long these others will consent to remain the meek victims of an ailing vampire.” Speeches and editorials declared that the war was as good as won, that a strong perimeter had been captured and fortified, and that no major counteroffensive was to be expected. The journal Kokusai Shashin Joho assured its readers in February that bombing attacks on Tokyo were no longer a danger, because any air bases within a threatening radius were now in Japanese hands. Perhaps the Allies were even ready to throw in the towel, General Hatta had mused in a radio lecture, “now that they have seen a sample of what the Imperial forces can do.” Whether they sued for peace or not, the editors of the New Order in Greater East Asia added, the United States and Britain were in a state of decline “to second-rate or third-rate powers, or even to total disintegration and collapse.”

  On February 12, 1942, Admiral Yamamoto had transferred his flag from the battleship Nagato to the newly commissioned superbattleship Yamato. His new quarters were perhaps the largest and most sumptuous to be inhabited by any naval officer in the world—the C-in-C lived like a prince in a suite of huge, air-conditioned cabins on the starboard side of the Yamato’s upper deck, amidships. He took his meals in an airy wardroom, at a long polished wooden table, under the expressionless royal gaze of Hirohito, whose portrait was prominently mounted on a bulkhead.
Yamamoto seemed to have plenty of spare time on his hands, even in wartime—he passed most of each day comfortably settled in his day cabin, a handsomely furnished living space adjoining his sleeping quarters. As always, he was diligent in reading and answering letters, not only those from friends and colleagues but also those written by strangers to congratulate and encourage him. The yeomen who handled his mail had been instructed to place letters from Chiyoko Kawai, the admiral’s geisha lover, on the top of the pile. (In late December, Yamamoto had told Chiyoko that he was receiving a flood of letters, “but the only ones I’m always eagerly waiting for are from you.”) He spent long hours hunched over a shogi board, playing against members of his staff, often for money. He entertained visitors, including naval subcommanders and members of the royal family. Often he hosted sukiyaki dinners. When he showed himself on deck, he was always turned out in a finely tailored white uniform, starched and pressed. His dark complexion contrasted sharply with his very white teeth and the pristine white expanse of his uniform coat. His brass buttons had been polished by his stewards until they shone like mirrors, and his chrysanthemum-crested gold epaulettes gleamed brilliantly in the sun. Admiral Yamamoto always looked the part.

  The Japanese press and public were acclaiming Yamamoto as a national hero, but he shrank from their adulation. He felt “intolerably embarrassed at the way the achievements in battle of those under me . . . have made me a star overnight.” When the Navy Ministry awarded him two new decorations, he said he would be “ashamed” to wear them. He had not yet laid eyes on an enemy ship or plane, he said, while other men were fighting and dying and had received no medals. He declined an invitation to have his portrait painted, confiding to a friend that “portraits are vulgarities to be shunned only less vigorously than bronze statues.”

  Yamamoto was troubled by the bombast and braggadocio of the official communiqués. He thought the euphoria infantile and shortsighted, and warned that Japanese forces had not yet encountered the enemy at his best. The Japanese navy, traditionally unwilling to trumpet its accomplishments, had once been nicknamed the “silent navy.” Now the term “invincible navy” was often thrown around, even within the ranks of the service. Navy headquarters in Tokyo issued victory bulletins over the radio, always to the accompaniment of stirring orchestral music such as the “Battleship March.” Yamamoto winced at these broadcasts. What had happened to the navy’s modesty, a trait that had so starkly distinguished it from the army in the past? “All they need do really is quietly let people know the truth,” he told a group of officers, as they listened to one such announcement. “There’s no need to bang the big drum. Official reports should stick to the absolute truth—once you start lying, the war’s as good as lost.”

  That Japan had scored so many easy victories in the war’s early stages came as no surprise to Yamamoto. In a typical passage in one of his prewar letters, the C-in-C had predicted: “For a while we’ll have everything our own way, stretching out in every direction like an octopus spreading its tentacles. But it’ll last for a year and a half at the most.” The war could only end with an armistice, followed by negotiations and concessions. The fall of Singapore, an event he had expected to occur about six months into the war, would present the ideal moment to open truce talks. Britain, he believed, would cut a deal to keep India, a colony it would hate to lose as much as an “old man” would hate “being deprived of his foot warmer.” The United States would also have to be appeased, probably through a restoration of conquered territories. Perhaps the Western powers would acknowledge Japan’s preeminence in China, as they had once acknowledged Japan’s preeminence in Korea. Fight, conquer, bargain, concede—Yamamoto had repeatedly urged that formula upon the Tojo-led cabinet, but his ideas had been ignored.

  Yamamoto detested the triumphant propaganda—“all the public hullabaloo”—because it seemed to foreclose the possibility of an armistice. Public opinion, he believed, should be prepared for a return to diplomacy. Instead, the Japanese people had been encouraged to believe that Japan was invincible, that its enemies were contemptible, and that its domination of Asia was preordained. “To end a war while it’s going favorably for one’s own side requires a special, different kind of effort,” he said. Among the tens of thousands of officers and sailors of the Combined Fleet, Yamamoto was now the sole remaining combat veteran of the Russo-Japanese War. In that conflict, he recalled, Japan had agreed to a truce after destroying the Russian navy, and had entered peace talks in a position of strength. Even so, the treaty ending that war (the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905) had been obtained only with deeply unpopular concessions, including the ceding of territory on Sakhalin Island. In the heady days of early 1942, the Japanese people were prouder and more bellicose than ever before. They had been told that they were a divine race, chosen by providence to drive the Western interlopers out of Asia. They were evidently succeeding. Nothing less than total victory would satiate them. But what if the alternative was total defeat?

  THE SPEED WITH WHICH JAPANESE FORCES had achieved their assigned tasks had caught the Imperial General Headquarters by surprise. When Java was overrun in early March, the southern invasions were running at least three months ahead of the prewar timetable. Perhaps it was the sort of problem that any conqueror would be happy to have, but it put the strategic planning staffs of both the army and navy in a quandary. What to do next? No detailed operational plans existed for the next phase of the war. If truth be told, Japanese military leaders had not yet agreed on their most basic strategic direction, beyond the conquests they had already achieved. In many cases, the army and navy held sharply divergent views, and the Japanese regime lacked mechanisms to resolve those differences. There was further discord within the navy, notably between the Tokyo-based Naval General Staff (NGS), which held formal responsibility for war planning, and Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet staff, which did not. Groping toward a consensus was a muddled and cumbersome process, and it tended to produce decisions that were finessed to give all parties at least part of what they wanted.

  One line of thinking held that Japan should dig in and assume a largely defensive posture. Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, Nagumo’s chief of staff, was a leading proponent of that strategy. He argued that the nation should husband its resources, shore up its interior supply lines, and concentrate its efforts on training and production. On its eastern, Pacific flank, Japan had amassed a network of far-flung islands, many of which were primitive and unfortified. Prewar planning had envisioned feeding matériel and men into those frontier islands, erecting strong defensive works on their beaches, and developing their airfields. Air superiority could be maintained all along that outer perimeter through a network of interlocking, mutually supporting air bases, so that reinforcements could be flown in quickly to repel any new Allied counteroffensive at the point of attack.

  But the purely defensive strategy never won much standing in the high command. Cultural factors may have been at work: the samurai tradition favored initiative and aggression over defensive tactics. A preference for offensive warfare permeated the culture of both the army and navy, and was ingrained in their tactical doctrines, weapons systems, and training programs. “It’s annoying to be passive,” noted Admiral Ugaki (Yamamoto’s chief of staff) in his diary on March 11. “Warfare is easier, with less trouble, indeed, when we hold the initiative.” Having taken the initiative on December 7, 1941, the Japanese were loathe to yield it to the enemy. Naval planners were also steeped in the Mahanian principle of the “decisive battle,” and shared a bedrock belief that the war could only be won by crushing the American fleet at one blow, as the Russian fleet had been crushed at Tsushima. In any case, the concept of the strong “defensive perimeter” had been shown up by the American carrier raids. With their flattops intact, the Americans could penetrate deep into the heart of Japan’s oceanic empire, strike without warning, and escape unmolested.

  In April 1942, Japan was the dominant military and naval power in Asia and in the Pacific, but it could
not hope to maintain that status for long. The titanic warmaking capabilities of the United States had not been destroyed, nor even seriously impaired. It was only a matter of time—perhaps a year, perhaps less—before the enemy’s freshly constituted sea, air, and land forces would launch heavy and sustained attacks along the Japanese perimeter. There was no hope in waging a prolonged war of attrition against a nation with ten times Japan’s latent military-industrial strength. Japan must therefore try to run out the clock. It must find a way to inflict such devastating punishment on the Allies that they would be forced to sue for peace before the end of 1942.

  As a solution to the problem, a group of officers within the NGS proposed an invasion of Australia. Five divisions of the Japanese army could easily be landed on the island-continent’s undefended northern coast. Such an invasion might or might not force the British to ask for terms, but at the very least it would deny the Americans their great southern springboard for an eventual counteroffensive. A second proposal was to strike at India by landing troops on Ceylon or possibly even on the subcontinent itself, in hopes of prompting a nationalist uprising that would drive the British out. The Axis partners might then join forces in the Middle East.