America At War - Concise Histories Of U.S. Military Conflicts From Lexington To Afghanistan (29 page)

Command of the U.S. forces fighting Japan in the Pacific was divided. General MacArthur was in charge of the Southwest Pacific. Admiral Nimitz (to whom Halsey reported) was in command of the Central Pacific. They competed for resources and proposed different strategies. MacArthur wanted to focus on the Philippines. He saw the army as the nation’s primary military force. In the general’s view, the navy’s role was to support his soldiers. Admiral Nimitz, with Admiral King’s full backing in Washington, believed the war against Japan was essentially a maritime conflict, and therefore the navy should lead the endeavor. King, in particular, wanted to advance to Japan via the islands of the Central Pacific. He and Nimitz believed that naval forces would so weaken Japan that an invasion would not be necessary.

Neither the general nor the admiral would budge. In fact the dispute—and it was very real—was between the United States Army and the United States Navy. For each service the stakes were high, and neither intended to give way. The only person capable of resolving the dispute was Franklin Roosevelt.

The president, however, did not resolve the dispute. He simply agreed to let each service proceed as it wished. MacArthur received permission to invade the Philippines (to which, with exaggerated gravitas, he had vowed to return). Nimitz was ordered to seize the islands he had targeted in the Pacific. The arrangement was far from perfect, but it worked.

On December 26, 1943, General MacArthur’s troops crossed over onto New Britain. They secured their immediate objective, Cape Gloucester, and prepared to slug it out with the 135,000 Japanese soldiers remaining on the island. Then U.S. commanders reached an important but unusual decision. They decided to bypass Rabaul and leave New Britain to the Japanese. The soldiers there had few airplanes and no means of resupply. They posed little threat. Why then waste time and men in an effort to dislodge them? Besides, Douglas MacArthur’s primary goal was to liberate the Philippines.

An archipelago of some seven thousand islands, the Philippines was an essential step in any effort to defeat Japan. The Philippines had been an American colony and its citizens enjoyed a close relationship with the United States. Its liberation was an American imperative, and no one was more anxious to return there than MacArthur.

The first invasion—there were several on different islands—took place on October 10, 1944. Approximately two hundred thousand soldiers ultimately participated, as did much of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet. The fighting was brutal and the death toll high. Capturing Manila alone cost the Americans six thousand casualties while, in defending the capital, the Japanese had sixteen thousand men killed. The city itself was devastated. So too were the island’s citizens. In MacArthur’s nine-month-long campaign to free the Philippines some one hundred thousand Filipinos lost their lives.

The Imperial Japanese Navy fully perceived the threat posed by the American presence in the Philippines. In response, their admirals mounted a last-ditch effort to destroy U.S. naval forces supporting the invasion. If the American ships could be eliminated, the soldiers ashore would be easy pickings. The IJN assembled most of its remaining warships, including four carriers, and set sail. The carriers were to act as decoys. They had few airplanes on board. Three years of fighting had depleted their supply of both aircraft and pilots. The four ships, steaming north of the islands, were to draw off the Americans’ aircraft carriers, leaving the other American ships without protective air cover. These would be sunk by powerful Japanese squadrons sailing from the south and west.

The resulting battle is called the Battle of Leyte Gulf. It was the largest sea battle of the Second World War. Commanding the American carriers was Admiral Halsey (an aggressive commander, the press had nicknamed him “Bull” Halsey, although no one in the navy ever had called him that). Halsey fell for the trap and took his carriers north, leaving the beaches undefended. But the Japanese failed to take advantage of the situation. In two major engagements, their strike forces were defeated by American warships. Among the latter were four battleships, the
California
, the
Maryland
, the
Pennsylvania
,
and the
West Virginia
.
Each had met the Japanese three years before, at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was decisive. For the Americans it meant the invasion of the Philippines could unfold as planned and that Japan’s navy no longer could contest the seas. For the Imperial Japanese Navy, once the most powerful fleet in the world, it meant the war had been lost.

***

Well before the invasions of the Philippines had begun, Admiral Nimitz launched his campaign to seize islands in the Central Pacific. First on the list was Tarawa. This was a flat coral reef, just half the size of New York City’s Central Park. Defending this real estate were 2,600 Japanese. Well entrenched, they were willing to die for their emperor, which all but 17 did. In the seventy-six hours it took to secure the island the United States had 1,056 of its marines killed. The American public was shocked by this number. General MacArthur argued that Tarawa proved that his strategy and approach to combat were preferable to that of Nimitz and the navy’s.

But the navy, Admiral Nimitz, and the United States Marine Corps learned from Tarawa. When the marines subsequently attacked Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands and later Saipan, Guam, and Tinian in the Marianas, their casualties were less.

The pattern for these operations were similar. The islands first would be bombarded from the air. Then a large amphibious force would arrive offshore. After battleships and cruisers pounded the island in question, marines would motor to the beaches in small landing craft. By 1944, America’s navy and its maritime soldiers were extremely proficient at this type of operation.

Protecting these invasion forces was the most formidable fleet the world had ever seen. At its core were new American aircraft carriers. Named after the first of its kind, the Essex class carriers were big ships, and fast. They displaced 27,100 tons and carried ninety aircraft. Each of the fourteen that saw action in the Pacific required a crew of more than three thousand sailors. By tradition U.S. Navy carriers were named after American military victories or previous naval vessels. Hence, the carriers included the
Ticonderoga
, the
Bunker Hill
, the
Intrepid
, and the
Wasp
. The navy also named several of the Essex class ships after American patriots: for example the
Hancock
and the
Franklin
. This last vessel, nicknamed Big Ben by her crew, was ripped apart by enemy bombs in March 1945, at the cost of 724 men killed and 256 wounded. But she did not sink. Badly battered, Big Ben sailed home under her own steam.

From late 1943 on, American carrier task forces attacked Japanese bases across the Pacific. These raids severely reduced the number of ships and planes the enemy could muster. Off Saipan, in what became known as “the Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. naval aircraft decimated their Japanese counterparts. This helps explain why, four months later in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the four IJN carriers had few airplanes aboard.

Airfields in the Marianas enabled the United States to mount a strategic air offensive against the Home Islands of Japan. Carrying out the aerial offensive was a brand-new bomber, Boeing’s B-29. With a crew of eleven, this four-engine machine could deliver forty 500-pound bombs to Tokyo, a round-trip flight of more than fourteen hours. That the 29’s power plant, the Wright Cyclone R-3350, occasionally caught fire made the missions even more eventful.

Initial operations with the B-29 were not successful. High winds, bad weather, inexperienced crews, and Japanese defenses plagued the American bombers. Then General Curtis LeMay, one of the B-29 commanders, made a surprising decision. Instead of high-altitude bombing as the plane’s design and air force doctrine mandated, the B-29s, stripped of guns and gunners to save weight, would go in low. Their payload, moreover, would include not just high-explosive bombs, but incendiaries. Japanese cities were full of wooden structures, and LeMay intended to burn them to the ground, which is exactly what the B-29s did.

The most devastating American attack took place on the night of March 9, 1945. LeMay sent 279 B-29s to Tokyo. They were loaded with incendiaries, and coming in low and fast, they leveled sixteen square miles of the city. Approximately eighty-three thousand people were killed. Had the Japanese been rational, they would have surrendered there and then. But they were not. The slaughter continued. During the ten months of the Marianas air campaign the B-29s flew 190 combat missions, the last one occurring on August 14, when 828 B-29s struck north of Tokyo. By then, LeMay and his airplanes were running low on priority targets.

Initially, the B-29s were based in China. Logistical support there was difficult, so the move to the Marianas was welcomed by all. China itself was a major theater of operations in the Second World War (as was, for the British, Burma). Japan had invaded China in 1937. Chinese forces opposing the Japanese were split. There were the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists led by Mao Tse-tung. Chiang and Mao despised each other, and each man intended, once the Japanese were disposed of, to eliminate the other. Franklin Roosevelt thought China to be important and was a strong supporter of Chiang, and so much American energy—and treasure—were expended in aiding the Chinese Nationalists.

When the Japanese cut the Burma Road, the principal route for supplies going to China, American aid to Chiang was delivered by air. Aircraft took off from fields in India, crossed over the Himalayan Mountains, and landed in Kunming. The planes employed were unarmed twin-engine transports. Extremely dangerous, the route was called “the Hump.” Beginning in mid-1943, huge amounts of supplies were flown into China, but at a high price. More than fifteen hundred American aviators were killed flying the Hump.

In charge of the U.S. military mission to China was General Joseph W. Stilwell. He also served as chief military advisor to Chiang. Stilwell was in an impossible situation. The area for which he was responsible, China, Burma, and India (known as the CBI) was not an American priority, despite Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for China. Making Stilwell’s job even more difficult was the Chinese Nationalist leader himself. Chiang Kai-shek was a military leader of little skill who often ignored Stilwell’s advice. What Chiang most wanted to do was horde the American equipment he received so it could be used later against Mao. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell did not succeed in China, but given the circumstances, no American commander could have.

However, there was one American general who enjoyed a modicum of success in China. He was an aviator by the name of Claire Chennault. Resigning from the U.S. Army Air Corps, he had gone to China to help Chiang fight the Japanese. Recruiting American pilots, Chennault established the Flying Tigers, three fighter squadrons that, in 1942, did well against Japanese aircraft (the pilots, in fact, were mercenaries who received a bonus of $500 for each enemy plane destroyed). When the United States started to aid the Chinese, Chennault was brought back into the U.S. Army. He then commanded the Fourteenth Air Force, which conducted aerial operations against Japan.

***

Roughly halfway between the Marianas and Japan lies the small island of Iwo Jima. At its southern tip, but dominating the landscape, lies Mount Suribachi, a dormant volcano. Early in 1945, twenty-three thousand Japanese soldiers manned the island’s defensives. Understanding that no reinforcements or additional supplies would be delivered, these soldiers expected to die on the island. They were determined to make the Americans pay a high price for Iwo Jima.

American commanders wanted the island as a base for fighter aircraft that then would escort the B-29s on their raids on Japan. More important, the island’s airfields would provide Superfortresses returning home to the Marianas a place to land in case of emergencies. Either battle-damaged or with an engine on fire, numerous B-29s were ditching in the ocean, well short of their airfields in the Marianas. In time, once Iwo Jima was in U.S. hands, B-29s would utilize this safe haven more than two thousand times.

To seize Iwo Jima, the Americans assembled the largest formation of United States marines ever to conduct a single operation: three divisions, totaling 70,647 men. The landings took place on February 19, 1945. They were preceded by seventy-three days of aerial bombardment. As was the routine, U.S. Navy warships then pounded the island.

The defenders fought tenaciously. So did the marines. Men were killed on practically every square yard of the island. When the battle was over, on March 19, the Americans had paid a high price. Marine deaths totaled 6,812. The number wounded was 19,217. Very few Japanese, a few hundred perhaps, survived. These numbers reflect the extraordinary level of violence the battle produced. A number that illustrates the courage of the Americans on that island is 27. That was the number of Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to marines and naval medical personnel of the black sands on Iwo Jima.

One remaining piece of the story about Iwo Jima needs to be told. It concerns a photograph, a very famous photograph, one that in the United States became the best known image of the Second World War. Early in the battle, U.S. marines reached the summit of Mount Suribachi. Several of them then raised a small American flag. Other marines cheered and the ships offshore blew their whistles in celebration. Later, wanting a larger flag and hoping to keep the small flag for posterity, six men—five marines and a naval medical corpsman—planted a larger flag. Standing nearby was an Associated Press photographer, Joe Rosenthal. He saw what was happening and snapped a picture. The resulting photograph won a Pulitzer Prize. Much later, the image was reproduced in sculpture form to serve as the official memorial to the United States Marine Corps.

In addition to incendiaries and high-explosive bombs, the B-29s based in the Marianas dropped aerial mines into the waters off Japan. As intended, these took a toll on Japanese vessels. An island nation with few natural resources, Japan depended on its merchant marine for delivery of supplies. Were the Americans able to stop the flow of shipping to Japan, the empire would be brought to its knees.