Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II (19 page)

The action of the kamikaze pilots was inexplicable to these American sailors.
After all, wasn’t the whole point of fighting in a war to try to survive it?
But the Japanese pilots had been educated in a wholly different philosophy.
At the core of it was not just the belief that their supreme commander, Emperor Hirohito, was a divine figure whose orders must be obeyed without question, but the spiritual faith that after death as kamikaze pilots their souls would dwell in the emperor’s own shrine.
‘Everybody at that time knew that their soul would go back to Yasukini,’ says Morimasa Yunokawa, then a pilot in the Japanese navy.
‘That was the special place where the souls of those who had died fighting for the country and their emperor went.’
Propaganda archive of the time shows war widows visiting the Yasukini shrine across from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, so that, as the commentary puts it, ‘they can at last meet again those who have been living on only in their memories.
For the widows, this was an unforgettable moment to show their appreciation for being able to honour their god-like husbands.’

However, it is important for those of us in the West who have been brought up with the concept of Christian martyrdom to realize that the spiritual beliefs of the kamikaze were not analogous.
The focus of the kamikaze pilots was at least as much on the service they were doing to the society they left behind than on the certainty of an afterlife.
‘There is no living thing that desires death,’ says Hachiro Hosokawa, another Japanese wartime pilot.
‘But there comes a time when you face responsibilities you cannot run away from, and at that point you give up your life.
To give up your life for your country and your people was the highest honour.
It was not only me but everyone who thought that way.’
In a country where the group mattered more than the individual, there could be no higher glory than to die in such a suicide attack.

Despite the kamikazes, the ‘one great victory’ that Hirohito and the Japanese High Command were chasing was still proving elusive.
Their plan was not proving to be a strategy so much as wishful thinking — and wishful thinking began to be the order of the day.
In early October 1944, Hirohito’s advisers simply misled him — they told him that overall, in a series of sea engagements, the Japanese had won great victories and that sixteen American carriers had been sunk (in reality the Imperial Navy had not sunk one of them).
It was this kind of false briefing that led Hirohito to suppose that a decisive victory over the Americans could be won as the enemy approached Leyte in the Philippines later that month.
Yet again, the Japanese leadership were chasing a dream.
Between 22 and 27 October the Americans inflicted another massive defeat at Leyte Gulf, sinking four Japanese carriers and killing more than 10,000 Japanese servicemen.
The superior firepower of the Americans had proved decisive once again.

Meantime, on the Southeast Asian mainland the British (with Indian army soldiers playing a prominent part) managed to defeat the Imperial Army on the Northeastern border of India at the battles of Imphal and Kohima and in the process the Japanese 15th army was almost completely destroyed.
During the autumn of 1944 the Allied forces pushed the remaining Japanese back towards Burma, with Colonel Orde Wingate’s guerilla Chindits harrying them from behind the lines.

As autumn turned to winter in 1944 the Japanese were facing something unique in their long history as a nation — catastrophic defeat.
Starting the war had been easy.
Ending it — before the whole of Japan was in ruins — would prove more difficult.

ENDGAME

          
B
y the start of 1945 the Japanese leadership were trapped in the near impossible situation they had created for themselves.
Militarily they knew they must be defeated — but they could not surrender unconditionally because that would mean the destruction of the whole emperor system, and life without that was inconceivable.
There were precious few alternatives; the easy option was to keep fighting and hope for the best — perhaps the Americans would eventually falter in the face of suicidal Japanese resistance.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, by the start of 1945 it was clear that this option was also the one least likely to succeed.
But how else could the impossible circle be squared — how could they surrender without sacrificing the emperor?

One possibility, some of Hirohito’s advisers thought, was to persuade him to abdicate in favour of his son, the eleven-year-old crown prince.
To that end secret discussions were held in January 1945 with the chief abbot of Ninnaji temple to see if it might be possible for Hirohito to ‘retire’ to a temple in Kyoto.
But the talks came to nothing — it was still easier and more comforting for the Japanese elite to put their faith in the fantasy of the ‘one big victory and then peace’ strategy.

In February 1945, as the Japanese leadership procrastinated, American marines landed on the tiny volcanic island of Iwo Jima, less than 700 miles (1100 km) south of Tokyo.
The island was a vital strategic objective for the Allies, as use of its airstrips would allow bombing raids to be mounted more effectively against the home islands of Japan.
Once more the Japanese response was tenacious and desperate.
Beneath the sulphurous landscape the defenders, under the command of Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayahi, built a honeycomb of tunnels and fox-holes.
Their fierce defence of the island cost the Americans dear — by the time it was captured, after a five-week battle, one in three of the marines who had taken part had been killed or wounded.

The level of sacrifice made by the marines on Iwo Jima had a profound effect not just on public opinion in the United States but also on their fellow servicemen in the Pacific.
Weeks after the island had been taken, Paul Montgomery and the rest of his bomber crew landed on Iwo Jima to refuel on their way back to base on the island of Tinian: ‘We were taxiing in and I passed right by a graveyard.
There were an indescribable number of marker crosses.
I couldn’t describe to you how affected I was.
I had never seen 7000 markers before.
And when I came to realize that they were just kids like myself and that they wouldn’t be going home....It just took something out of me that I didn’t know was there.
I thought I was pretty tough.
I wasn’t tough.
I became traumatized with the price that had been paid for that island — and the reason they took it was so I could have a runway to land on coming back.’

Paul Montgomery was just one of thousands of young Americans participating during the spring and summer of 1945 in the biggest aerial bombardment in history.
Early in the war the Americans had attempted to use precision bombing against Japanese military and industrial targets, but in January 1945 that policy changed with the arrival of a new air force commander — General Curtis Le May.
The new tactic was simple — burn whole cities to the ground.
In an effort to force Japan to accept unconditional surrender (and eradicate the need for more marines to die capturing islands like Iwo Jima) the decision had been taken to bring the war home to the civilian population in a cataclysmic manner.
Packed with incendiaries, B-29 bombers now flew low over Japanese towns at night and set the buildings on fire.

The controversy over the decision to use nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has overshadowed Le May’s earlier devastating conventional bombing campaign against Japan.
As a result, one astounding fact has not seeped into the public consciousness — five months before the atomic bombs were dropped, on the night of 10 March 1945, the Americans fire-bombed Tokyo and killed around 100,000 in the biggest fire storm in history.
More people died in a few hours than in either of the later attacks with atomic bombs.

’I remember there was no alarm or air raid warning,’ says Yoshiko Hashimoto, then a young mother in Tokyo.
‘But the sky in the west was blazing red, scarlet red, like a bright sunset burning.
Usually B-29s flying at high altitude looked small, but these B-29s looked gigantic, looming very close and dispersing their bombs.
And it was almost like a heavy evening shower coming down.’

The fire was so intense that it became obvious to Yoshiko’s father and mother that they and their three daughters had to leave the air raid shelter and seek another place of safety.
‘I knew we had to flee,’ she says, ‘but we had to take some things with us — there was a dire shortage of everything to wear or to sleep on.
So my mother and father and sisters went into the house and put the bedding mattress and clothes on a hand cart.
And I was told that since I had a baby I had to escape first.
Right next to my house there was a big avenue and the fire was coming close by, like a blizzard of fire — yes, a blizzard of fire.
We couldn’t keep our eyes open, wind was blowing the debris from the fire all around.’

Yoshiko picked up her baby and hurried down towards the elevated railway line that ran above the street to wait for the rest of her family.
When they arrived her father said the railway might be a target for further bombing so they decided to run in the direction of the river.
Around them was pandemonium.
‘There were so many people seeking refuge, moving in various directions.
The paths and roads were packed — from the narrow alley to the big road.
Everybody was panicked, pushing around.
Everybody was trying to call for each other and we heard the children starting to scream.’

One of Yoshiko’s sisters was running holding a big pot of rice — as precious as gold in those times of starvation — and so could not hold her parents’ hands as she ran.
‘She was pushed around by the crowd and was swaying and faltering.
I was very worried about her.
I kept on calling to her.
But gradually the distance between me and her grew bigger and I lost sight of her.
It’s very sad.
She was eighteen and had pony tails.
Still my youngest sister is eighteen — I lost her.’

The rest of the Hashimoto family pressed on through the throng until they reached the river.
They were surrounded by fire.
‘I saw living people burnt alive,’ says Yoshiko.
‘People one by one were quickly burning to death, struggling and suffering.’
The bedding mattresses that many had saved from their houses proved deadly liabilities as they caught fire and burned amongst the crowd.
Across the river warehouses were ablaze.
The screams of the victims mingled with the acrid smell of smoke and burning, all lit in a hellish flame-orange glow.
‘I heard a very sharp scream on my back — it was my baby!
And I turned around and he was crying with his mouth open so that little powdery pieces of fire got into his mouth.
And my mother screamed that I should get him in my arms, get him off my back.
So I held him in my arms while my mother and father tried to protect themselves from the raging fire.’
Witnessing the nightmare scenes around him, Yoshiko’s father shouted to his daughter to jump into the river.
‘But in March it was very cold,’ she says, ‘and I didn’t have courage to jump at first.
And besides I had my baby in my arms....So I was hesitating, and I kept on hesitating, and my mother also said, “Jump in!”
And I was almost scolded.
In her eyes they didn’t have any hope of life, but my son was the only hope for her — he was her first grandson.
She adored him very much.
So I decided to jump into the river with my baby in my arms.
When I jumped in I heard the sound of fire in my clothes being extinguished.
And the water was extremely cold.
Looking around on the surface of the river there were many who had jumped before me.’
On the bank stood her father and mother — neither of them could follow their daughter and grandson into the water.
Her father had an injury to his leg and her mother had never learnt to swim.
‘They probably burnt to death there,’ says Yoshiko.
‘Both my mother and father would have caught fire and died.
It’s very painful even to think of that.’

Once she was in the river Yoshiko tried to cling to passing logs but they were slippery and she saw people pushed under the water as the logs turned.
Eventually she hung on to a passing raft and managed to put her baby on top of it.
She was lucky — other mothers who had jumped in with their babies on their backs, rather than holding them in their arms as she had done, turned round and saw that their children had drowned: ‘The mothers’ heads are above the water but the babies on their backs are under the water — so the babies died without the mothers knowing.
These young mothers just lost their minds when they saw what had happened.’

As she clung to the raft, knowing she could not survive much longer in the cold water, Yoshiko saw a small rowing boat approaching, with two young men pulling at the oars: ‘They passed the raft, and shamelessly I shouted and asked for help — if not for me then just for my son.
They rowed close to me and dragged my son and me on to the boat.’
She spent the rest of the night on the small boat as around her Tokyo burned.
‘Everywhere we saw burnt corpses and [heard] the screams and cries of pain and torment.’
In places the surface of the water — covered with wood and oil — had caught fire, but still people jumped in from the banks and the bridges.
‘Everyone jumped in that sea of fire and many were chanting the Buddhist
sutra
— but you cannot be calm there.’

The next morning they were able to land upstream, and Yoshiko took her baby to hospital.
‘The doctor gave my son a big sedative shot and at long last he started drinking water.
The I realized that my son was alive and that was a tremendous sense of relief.
And then I wept.’
Around her, on the way to the hospital, she had been astonished at the destruction.
‘There wasn’t anyone alive — everyone had been burnt to death.
Not a living soul.
It was beyond belief.
And everything was burnt so that you could see all the way, almost to the horizon.
The town and community you were born and lived in simply reduced to ashes.
I still have this nightmare — the burnt corpses of people looking like withered trees.
I saw mothers that died trying to protect their children — I saw them.’That night Yoshiko lost her mother, father and one of her sisters.
‘Many, many civilians were killed,’ she says.
‘The atomic bombs were terrible, but conventional weapons also bring death to many, many people.
Fifty years after the war, I met a pilot of a B-29 bomber and I asked him, “As you were raiding Tokyo, dropping bombs, did you ever think that, underneath you, my parents and many others were being killed?”
And he said, “It’s a very difficult question to answer.’”