Interspersed in the gaps between the battlewagons, like the fingers of smaller hands fitted into those of bigger ones, were nine prewar heavy cruisers-veterans of every Pacific preinvasion bombardment. Joining them were three light cruisers and twenty-three destroyers, as well as dozens of those landing craft infantry (LCIs) that had been found too awkward for their designed mission of plowing up on enemy beaches and so converted to rocket fire. Americans boated in the amtracks following the rocket ships "in" cheered l.u.s.tily when they heard that monster swoooosh! swoooosh! of those flights of missiles darkening the skies like so many arrows from thousands of bows. of those flights of missiles darkening the skies like so many arrows from thousands of bows.
Spruance"s Fifth Fleet, besides the striking power of his TF 58 and the flying buffer of the British carrier force, also included ninety minesweepers of all types ready to clear Okinawan waters of the primitive contact mines planted by the enemy. There were also the brave SEALS, as they are now called, of the Navy"s Underwater Demolition Teams, charged with detonating the enemy"s underwater explosives and pointed stakes; the big bombers of the Twentieth Air Force, and the Tenth Army"s own Tactical Air Force made up mostly of Marine pilots and commanded by a Marine, Major General Francis Mulcahy.
Here, off those eight miles of Hagushi Beaches, the heaviest weight of metal ever hurled from sea to sh.o.r.e was clearing the way for the a.s.sault troops-and yet, it was never needed. For all their thunder and flash, their geysering flame and smoke like so many erupting volcanos, the bombardment was falling harmlessly among beaches, hills, and valleys long ago abandoned by General Ushijima.
Even Ushijima and his staff standing atop Shuri Castle and studying the scene through binoculars were deeply impressed. One of these officers later wrote in his diary that the flash and crash of this incredible bombardment was "a scene of unsurpa.s.sed grandeur." They were also glad that Ushijima had accepted Yahara"s advice not to defend the Hagushi Beaches. From what they saw they could imagine the carnage among their troops if he had adhered to the old, discredited doctrine of "destruction at the water"s edge."
Yet for all its negligible effects, the t.i.tanic sea bombardment would serve one major psychological purpose: it would encourage the a.s.sault troops. Boated in their amphibious tractors-"amtracks" -in the bellies of their LSTs-"Landing Ship, Tanks," which they derisively called "Large Stationary Targets"-these men had been swallowing the smoke of their roaring vehicles for hours. Lined up on the tank deck two abreast, nose to rear, it was as though they were in a traffic jam, or sailing to battle in the Lincoln Tunnel. All-even the veterans-were tense and fearful, for they had been told that Okinawa would not be easy. Among some of the Marines it was more than anxiety that tied their stomachs in knots. They had breakfasted on "styke "n" aiggs," a tradition they had picked up in Australia and New Zealand, and were having difficulty holding it down. Some ship"s doctors hoped that they would all let it go over the side, once they were seaborne. "Steak and eggs!" one dismayed surgeon had cried. "A nice lot of guts that"ll be to sew up-full of steak!"
Ernie Pyle smiled when he heard that complaint. Pyle had left the European Theater, in which the Axis had been driven to its knees, to travel with the Marines in the Pacific; and he was aboard one of those numerous LSTs when their big bow doors yawned open and the amtracks-roaring louder as the c.o.xswains accelerated-began waddling down the tank decks to go plunging into the East China Sea. They could see ahead of them the white-capped gray water beneath a mackerel sky, and they could almost feel the impact of that monster howling seemingly encasing their heads in a great bra.s.s bowl on which some insane giant was hammering. Until that moment, the bombardment had been merely a steady rumbling noise outside. But now it was a bellowing, clanging clamor like Shakespeare"s "iron tongue of midnight." None of these men of the a.s.sault troops were dismayed to hear this martial symphony overhead-big guns booming like kettle-drums, sh.e.l.ls speeding sh.o.r.eward with the woodwinds" howl and the shriek of violins, the snare-drum rattle of machine guns together with a bra.s.s section of braying ack-ack, and beneath it all in counterpoint keeping the beat, the cough and hum of mortars like strummed cellos and ba.s.s viols. Rather, the GIs and Marines were delighted by the sound and the fury so suggestive of their enemy"s destruction, and many of them grinned as they raised their helmeted heads above the gunwales or lifted their hands on high with the thumb and forefinger joined in the gesture of perfection.
Ernie Pyle, though exulting in his first experience of an amphibious invasion, was nonetheless a bit shaken by the bombardment, which he thought actually "set up vibrations in the air-a sort of nutter-which pained and pounded the ears as though with invisible drumsticks ..." Even Kelly Turner-like all "Bomber Barons" or "Admirals of Artillery"-thought that the bombardment would end all opposition, reporting to Nimitz: "I may be crazy, but it looks like the j.a.panese have quit the war, at least in this sector." Back came the counter-message: "Delete all after "crazy." "
Nimitz would be proved a truer prophet, of course, but on Love Day Turner looked like a better bet. Off the beaches four thousand yards distant the control boats were organizing the attack waves. Perhaps eight hundred amtracks loaded with GIs and Marines were sent speeding beachward in from five to seven lines, each with bow waves curling away from their prows, their churning propellers leaving frothy white wakes trailing behind like tails a thousand yards long. Crawling steadily ahead of them were the amphibious tanks.
Abruptly, as though switched off, the beach bombardment ceased-and the GIs and Marines in the amtracks glanced skyward nervously, wonderingly. Actually the sea cannonade had been lifted only to strike enemy installations farther inland, and during the respite two flights of sixty-four carrier planes apiece came roaring over the beaches to strafe them with machine-gun fire-making the men in the amtracks lift their hands in approval once again. Usually the strafing planes raised only dust, but sometimes a j.a.panese fuel storage tank would be hit, and plumes of flame and clouds of smoke swirled skyward to enter drifting white clouds and suffuse them pink and black. Once the aircraft departed, the bombardment ships resumed their cannonade: this time firing every gun they mounted, even 40 mm AA spitting out red tracers flashing low across the water to explode just inland of the beach. Even so, all this also had not been needed-but woe to the commander who would have ordered anything else. Marines who had landed at Iwo Jima were still bitter over the less than adequate three-day preparation there, for when they came ash.o.r.e they were instantly struck by hundreds of enemy positions that had been left intact. Three more days of steel and fire, they insisted, could not have failed to knock out all remaining obstacles on that tiny two-by-four island; and there would have been far fewer casualties than those twenty-two thousand dead and wounded United States Marines. That was why Okinawa got six days, with ships firing no less than seven thousand sh.e.l.ls in every caliber from sixteen inches to 40 mm, plus the aerial onslaught. During the beach bombardment preceding H-Hour alone, the fleet fired 44,825 rounds of five- to sixteen-inch sh.e.l.ls, 33,000 rockets, and 22,500 mortar sh.e.l.ls. Seventy miles east of Okinawa Task Force Fifty-eight was deployed to furnish air support and to intercept air attacks from Kyushu, while support carriers were protecting troop carriers still arriving with second- and third-echelon troops. Earlier, carrier fighter-bombers had bathed the beaches in flaming tanks of napalm.
Thus, whether needed or not, this terrible weight of metal had made it certain that when the American spearheads climbed the reef to a.s.sault the beaches, not an enemy hand was raised to stop them.
Within the first hour no less than sixteen thousand troops had come ash.o.r.e-an incredible achievement. With the beachhead secure, the remaining combat troops streamed onto Okinawa. They were followed by waves of tanks, some of them amphibious, some carried ash.o.r.e by flotation devices, others ferried to the beaches by LSMs. Then came ammunition and supplies. Well before noon of April 1, 1945, the Hagushi Beaches were safely in American hands.
Down to the south off the Minatoga Beaches, meanwhile, the troops of Major General Watson"s Second Marine Division also came roaring sh.o.r.eward in a masterful feint that not only drew off some of Ushijima"s defenders but actually-and unintentionally-brought upon their heads the wrath of the first kamikaze kamikaze to strike the invaders. They damaged a transport and an LST, killing and wounding sixteen Americans. But the amtracks still churned beachward until, as the fourth wave crossed the line of departure at 8:30 A.M., with remarkable precision all the landing craft reversed course to return to their ships. Next day the demonstration was repeated, and General Ushijima reported that "an enemy landing attempt on the eastern coast of Okinawa on Sunday morning was completely foiled, with heavy losses to the enemy." to strike the invaders. They damaged a transport and an LST, killing and wounding sixteen Americans. But the amtracks still churned beachward until, as the fourth wave crossed the line of departure at 8:30 A.M., with remarkable precision all the landing craft reversed course to return to their ships. Next day the demonstration was repeated, and General Ushijima reported that "an enemy landing attempt on the eastern coast of Okinawa on Sunday morning was completely foiled, with heavy losses to the enemy."
Inland on Hagushi the Bimbo Butai Bimbo Butai had broken and fled at the first belch of American guns, leaving the vital Yontan and Kadena Airfields deserted and unprotected. By mid-morning the Sixth Marine Division on the left flank of General Buckner"s four-division front had reached Yontan and was moving across it while the First Marine Division on its right struck out rapidly for Nakagusuku Bay on the east coast, chopping up the remnants of the demoralized had broken and fled at the first belch of American guns, leaving the vital Yontan and Kadena Airfields deserted and unprotected. By mid-morning the Sixth Marine Division on the left flank of General Buckner"s four-division front had reached Yontan and was moving across it while the First Marine Division on its right struck out rapidly for Nakagusuku Bay on the east coast, chopping up the remnants of the demoralized Bimbo Butai. Bimbo Butai. Many of these reluctant soldiers, on both the Third Corps"s front to the left and Twenty-fourth Corps"s on the right, threw off the hated j.a.panese uniform and melted out of sight among their own people. Some true j.a.panese soldiers also shed their uniforms, not to desert but to don blue Okinawan kimonos to conduct guerrilla warfare from the wild northern hills. So there were few enemy indeed to contest the cross-island rush of the Tenth Army spearheads. Behind the riflemen, tanks had already rolled across beaches blessedly free of mines, while behind them came the bulldozers to cut pa.s.sage through the terraces. Soon every manner of transport vehicle-wheeled or tracked-was depositing supplies on those rapidly growing inland mountains of cases, crates, and barrels. Everywhere the engineers and pioneers of all the a.s.sault divisions were moving and shaking and transforming Okinawa with customary Yankee energy and ingenuity. Only the Battalion Aid Stations so rapidly organized on the beaches were quiet and inactive. Bottles of blood plasma or whole blood swung upside down and unused on their tall fork-like stands, while doctors and medics squatted on their heels or sat perched on water cans, smoking and staring wonderingly at empty operating tables like so many embarra.s.sed supernumeraries. Many of these reluctant soldiers, on both the Third Corps"s front to the left and Twenty-fourth Corps"s on the right, threw off the hated j.a.panese uniform and melted out of sight among their own people. Some true j.a.panese soldiers also shed their uniforms, not to desert but to don blue Okinawan kimonos to conduct guerrilla warfare from the wild northern hills. So there were few enemy indeed to contest the cross-island rush of the Tenth Army spearheads. Behind the riflemen, tanks had already rolled across beaches blessedly free of mines, while behind them came the bulldozers to cut pa.s.sage through the terraces. Soon every manner of transport vehicle-wheeled or tracked-was depositing supplies on those rapidly growing inland mountains of cases, crates, and barrels. Everywhere the engineers and pioneers of all the a.s.sault divisions were moving and shaking and transforming Okinawa with customary Yankee energy and ingenuity. Only the Battalion Aid Stations so rapidly organized on the beaches were quiet and inactive. Bottles of blood plasma or whole blood swung upside down and unused on their tall fork-like stands, while doctors and medics squatted on their heels or sat perched on water cans, smoking and staring wonderingly at empty operating tables like so many embarra.s.sed supernumeraries.
Up front the attacking Americans were slowly letting out their breath. A soldier of the Seventh Division standing on a hill south of the Bishi River spoke for all of them when he said: "I"ve already lived longer than I thought I would." On his left the Marines were also submitting to the Great Loo Choo"s pastoral charm, one of them feeding a box of K rations to a goat, which quickly gulped it down-cardboard and all-while others rounded up the s.h.a.ggy little Okinawan ponies and vaulted aboard with shouts of glee.
"Ya-hoo!" one of them yelled. "I"m Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines!"
Out among the forest of masts in the Hagushi Anchorage Colonel Cecil Nist, General Hodge"s intelligence officer, could hardly believe the radio reports from the beaches. The troops had found what the aerial photographs suggested: formidable but empty enemy positions, and now the suspicion that had replaced apprehension was gone, to be supplanted by relief. Major General Shepherd moved his Sixth Marine Division headquarters ash.o.r.e with the remark: "There was a lot of glory on Iwo, but I"ll take it this way."
Shepherd and his staff sailed past the new LST-hospitals riding lonely and unattended at anchor, with not even a single enemy aircraft threatening to plant the customary bomb in the center of that big red cross. On one of them a.s.signed to the First Marine Division, the ship"s surgeon was impatient. From the moment the amtracks rolled into the sea, his medical corpsmen had been at work transforming a ship-of-war into one of mercy. Litter left behind by the Marines was heaved over the side, the tank deck was hosed down and rows of cots set up inside it. Up forward the bow doors remained open and outside them a company of Seabees rigged a pontoon-pier for casualty boats. All was accomplished within two hours, and the ship"s surgeon-a small, thorough, fussy man, obviously a perfectionist-strode out onto the pier, satisfied. He stood there, watching the columns of attacking Marines vanishing behind the seawall. But there was no b.l.o.o.d.y return traffic. Puzzled, he turned anxiously to a corpsman.
"No boats, no wounded?"
"Nothing yet, sir."
The surgeon shrugged, almost ruefully, and went back inside his LST. In a moment he had hastened outside again, having heard the sound of a boat"s engine. A Marine was clambering out of it onto the pier.
"What"s wrong with you, son?"
The Marine held up a hand spouting blood from one of his fingers.
"One of my buddies let one go and shot the top of my finger off."
The surgeon peered at it, turning to a corpsman to order it dressed.
"What"s happening in there, son?"
"Don"t ask me, Doc. All I know is everybody"s goin" in standin" up."
The surgeon sighed. He glanced sh.o.r.eward again, turning to go inside for lunch. Coming back to the pier, he still saw no return traffic. Calling to his solitary patient, he said: "C"mon, son, let"s go make you a new finger. We"ve got plenty of time to do it in."6 That was Love Day on Okinawa, a most fortuitous eight hours of daylight during which the Tenth Army captured two airfields and a beachhead eight miles wide and three to four miles deep-all at a cost of 28 killed, 27 missing, and 104 wounded. Many of these were among the ranks of the Second Marine Division, supposedly having drawn the "soft" a.s.signment of feinting at the Minatoga Beaches. Down there another suicider put three holes in destroyer Hinsdale, Hinsdale, and the stricken ship had to be towed to Kerama by tugs, the first invasion ship to achieve that dubious distinction. The next day when the Second"s Marines made another demonstration, returning to their ships as planned, General Ushijima fired off an exultant report to Imperial General Headquarters claiming to have forced the enemy to withdraw "after being mowed down one after another." and the stricken ship had to be towed to Kerama by tugs, the first invasion ship to achieve that dubious distinction. The next day when the Second"s Marines made another demonstration, returning to their ships as planned, General Ushijima fired off an exultant report to Imperial General Headquarters claiming to have forced the enemy to withdraw "after being mowed down one after another."
Rather a different situation actually existed on Okinawa, where some fifty thousand Americans had come ash.o.r.e almost unimpeded within a single day. Objectives expected to require three or more days and take many lives were firmly in American hands by nightfall. At Yontan Airfield there were bulldozers clearing away wrecked enemy planes and General Ushijima"s clever dummies of sticks, stones, and cloth. Already there was an airplane approaching a runway. But it had a big red ball on its fuselage. Its roar as it circled became louder as bulldozers fell silent and Marines hopped to the ground clutching rifles. Others heating their rations with gunpowder fires stood erect and seized theirs, walking quietly toward the landing strip. The Zero swung seaward for a smooth landing.
The pilot wriggled out of his parachute pack. He climbed down to the tarmac. He walked toward the waiting Marines. He stopped. Between that moment in which he reached for his pistol, and the next when he slumped to the runway, riddled, an expression of indescribable horror had pa.s.sed over his face.
"There"s always someone," a Marine said ruefully-"there"s always one poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d who doesn"t get the word."
The Marines Overrun the North
CHAPTER NINE.
On the morning of April 2 American fighting men awoke in amazement to see vapor puffs issuing from their lips, their feet so chilled that they began to stamp them vigorously. The temperature was somewhere around fifty degrees and would not go above sixty, and most of these men with their blood thinned by years in the tropics felt as though they had arisen on the Arctic Circle. Actually, they welcomed a respite from the tropic heat with all its poisonous reptiles and vegetation and diseases, and they were again surprised to draw new issues of wool and gabardine field jackets to warm them-a tribute to the service of supply if there ever was one.
They moved out rapidly along the narrow roads-the GIs heading south, the Marines marching east and north-pa.s.sing through peaceful fields plotted and pieced around little thatched farm cabins, each sheltered behind stone walls or bamboo wind-breaks. Leathernecks of the Sixth Division-who now proudly called themselves "the Striking Sixth"-quickly gathered momentum in their approach march to Colonel Udo"s three thousand holding the mountain fastness. Their first objective was Zampa Cape to give Admiral Turner the site for a badly needed radar station to warn of approaching j.a.panese aircraft, while the First struck east across-island for Nakagusuku Bay, believed to be an excellent anchorage and soon to be called Buckner Bay.
"Off and on!" the sergeants shouted as the men finished their morning rations. "Get a move on, you mother"s mistakes-an" keep both ends up!"
"You there, Drag-a.s.s, whattaya lookin" behind you for?"
"I can"t help it, Sarge-I keep feelin" somebody"s gonna cold-conk me from behind."
"Oh, yeah? Well, if anybody does-it"ll be me!"
This mood of incredulity at the ease of the landing was a common sensation among the Americans as Love Day turned into Honeymoon Week on Okinawa. It was even more p.r.o.nounced in the north, where only Colonel Udo and his men stood between the Marine divisions and their objectives. For the First, with its memories of fierce battle, the Great Loo Choo was an unbelievable but lovely frolic. In the afternoon General Del Valle called a press conference to tell the correspondents: "I don"t know where the j.a.ps are, and I can"t offer you any good reason why they let us come ash.o.r.e so easily. We"re pushing on across the island as fast as we can move the men and equipment." They were, and in two days of "fighting" the First"s casualties totaled three dead and eighteen wounded. On April 3 the division"s jubilant Marines stood on the eastern seawall overlooking the bay and the Pacific Ocean. That same day scouting parties entered the narrow finger of the Katchin Peninsula, traversing it without opposition. Encouraged, General Buckner lifted all restrictions on the rampaging First, and the division rapidly secured all the east coast between Yontan Airfield and the Ishikawa Isthmus, that narrow neck of land about two miles wide lying two-fifths of the way up Okinawa"s slender length. In four days, the First had taken territory expected to require three weeks of savage fighting.
To the north, the Sixth was running into steadily stiffening opposition, ambushes, and isolated attacks on strong-points-skirmishes real enough to those who fought in them, especially those who died or fell wounded-but not in sufficient strength to slow the Sixth"s rapid advance. After the division had sealed off the northern side of Ishikawa, its men started marching north for Zampa Cape at route-step speed. The First would clean up behind the Sixth, and also attend to the problem of the Okinawan refugees now clogging the roads.
There were so many of them: women with babies at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; children without parents; grizzle-bearded ancients hobbling along with bent backs, leaning on staffs and carrying pitiful small bundles representing all that the war had left them, that terrible war that had also robbed them of the authority of their beards and had exposed them to j.a.panese mockery and American pity; and the old white-haired women who could not walk, who merely squatted in the road, shriveled, frail, hardly bigger than monkeys, waiting to be carried, waiting for the kind Marine who might stop and stick a lighted cigarette between their toothless gums.
They were a docile people, and now they were terrified because the j.a.panese had told them the Americans would torture them. They were frightened also because they knew that among them were j.a.panese soldiers disguised as civilians. But their fear vanished with gentle treatment, with the policy of carefully searching all males between fifteen and forty-five-to discover many a knife or cartridge belt beneath a smock-and of placing all of these within prisoner-of-war camps. Soon the Okinawans were speaking openly of their hatred for the j.a.panese, their loathing for the Reign of Radiant Peace.
"Nippon ga maketa," they said. "j.a.pan is finished." they said. "j.a.pan is finished."
Marines of the Sixth Division were still marching rapidly north, sweeping up both coasts,. a regiment to either side, and making giant strides daily. Tanks packed with grinning riflemen rolled up the narrow, dusty roads unimpeded but for an occasional sniper, a hastily built and unforbidding roadblock that bulldozers or the tanks themselves could easily shove aside, or here and there an obviously freshly planted land mine that could be detonated with a well-aimed rifle shot.
On April 8 the tanks in the lead came to the mouth of the Motobu Peninsula, a wild headland jutting into the East China Sea on the left, or west of the Marines. Here the Americans discovered why it was that they had moved so easily north. On Motobu were gathered almost all of the two thousand soldiers remaining to Colonel Udo. They were holed up on twelve-hundred-foot Mount Yaetake, among the well-chosen and well-fortified labyrinth of cave-eaten ridges, cliffs, gorges, steep hills, and rocky corridors-well supplied with guns, prepared to fight to the end.
The Marines moved in. They pushed cautiously around the coastal roads, their engineers swiftly building bridges over the ruins of those demolished by the j.a.panese or trucking in loads of rock and dirt to fill tank-traps blasted at the foot of cliffs or out in the rice paddies. By April 13 they had driven the j.a.panese back onto the crest of the Yaetake stronghold. They were prepared to attack in a pincers, three battalions to begin a fighting climb from Motobu"s west coast, two to strike from the east.
With first light on Friday the thirteenth on Okinawa, these Marines of the Sixth Division were startled, then grief-stricken, to hear the bullhorns of the ships offsh.o.r.e blaring: "Attention! Attention! All hands! President Roosevelt is dead. Repeat, our supreme commander, President Roosevelt, is dead."
Swiftly the news reached the men out of earshot. Many of them cried, most of them prayed. So many of these youths had known no president other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They had truly loved him, had depended on him-how much they did not know until they heard that he was dead. Nor could they turn for solace to company officers, barely a few years their senior. They could ask only: "What do we do now?"
Memorial services might be possible on ships even now flying the flag at half-mast, but the Marines on Motobu could do nothing but move out.
The Yaetake attacks became a week-long nightmare against a phantom enemy. Everywhere in the hills were small groups of j.a.panese cl.u.s.tering around a Hotchkiss heavy machine gun and the usual proliferation of Nambu lights. Marines might grenade these nasty spitting nests, might call down exact mortar fire, but then, in the succeeding rush, might find nothing but a trail of blood to suggest that anyone had struck at them.
"Jeez!" a Marine swore. "They"ve all got Nambus, but where the h.e.l.l are they?"
On April 15 naval gunfire and close-up air strikes grew stronger. More artillery was brought in. Artillery observers went forward, among them a battery commander and his spotter, Pfc. Harold Gonsalves. The commander lived because Gonsalves hurled himself on a j.a.panese grenade to save him-and win the Medal of Honor.7 More and more guns lashed at Yaetake. More and more guns lashed at Yaetake.
Next day the Marines drove deeper into the j.a.panese complex. Corporal Richard Bush led a squad forward on the right flank of the three-battalion line, striking at Yaetake"s eastern ma.s.s. The face of the opposing ridge erupted with gunfire. Bush"s squad went up and over it to drive the j.a.panese out, to score the first breakthrough. But Bush was badly wounded. He was pulled back to a cl.u.s.ter of protecting rocks where other men lay. A grenade sailed in. Bush pulled it to him. He saved the other wounded and he also lived, to join that amazing company of Marines whose Medals of Honor testified to the toughness of their bodies. Through the hole his squad had cut, through other holes along the line, the fight marched upward-swirling up in the mountains where it became as much a matter of supply as killing the enemy.
Marines toiled up hills with five-gallon cans of water on their backs and bandoleers of rifle-clips or grenades slung crisscross about their bodies. Battalion commanders going up to inspect the lines brought a water can or a mortar sh.e.l.l along with them.
It was four days before the Marines burst into Colonel Udo"s headquarters to discover this mimeographed sheet intended for their eyes: NEWS OF NEWS.
No. 1 Sat.u.r.day, April 14 President Roosevelt Died A Sudden Death To the men of the Sixth Marine Division!
We take it a great honor to speak to you for the first time.
We are awfully sorry to learn from the U.P. telegraph that the life of President Roosevelt has suddenly come to its end at 3:30 P.M. on April 12. It seems to be an incredible story in spite of its actual evidence.
Men of the 6th Marine Division, particularly men of the 15th and 29th Marines and the 3rd Amphibious Corps, we express our hearty regret with you all over the death of the late President. What do you think was the true cause of the late President"s death? A miserable defeat experienced by the U.S. forces in the sea around the island of Okinawa! Were this not the direct cause leading him to death, we could be quite relieved.
We do not think that the majority of you have exact knowledge of the present operations being carried out by the U.S. forces although a very few member of you must have got a glympse of the accurate situation.
An exceedingly great number of picked aircrafts carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers held on her course to and near the sea of Okinawa in order to protect you and carry out operations in concert with you. The 90% of them have already been sunk and destroyed by j.a.panese Special Fighting Bodies, sea and air. In this way a grand "U.S. Sea Bottom Fleet" numbering 500 has been brought into existence around this little island.
Once you have seen a "Lizard" twitching about with its tail cut off, we suppose this state of lizard is likened to you. Even a drop of blood can be never expected from its own heart. As a result an apopletic stroke comes to attack.
It is a sort of vice however to presure upon others unhappiness. This is why we want to write nothing further.
It is time now for you, sagacious and pradent, however, to look over the whole situations of the present war and try to catch a chance for reflection!!
The Marines went on to conquer the rest of Motobu, securing the peninsula on April 20. Above them, the Sixth Division"s Twenty-second Regiment had reached Okinawa"s northernmost point. The biggest battle in the northern sector was over.
The Sixth spent the rest of April patrolling and pursuing those j.a.panese who had fled Yaetake and turned irregular, using wardogs to scent the enemy and bark a warning. They even found that natural enemy of whom they had had such ample, ominous warning.
"Lookit the snake I just killed. It"s one of them habu!"
"Hoo-what?"
"Habu, the snake they was all talkin" about before we landed."
"What"re yuh gonna do with it?"
"Do with it! With the slop they been feeding us on this screwy island? I"m gonna cut it into fillets and then I"m gonna fry it and eat it!"
Marines of the First Division were not quite so desperate. They were, in fact, still celebrating the honeymoon, extending it for the duration of the month of April.
Many of the division"s battalions built bivouacs complete with gravel paths, showers, and mess halls. The men went to abandoned Okinawan homes to remove the sliding panels that separated the rooms. They used them for foxhole covers or to build shanties. Everybody had a pet-a pony, a goat, even one of those numerous Okinawan rabbits that might have escaped the pot. There was an open-air theater at Division Headquarters, and there all the clerks and typists gathered nightly to play leapfrog until it was dark enough for a movie. This was not battle as the First had known it. But the men said, "Peace-it"s wonderful!" They were so enchanted by "Lilac Time" that they brewed jungle juice out of their rations, drank it from "borrowed" lacquerware-one of Okinawa"s few crafts-and began to harmonize.
They sang all the old favorites such as "The Wabash Cannonball" or "Birmingham Jail," as well as that vast repertoire of bawdies and unprintables collected or composed by local bards during three years of tramping the Pacific. There was a new printable one for Okinawa, and it went: Oh, don"t you worry, Mother, your son is safe out here.
No j.a.ps on Okinawa, no sake, booze or beer.
Your sons can"t find no Nips, so we"re going back on ships.
But don"t you worry, Mother, cause we"re going on another.
But they were not. The honeymoon was ending. They were staying on Okinawa and going south, down to that Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line that had stopped the Army"s Twenty-fourth Corps.
In the meantime, Admiral Ugaki had hurled the first of his kikusui kikusui-or "Floating Chrysanthemums"-aerial strikes on the American warships surrounding Okinawa; while Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Navy Chief of Staff, had also ordered great Yamato Yamato-the mightiest warship ever built-to join these kamikaze kamikaze attacks as a suicide battleship. attacks as a suicide battleship.
"Floating Chrysanthemums"
CHAPTER TEN.
In j.a.pan the chrysanthemum is probably the most beloved of all flowers, woven into wreaths for weddings and funerals alike, decorating graves or dropped by grieving pilots onto waters in which their dearest comrades had plunged to their death. Thus, in conformance with this custom among the flower-loving Nipponese, Admiral Matome Ugaki decided to give the scheduled Ten-Go Ten-Go aerial attacks on American shipping the name of aerial attacks on American shipping the name of kikusui, kikusui, or "Floating Chrysanthemums." or "Floating Chrysanthemums."
Although Ugaki"s aerial strength on Kyushu had been seriously weakened by Halsey"s strikes of mid-October 1944, and especially by Spruance"s sweeps of March 18-19, 1945, he still had well over three thousand planes-both conventional and suiciders-in his command after the Americans landed on Okinawa.
Ugaki had few reservations about his ability to shatter the enemy fleet and so delay or even prevent the invasion of j.a.pan proper, but he did occasionally despair about the absence of coordination and cooperation among the Army and Navy subordinate air commanders on both Formosa and Kyushu. Though the j.a.panese command structure was probably better unified for Okinawa than for any other operation thus far, it was still a most casual chain of command in which the last thing a subordinate commander in, say, the Army, would think of doing was to obey an order from a superior in the Navy. At best to them an order was no better than a suggestion. Thus Army and Navy commanders on those two great island fortresses neither Cooperated with each other nor followed directives from the Combined Fleet or Imperial Army Headquarters in Tokyo. Although there was indeed intense and divisive rivalry between the American Army and Navy in the Pacific, orders from superiors were never-or at least seldom-ignored. If Fleet Admiral Nimitz issued orders to Admiral Turner off Okinawa, he transmitted them to General Buckner, who obeyed them without question.
Admiral Ugaki enjoyed no such luxury. If he wanted Lieutenant General Michio Sugahara, commander of the Sixth Air Army on Kyushu, to take some action, he would not issue an order but rather send a diplomatic officer to Sugahara"s headquarters to explain in the least offensive language what was being required of him. Such deference, of course, did not forge the j.a.panese chain of command with iron links, and it also wasted valuable time, for Ugaki was based at Kanoya and Sugahara at Chiran. Nor could he ask Admiral Toyoda"s fleet to issue an order binding on both of them. All that Ugaki could do was to send orders to a pair of Army air divisions that made most of the Okinawa attacks, although even here they were sometimes ignored. It is possible that this deference by senior officers to their subordinates was the result of j.a.panese misunderstanding of the character of Western military officers. When j.a.pan decided to build the Imperial Navy, the model was the British Royal Navy, and the innate courtesy of its officers was mistaken for reticence. Thus an admiral might hesitate to insist that a commander give unbending obedience to his orders lest it be considered rude.
Ugaki had a second problem in organizing his forthcoming kikusui kikusui attacks: how to strike a balance between under-training and over-training his attacks: how to strike a balance between under-training and over-training his kamikaze. kamikaze. Overtraining a pilot in the sense of turning him into a skillful combat flyer would be a wasted effort when all that was needed was to guide an obsolete aircraft to its target and then crash-dive it. But suicide attacking wasn"t that simple, especially in the North Pacific springtime when the weather was so variable, with conflicting wind currents, poor visibility, and low ceilings. In such weather even an experienced pilot could become lost. For a rookie pilot to keep a bomb-loaded crate on a direct course was not enough, for he still might not find his target. In such unreliable planes, engine trouble was frequent, and the student pilot needed to be trained enough to return successfully to base. But a new recruit would not emerge as a qualified suicider until months later. This requirement put an unbearable burden on Ugaki"s attempt to build up a powerful air armada; the suicide tactic for which this force was being formed was not only innately self-destructive but also time-consuming. j.a.pan in the spring of 1945 could not afford to lose more months of what had become a fast-vanishing resource. Finally, the American seaborne aerial attacks on Kyushu and Formosa, as well as the Marianabased B-29 strikes on Kyushu and to a lesser degree of MacArthur"s Fifth Air Force on Formosa, along with the willingness of the suicide-saviors to take their own lives, had left Ugaki with nothing like the minimal four thousand aircraft he needed to destroy or cripple Spruance"s Fifth Fleet. That was one reason why Ugaki"s airplanes did not immediately strike the Americans the day the invasion began, and it was not until that very day that Admiral Toyoda in Tokyo ordered Overtraining a pilot in the sense of turning him into a skillful combat flyer would be a wasted effort when all that was needed was to guide an obsolete aircraft to its target and then crash-dive it. But suicide attacking wasn"t that simple, especially in the North Pacific springtime when the weather was so variable, with conflicting wind currents, poor visibility, and low ceilings. In such weather even an experienced pilot could become lost. For a rookie pilot to keep a bomb-loaded crate on a direct course was not enough, for he still might not find his target. In such unreliable planes, engine trouble was frequent, and the student pilot needed to be trained enough to return successfully to base. But a new recruit would not emerge as a qualified suicider until months later. This requirement put an unbearable burden on Ugaki"s attempt to build up a powerful air armada; the suicide tactic for which this force was being formed was not only innately self-destructive but also time-consuming. j.a.pan in the spring of 1945 could not afford to lose more months of what had become a fast-vanishing resource. Finally, the American seaborne aerial attacks on Kyushu and Formosa, as well as the Marianabased B-29 strikes on Kyushu and to a lesser degree of MacArthur"s Fifth Air Force on Formosa, along with the willingness of the suicide-saviors to take their own lives, had left Ugaki with nothing like the minimal four thousand aircraft he needed to destroy or cripple Spruance"s Fifth Fleet. That was one reason why Ugaki"s airplanes did not immediately strike the Americans the day the invasion began, and it was not until that very day that Admiral Toyoda in Tokyo ordered Kikusui Kikusui 1 to be launched on April 6. 1 to be launched on April 6.