Okinawa by Robert Leckie
He did this because, like Isamu Cho, his heart had conquered his head; and because most Japanese commanders from Midway-Guadalcanal to Okinawa itself could never shed that Bushido-born, carefully cultivated conviction that the soft, spoiled, luxury-loving Americans would quail at the first flash of a Samurai saber.
Kikusui 2: Kamikaze Crucible
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Admiral Matome Ugaki was still convinced that his April 6-7 strikes at the Americans had seriously damaged TF 58, an estimate not shared by his colleague, Lieutenant General Michio Sugahara of the Sixth Air Army. A report made by Sugahara’s staff somewhat sourly concluded: “Despite many attacks, the Navy cannot block the enemy’s carrier force, which still is operating east of Okinawa.”
Nevertheless Sugahara was eminently cooperative in preparing for Kikusui 2, which Ugaki hoped would so shatter Spruance’s fleet that it might seek sanctuary in the open sea. But both he and the army general realized that the second Floating Chrysanthemum would never equal the strength of the first, if only because of the serious losses it had suffered. They were also concerned to learn that Marine Corsairs had indeed arrived at Yontan and Kadena, thus menacing their own aircraft with ground-based fighters that, because of their proximity to their base, were more to be feared than carrier-based interceptors.
Their apprehension was somewhat eased, however, with the arrival on Kyushu of a new weapon: the Oka, or “Cherry Blossom” glide bomb, a rocket-boosted, piloted suicider capable of speeds of 500 knots and carrying a huge wallop of 2,645 pounds of trinitroanisol. The Oka was slung beneath a mother plane, usually a heavy Betty or Peggy bomber, and flown to within about a dozen miles of its target, when it was released with the pilot firing its rockets and directing it toward its target. Moving at pistol-bullet speed, the Oka was believed to be almost immune to enemy gunfire, but its very velocity made it extremely difficult for its pilot to keep his 16½-foot missile on target. American intelligence was aware of the appearance of this new weapon, but considered it so ineffective that it was christened baka, or “foolish.”
Although Kikusui 2 was scheduled for April 12, Admiral Ugaki tried to destroy “the remnant” of TF 58 on the day before, hurling a daylight suicide attack of about fifty-two planes against Admiral Mitscher’s carrier force. Typically glowing reports claimed three carriers sunk, a cruiser set ablaze, another cruiser holed, and two destroyers hit with torpedoes. The next day Ugaki’s pilots, still mightier with pen than bomb, reported sinking two battleships and a light cruiser. Actually very little damage was done to Mitscher’s ships on either day. Some damage was inflicted on the veteran flattop Enterprise, and a kamikaze crashed the majestic new battleship Missouri, but succeeded only in scratching her deck and blistering some paint. Destroyer Kidd was hit on picket duty and badly hurt, with thirty-eight sailors killed and fifty-five wounded, the worst casualty of the day. Waggish bluejackets aboard another picket destroyer, exasperated by repeated strikes at their station, erected a huge sign on deck with an arrow pointing aft and reading: CARRIERS THIS WAY.
Both Ugaki and Sugahara hoped to neutralize the enemy Corsairs by planning a series of bombing raids on their airfields the night before the scheduled attacks of April 12, while Sugahara also organized a decoy flight of fighters to lure TF 58’s Hellcats and Corsairs away from the impact area. In the bombing operation, 22 Japanese aircraft struck Yontan and Kadena shortly before dawn of the twelfth, damaging 5 enemy planes but losing 5 of their own to American gunners of all services. Next, Sugahara’s decoys attracted nothing but birds rising for dawn breakfasts, so that it was not until eleven o’clock in the morning that the Kyushu main body of about 120 late-model fighters arrived over both Kikai Jima and the Hagushi Anchorage to try to clear the strike area for following flights of 76 kamikaze, plus 20 suiciders roaring up from Formosa.
Although the Nipponese fighters were more successful than usual against the more skillful Americans flying better planes—claiming a probably exaggerated 20 kills—the Navy and Marine pilots from the carriers of TF 58 reported a much higher 126 enemy planes downed during fighter sweeps. This also was probably exaggerated—not by intent like the starry-eyed enemy—but from the inevitable duplication occurring when more than one fighter was firing on the same enemy, or even when a “flamer” plunging toward a watery grave might have the winds caused by his velocity blow the fires out, enabling him to return successfully to base. “Kill” estimates like body counts were much like American taxpayers’ income-tax returns: so full of deductions for charity that the churches of America would all be rich “beyond the dreams of avarice.”
But the American interceptors did effectively prevent the enemy fighters from protecting the kamikaze. Although the suiciders succeeded in damaging eight American ships—mostly destroyers and destroyer-escorts of the radar picket line, as well as some smaller craft—and causing high casualities, only one warship was sunk: the new picket destroyer Manert L. Abele, the first kill on record by a baka bomb.
Abele was on Picket Station 14 about thirty miles west of Okinawa when it was jumped by a pair of suicide Vals. Abele’s AA opened up, each burst seemingly scoring a hit but with the planes reappearing through the smoke. One of the attackers was sent into the sea, but the second struck the destroyer’s after engine room, spreading death and destruction and causing Abele to buckle visibly. Just then one of two Betty bombers circling like scavengers overhead released its baka bomb, which came shrieking at the stricken destroyer at five hundred knots. The pilot kept his missile perfectly on course, striking Abele exactly amidships. A tremendous blast lifted the American out of the water to be slammed back again. Many men were blown overboard, among them Lieutenant s.g. George Wray, who swam back to his ship, clambering aboard to tear open a jammed escape hatch allowing the entire watch of the forward engine room to scramble to safety. In less than another minute, Wray might have been too late, for Abele sank five minutes after the baka struck. Most of her officers and crew were rescued by a nearby LSM, but six men were killed and seventy-three missing.
Simultaneous with the agony of Abele, a flight of conventional kamikaze found Rear Admiral Deyo’s gunfire support force patrolling waters off the Motobu Peninsula. When they struck, Deyo fortunately had his ships concentrated and they were ready for the Divine Winds, which could do little more than stagger a destroyer and crash a 40 mm mount aboard battleship Tennessee. One sailor who was blown into the air landed atop a five-inch gun turret, where he crouched while calmly stripping off his burning clothing to await a cold bath from the nearest fire hose. Marine Corporal W. H. Putnam either fell or was blown overboard, surfacing near a big life raft. He clambered aboard, finding unusual company in the presence of the headless torso of the kamikaze who had crashed his ship.
Thus the scourging of the American fleet off Okinawa continued unabated, but once again the kamikaze had failed to strike the paralyzing blow so eagerly sought by Admiral Ugaki. Losses among the suiciders are not exactly known, although 185 of them had participated in the assault—an enormous decline from the 355 making the first attacks. The decrease would continue until on June 21-22 Ugaki could scrape together only 45 decrepit Divine Winds—the shriveled petals remaining on the deadly Floating Chrysanthemums.
Uncle Sam: Logistics Magician
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Triumphs of logistics, though impressive, usually do not make “rattling good reading,” as one British historian wrote of the Napoleonic Wars. Yet the industrial and logistics feat of the United States of America fighting the first great two-ocean war on record is unrivaled in the history of humankind; and at Okinawa during the culminating battle of the Island War, as well as the greatest amphibious operation in military annals, the Americans had to overcome two unprecedented challenges.
First, it had to supply this unrivaled sea invasion at a distance of seventy-five hundred miles from its western shores. Second, it had to keep a fleet unsurpassed in numbers of ships and firepower constantly at sea for weeks at a time whil
Even more than Admiral Spruance’s Fifth Fleet and Mitscher’s Task Force Fifty-eight, General Buckner’s Tenth Army was a monster of consumption. Between April 1 and 16 alone, no less than 577,000 tons of supplies were landed on the Hagushi Beaches, a record achieved in the face of two destructive storms and the attacks of the kamikaze. A difficulty unsuspected by the Iceberg planners—though actually a happy one—was the incredible speed of the advance of Buckner’s attacking divisions, so rapid that Ducks and amphibious tractors expecting to haul their supplies no farther than the beaches were obliged to roll far inland to unload.
Another problem caused by unforeseen success was that because planners had placed the unloading priority of spare vehicles lower than such vital supplies as ammunition, barbed wire, fuel, and food, these first-priority supplies had to be heaped on the beaches to get at the now-sorely-needed jeeps and trucks. This caused the breakdown of an elaborate plan for supply dumps to be established at carefully selected points. Night unloading under floodlights, suspended only during air-raid alerts, helped to unload waiting ships speedily, but also added to beach congestion.
On April 13 General Buckner was dismayed to learn that during the past twenty-four hours only 640 tons of artillery ammunition had crossed the beaches, not nearly enough to supply guns expending more shells than planners had anticipated. Buckner immediately gave priority to artillery shells, and in the next few days 3,000 tons daily were deposited ashore—enough not only for those tireless guns but also to begin building a reserve.
Okinawa’s “excellent network of bad roads”—all narrow and lightly surfaced—could not be traversed by American armored tractors and six-by-six trucks. Those early April rainstorms that had delayed unloading of ships also made the roads softer, compelling American engineers to try to harden them with sand mixed with coral. But the coral was not easy to dig and had to be blasted frequently. Without a rock crusher, the engineers sometimes dumped coral fragments as big as boulders on the roads, turning some of them into obstacle courses.
Erection of numerous pontoon causeways from the reefs to solid ground helped ease the continuing problem of moving supplies from ship to shore. LCTs—Landing Craft, Tank—and LSMs could tie up to the small ones, transferring their cargo directly into trucks. The bigger ships at the bigger causeways used cranes. Red Beach 1 opposite Yontan Airfield had the largest causeway: 1,428 feet long with a pierhead 45 by 175 feet. During the first few days sixty thousand men and 110,000 tons of cargo crossed the piers.
The most serious shortage was in shells for the 81 mm mortars—those unlovely “stovepipes” that probably have killed more soldiers than any other weapon devised—caused by the loss to kamikaze April 6 of those two ammunition ships. But the ever-resourceful Admiral Turner quickly put in an emergency request to Guam, and 117 tons of mortar shells were airlifted to Okinawa, enough to keep the stovepipes firing until many more tons could arrive by ship. Yontan and Kadena Airfields were kept so well supplied that not a single plane was grounded for lack of fuel during the entire campaign.
Fifth Fleet and TF 58 were supplied by a force of cargo ships and oilers commanded by Rear Admiral D. G. Beary from his flagship in the old light cruiser Detroit. When Beary received requests from carrier groups for oil and/or ammunition, he would send formations of the necessary ships hurrying to the flattop fleets to begin replenishment at dawn and complete it by dusk. Long before Okinawa, the Navy had perfected the system of refueling at sea, and eventually replacement ships were trained to fill the carriers’ every need—even such bulky items as crated airplane engines or jeeps for use on flight decks. Weapons, bombs, and bullets were soon added, and thus at Okinawa TF 58 could remain almost indefinitely at sea—a fact that might be a boon to Admiral Mitscher, but a bore to his “swab-jockeys” weary of sea duty and eager for a little fun ashore. In the immemorial rhythm of “for want of a nail a shoe was lost,” the most serious problem was inadequate supplies of 3½- and 4-inch Manila line, and this would not be solved until the Philippines were completely reconquered.
Supply of the bombardment warships off Okinawa was made easy by Admiral Turner’s foresight in seizing the Keramas not only for a ship’s hospital but also to keep the big naval guns bellowing. A new class of LST ammunition ships equipped with mobile cranes shuttling between the Keramas and Ulithi and the Marianas was able to deposit cargos directly onto the decks of bombardment warships. They also were “type loaded,” that is, carrying ammunition for just one class of ship—say, five-inchers and 40 mm for destroyers.
Fuel for all these ships together with about a thousand carrier aircraft was supplied both by Admiral Beary and fleet tankers sailing from Guam to Okinawa or meeting thirsty ships at sea. Two huge fleet tankers left Guam every three days. Every day during the peak period of April 4-24 an average of 167,000 42-gallon barrels of fuel oil was consumed by the ships at and around Okinawa, plus 385,000 gallons of aviation gasoline. By May 27 nearly 9,000,000 barrels of oil had been consumed and 21,000,000 gallons of aviation gasoline, to say nothing of the delivery of less-vital but still-important items as 2,700,000 packages of cigarettes, 1,200,000 candy bars, and over 24,000,000 pieces of mail—to “gladden the heart” of American servicemen there. Suggestive of the extent of the logistical triumph occurring at the Great Loo Choo was the fact that four escort carriers were employed to protect replacement planes and pilots being ferried to the battle area, with seventeen more on the same mission between the West Coast and the Marianas.
Aside from the loss of those two ammunition ships, Japan’s naval and air forces did next to nothing to interfere with this enormous supply pipeline. Because Admiral Beary’s fleet operated about two hundred miles south of Okinawa with air cover from two escort carriers, it was rarely attacked. One lone kamikaze did score a hit on the fleet oiler Taluga, but this minor damage was quickly repaired.
Hodge’s Hurricane Attack Hurled Back
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The failure of the Japanese counter-attack on April 12-13 had convinced Major General John Hodge that the time had come for a major breakthrough in Ushijima’s Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru line. It was scheduled for April 19.
In the interval, the Seventy-seventh Infantry Division landed on Ie Shima just off the western tip of Motobu Peninsula, about to fall to the Sixth Marine Division. Ie was a fair-sized island with a completed airfield. Landing on April 16, the Seventy-seventh fought a savage four-day battle, killing 4,706 Japanese—many or perhaps even most of them uniformed civilians—while losing 258 soldiers killed or missing and 879 wounded. Marching with the Seventy-seventh was Ernie Pyle.
Before Pyle left Ulithi to join the First Marine Division, another correspondent yelled at him jokingly, “Keep your head down, Ernie.” Snorting in disdain, the GI’s Friend replied: “Listen, you bastards—I’ll take a drink over every one of your graves.” But it was Ernie’s last resting place that was dug on Ie Shima. As it always was with Pyle, he was at the front—driving there with a battalion commander. Suddenly a Japanese machine gun opened up, and the driver with his two passengers dived into a ditch. After the machine gun fell silent, the commander and Pyle raised their heads—and the gun chattered again. Pyle slumped back into the ditch. Bullets had entered his forehead just below his helmet. Over his grave his new comrades in the Pacific placed a monument with the inscription: “On this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April, 1945.”
Two days later the defending Japanese mounted a desperate counter-attack in an effort to recover ground lost during April 20 to the Americans. After dark that night infiltrators in company strength and in small groups—a total of about 500 men—launched a screeching assault on the front of the 307th Infantry’s G Company. Many of them penetrated, actually overrunning a battalion command post, and might have broken through but for the efforts of two machine gunners: Staff Sgt. Anthony Cern
On the following day General Hodge’s bellowing, three-division assault began. Its objective was to penetrate defenses around Shuri to seize the low valley and highway linking Yonabaru on the east coast with the capital of Naha on the west. Admirals Spruance and Turner were eager to seize Naha with its excellent port, the very harbor in which Commodore Perry had cast his anchors en route to opening Japan to world trade.
Even though General Hodge was hopeful, he had no illusions about the formidable positions that his troops would be attacking. “It is going to be really tough,” he said. “There are sixty-five thousand to seventy thousand fighting Japs holed up in the south end of the island, and I see no way to get them out except blast them out yard by yard.” He also said that because he faced a bristling front without flanks stretching from the Pacific Ocean on the east to the East China Sea on the west, there was simply no opportunity for large-scale maneuver. Instead, Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru had to be cracked by weight of metal.
All previous Pacific War bombardments were surpassed by the concentration of explosives—land, sea, and air—that preceded the attack. Twenty-seven battalions of Army and Marine artillery ranging from 105 mm to 8-inch howitzers—354 pieces in all—produced a barrage of 75 pieces per mile, the proportion increasing as the array moved from east to west. Bursting on the enemy with a horrible roar at dawn of the nineteenth, a rain of howling shells struck Japanese emplacements for twenty minutes to the front of the Seventh and Ninety-sixth Divisions. Six battleships, six cruisers, and nine destroyers firing on call thickened the cannonade with projectiles ranging up to one thousand eight hundred pounds, while 650 Navy and Marine aircraft either flew close-up air support for the waiting troops or punished the enemy’s outposts and Ushijima’s Shuri headquarters with rockets and one-thousand-pound bombs. Meanwhile, troops boated in transports covered by planes and warships made another feint at the Minatoga Beaches in the south, hoping to draw off some of the enemy’s strength. But Ushijima was not deceived and gave no such orders. Instead, he reiterated his instructions to all commanders to keep their men safely below ground. Needless to say, they were strictly obeyed even when, after its opening twenty-minute explosions, the American artillery lifted its fire to begin pummeling the rear areas for ten minutes, while American troops feinted at the Japanese front, hoping to deceive the Japanese into believing the bombardment had ceased and thus lure them above ground. But they still remained invisible, so that when their enemy’s fire returned to their front again, no one was caught above ground.