HONOURS MODERN
HISTORY
The Tide Turns
*After
the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway the Japanese were
on the defensive, but they seemed well-prepared to defend
themselves. They had heavily fortified and well-supplied bases on
their Pacific islands, particularly at Rabaul on New Guinea, and were
still trying to capture Port Moresby by land (although they never
succeeded).
*The Japanese even managed to capture two of the Aleutian Islands in
Alaska in the summer of 1942, the only part of America invaded by
foreign troops during World War II. They were not dislodged for
over a year. This was a minor victory, though, and one of Japan’s
last.
*One great advantage the Allies had over the Japanese was that while
the Allies managed to decrypt many coded Japanese messages, the
Japanese did not have similar success. This was partly due to the
use of American Indian ‘codetalkers,’ most famously a Navajo unit in
the US Marine Corps. They used very simple codes, but the encoded
messages were in Navajo (or other American Indian languages, as well as
in Basque and Welsh, native speakers of which were used to a small
extent).
*Allied codebreakers not only predicted several major battles, allowing
successful plans against them to be made, but even informed the
military of Admiral Yamamoto’s travel plans, so that his plane was shot
down over the East Indies in 1943.
*Between 7 August, 1942 and 9 February, 1943, the Allies fought the
Japanese in the Solomon Islands, especially around the island of
Guadalcanal. So many ships on both sides were sunk that one area
near Guadalcanal came to be known as Ironbottom Sound. The
Japanese fought so fiercely that of about 36,000 soldiers, 31,000 died
(including many of Japan’s most experienced veterans) and only 1,000
were captured. Of about 60,000 Allied soldiers only about 7,000
were killed (and almost none captured, although partly because the
Japanese would rather kill than take prisoners).
*The Guadalcanal Campaign was the first major successful attack by
Allied forces against Japan, and showed how ground, naval, and air
forces could work together in a strategy of island hopping. From
Guadalcanal, the Allies were able to attack other Japanese bases in the
Solomons and then on other islands. This allowed the Allies in
many cases to completely bypass major bases such as Rabaul (and later
Formosa), and allow them to slowly wither on the vine as their supply
lines were cut.
*The Allies also began to cut off supplies to Japan itself.
Although the Allied fleets and air forces could not yet reach the home
islands, Allied submarines could begin sinking Japanese supply ships
and merchant vessels (just as the German U-boats had done to Allied
shipping in the Atlantic). Many mines were also laid around
Japanese shipping lanes.
*There were few major naval battles in 1943, as Nimitz avoided direct
conflict with the Imperial Japanese Navy, knowing that it could not do
much to seek out his fleet due to fuel shortages in Japan.
*In China and Burma the Allies fought the Japanese to a standstill, and
even began to push back against them, although not with much success in
1943. By late 1944, though, the Allies had begun to push to
Japanese out of Burma, and retook it all by July 1945.
*China was largely neglected by the Allies, except as a base for air
attacks on Japanese forces, because Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed
on a Germany First strategy. In 1944, the Japanese (while facing
reverses everywhere else) made a major offensive against American air
bases in China and captured several Chinese cities. In the Spring
of 1945, the Chinese retook several of these cities, but the Japanese
still occupied large parts of China when the Second World War ended.
*By 1944 the Allies were ready for a major campaign against the Japanese.
*On 15 June, 1945, 535 ships began landing 128,000 U.S. Army and Marine
personnel on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands. The Allied
objective was the creation of airfields within B-29 range of
Tokyo. This, and subsequent battles in the island hopping
campaign, which took islands to use as bases from which to push further
against Japan, were horrible for both sides.
*The Japanese would not surrender. Of 31,629 Japanese on Saipan,
approximately 29,500 died. Only 2,100 prisoners survived, many of these
only because they were too wounded to take their own lives or they ran
out of the means with which to kill themselves before being
over-run.
*Even civilians gave their lives for the Emperor, refusing to
surrender, in part because they assumed Americans would treat them as
badly as they would have treated Americans. In the case of
Japanese soldiers that might be true—Americans often shot them rather
than take them prisoner. Civilians, though, were treated fairly,
but most did not know this. On Saipan, civilians killed
themselves by holding on to hand grenades or by jumping off cliffs to
their deaths, even mothers holding infant children. Supposedly
there were so many bodies off the coast of Saipan after its capture
that the Navy had a hard time navigating the waters.
*After capturing the Mariana Islands, the US was close enough to Japan
to begin bombing her. The US bombed every major city and
industrial area flat, both to destroy Japan’s industry and to terrify
her people. Whereas the US did not use firebombs in Europe, they
did in Japan, creating terrible firestorms, killing 100,000 people in
one night in Tokyo, on just one of many occasions.
*By the end of the war, the Japanese economy was so badly injured that
Japanese school children made huge balloons out of paper and glue,
which the military then tied to bombs, and cast into the air, hoping
they might fly across the ocean and all on the US. Besides
starting one forest fire on the Pacific Coast, these did no harm.
*Japanese soldiers, as they began to run low on supplies, turned, in
some places, to cannibalism. POWs were killed and parts of their
bodies eaten. In most cases this was out of desperation, but in
some cases it was a deliberate act to terrorise other prisoners and
build morale among the Japanese soldiers. After the War,
Tachibana Yosio, a Lieutenant General in the Japanese army became the
highest-ranking officer accused of cannibalism and of ordering others
to do it (beheading two Allied POWs, cutting out their livers, and
frying them), but because it was such a horrible crime, no-one had ever
bothered listing it among the things against the rules of warfare, so,
although Tachibana was hanged, it was for (among other things)
'prevention of honourable burial.”
*On 20 October, 1944, Americans invaded the Philippines.
MacArthur landed on the beach and announced for the benefit of the news
cameras, ‘People of the Philippines, I have returned.’
*During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the major naval battle of the
reconquest of the Philippines, the Americans faced a new weapon, the
kamikaze. More than any other Japanese soldier, these suicide
pilots were ready to die for the Emperor by diving bomb-laden planes
(and driving human-piloted torpedoes) into American ships.
Despite this, the Allies won the battle, but continued fighting in the
Philippines for almost a year.
*The last POWs from the Bataan Death March were freed in January
1945. Of 80,000 Japanese in the Philippines, 1,000 were captured,
and the rest died bravely fighting until the end of the war in August,
1945.
*As Americans got closer to the Home Islands, the Japanese resistance
grew stronger. In the Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945,
Americans won 27 Medals of Honor, the most in any campaign. Of
25,000 Japanese on the island, 216 were take prisoner, and it took
110,000 men to beat them. When the island was taken, the Marines
raised the flag on the peak of Mount Suribachi.
*The last island before hitting Japan itself was Okinawa. It was
defended by 100,000 troops who swore to defend it to the death.
The US gathered 1,300 warships and 180,000 combat troops, making the
invasion second only to that at Normandy. 2,000 kamikaze attacks
were made on American ships. The battle lasted from April to June
1945, and 50,000 Americans were killed or wounded and only 7,200 of
100,000 Japanese surrendered.
*The home islands were next. The problem was that the Japanese
fought so hard, and were willing to die to the last man. Military
experts said it would probably take at least three million men just to
start the invasion and that perhaps one third of them would be killed
and wounded. The Army made up 500,000 Purple Hearts in advance of
the planned invasion—every Purple Heart awarded since has come from
that stockpile, and about 120,000 remain.
*Fortunately, America had an alternative. Starting in 1939, under
top secret security, scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, trying
to make an atomic bomb. The first research and tests were done at
the University of Chicago. Once they knew a bomb could be made,
they needed fuel. Plutonium was refined at Hanford, Washington,
and uranium in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The bombs were assembled in
Los Alamos, New Mexico, and tested nearby at Alamogordo. This was
the most powerful bomb ever built. The question was: should
it be used on Japan?
*In April, 1945, just over a month after winning his fourth
presidential election, FDR had died of a brain hæmorrhage while
on vacation at Warm Springs, Georgia, and Harry Truman became
president. The atom bomb was a surprise to him, and he only knew
it as a powerful weapon. Under the advice of experts, he chose to
use it for three main reasons:
1. To end the war with as few American casualties as
possible. The invasion of Japan was expected to cost anywhere
between 125,000 and one million killed and wounded in the first three
months.
2. To end the war quickly before the USSR could get
involved (which they did, invading Manchuria on 8 August 1945) and end
up sharing Japan with the US.
3. To test the bomb on a real target.
*On 6 August 1945, the Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima,
killing about 80,000 Japanese and later infecting many with radiation
sickness.
*On 9 August, another plane dropped the plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 39,000.
*On 14 August, Japan surrendered on the one condition that they could
keep their emperor, and on 2 September 1945 the Japanese formally
signed the surrender agreement, ending WWII.
*The end of WWII did not end tension in East Asia, however. Japan
was occupied by the US Army, Korea was partitioned between the USA and
USSR, and in China the Nationalists and Communists fought each other
with the support of the US and Soviet Union.