Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (119 page)

VI

T
j
's successor, Prime Minister Koiso, was a virtual unknown whose cabinet lasted for eight critical months. During that time, between July 22, 1944 and April 5, 1945, the war grew increasingly desperate, and the Japanese people were forced to make more and more sacrifices. On July 24, 1944, the emperor sanctioned plans for showdown battles in the Philippines, Taiwan, the Southwest [Nansei] Islands, the Ryukyus, and the Japanese home islands with the exception of Hokkaido and the Kuriles. Two days later, he told Koiso to stay in the capital as long as possible and let the war determine whether the Imperial Headquarters should be moved to the
continent. As for himself, he intended “to remain in this divine land and fight to the death.”
¹¹⁰

Shortly afterward, on August 4, the Koiso cabinet decided to arm virtually the entire nation and have all subjects begin military training (with bamboo spears) in workplaces and schools throughout the country. Hirohito formally confirmed the new preparations for defense against the forthcoming enemy offensives at his imperial conference two weeks later. Emphasis was to be placed on air defense, fighting the enemy “in the interior” rather than “at the water's edge,” and the rapid development of “sure victory weapons,” which meant the large-scale production of “body-smashing” or “special attack” weapons, designed to “exchange” the life of the crew or the pilot for a specific military achievement.
¹¹¹

On August 5, 1944, the liaison conference changed its name to Supreme War Leadership Council and began new diplomatic initiatives aimed at making the Nationalist government in Chungking acknowledge Japan's “sincerity;” the council also mapped its first vague overtures to the Soviet Union. The latter plan, made by the Foreign Ministry, ostensibly sought Soviet help in bringing about reconciliation between the Chinese Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. Japan could then conclude peace with the new regime in China and be in a better position to wage the “War of Greater East Asia.” In return Japan would endeavor to promote restoration of relations—that is, peace—between its Nazi ally, the German Third Reich, and the Soviet Union.
¹¹²
And why? So that Japan's crumbling hegemony in East Asia might be stabilized. This first Soviet-centered peace plan amounted to little and ended in nothing.

Awareness of the emperor's resolve to fight on was widespread in government circles, particularly after his rescript of September 7, 1944, on the occasion of convening the Eighty-fifth Imperial Diet. After noting that the enemy's offensive was intensifying and the overall war situation had “grown more critical,” Hirohito had
declared, “Today our imperial state is indeed challenged to reach powerfully for a decisive victory. You who are the leaders of our people must now renew your tenacity and, uniting in your resolve, smash our enemies' evil purposes, thereby furthering forever our imperial destiny.”
¹¹³

That Hirohito still had hope of victory could be seen in his and the Imperial Headquarters' performance during the Battle of Leyte, in the southern Philippines. The American reconquest of its former colony, by troops under General MacArthur's command, started in October with the air, naval, and land battles of Leyte and the Philippine Sea. Continuing into November, these battles virtually destroyed what was left of the Combined Fleet and took the lives of about eighty thousand Japanese defenders.
¹¹⁴
The decision of Imperial Headquarters, on October 18, to fight the decisive battle on Leyte made an effective defense of Luzon impossible. After the war, Hirohito himself admitted: “Contrary to the views of the Army and Navy General Staffs, I agreed to the showdown battle of Leyte thinking that if we attacked at Leyte and America flinched, then we would probably be able to find room to negotiate.”
¹¹⁵
His statement reflects what actually happened: Hirohito and his chiefs of staff forced the field commander, Gen. Yamashita Tomoyuki, to engage the American invasion force where Yamashita had not wanted to fight and had not prepared defenses. It was one more example of the destructive influence Hirohito often wielded in operational matters.

Fighting on Leyte continued into late December 1944, and involved kamikaze suicide attacks that were initially highly effective as the planes came in from behind the cover of mountains. Finally Imperial Headquarters decided to write off the island as lost. The costly defense forced delays in preparations for fighting more important battles elsewhere, including the homeland. The development of “balloon bomb” reprisal weapons, which Hirohito on September 25 had placed under the control of Army Chief of Staff Umezu and ordered completed by the end of October, remained on
schedule, however.
¹¹⁶
In response to the Leyte defeat, the first release of thousands of balloon bombs against the U.S. mainland occurred on or around Emperor Meiji's day of remembrance, November 3; by March 1945, about 9,300 had been released.
¹¹⁷
Very few reached the North American continent; those that did caused little damage.

Housewives and old people—everyone all over Japan practicing war with bamboo spears; wind-carried balloons with a small incendiary device hanging below; surely the military significance of these measures was more symbolic than practical. Kamikaze attacks on Allied warships and troop transports were an entirely different threat, however, a real and dangerous one.
¹¹⁸
They were a kind of weapon Americans, Australians, and Britons simply could not understand, and for that reason found all the more disturbing. Hirohito, however, clearly understood the rhetoric of sacrifice, and he may have hoped that the kamikaze tactic would prove militarily effective. On New Year's Day 1945, while the Japanese capital was under air attack, the emperor and empress inspected the special last-meal rations being provided to the departing members of the suicide units. Thereafter Hirohito continued to show gratitude for these “special attack forces” whose operations he had followed in the newspapers and watched on film since the summer of 1944, when he saw the first newsreel on the kamikaze (“The Divine Wind Special Attack Force Flies Off”).
¹¹⁹

Sometime after January 9, 1945, when the United States began retaking Luzon, and the self-destruction of kamikaze pilots and “human torpedoes” increased, the emperor's military aide Yoshihashi Kaiz
was delivering a briefing on the battles near Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines. He had just mentioned the suicide attack of one of the “special pilots” when:

Enthralled like the rest of the nation by the rhetoric of sacrifice, the emperor began the most fateful year of his life by honoring the “Yamato spirit” in its supreme manifestation.

During the first half of 1945, American forces recaptured most of Luzon, though the fighting in the Philippines continued until virtually the end of the war. They also invaded Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Everywhere they encountered desperate and increasingly effective ground resistance and more and more kamikaze attacks, which, however, became gradually less deadly as American countermeasures were developed. On tropical Iwo Jima in the Bonin Islands, where, after three days of fierce naval bombardment, two marine divisions landed on February 19, outnumbered Japanese defenders for the first time did not try to stop the invaders at the beaches or resort to mass charges. Instead, they pursued a “dug-in” defense from caves and bunkers. When the battle there entered its final stage, the emperor said, on March 7, “I am fully satisfied that naval units have taken charge of defense and are cooperating very well with the army. Even after the enemy landed, they fought ferociously against much greater forces and contributed to the entire operation.”
¹²¹

American journalism made Iwo Jima symbolic of U.S. superiority in everything from technology, firepower, and tactics to raw courage. The image, partly falsified, of U.S. Marines triumphantly raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi glorified the bravery of Marines in single-minded pursuit of victory. In his bombproof command center in Tokyo, Hirohito too viewed Iwo Jima in terms of the courage of his forces there and their willingness to fight to the
death. He had ordered all garrisons on islands forming the outer moat of defense to buy time during which the home islands could prepare for the final battle. Their mission was to make the enemy bleed as much as possible. General Kuribayashi, the Iwo Jima commander, had done exactly that. Virtually the entire Japanese garrison of twenty thousand men had fought to the death but the Americans had also died, nearly seven thousand of them, with more than nineteen thousand wounded.
¹²²
Thus Hirohito took comfort in the proportionately greater losses that his doomed defenders had inflicted on the invading marines. As Guadalcanal had been, Iwo Jima had become a test of character. And Hirohito had abetted the killing by his bullheaded refusal to accept and deal with Japan's defeat.

In the defense of Okinawa, another island he had defined as an expendable moat area, the emperor intervened early and often for he believed—as he told Chief of Staff Umezu—“If this battle turns out badly, the army and navy will lose the trust of the nation. We have to think about the impact it could have on the future war situation.” He seemed unable to comprehend just what was happening: “Why doesn't the field army go on the offensive? If there are insufficient troops, why don't you do a counterlanding?”
¹²³
“Is it because we failed to sink enemy transports that we've let the enemy get ashore? Isn't there any way to defend Okinawa from the landing enemy forces?”
¹²⁴
So spoke Supreme Commander Hirohito on the second day of the American invasion. And later that same day he told Prime Minister Koiso: “Nothing is going the way it was supposed to.”
¹²⁵

On the third day Hirohito pressed Umezu to order the Thirty-second Army on Okinawa, under Lt. Gen. Ushijima Mitsuru, to either go on the offensive or launch a counter-landing.
¹²⁶
Ushijima, having learned from the mistakes of his predecessors in the Central Pacific, was following a strategy of tactically retreating, digging in,
and fighting a war of attrition from well-concealed bunkers. After Hirohito's intervention the Tenth Area Army, which was the upper echelon of command over the Thirty-second, ordered Ushijima to “launch an offensive against the northern and central airfields.”
¹²⁷
Ushijima could only comply, radioing back to Imperial Headquarters, “All of our troops will attempt to rush forward and wipe out the ugly enemy.” The charge was made—but the “ugly enemy” survived it. Hirohito also urged the navy to counterattack in support of the defenders on Okinawa with every possible resource.
¹²⁸