History of the Second World War (117 page)

BORNEO

The initiative for the recapture of Borneo came mainly from the Americans, who wished to cut off the Japanese oil and rubber supplies, and also to provide the British with an advanced fleet base at Brunei Bay. The British Chiefs of Staff did not favour the idea, as they wanted a base in the Philippines, while the Pacific Fleet was already committed to the Okinawa area, and they did not wish to bring it back southward. So the operation was carried out by the Australian 1st Corps (of two divisions) under Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Morshead, with the protective aid of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. The island of Tarakan, off the north-east coast, was seized on May 1, 1945, and Brunei Bay on the west coast was captured without serious opposition on June 10. From there the Australian troops advanced down that coast into Sarawak. At the beginning of July, after a prolonged bombardment, the oil centre of Balikpapan on the south-east coast was attacked and captured, after some tough resistance — in what proved to be the last large amphibious operation of the war.

By that time British preparations for the recapture of Singapore were well advanced, but were nullified by Japan’s surrender in August. So when Mountbatten arrived at Singapore on September 12 it was merely to receive the general capitulation of Japan’s forces in South-east Asia which had already been signed in a preliminary agreement at Rangoon on August 27. It brought the surrender of three-quarters of a million Japanese.

THE PHILIPPINES*

* For maps, see pp. 614 and 214.

Although the Americans had gained strategic control of the Philippines within five months of their first landing, at Leyte, in October, large Japanese forces were still there in March. On Luzon alone, later evidence shows them to have been about 170,000 — a much bigger figure than the Americans estimated at the time. The largest groups were in the north of Luzon under Yamashita himself, but some 50,000 under General Yokoyama were in the mountains near Manila, the capital, and controlling the water-supply of that city. Early moves to evict them were checked and the Japanese even took the offensive against General Griswold’s 14th Corps, which had been given the task of destroying them. In mid-March General Hall’s 11th Corps was brought in to take over the advance and by the end of May had captured the two main dams at Awa and Ipo. By then Yokoyama’s strength had been halved, largely by hunger and disease, and it soon broke up into disorganised groups that were pursued and harassed by Filipino guerrillas as well as by the American troops. For every man killed in action, ten perished from starvation and disease. At the end of the war barely 7,000 survived to surrender.

Meanwhile, General Krueger’s forces cleared the passages through the Visayan Sea, thus shortening the shipping route from Leyte to Luzon, and subsequently started a drive to clear the southern part of Luzon. Other forces cleared the islands south of Leyte, and established a lodgement on Mindanao — where over 40,000 Japanese troops had been placed because of the Imperial G.H.Q. view that it would be a primary objective for the American invasion. By the summer the Japanese forces in all these areas had withdrawn into the mountains, where they dwindled rapidly from hunger and disease.

The last stage of the process was the American drive against Yamashita’s forces in the north of Luzon. It was launched on April 27 by three American divisions, soon reinforced by a fourth, but met increasing difficulties as it pressed into the mountains, where Yamashita had concentrated over 50,000 troops — more than double what the Americans had estimated. He was still holding out when the war ended in mid-August, and he surrendered with 40,000 remaining troops, as well as a further 10,000 in other parts of northern Luzon. The strategic necessity for this costly mopping-up campaign is very doubtful.

THE AMERICAN STRATEGIC AIR OFFENSIVE

The air offensive against Japan did not become really effective until it could be launched from the Marianas — which were captured, chiefly for that purpose, in the summer of 1944.

Its chief instrument was the Boeing B.29 Superfortress, the largest bomber of the Second World War, which could carry a bomb-load of up to 17,000 lb. (7.3 tons), fly at speeds approaching 350 m.p.h., and at altitudes of over 35,000 feet. It had a range of over 4,000 miles, and was well-protected by armour-plate, as well as by some thirteen machine-guns that it carried.

In mid-June 1944 the steel town of Yawata, on Kyushu, was bombed by some fifty B.29s based on China and India, but this and subsequent attacks did little damage — only about 800 tons of bombs were dropped on Japan from that direction in the second half of 1944, and the B.29s of the 20th Bomber Command required so much of the air supply over the ‘Hump’ to maintain them in China, for results so poor, that they were withdrawn early in 1945.

But the first air-strip in the Marianas, at Saipan, was ready for use by the end of October 1944, and then received the first wing (112 machines) of the 21st Bomber Command. A month later, on November 24, 111 B.29s took off from there to bomb a Tokyo aircraft factory. It was the first attack on Tokyo since Colonel Doolittle’s raid in April 1942. It inaugurated the new offensive, and although less than a quarter of the bombers found their target, only two of them were lost — despite the 125 Japanese fighters that were sent up to engage them.

During the next three months the B.29s continued with their daylight precision-bombing, based on their experience in Europe, but the effects were disappointing — although it forced the Japanese to begin dispersing their air factories and other industries. But by March 1945 the number of B.29s in the Marianas was trebled, and General Curtis LeMay, who had taken command there, decided to switch them onto night time low-level area-bombing — in order to exploit Japanese weaknesses in night defence, allow a greater bomb-load to be carried, ease the strain on engines, and be more effective in hitting the numerous small industrial targets.

More important still, LeMay decided that the B.29s were to carry incendiary bombs instead of explosive bombs — each B.29 could carry forty clusters of thirty-eight incendiaries apiece, which could burn an area of approximately sixteen acres. The results of the change were horrifyingly effective. On March 9, 279 B.29s — each carrying 6-8 tons of incendiaries — devastated Tokyo. Nearly sixteen square miles, a quarter of the total area of the city, was burnt out, over 267,000 buildings being destroyed. The civilian casualties were approximately 185,000 — whereas the American attackers lost only fourteen aircraft. In the next nine days the cities of Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya were similarly devastated. By the 19th these attacks ceased, as the Americans had run out of incendiaries — in those ten days they had dropped nearly 10,000 tons of them.

But the devastation was soon resumed, and increased — in July the tonnage dropped was three times what it had been in March. In addition, thousands of mines were dropped to block Japanese coastal traffic. Over 1¼ million tons of shipping were sunk, and the traffic was brought almost to a halt. Japanese opposition in the air had become negligible.

The effects were tremendous. Civilian morale declined badly after the Tokyo fire-raid, and still more when LeMay began dropping pamphlet warnings of his next targets. Over 8½ million people fled into the countryside, causing war production to sag — at a time when Japan’s war economy was almost at the end of its tether. For production in the oil-refilling industry had declined by 83 per cent, in aircraft engines by 75 per cent, in airframes by 60 per cent, and in electronics equipment by 70 per cent. More than 600 major war factories had been destroyed or badly damaged by bombing.

Beyond all this was the fact that the bombing campaign had brought home to Japan’s people that their forces could no longer protect them, and that surrender, even unconditional, had become unavoidable. The atomic bombs in August merely confirmed what most of the Japanese people, except for military fanatics, had already come to realise.

THE ATOMIC BOMB AND JAPAN’S SURRENDER

Winston Churchill in the last volume of his war memoirs relates how on July 14, 1945 — when he was at the Potsdam Conference with President Truman and Stalin — he was handed a sheet of paper with the cryptic message: ‘Babies satisfactorily born.’ Mr Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, explained its meaning — that the experimental test of the atomic bomb, on the previous day, had proved successful. ‘The President invited me to confer with him forthwith. He had with him General Marshall and Admiral Leahy.’

Churchill’s account of the sequel is of such far-reaching significance that the main passage deserves to be quoted at length:

We seemed suddenly to have become possessed of a merciful abridgment of the slaughter in the East and of a far happier prospect in Europe. I have no doubt that these thoughts were present in the minds of my American friends. At any rate, there never was a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used or not. To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.

British consent in principle to the use of the weapon had been given on July 4, before the test had taken place. The final decision now lay in the main with President Truman, who had the weapon; but I never doubted what it would be, nor have I ever doubted since that he was right. The historic fact remains, and must be judged in the after-time, that the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.*

* Churchill:
The Second World War
, vol. VI, p. 553.

But later, Churchill himself raises his doubts about the case for using the atomic bomb, when he says:

It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell, and was brought about by overwhelming maritime power. This alone had made it possible to seize ocean bases from which to launch the final attack and force her metropolitan Army to capitulate without striking a blow. Her shipping had been destroyed.*

†
ibid.,
p. 559.

Churchill also mentions that at Potsdam, three weeks before the bomb was dropped, he was told privately by Stalin of a message from the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow expressing Japan’s desire for peace — and adds that in passing on this news to President Truman he suggested that the Allies’ demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ might be somewhat modified to ease the way for the Japanese to surrender.

But these Japanese peace-seeking approaches had started much earlier, and were already better known to the American authorities than Churchill indicated or was perhaps aware. Just before Christmas 1944, the American Intelligence in Washington received a report from a well-informed diplomatic agent in Japan that a peace party was emerging, and gaining ground there. The agent predicted that General Koiso’s Government — which in July had replaced the Government under General Tojo that had led Japan into the war — would soon be succeeded by a peace-seeking Government under Admiral Suzuki which would initiate negotiations, with the Emperor’s backing. This prediction was fulfilled in April.

On April 1 the Americans landed on Okinawa, one of the Ryukyu islands, midway between Formosa and Japan. The shock of that news, coupled with the Russians’ ominous notice of terminating their neutrality pact with Japan, precipitated the fall of Koiso’s Cabinet, on April 5, and Suzuki then became Prime Minister.

But although the heads of the peace party were now predominant in the Government they were at a loss how to proceed. Already in February, following the Emperor Hirohito’s initiative, approaches had been made to Russia begging her ‘as a neutral’ to act as an intermediary in arranging peace between Japan and the Western Allies. These approaches were made, first, through the Russian Ambassador in Tokyo, and then through the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow. But nothing developed. The Russians had not passed on any word of the approach.

Three months passed before a hint of it came. This was at the end of May, when Mr Harry Hopkins, as the President’s personal envoy, flew to Moscow for discussions with Stalin about the future. In their third meeting Stalin brought up the question of Japan. At the Yalta Conference in February he had undertaken to join in the war against Japan on condition of getting the Kurile Islands, the whole of Sakhalin, and a controlling position in Manchuria. Stalin now informed Hopkins that his reinforced armies in the Far East would be deployed by August 8 for attack on the Japanese front in Manchuria. He went on to say that if the Allies stuck to their demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ the Japanese would fight to the bitter end, whereas a modification of it would encourage them to yield — and the Allies could then impose their will and obtain substantially the same results. He also emphasized that Russia expected to be given a share in the actual occupation of Japan. It was in the course of this discussion that he revealed that ‘peace feelers’ were being ‘put out by certain elements in Japan’ — but did not make it clear that they were official approaches through the ambassadors.

Long before the end of the struggle on Okinawa, the issue was certain. It was also evident that once the island was captured, the Americans would soon be able to intensify their air bombardment of Japan itself, as the airfields there were within less than 400 miles of Japan — barely a quarter of the distance from the Marianas.

The hopelessness of the situation was plain to any strategical mind, and particularly to a naval mind such as Suzuki’s, whose anti-war views had led to his life being threatened by the military extremists as far back as 1936. But he and his peace-seeking Cabinet were entangled in a knotty problem. Eager as they were for peace, acceptance of the Allies’ demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ would appear like a betrayal of the forces in the field, so willing to fight to the death; these forces, who still held the lives of thousands of near-starved Allied civilian and military prisoners in pawn, might refuse to obey a ‘cease fire’ order if the terms were abjectly humiliating — above all, if there was any demand for the removal of the Emperor, who in their eyes was not only their sovereign but also divine.