Authors: Japanese Reaping the Whirlwind: Personal Accounts of the German,Italian Experiences of WW II
But Obara was more concerned with hatred and death.
For the past two or three nights, searchlights have been frequently observed probing the sky over towards Manila. I wonder if it could be that our aircraft have been making night raids. May they blow Manila to hell! Whenever we find Americans or Filipinos now, we must simply destroy them. In plain language, even those who surrender cannot be kept alive. How could we have overlooked the fact that these are beasts worse than the great predators?
There was more shelling and more American attacks, again repelled with heavy casualties on both sides. Finally on 12 May, X-Day arrived. But no Japanese aircraft turned up. Without air support, the Japanese were forced to endure another day’s shelling as usual.
The mountains endure and the clouds drift by. We remained clinging to our positions, yet the tears one by one trickle and fall.
On 17 May, the enemy infiltrated their positions, but ‘we used our mortars to give them a blood-letting’. Obara heard that, after the victory off Okinawa, the Imperial Navy had gone on the offensive. In fact, what was left of it did not have enough fuel to sail. He was also convinced that the Japanese counteroffensive was progressing elsewhere and that, somehow, the enemy was in difficulties.
The enemy must be short of men. They are now pressing Filipino women into the front lines. We hear reports that women soldiers account for about one-third of the total.
And of course, Filipino women would be no match for the men of the Imperial Army.
But is the counteroffensive succeeding? This bombing and shelling is so excessively intense that I wonder if it is not just a question of time before these positions and the mountain with them will not simply crumble away … I cannot bear to think so. I will continue the fight and I will resist even if I should be the last survivor, and yet … When the counteroffensive shall have prevailed, then we will leave these positions and pounce upon the enemy! Ah, ah! I cannot wait.
They were short of rations and ammunition, but there was still hope.
An M-4 type medium tank overturned with a loud explosion and burst of fire. ‘We got him! We got him!’ I said to myself, and felt from the bottom of my heart a sudden thrill of triumph. It looked like an A-T close attack – leaping the boundary between life and death, a son of the divine land, a sacrifice to the nation! An explosion was perhaps this message – this is a soldier giving his life. Ah, ah! How like a god, that soldier! Come then, enemy tanks! We shall all of us turn into human bombs, and all of you will be destroyed.
However, he had noted that his men were becoming less and less talkative.
‘Hold on, it will be just a little longer,’ I say to encourage them. ‘I hear the Navy is now in pursuit off Okinawa!’ Eyes fixed on a point in the distance, they fall silent my men.
Fukuzo Obara’s diary ends on 19 May 1945. A US naval analyst noted:
Despite the firestorm that Obara described, it was estimated that 60 to 70 per cent of casualties on the Philippines were caused by disease rather than injury. Lieutenant Colonel Shigeo Kawai of the 2nd Tank Division reckoned they lost 95 per cent of their infantry – ‘At times during the fighting along the mountain ridge of Salacsac, we lost a total of 180 men a day.’
It was now clear that no amount of
Bushido
could win the Greater East Asia War. Lieutenant General Tadasu Kataoka, commanding the 1st Division on the Philippines, recalled:
We received orders from the 35th Army headquarters that we were to resist until the very end, even if it took two or three generations … Once, during a lull at the front lines, men of the 57th Regiment, which had been fighting up front for days, were brought back to the rear area divisional headquarters for a short period of rest. To show them our gratitude for their efforts, we fed them rice, which had been carefully nurtured and grown by our field hospital patients. However, these men had been on a starvation diet so long that their stomachs could not handle all the food and consequently, there were a great number of vomiting cases … Later, as the intensity of the fighting grew, our food supply became so low that dead horses were a welcome addition to our diet. My personal horse, which was used by my adjutant to maintain liaison between our troops and divisional headquarters, was one of the last horses to be killed. He was fatally wounded by enemy artillery fire and his carcass passed around to our men.
Morale had already suffered a crippling blow. According to Major Chuji Kaneko, a junior staff officer with the 102nd Division on the Philippines:
In our unit, the morale was exceptionally good until after the Leyte operation. The men in our division at the time were sure that our troops on Okinawa and other areas would repel the enemy and turn the tide of battle. The morale at this time was astonishingly high. However, after the fall of Okinawa, our morale wavered to its lowest ebb and few men remained who were confident of victory.
By then the homeland was in peril. On 27 March 1945, American B-29s began mining the Shimonoseki Strait, which connected the Sea of Japan to the Inland Sea. This was used by ships carrying food and raw materials from mainland Asia, and handled 40 per cent of all Japan’s maritime traffic. Some 1,250,000 tons of shipping a month were funnelled through a waterway less than 750m (half a mile) wide. Over the next four months, 12,000 mines were dropped. Captain Minami of the 7th Fleet explained the disastrous effects:
Due to the fact that the United States did not use mines extensively during the first years of the war, the Japanese allowed their research efforts to relax and consequently were in no way prepared for the saturation type of attack that was delivered in Japanese waters in the spring of 1945 … Frantic efforts were made to counter the mining of the Skimonoseki Strait … [but] at times the traffic in the straits became so jammed that it was necessary to force ships through regardless of losses.
According to Commander Tadenuma, a staff officer of the Kure Mine Squadron, which was responsible for sweeping mines from the Inland Sea:
Large warships did not attempt to use the Shimonoseki Strait after 27 March 1945 and were forced to use the Bungo Strait.
There they were vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines. Captain Tamura, head of the Mine Sweeping Section of the Japanese Navy, told his captors:
The result of the mining by B-29s was so effective against shipping that it eventually starved the country. I think you could have shortened the war by beginning earlier.
It was clear that the homeland could now be defended only by suicidal action. After the war, Lieutenant General Tazeo told his captors how the kamikaze were to play a vital part in the defence of the home islands:
We expected an Allied invasion of southern Kyushu or of the northwestern coast of Kyushu in September or October … The airforce plan was to attack the Allied fleet with kamikaze planes, and for that purpose the full airforce led by the commanding general was made ready to destroy the Allied ships near the shore. We expected annihilation of our entire airforce, but we felt it was our duty. The army and navy each had 4,000–5,000 planes for this purpose. Of that force, waves of 300–400 planes at the rate of one wave per hour for each of the army and navy would have been used to oppose a landing on Kyushu. We thought we could win the war by using kamikaze planes on the ships offshore; the ground forces would handle those which got through. The army could not put out effective resistance without the air arm, but we intended doing the best we could even if we perished. The entire navy and army airforces volunteered as kamikaze and there was sufficient fuel for these attacks.
General Kawabe explained the irreducible logic of this strategy to his American interrogators:
I know that you in the United States found it more difficult to manufacture crews than planes and did everything possible to rescue the crews, but our strategy was aimed solely at the destruction of your fleet and transport fleet when it landed in Japan. It was not difficult to manufacture second-rate planes, that is, makeshift planes, and it was not difficult to train pilots for just such a duty; and since pilots were willing, we had no shortage of volunteers. At no time did we run out of pilots to man these planes, but our big difficulty was rather a question of manufacturing than a shortage of crews.
But I wish to explain something which is a difficult thing and which you may not be able to understand. The Japanese, to the very end, believed that by spiritual means they could fight on equal terms with you, yet by any other comparison it would not appear equal. We believed our spiritual confidence in victory would balance any scientific advantages and we had no intention of giving up the fight. It seemed to be especially Japanese.
Also, may I point out another thing. You call our kamikaze attacks ‘suicide’ attacks. This is a misnomer and we feel very badly about you calling them ‘suicide’ attacks. They were in no sense ‘suicide’. The pilot did not start out on his mission with the intention of committing suicide. He looked upon himself as a human bomb which would destroy a certain part of the enemy fleet for his country. They considered it a glorious thing, while suicide may not be so glorious.
Captain Rikihei Inoguchi of the 10th Air Fleet, a veteran of the Philippines, was in charge of training
kamikaze
pilots for the defence of Okinawa. According to him:
At the time of the Philippines campaign, men were very anxious to get into the kamikaze and volunteered in great numbers. They felt that to die for Japan was not only honourable, but their duty. About the time of the Battle of Okinawa, they became more reluctant to volunteer, particularly inasmuch as the outcome of the war did not look too favourable for them. However, fearing that they would be called ‘slackers’ or told they were not ‘true Japanese citizens’, they did volunteer … I knew that in case of invasion of the homeland, I, as well as the other men who conducted this type of training, would be called upon to fight for the defence of our homeland. For this reason, we did not hesitate sending out the pilots. Before the loss of Okinawa, they still thought the war could be won … Even after the loss of Okinawa, they were still willing to die as kamikaze pilots. Only when the Emperor broadcast that the war was over did they willingly lay down their arms.
On 23 May 1945, the eve of his sortie, kamikaze pilot Captain Masanobu Kuno wrote his final letter to his five-year-old son Masanori and his two-year-old daughter, Kiyoko.
Dear Masanori and Kiyoko,
Even though you can’t see me, I’ll always be watching you. When you grow up, follow the path you like and become a fine Japanese man and woman. Do not envy the fathers of others. Your father will become a god and watch you two closely. Both of you, study hard and help out your mother with work. I can’t be your horse to ride, but you two be good friends. I am a cheerful person who flew a large bomber and finished off all the enemy. Please be an unbeatable person like your father and avenge my death.
Lieutenant Masahisa Uemura left a letter for his baby daughter, Motoko, asking her to pay a visit to the Yasukuni shrine:
When you grow up and want to meet me, please come to Kudan. And if you pray deeply, surely your father’s face will show itself within your heart … Your uncle and aunt will take good care of you with you being their only hope, and your mother will only survive by keeping in mind your happiness throughout your entire lifetime. Even though something happens to me, you must certainly not think of yourself as a child without a father. I am always protecting you. Please be a person who takes loving care of others. When you grow up and begin to think about me, please read this letter.
P.S. In my airplane, I keep as a charm a doll you had as a toy when you were born. So it means Motoko was together with Father. I tell you this because you being here without knowing makes my heart ache.
By the end of May 1945, the situation on the Philippines was untenable. The diary of Commander Tadakazu Yoshioka of 26 Air Flotilla, who was hiding out on Luzon, recorded:
31 May: We can find enough to eat, but my conscience bothers me. I don’t know if it is right to live on stolen goods.
8 June: Will the American and the Filipino armies spare us? The fact that they shoot at us every day and kill almost anything they encounter leads me to believe that they have no desire to spare us. I certainly want to live. I cannot die without knowing the situation in the world. I want to become a Christian. Amen.
9 June: Rained for three days. I guess nature cannot be conquered. Talking about sailing last night.
10 June: Rain. Are we considered worth taking alive? Or will we be killed? Hatagoe came. He promised to be with us from now on. Illness and hunger – no one cares. I have nothing to do with the world situation. Nevertheless, I will live a life worthy of a human being.
11 June: I asked Iio for his opinion on surrendering. He replied that he prefers death to capture. However, there is no other plan worth considering. Does the nation still prohibit us from taking free and independent action when the situation is absolutely hopeless as it is now? No food and no rice. What should I do as a human being? Die? Death can be achieved at any time. I shall wait.
12 June: Went to get tapioca last night in the rain. Discovered a booby trap in the adjacent field. Should we leave here before the mopping-up commences? Kudo insisted on taking a boat from north of Masinloc even if he had to go alone. I have no confidence in this place. But we must leave the hiding place if we want to live. Rain, sickness and no food. How many months can we live on tapioca? Will the enemy forgive us? Will he forgive us if we collect stragglers and work for him? I want to go back alive and analyze why Japan acted so foolishly. Never before in history was anything so foolish done.
Sato’s condition is bad. If he does not leave now while he can still move, he will die, but it is no use dying unnecessarily. Humanity insists that I at least cultivate farms for the Filipinos.
13 June: Saw B-29s in flight heading north. Is the war still on? As a human being, is it right to assemble troops in the area and persuade them not to give any more trouble to others?
14 June: All out of tapioca. Will war end by 8 July? If there are some people in Japan with common sense, I think an end can be brought to this war. However, if they are all lunatics, it is another matter. Relying on America and Britain to rebuild Japan is the far-sighted national policy. The concept that a nation will perish when losing one war is erroneous. Still, to rely on Russia would lead the nation into danger. We must depend on America. I do not think that America will annihilate all the Japanese. Kudo disagrees with me on the ‘8 July theory’.
17 June: I hope the war will be over soon. Ate the last grain of our dried rice. Rice is truly good. I want to eat rice after I become a prisoner of war. Three of us talked about food at night. We haven’t had meat for six months now.
18 June: Takahashi died of stomach illness. Muramatsu returned without any food. Tonight we will depart. I pray that the war will come to an end. I will become a Christian. I will be a good citizen. I will not steal. I want to do something for the Philippines for the damage caused by the Greater East Asia War.
The following day Yoshioka was captured at Botolan in Zambales province, Luzon, and his diary was taken from him.
A Japanese soldier captured on the Indonesian island of Biak told of the appalling conditions there in 1945:
The Japanese forces, who took pride in their superb discipline and high morale, were completely bereft of those virtues by the advance of the enemy’s mechanized forces and by their lack of food. Never in the history of the world’s warfare has an army met with so tragic a fate as is the lot of the present Japanese force on Biak Island, whose members continually roam the jungles in search of food; all will inevitably die of starvation. I should like to recount to the world our deeds in the Biak campaign, and for posterity, the trials and tribulations we have suffered.
I would note a few incidents from the tragic tale. At first there were four deserters from our unit, all members of the colour guard. Their number subsequently increased. Things were stolen. Men were killed. The sick were put to death. Those who could not keep up with the unit were held near the billeting area and callously murdered with sabres or bayonet. Men died of fever. Some of the sick, who had not eaten for a month, as they died, pleaded for a pinch of salt.
Graves were opened in the night and the bodies of the malaria victims were exhumed. The human flesh was dried and carried along as rations. Some, while seeking food, were killed by the enemy, some by the natives. Even the innocent are deceived and killed. The strong are those who kill men and eat their flesh. Even a lowly private, if he is strong, never heeds his NCOs or officers. Even the force commander, Sudo, had to dig in the gardens for potatoes, gather kindling, fetch water and worry about his dinner. The men have neither hope nor discipline. They wait only for someone to die, or dream of finding a garden with potatoes.
Front-line soldiers ignored Allied leaflets urging them to surrender. They were told by their superiors that they could expect no mercy, as the Americans were barbarians. One captured Japanese said:
The promise of kind treatment was doubted and the men laughed outwardly about the general contents of the leaflets. However, inside their hearts, men were wondering if the conditions described in the leaflets were true.
When they discovered that they were, Japanese captives were shocked, even outraged. One Japanese officer captured in Luzon, who had been well treated by US troops, said indignantly:
The Japanese Army is murdering the Japanese race by the lies they are telling their people concerning the progress of the war and the barbarianism of the Americans.
For most Japanese soldiers, being taken prisoner was not an option. Lieutenant Colonel Toshikata Ohira, of the Personnel and Training Section of the 8th Army, said:
The Japanese soldiers had been indoctrinated to die rather than be captured in battle. If troops were well trained in the Japanese Army they would have chosen to die. The Japanese troops that fought in the early stage of the New Guinea campaign were mostly well trained, but those who were sent there in the later stages of the campaign did not have sufficient training, consequently, more Japanese soldiers preferred to be captured rather than die as the battle situation became unfavourable to the Japanese.
Minoru Yamo, the commander of the landing party at Milne Bay, New Guinea, agreed:
The Japanese soldier is taught that, if he has six grenades, he should throw five and then kill himself. That is why my soldiers killed themselves when it appeared they might still have done some damage to the enemy.
However, one Japanese soldier who was captured in the Philippines realized that his comrades’ situation was hopeless and prepared a pamphlet called ‘Become the Foundation of the New Japan’. It read:
I who was born in Japan and am a soldier of the Imperial Army know only too well the feelings you must experience who are still hiding in the mountains, lacking food and water, and continuing the fight against every difficulty. Indeed right up to the present I was myself wandering about the mountains almost without food or drink …
The American Army is approaching Japan and with succession of night and day bombing attacks is reducing our people to the depth of misery. Our parents, our wives and children, our brothers and sisters, are compelled to pass a wretched existence …
Resistance in the mountains is quite senseless. The Army has to choose between a wretched death from starvation and being taken prisoner … but let us be sure that the choice of present death is to the country’s advantage. Is it anything more than a mass death? Japan today desperately needs young men to bear the burden of the forthcoming period. At all costs there must be enough young men left alive.
The denunciation is made: ‘Why not choose to die? You are a man false to your country who has forgotten the Japanese spirit and the military spirit.’
But now such narrow modes of thought should be revised.
The home country cannot be protected by your death … To become a PoW is today not at all shameful. A PoW that is one of the rebuilders of the new Japan … So, free yourselves from the old way of thought, and follow the path of national service.
Lastly, the American Army, which announces that no one need be frightened of them, is in fact kind. What you have been taught up to now is the direct contrary of the truth.
One Japanese prisoner was so grateful for the treatment he had received, he wrote a thank-you letter:
To All in the Australian Red Cross Hospital:
I am deeply grateful for the devotion with which you have nursed me. Thank you very much for everything that you have done. When you even took an X-ray of me, I broke down and cried in front of the soldiers. In doing this, even for an enemy soldier, made me think of Florence Nightingale. I think you know that every night, when I was in bed, in my heart the Gods reproached me. When I went to **** and the two gentlemen who spoke Japanese told me that I would be examined by the military police, I decided to tell them everything and take my punishment.
My wound has healed … From the bottom of my heart I thank you. I think that the spirit of the Red Cross will continue forever, without differentiation of enemies. You will laugh at me, but I have wept at your devotion without distinction of friend or foe.
Others had a similar experience of being captured. Lieutenant Colonel Yasuse Shibazaki, an engineer in charge of a road surveying team, said:
The only time I met any enemy soldier was after the end of the war, and they were Australians. I felt that the troops I was fighting against were sincere in everything they did. They were glad the fighting was over. They knew what our situation was. The Aussies showed much kindness towards us, much more than we ever expected. Our troops at the close of the war were weak and sick. The Australian government produced timber and other material for us to construct a field hospital. The Australian government was very kind to us; so was each individual soldier … While we were dug in, in our positions in the mountains, several Australians came up to the mouth of our holes and tossed in a couple of hand-grenades. One needs lots of courage to do that. As for their weak point, that is whenever a patrol of five or six men went on patrol, they would always be close together. When one got hit, a second would try to help the wounded soldier by coming to the spot he was hit or try to pull the wounded buddy out of sight. We took advantage of this and killed the second enemy.
At home in Japan, morale collapsed, as Dr Kawai recalled:
When the B-29 raids began the people really knew the war was lost. Before that they knew some islands had been lost, but islands mean nothing to the ordinary man. When the big raids came, the feeling of defeat began. But the B-29 raids went beyond the point of criticism. People felt that they were all in for it, and there was no purpose in criticism, at least not criticism of the government.
‘There was increased criticism, however, of the ARP. They were criticized because they were always changing their directives and people came to think they didn’t know what they were doing. But generally the raids were too big for mere criticism of the government. They were beyond that. People had completely lost confidence in the governing group.
The fire raids were worse than the high explosives because they came at night. One night, one of the first raids, 100,000 people were killed when the bombers hit a slum area. This caused a hopeless feeling, but there was no real panic yet because the affected people were not influential. If the raid had come in a ‘better’ area, the victims would have been able to spread more concern.
There were many strange things after that raid. For instance, the victims were evacuated to private homes in a nearby good residential section. They were so pitiful that their hosts were kind and gave them all kinds of attention. But the reaction was just the reverse of what was expected. Instead of being grateful, the slum people resented the fact that in war, while they were suffering, people should be having such luxuries, ones they couldn’t dream of having even in peace. So they looted the houses wholesale, and the police could do nothing about it. They were tough people from one of the worst slum areas. After that people were evacuated not to private houses but to schools and public buildings.
But the B-29s soon bombed the good sections also and then all were in the same boat. The amount of feeling varied with the individual, but by the time the Marianas were captured, the intellectuals were certain that the war was lost. The real terror for the people came with those leaflets naming the places to be bombed. When you did that and then bombed the places named, then there was real terror.
The weekly newspaper
Mainichi
claimed that the US were going to run out of B-29 Superfortresses, fuel and crews to man them, but this was whistling in the wind. And the Japanese people were not fooled. Even before the B-29 Superfortresses began coming in from the Marianas, they were terrified of what was to come. According to a student writing in 1943: