Okinawa (14 page)

General Cho’s desperation attack was also hurled back on Kakazu Ridge proper. When the Ninety-sixth’s heavy mortar crews were informed that about forty Japanese were threatening to overrun their battalion observation post, they decided to risk close support of their riflemen buddies up front. Hoping that their comrades would be safely below ground in pits and foxholes, they sent about eight hundred high-explosive shells humming skyward, to come plunging straight down with a horrible whistling noise that was the last sound many Japanese ever heard. Marine artillery also joined the bombardment, firing shells that drew a curtain of explosives around the endangered position. In the morning enemy dead were “stacked like cordwood” below.

In their headquarters below Shuri Castle a sorrowing General Ushijima and a despairing General Cho heard nothing but depressing reports from the front. Nevertheless, it was still hoped that a battalion of the Twenty-second Regiment that had slipped through American lines undetected to enter the Ginowan area might hide out in caves until daybreak, when they could emerge to shoot up the American rear echelons—and even perhaps reach Yontan and Kadena to destroy enemy aircraft. But in scattering for sanctuary during the night, they had become so fragmented that daybreak showed them incapable of concerted action. So they remained hidden until nightfall of the thirteenth, when half of them successfully slipped back into their own lines. Two final Japanese counter-attacks were repulsed during the early-morning darkness of the fourteenth, one of them with losses of 116 men, closing out Isamu Cho’s abortive counter-offensive.

It had not, of course, been a proper
Banzai!:
howling,
sake-
crazed troops, screaming and screeching as they ran through the darkness banging canteens on bayonets and yelling in singsong English what they presumed to be blood-curdling oaths—“Japanese boy drink American boy’s blood!”—only to be herded into enemy barbed wire by American mortars falling behind them, there to be riddled or sometimes even exterminated by accurate machine-gun and rifle fire. But it was still a reversion to bamboo-spear tactics, and worse, a decision to come outside of the caves and tombs and pillboxes from which they had successfully halted the two-division advance of General Hodge’s Twenty-fourth Corps, and expose themselves to the devastation of overwhelmingly superior American artillery, mortar, and naval gunfire, as well as accurate small arms. Ushijima, in authorizing this romantic regression into the failed tactics of the past, had blessed an operation ill conceived, understrength, misdirected, haphazard, and uncoordinated. As a result, more than half the force involved—1,594 men—were killed. To approve a plan calling for splendid defensive fighters to take the offensive at night while moving over unfamiliar terrain and woefully inferior in numbers and firepower was simply to grasp the muzzle of military success rather than the pistol grip; and also to surrender his own enormous advantage in terrain and tenacious troops: natural obstacles made unassailable by improved fortifications, thus canceling out his enemy’s superior firepower, and manned by invisible troops movable only in death.

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.

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.

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 while feeding it with ammunition, food, fuel, airplanes, and those myriad lesser demands of an invader engaged on land and sea and in the air.

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.