CHAPTER 4
The raising of the U.S. flag on one of the Solomon Islands symbolized the successful expulsion of Japanese forces by U.S. troops.
Early in 1943, with Guadalcanal captured and the enemy being forced off New Guinea, the U.S. troops felt confident enough to push forward with their plan to capture the main Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. Troops landed on New Georgia at the end of June, but it was August 5 before the island’s airfield was captured. There were battles at sea as well as fierce fighting on land that took their toll of these U.S. troops who were not yet battle-hardened.
By the middle of August, flights from New Georgia’s airfield supported new landings on the neighboring island of Vella Lavella. More than one thousand Americans lost their lives taking the two islands and more than twice that number of Japanese died on New Georgia alone. By November, U.S. troops had landed on Bougainville and the following month saw landings on the Green Islands. Rabaul, however, was heavily defended by Japanese soldiers living in specially built tunnels. A land attack was delayed and the island of New Britain was bombed heavily from the air until the Japanese garrison was put out of action.
This map shows the main theaters of war as U.S. and Japanese forces wrestled for control of the Solomons.
Both the U.S. Army under General MacArthur and the U.S. Navy under Admiral Nimitz were in action against the Japanese. There was a certain amount of rivalry between the two forces, but it never became a serious problem. Both commanders were helped by the fact that, by the end of 1943, the U.S. war economy rolled new aircraft, tanks, and ships off the production lines in record time. By early 1944, a new aircraft was completed every 294 seconds. Also, U.S. submarines, sailing from Pearl Harbor and Australian bases, achieved increasing success against enemy shipping. The Japanese found it difficult to maintain supply lines, seriously weakening their ability to keep fighting the war.
An assault boat carries U.S. Marines to land at Empress Augusta Bay on November 1, 1943, at the start of a hard-fought campaign to clear Bougainville Island of its Japanese garrison.
U.S. troops survey bodies of enemy soldiers killed on a Guadalcanal beach after an unsuccessful Japanese attempt to land reinforcements.
TORMENTS OF WAR
Ogawa Tamotsu, a Japanese medic, was ordered to kill patients who were too ill to care for:
“I was at the front almost six years, in China, and then in the South Pacific. The final year was the most horrible. It was just a hell. I was a medic in a field hospital on New Britain Island … We were five or six medics with one to two hundred patients to care for … In the beginning it was hard to do it, then I got used to it and didn’t cry any more. I became a murderer … Sometimes, when I look back, I even get a sense of fulfilment that I survived. Sometimes, though, it’s all nothingness. I think to myself: ‘I deserve a death sentence. I didn’t kill just one or two.’ Only war allows this—these torments I have to bear until I die. My war will continue until that moment.”
—From Japan at War, Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook
A U.S. Marine hurls a grenade at a Japanese machine-gun post during the grim battle for Tarawa in November 1943.
A KILLING ZONE The south-to-north advance on Japan, through New Guinea and eventually the Philippines, was under the command of General MacArthur. Admiral Nimitz preferred an “island hopping” strategy, starting in the Central Pacific and continuing through the Caroline Islands and the Marianas, before pushing close to Japan through Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the decision to bypass Rabaul in the southwest, the drive toward Japan shifted to the Central Pacific. Nimitz’s campaign began with the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.
Triangular in shape and nowhere rising much more than 11 feet (3.5 m) above sea level, Tarawa is one of 16 atolls forming the Gilbert Islands. It is made up of 47 coral islands, the largest of which, Betio, is only about 2.5 miles (4 km) long. Tarawa Atoll was invaded in November 1943. The landing area, divided into zones called Red 1, 2 and 3 by the U.S., was expertly protected by nearly 5,000 elite troops under Japanese Rear Admiral Shibasaki. A coconut log barricade about 10 feet (3 m) high, held together with steel clamps, was constructed off the shore line to channel the invaders into a killing zone. Here, U.S. troops faced heavy gunfire from emplacements dug in behind timber, sand, and also concrete defenses. The Allies fired tons of shells at the island’s defenders but they had little effect. The Japanese were able to fire at will at the troops who were forced to wade ashore, since Allied landing craft could not pass the natural defense of the coral reef.
U.S. troops and Japanese fought bitterly for possession of the coral island of Betio, part of Tarawa atoll. It is no larger than New York City’s Central Park.
It was not until the second day, when U.S. troops occupied part of the south shore and an area in the west, that reinforcements were able to land there. The Japanese eventually withdrew to the eastern end of the island and counterattacked with banzai charges, but by the end of the third day the island was taken. U.S. Army casualty figures reported that only 17 Japanese prisoners, out of a garrison force of 4,836, survived the fierce battle for Tarawa. U.S. dead numbered more than eight hundred, with more than two thousand injured.
U.S. forces advancing in Tarawa, one of the most heavily fortified islands fought over during the Pacific War.
“OUR ONLY ARMOUR WAS THE SHIRT ON OUR BACKS”
Bob Libby should have landed on Red 1, but his launch hit the coral reef and he leaped overboard:
“The sound of screaming shells passed overhead, the unmistakeable crack of rifle fire zipped around our ears, heavy explosions on shore … the screams of the wounded were lost in this cacophony of sound––all the while we who survived so far still made our way to the beach to find some haven of safety, if such existed … Every step of the way was a life and death situation; how anyone ever reached the shore is still mysterious to me as the enemy fire seemed to cover every inch between the reef and shore – there was no hiding place, no protection, our only armour was the shirt on our backs.”
—From Tarawa– A Hell of a Way to Die, Derrick Wright
After Tarawa, the next objective was the Marshall Islands, a group of thirty-six Central Pacific atolls. U.S. intelligence had decoded messages that indicated that the Japanese expected an attack on the Marshall’s outer atolls. Instead, these atolls were weakened by bombing attacks from Tarawa and bypassed, not surrendering until the end of the war. U.S. troops landed on Majura atoll on January 30, 1944—the first U.S. occupation of pre-war Japanese land—and in mid-February they successfully attacked the more heavily defended Eniwetok both from the air and by land. In February, the U.S. Navy attacked the Japanese naval base of Truk, one of the Caroline Islands, dropping thirty times more explosives on that target than the Japanese had dropped on Pearl Harbor.
General MacArthur, not to be outdone by Admiral Nimitz, captured the Admiralty Islands in the soutwest and then seized Hollandia. Decoding enemy messages allowed his forces to leap over pockets of Japanese resistance, leaving them ineffective.
A large transport vessel lands U.S. troops in the Marshall Islands in April 1944.
After the capture of the Marshall and Caroline Islands, the Mariana Islands were the next target.
THE CENTRAL PACIFIC In the Central Pacific, the way was open for an attack on the Mariana Islands: Saipan, Tinian, Rota, and Guam being the main targets. U.S forces launched invasions in February 1944, and in August Guam was the last of the islands to be taken. The Japanese mounted a strike force of nine aircraft carriers to repel the invaders in what became the battle of the Philippine Sea in June. It was the biggest carrier battle of the war. The Japanese were the first to locate their enemy but their pilots were outnumbered and outmatched by U.S. fighters. The next day, the Japanese fleet was located; one carrier was sunk and three damaged. U.S. submarines had already sunk two others.
After the capture of the Mariana Islands, U.S. commanders had to decide whether to move closer to Japan via Formosa or take back the Philippines. MacArthur and Nimitz agreed on the Philippines and planned to seize the Japanese-occupied coral island of Peleliu as protection for landings on Leyte in the Philippines. The capture of Peleliu turned into one of the war’s bloodiest engagements, starting on September 15 and not ending until the end of November.
The Japanese knew that it was important to try to prevent the capture of the Philippines and so halt the U.S. advance towards their home country. The plan was that Vice Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa, in overall command of the operation, would divert the main U.S. force by sailing four almost empty aircraft carriers to the northeast of the Philippines. The bulk of the Japanese naval force—comprising most of the Japanese warships still afloat—would be split between Vice Admirals Kiyohide Shima and Takeo Kurita. Shima, aided by some of Kurita’s ships under the command of Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura, would occupy Surigao Strait, while Kurita would head for the San Bernardino Strait to the north. The U.S. landing force would be caught in a pincer movement between the two of them and wiped out along with their support ships.
THE FORGOTTEN BATTLE
Equal in ferocity to the battle for Tarawa, the struggle for Peleliu received far less publicity during the war. Regarded as the Pacific War’s “forgotten battle,” it is debatable whether it should ever have been fought. It made little difference to the capture of the Philippines and the human cost was terrible:
U.S.
1,050 killed in action
150 died of wounds
5,450 wounded
36 missing
Japanese
10,900 killed
202 prisoners; 19 of whom were Japanese, the rest being non-Japanese laborers
U.S. soldiers celebrate the capture of the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, which brought U.S. aircraft within range of the Caroline Islands.
The Japanese First Striking Force split, with Nishimura heading east towards Leyte and Kurita heading northeast.
Admiral Jizaburo Ozawa (1886–1963) played a successful part in the Leyte Gulf battle.
THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF
The Japanese plan failed, partly because Nishimura’s force was virtually destroyed by U.S. battleships and cruisers, and Shima, who was following behind, withdrew without joining the fight. The other, stronger force, under Kurita, was met the following morning, and the battle that followed was hardfought on both sides. For the first time, kamikaze pilots, suicidally crashing their aircraft onto their targets, sank an U.S. ship. The outcome of the battle seemed to be in doubt when, to the surprise and relief of the Americans, Kurita withdrew.
Choosing to engage the enemy in the battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in world history, was a necessary gamble for the Japanese. Without the Philippines, they would be cut off from their fuel supplies in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). The gamble failed. The Japanese lost most of the major naval ships that they possessed and ten thousand Japanese lost their lives, as did 1,500 U.S. servicemen. Historians have credited the Japanese, in spite of their loss, with superior strategy and criticized U.S. Admiral William Halsey, in charge of the U.S. forces, for falling for Ozawa’s decoy and failing to prevent Kurita from reaching Leyte Gulf.
Japanese kamikaze pilots preparing for their suicide attacks on U.S. warships.
The U.S. victory allowed MacArthur to land thousands of troops on Leyte. By the end of the year MacArthur was ready to return to Manila, the capital city of the Philippines.
General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japanese commander in the Philippines, did not plan to fight in Manila. He left about 20,000 troops in the city, in charge of Rear Admiral Iwabuchi, and withdrew northwards to harass the enemy. He even planned to grow his own crops in northern Luzon (see page 36) to feed his troops. Iwabuchi, however, chose to avenge his country’s disastrous naval defeats by fighting to the bitter end. The resulting fight was the Pacific’s only battle in which U.S. and Japanese fought in a city.
BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF OCTOBER 24–25, 1944
For every soldier killed in the battle for Manila, which had a population of 800,000, six civilians lost their lives.
Japanese troops stopped the first U.S. advance from the south at Nichols Field, inflicting 900 casualties. A U. S. northern advance turned grim near Paco Station where 300 Japanese held out for two days at a cost of 335 U.S. casualties. On February 15, Iwabuchi rejected Yamashita’s order to break out of the city of Manila and made his last stand in Intramuros, a square mile of stone-built buildings surrounded by a high wall.
A historic moment: General Douglas MacArthur, returning to the Philippines, wades ashore on Leyte on October 25, 1944.
The corpse of a U.S. soldier is carried on a stretcher through the ruins of Manila.
U.S. forces decided to employ heavy artillery and most of the city was reduced to rubble. About 100,000 Filipino residents of the city lost their lives in the fighting, fires, and explosions. The Japanese, believing they were going to die, took to slaughtering civilians, especially European residents. They attacked the German Club, where 1,500 European refugees had taken shelter, killing hundreds of them with bayonets and clubs.
THE COST OF MANILA WAS HIGH
In and around Intramuros, buildings were attacked and destroyed one by one. On February 21, the Manila Hotel was destroyed and four days later, with shells hitting his headquarters, Iwabuchi and others committed suicide. On March 3, the Finance Building, the last building in Japanese hands, was reduced to rubble. The battle for Manila was over.
The United States, which lost 1,100 men, counted over 16,000 Japanese bodies. MacArthur, knowing this cost was too high, ordered that no public monuments commemorating the “liberation” of the city should be erected in either the Philippines or the United States.
WAR TALK
“We are very glad and grateful for the opportunity of being able to serve our country in this epic battle. Now, with what strength remains, we will daringly engage this enemy. Banzai to the Emperor! We are determined to fight to the last man.” Vice Admiral Iwabuchi, February 15. 1945.
“People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil—soil consecrated in the blood of our two people … Rally to me.”
General MacArthur, returning to the Philippines two and a half years after he had been forced to leave Corregidor.
—From Atlas of World War II Battle Plans, edited by S. Badsey, and How It Happened: World War II, edited by Jon E. Lewis