The Conquering Tide (95 page)

Anonymous gestures of defiance triggered paroxysms of repression.
Sumio Ishida, a local policeman in Shizuoka Prefecture, recalled that someone in his district began mailing unsigned letters to prominent political figures. The letters were filled with sentiments such as “Please stop this war as soon as possible. . . . Japan will lose this war for certain. . . . Aren't you aware of how difficult the lives of the Japanese people have become?”
⁴⁴
Ishida's entire precinct was mobilized to catch the perpetrator. Plainclothesmen staked out mailboxes twenty-four hours per day. The police took handwriting samples from hundreds of citizens. A months-long investigation finally led to an arrest. The perpetrator was a fifty-three-year-old woman whose son had died in the South Pacific. The war ended before she was brought to trial.

To many, the war seemed to tear at the seams of an ancient and sacred social contract. Whatever super-familial bonds had once held Japan together threatened to rupture. The nation had always taken justifiable pride in a low crime rate, but the war brought a sharp increase in petty property theft. Handbags and briefcases were snatched on overcrowded trains. Shoes left in the entrance halls of restaurants or the vestibules of private homes disappeared. Thieves reached in through kitchen windows and took food off the stove as it was cooking. “Foremost Thief Nation of the Whole World,” complained an April 1944 headline in the
Mainichi Shinbun
.
⁴⁵
Authorities wrung their hands about juvenile delinquency, diminishing respect for elders, and a breakdown in Confucian ideals of filial piety. Farmers, observed Aiko Takahashi in January 1944, seemed to take malicious pleasure in their new power over the city dwellers—they “hold the key to our lives—food—and sit in the kingly position of lords of production. By selling on the black market, they are enjoying extraordinary prosperity.”
⁴⁶
Urban evacuees were treated harshly by rural families. Children from the cities were forced to live in sheds and survive on scraps from the host family's table. After observing these patterns of behavior, a young girl in Niigata “became disillusioned with the disgraceful qualities in our people. They had become a herd whose humanity had been shorn from them by war.”
⁴⁷

Direct defiance of authority was impossible. Spies were everywhere, and the
Kempeitai
was quick to arrest anyone suspected of holding left-wing or “anti-
kokutai
” views. Children were encouraged to inform on their parents and teachers. Libraries were compelled to produce lists of titles loaned to every patron, and the police combed those lists for clues of who might harbor foreign sympathies or unacceptably liberal tendencies. The regime created
an atmosphere of omnipresent paranoia. Traitors and infiltrators were said to be everywhere. “During those years everything happened behind heavy doors, out of our sight,” wrote the novelist Michio Takeyama (author of
Harp of Burma
) after the war. “What's become clear now was wholly unclear then. Day after day we simply trembled in fear, struck dumb with astonishment at incomprehensible developments.”
⁴⁸
Malnourished and overworked, driven like a herd of beasts, instructed how to act and what to think, deprived of any sound basis for rational judgment, threatened with torture and prison at the first divergence from enforced norms, the Japanese people were powerless to alter the doomed course chosen by their leaders. Having long since surrendered whatever rights and freedoms they had once possessed, they were fated to share in the coming Götterdämmerung of 1945.

^*
Wartime propaganda often referred to the Japanese people as the “ 100 Million.” The figure was overstated by about 30 million.

NOTES

Prologue

1.
 Clemens,
Alone on Guadalcanal
, p. 57.

2.
 Read, “Report by Lieut. W. J. Read on Coastwatching Activity,” p. 59.

3.
 Clemens,
Alone on Guadalcanal
, p. 149.

4.
 Ibid., p. 32.

5.
 Rhoades, “Secret Diary,” p. 1.

6.
 Ibid., p. 4.

7.
 Clemens,
Alone on Guadalcanal
, p. 106.

8.
 Ibid., p. 110.

9.
 Entry dated May 4, 1942, in Rhoades, “Secret Diary,” p. 4.

10.
 Clemens,
Alone on Guadalcanal
, p. 105.

11.
 Ibid., p. 147.

12.
 Rhoades, “Secret Diary,” p. 7.

13.
 Clemens,
Alone on Guadalcanal
, p. 187.

14.
 Ibid., p. 188.

Chapter One

1.
 The phrase may have been Bundy's. Stimson and Bundy,
On Active Service in Peace and War
, p. 506.

2.
 Karsten,
Naval Aristocracy
, p. xiv.

3.
 See the trenchant comments on this subject by Ruthven E. Libby, in Vice Admiral Ruthven E. Libby, USN (ret.), USNI Oral History Program, 1984, pp. 56–62.

4.
 Twining and Carey,
No Bended Knee
, p. 29.

5.
 MacArthur to Army Chief of Staff, May 23, 1942, in NARA, RG 38, “CNO Zero-Zero Files,” Box 38.

6.
 Trumbull, “Big Bombers Won.”

7.
 Mears,
Carrier Combat
, p. 78.

8.
 Smith and Finch,
Coral and Brass
, p. 18.

9.
 Tom Lea, “Peleliu Landing,” in
Reporting World War II
, Vol. 2:
Part II
, p. 500.

10.
 Churchill to Roosevelt, June 13, 1942, in Loewenheim, Langley, and Jonas, eds.,
Roosevelt and Churchill
, p. 220.

11.
 “Sacrifice Will Win, Says Admiral King.”

12.
 Walter Muir Whitehill, “A Note on the Making of This Book,” in King and Whitehill,
Fleet Admiral King
, pp. 649–50.

13.
 Stoler,
Allies and Adversaries
, p. 69.

14.
 Ambrose,
Eisenhower
, p. 141.

15.
 Entry dated January 20, 1943, in Alanbrooke,
War Diaries
, p. 364.

16.
 Admiral Ernest J. King to Joint Chiefs of Staff, “J.C.S.—Defense of Island Bases in the Pacific,” April 6, 1942, FDR Safe Files, Box 4, George C. Marshall file.

17.
 “Memorandum for the President,” January 18, 1942, Ernest J. King Papers, Box 9, FDR correspondence file.

18.
 “Situation in South Pacific and Southwest Pacific Areas as of the end of May, 1942,” Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet to Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, memorandum dated May 12, 1942, in NARA, RG 38, “CNO Zero-Zero Files,” Box 60.

19.
 King, “Memorandum for the President,” March 5, 1942, Ernest J. King Papers, Box 9, FDR correspondence file.

20.
 COMINCH to CINCPAC 2303-2306, June 24, 1942, in CINCPAC War Diary, Book 1, pp. 602–3.

21.
 COMINCH to CINCPAC 1840, June 25, 1942, in ibid., p. 603.

22.
 COMSOPAC to CINCPAC 0015, June 26, 1942, in ibid., p. 604.

23.
 PESTILENCE Operation Plan, COMSOPAC File No. A 4-3/A16-3, Serial 0017, in NARA, RG 38, “SOPAC Amphibious Force Diary, July 1942,” Box 173; and COMSOPAC dispatches in CINCPAC War Diary, Book 1, pp. 487–596.

24.
 “Interview of Captain M. B. Gardner, USN, Chief of Staff, ComAirSoPac,” January 13, 1943, Bureau of Aeronautics, pp. 2–3, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 24.

25.
 D. J. Vellis, oral history, recorded in Olson,
Tales from a Tin Can
, p. 89; and Huie,
Can Do!
, pp. 93–95.

26.
 “Callaghan's Report of Conference” on
Saratoga
, July 28, 1942, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 24.

27.
 Vandegrift and Asprey,
Once a Marine
, p. 105.

28.
 “Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operations,” May 24, 1943, pp. 2–4, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 25.

29.
 Vandegrift and Asprey,
Once a Marine
, p. 111.

30.
 COMINCH to CINCPAC 2303-2306, June 24, 1942, in CINCPAC War Diary, Book 1, pp. 602–3.

31.
 “Joint Directive for Offensive Operations in the Southwest Pacific Area,” July 2, 1942, in, NARA, RG 38, “CNO Zero-Zero Files,” Box 38, folder labeled “Memos to Gen. Marshall, 15 Jan. 42–1 Sept. 44.”

32.
 “COMSWPACFOR to COMINCH, etc., July 9, 1942,” in COMSOPAC, “Top
Secret Incoming and Outgoing Dispatches, 1942–45,” in NARA, RG 38: 0313, Container 1.

33.
 COMINCH to Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, July 10, 1942, in NARA, RG 38, “CNO Zero-Zero Files,” Box 38, folder labeled “Memos to Gen. Marshall, 15 Jan. 42–1 Sept. 44.”

34.
 COMINCH to COMSOPAC 2100, July 10, 1942, in CINCPAC War Diary, Book 1, p. 616.

35.
 Twining and Carey,
No Bended Knee
, p. 30.

36.
 Merillat,
Guadalcanal Remembered
, p. 21.

37.
 Twining and Carey,
No Bended Knee
, p. 27.

38.
 Lt. Chester M. Stearns, interview in November 1943 on board
Baltimore
, in Morison's Notebook, Pacific XII 1943, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 26.

39.
 Justice Chambers, Major, USMCR, oral history, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946.”

40.
 Donald Dickson, Major, USMC, oral history, in ibid.

41.
 Mears,
Carrier Combat
, p. 100.

42.
 Vandegrift and Asprey,
Once a Marine
, p. 120.

43.
 Twining and Carey,
No Bended Knee
, p. 45.

44.
 Details to follow in NARA, RG 38, “SOPAC Amphibious Force Diary, August 1942,” Box 173.

45.
 Roland N. Smoot, USNI Oral History Program, 1972, p. 92.

46.
 “Annex King to Operation Plan No. A3-42,” p. 3, in NARA, RG 38, “SOPAC Amphibious Force Diary, July 1942,” Box 173; also Rogal,
Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Beyond
, pp. 51–52.

47.
 “Vice Admiral Crutchley's Report on Operation Watchtower,” September 3, 1942, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 26.

48.
 Merillat,
Island
, p. 28.

49.
 Roland N. Smoot, USNI Oral History Program, 1972, p. 93.

50.
 Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary
, p. 15.

51.
 Rogal,
Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Beyond
, p. 52.

52.
 Manchester,
Goodbye, Darkness
, p. 162.

53.
 Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary
, p. 31.

54.
 Twining and Carey,
No Bended Knee
, p. 63.

55.
 Justice Chambers, Major, USMCR, oral history, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946”; also Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary
, p. 36.

56.
 Many histories have credited the
San Juan
's guns with destroying the Kawanishis. Admiral Crutchley, who commanded the fire support groups, credits the F4Fs' strafing attack. “Vice Admiral Crutchley's Report on Operation Watchtower,” September 3, 1942, pp. 9–10, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 26.

57.
 Photo negatives taken from the
Wasp
air group commander's plane confirmed that VF-71's claims were accurate.
Wasp
Action Report, “Capture of the Tulagi–Guadalcanal Area, 7–8 August 1942,” dated August 14, 1942, FDR Map Room Papers, Box 178.

58.
 Donald Dickson, Major, USMCR, oral history, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946.”

59.
 Pharmacist Frederick A. Moody, USN, oral history, recorded at the Navy Department, April 21, 1943, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946.”

60.
 Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary
, p. 44.

Chapter Two

1.
 Lundstrom,
First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign
, p. 38.

2.
 Lindsay,
Coast Watchers
, p. 197.

3.
 Lundstrom,
First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign
, p. 48.

4.
 Entry dated August 8, 1942, p. 6, Commander Amphibious Force, Task Force 62, War Diary, August 1942, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II War Diaries,” Box 173.

5.
 Lundstrom,
First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign
, p. 52.

6.
 Sakai, Caidin, and Saito,
Samurai!
, p. 151.

7.
 Ibid.

8.
 Ibid., p. 152.

9.
 Calhoun,
Tin Can Sailor
, p. 53.

10.
 Thomas C. Kinkaid, CCOH Naval History Project, No. 429, Vol. 1, p. 186.

11.
 
Wasp
Action Report, “Capture of the Tulagi-Guadalcanal Area, 7–8 August, 1942,” p. 5, dated August 14, 1942, FDR Map Room Papers, Box, 178.

12.
 Merillat,
Island
, p. 33.

13.
 Vandegrift and Asprey,
Once a Marine
, p. 127.

14.
 Donald Dickson, Major, USMCR, oral history, p. 4, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946,” Box 8.

15.
 “Division Commander's Final Report on Guadalcanal Operations,” May 24, 1943, Phase II, pp. 2–5, Samuel Eliot Morison Papers, Coll/606, Box 25; also Vandegrift and Asprey
, Once a Marine
, p. 128.

16.
 Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary
, p. 56.

17.
 Donald Dickson, Major, USMCR, oral history, pp. 4–5, in NARA, RG 38, “World War II Oral Histories and Interviews, 1942–1946,” Box 8.