MAKING PEACE - Eight - Last

I suppose it was predictable. Having already destroyed the 22 largest cities in Japan, in June of 1945 the 20^th Air Force Bomber Command, headed by General Curtis LeMay, ordered implementation of the “Empire Plan” - the saturation and fire bombing of the next largest 25 cities, with populations between 330,000 and 62,000 people. 

As part of this plan, on the night of Thursday, 19 July, 1945, 127 B-29 bombers flying from the Mariana Islands, dropped 954 tons of incendiaries on the city of Fukuoka (above), - population 300,000 -  burning out 85% of the town (1 ½ square miles) and killing 10,000 civilians.

Moments after the noon broadcast of Emperor Hirohito's speech accepting the American conditions for surrender, Japanese officers at the Western Army Headquarters at Fukuoka, Japan, 60 miles northwest of Nakasaki, ordered that 16 American prisoners of war be brought to the Aburayama “execution grounds”, a hill southwest of the port city. The blindfolded and handcuffed prisoners arrived at 3:30 on the afternoon of Wednesday, 15 August - three hours after the military officers had been told by their Emperor they must “endure the unendurable”.

The victims were divided into four groups and taken to four different locations in field shielded from civilian witnesses by bamboo groves  Lieutenant Hiroji Nakayama demonstrated the correct “"etiquette, according to old customs” to be used in executing the prisoners. The first prisoner, still blindfolded and handcuffed, was made to sit. Then his throat was cut from ear to ear, causing near immediate death. And only then was the head removed with a single blade slice. Unfortunately Nakayama was able to demonstrate this “humane” form of execution to only one of the four groups. Most of the prisoners were butchered. The bodies were then transported by truck to the nearby crematorium. The officers were then ordered to be certain “...no evidence of the execution remained...”  These were men demonstrating the honorable method of murdering their enemies.

In September of 1925, Anthony “Tony” Marchione was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania (above), about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. . He was the first born child of Italian immigrants, and at the age of 14 he got an after school job at a bakery to help support his three sisters. He was so good with his trumpet, he also made extra cash in a “swing band” playing at local dances. But after graduating high school in June of 1943 Tony took a full time job making shell casings at a local war plant. But the 5 foot 6 inch, 125 pound brown eyed Marchione knew he would soon be drafted. He was interested in aviation, so before his draft notice arrived in the mail, on 20 November, he joined the United States Army, requesting service in the Army Air Corps.

Private Anthony Marchione – serial number 33834700 – received basic training in Miami, Florida. The army never considered Tony for flight training. So after basic, he volunteered as an aerial gunner. He was transferred to the Florida panhandle for the 6 week, 290 hour gunner's training. Then Corporal Marchoine was transferred to a B-24 squadron being assembled in Arizona. 

Three months later, while waiting orders to ship out for Italy, Tony's crew was one of five chosen for further training in Oklahoma in photo reconnaissance. After another 3 months becoming proficient at loading both 50 caliber machine guns and film cartridges, in December of 1944, Marchione (above, front row, 2nd from right) and his crew were transferred to Clark Field, on Luzon, in the Philippines.

Sargent Anthony Marchione arrived at Clark Field in May of 1945. After several missions over Luzon and even photographing the coast of China, on Saturday 11 August, he moved 900 miles north to Yontan airbase (above), on Okinawa,  just 250 miles south of Kyushu island. Here, members of his unit were used to support missions by the newly arrived B-32's  

And it was at Yonton, on Wednesday, 15 August, when the “happy day...arrived”, meaning the Emperor's speech accepting surrender terms. But in the same letter Tony spent more time discussing the “fresh pork and potatoes” – served at dinner. “Boy, that was really a treat after those darn rations.” .

On Thursday, 17 August, three B -32's (above)  from Yonton flew 956 miles to Tokyo, taking photos of the bomb damage, and testing Japanese compliance with the Emperor's promise on 16 August, that all hostilities had ceased. The big planes were attacked by Japanese aircraft, but no crew members were injured That afternoon Tony added his name to the list of volunteers to fly the next mission, just about the same time that officers in McArthur's Manila headquarters decided to tests Japanese compliance again the next day.

Four more B -32's lifted off from Yonton airfield before 7 in the morning, Friday, 18 August, 1945. It was mission number 320 A-8. Two of the 60 ton bombers ran into mechanical trouble and were forced to turn back. The remaining two, including the B-32 named Hobo Queen II , commanded by Lieutenant J.R. Anderson, and co-pilot Lieutenant Richard E. Thomas, and carrying, in addition to their regular crew, Photographer Staff Sergeant Joseph Lacharite and photographer's assistant Sergeant Anthony Marchione, cocontinued to the “target” at 20,000 feet. From his letters to friends and family, it was clear Tony was not seeking “action”, but an opportunity to move up the list for earlier discharge, which a combat mission would give him.

But a little before 11:00:that Friday morning the two American aircraft were attacked by 14 Zeros and 3 Shiden-Kai fighters over Tokyo. Thirty years later one of the Japanese pilots, Sadamu Komachi, justified defying orders and launching the attack because he cold not bear to see the American bombers flying serenely over a devastated capital, where 120,000 had died on one March night..

As the bombers flew their photo mission, tail gunner, Sergeant John Houston, spotted fighters approaching. “They were coming in from my 11 o’clock, three or four moving from my left to right. I just put the sight on them and started shooting. One fighter came so close I couldn’t miss. I gave him about 50 rounds and saw hits on the wings and fuselage. He kept coming until he was within about 100 feet, and then he just blew up.” Twenty millimeter cannon fire peppered Hobo Queen II, hitting one of the bombers four engines. “Feathering” that prop, Thomas radioed for the second B-32 to slow down so he could keep up,. Suddenly a Japanese voice crackled over the radio, in perfect English. “Yes, please, slow down so I can shoot you down too.”

Sergeant Burton Keller was in the nose, firing at the fighters that seemed to be trying to ram his plane. Lt Thomas saw the same thing and put the Hobo Queen II into a turning dive, to pick up speed and outrun the fighters.

.As he did so the Zero's made another attack. Later Sargent Lacherite explained, “Rounds came right through the skin of the plane and hit me in both legs. I got spun around and landed on the floor. I grabbed the cord from one of the barracks bags that carried camera gear and wrapped it around one leg as a tourniquet. Then I wrapped an intercom cord around the other leg as Tony pulled me to a cot raised a few inches off the floor.” Tony then called Lt.Anderson over the intercom, telling him Lacherite had been badly wounded.

As Tony turned back to assist Joe, a last Zero(above) spewed the Dominator with 20 mm cannon shells. One blasted through the bomber's paper thin aluminum skin, and hit Tony in the chest, knocking him across the fuselage. A crew member was then able to reach the two wounded men. “When I got there, Tony was bleeding from a big hole in his chest. He was still conscious...He said ‘Stay with me,’ and I said ‘Yes, I’ll stay with you.’ I did the best I could to stop the bleeding and I held him in my arms.” Other crewmen tended to Lacharite. They used compresses to try and stop the bleeding from Tony's chest, and he was given oxygen and plasma. But thirty minutes later, the 19 year old Italian American kid who liked playing the trumpet, died in a soldier's arms, one month short of his 20^th birthday, 10,000 feet over the Sea of Japan..

Anthony Marchinoe was the last American killed in combat during World War Two. The next day Emperor Hirohito personally ordered the propellers on all Japanese combat aircraft be removed..

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MAKING PEACE - Seven - Doubts

I think of the 48 hours beginning at midnight Saturday, 12 August 1945 (Washington time), when the reply to Japan's surrender offer was dispatched, as a sort of geopolitical waltz. President Harry Truman was leading Emperor Hirohito across the ballroom floor, the pair trying to avoid the unpredictable choreography of the other spinning couples, some of whom had been set in motion by leadership on both sides . And now it was again the turn of the Japanese leadership to take the lead.

The American reply was received on Sunday, 13, August, Tokyo time. When an aide expressed concern about the lack of a clear statement guaranteeing the Imperial throne, Hirohito observed, “That's beside the point. It would be useless if the people didn't want an Emperor. I think its perfectly all right to leave the matter up to the people.” 

The young man raised in privilege, willing to support the privileged elite of army officers who murdered their way to power in the 1920's, invaded Manchuria in 1931, perpetrated the “Rape of Nanking” in 1937 and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, had at last come to the conclusion that the true salvation of the Chrysanthemum Throne depended not on the privileged elite of army officers, but on the nation. It might have been better if he had come to that conclusion in 1931, but humans are rarely if ever “better”.

Beyond the view of the privileged army officers, their wars were destroying Japan. Because of the bombing, most of the nation's urban residents were homeless, sleeping in subways, train stations or shanty towns. And so much food had been stockpiled to sustain a final battle that by August of 1945 most Japanese were clinically malnourished, receiving their full ration of 1,000 calories a day only half the time.

The domestic rice crop had first failed in 1943, but imports had prevented starvation. Still, the predicted harvest of 1944 was less than 10% of what it had been in 1937. And the actual harvest was barely 60% of predicted levels. In 1944 the police in the prefecture (county) of Osaka estimated half of all economic crimes involved the theft of food. Standard white rice had become so rare an item in Japan it acquired a new name - Silver Rice. By late summer of 1945, on any given day 15% of all civil servants were absent, looking for Silver Rice. Japanese bureaucrats expected 10 million to die of starvation during in the coming winter and spring of 1946, even without an invasion. 

Between 1940 and the end of the war, the average 12 year old boy, measured in preparation for induction into the army, had lost almost a foot in height and 9 pounds in weight. It would be “better” for Japan if the war ended. But the elite were not yet ready to admit that what threatened Japan was not the Americans, nor even the Soviets. It was them.

At the full cabinet meeting that afternoon, the military insisted the American reply was insufficient, and the war must continue. Again Prime Minister: Kantarō Suzuki was forced to ask the Emperor to settle the issue. 

Hirohito assured the room, “My own thoughts have not undergone any change.” Then he went a step further., saying, “In order that the people may know my decision, I request you to prepare at once...so that I may broadcast to the nation.” As soon as the Emperor left the room, Suzuki pressured all to sign a promise to support the Emperor's decision. And once again the hardliners were forced to sign, so as not to offend the Emperor. Only then, at 11 that Monday night, 13 August, did Suzuki issue the acceptance though the Swiss. Washington intercepted that message at 2:49 Washington time, Monday morning, 13 August..

It took most of the rest of the day to prepare the Emperor's statement, and at 10:00 that night, 14 August Tokyo time, a team from NHK radio recorded Hirohito's message onto a pair of gramophone disks.. So desperate was the Emperor to end the war quickly, and so worried about the loyalty of the social elite – the officer corps – that he entrusted the recordings to his court chamberlain, Yoshihiro Tokugawa. Without telling anyone, Tokugawa hid both disks in a safe in the office of a secretary to the Empresses.

A half hour before Hirohito began his recording session, Major Kenji Hatanaka (above), leading the 2^nd Regiment of the First Imperial Guards surrounded the Imperial Palace, claiming they were reinforcements for the battalion already on duty. 

He then lied to the commander, Colonel Haga, telling him they were under orders from War Minister General Korechika Anami to seize the palace and protect the Emperor. Then using Haga's office Hatanaka called Anami at home, expecting the hard liner to support his actions. 

But Anami had decided to resolve the conflict between his own refusal to accept defeat and his promise to support the Emperor's decision, by killing himself. Anami chose to continue his ritual suicide, rather than either supporting the coup or ordering Hatanka to stand down.

It was after 1:00 in the morning of Wednesday, 15 April, when Major Hatanaka entered the office of the Guards Division commander, Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori, to urge him to join coup. Mori ordered Hantaka to return to his barracks. After arguing for a few minutes, Hantaka grew frustrated and drew his sword . The General's brother-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Michinori Shiraishi, jumped in front of Mori, to block the blow. Hatanaka's fellow conspirator, Captain Shigetarō Uehara, shot the colonel dead  Hantaka then cut General Mori down with several swings of his sword.

Over Mori's bloody coprse, Hantaka forged Order Number 584, authorizing the Guards division to seize the palace and the NHK offices and transmitters.  

After 2:00 a.m. Hatanaka's troops entered the palace grounds, disarmed the guards and barricaded the gates. Hatanaka and other officers then began a desperate search for the Emperor, and the wax recording disks. They arrested 18 palace staff members, but never found Hirohito (he was hiding in a bomb shelter), but they did arrest Chamberlain Tokugawa Hatanak, threatening to disembowel him if he did not hand over the recordings. But the terrified Chamberlain refused to admit he even knew where the disks were.

At the same hour an assassination squad burst into the home of Prime Minister Suzuki (above). But warned moments before the old admiral had escaped. So the assassins satisfied themselves by machine gunning the home and then burning it down. Another team sent to murder Baron Hiranuma Kiichirō found their target had also escaped. So they burned down his home as well..

About 3 that morning, Colonel Haga found out the truth about General Anami, and ordered Major Hatanaka to leave the palace grounds at once. And learning that troops were on the way to arrest him, the rebellious Major headed for the NHK offices. Pulling a pistol Hatanaka tried to force the staff to give him air time. 

But the workers were able to stall until they could connect the mad man by phone with a superior officer, who ordered him to leave. With no where else to go, and no one else to threaten, Major Hatanaka drove to the plaza in front of the Imperial Palace, where he shot himself, insisting, in his death poem, that he had nothing to regret.. By dawn of 15 April, 1945, the coup was all over. 

And at noon NHK broadcast the “Gyokuon-hōsō “, the Jewel Voice Broadcast. After it had ended, announcers were required to make it clear to the average Japanese citizen that the nation had surrendered.

The war had left 1,750,000 soldiers, sailors and Japanese civilians dead– 4% of their 1941 population.

The population was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Many, including 15 year old Kazutoshi Hando, now expected to be “taken to California or Guam as a slave,” It was also common to believe Japanese women would now be forced to become mistresses. They had been assured this would happen. And they were simply too exhausted to care anymore.

In his his private diary, General Hideki Tojo had nothing but contempt for those who had died fighting his war. The man who had launched the war against Manchuria, China,  America, Britain and France, confided to his diary, “The Japanese government has accepted the notion that Japan is the loser...Without fully employing its abilities even at the final moment, the imperial nation is surrendering to the enemies' propaganda...I never imagined such torpor in the nation's leaders and its people." Even at this moment he was refused to accept that the failure had not been the nation that bleed and murdered to support his dreams, but his own.. That night first year army private Michi Fukuda, witnessed “...many soldiers beating up several of the mean-spirited officers, who were screaming, “Forgive me, forgive me!" After ten years of militant fantasies, and brutality,  the long shadow of rebellion was frightening Emperor Hirohito.

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MAKING PEACE - Five - Hearts

I believe the long argument about just what would have been the human cost of  an invasion of Japan in 1945 can be settled by knowing that the United States has not had to order a single new Purple Heart decoration to be manufactured for a dead or wounded American soldier, sailor or airman since 1945. The tolls from Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have not emptied the stockpiles intended for presentation to causalities suffered during an 1945-46 invasion of Japan.

General Douglas MacArthur, eager for glory after having been chosen to lead the invasion of Japan, tried to convince President Truman that it would cost "only" 500,000 causalities. But Truman had his own estimate, produced by former President Herbert Hoover. Hoover, using his old skills as an economist, and backed up by an independent study group, estimated the real cost would be closer to a million American dead and wounded. The U.S. Navy, doing their own independent estimate came up with the same numbers. With the examples of the death toll from Okinawa and Iwo Jima as supporting evidence, Truman became a believer in Hoover’s numbers. And, in my opinion, that deceptive reduction in causality estimates justified Dugout Dug’s immediate recall. Only his political clout with Republicans in Washington saved his command until after another bloodbath finally empowered an American President to order his removal..

So the horrific casualties certain to result from an American invasion of Japan, plus the geo-political threat posed by the Soviet intervention, encouraged Truman to get out of this war as quickly as possible. And those were the same factors driving the Japanese decision to finally accept rational surrender on terms. It had taken four years of horrible bloodshed (and the loss of influence of some monumental egos, i.e. Tojo and MacArthur)  for Japanese and American politicians to come to the realization that they had some rather basic goals in common.

First the Japanese -  At the Big Six meeting on the evening of 9 August, the six participants each argued

their case. Foreign Secretary Togo(above)  argued for accepting the Potsdam declaration, but retaining the Emperor.

General Anami (above) insisted better terms could be won by continuing to fight. No minds were swayed.  But the three members of the "war party" were slowly led justify continuing the war primarily because it would preserve the Imperial throne. It was,  to Japanese historians, Japan's Longest Day. 

Finally, at 2 in the morning of 10 August, Prime Minster Suzuki (above) bowed before the Emperor and said it was up to him to decide. 

And for the first time in modern Japanese history, the Emperor, dressed in his uniform (above)  spoke directly to the politicians as the Emperor. "I have ..concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation...the time has come to bear  the unbearable....I swallow my tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation..."

The Emperor then left the meeting, and Suzuki immediately presented a written pledge to follow the Emperor's  wishes, and asked all six to sign it. The previous 24 hours had been building to this moment, to maneuver the generals and admirals to define as their honor not as their willingness to die for their Emperor, but to defend their signatures on this piece of paper.  The three members of the war party were not stupid men. They knew what they were being asked to do, and doing it broke their hearts. But they signed.

The next day Mr. Max Grassli, charge d’Affaires for Switzerland, sent a cable to James Byrnes, the U.S Secretary of State. It read, in part, "The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which as issued at Potsdam…with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."  It should have been the end of the  bleeding.  But it was not.  

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