MAKING PEACE - Nine - Green

I know history says the crowning achievement of the American effort in World War Two was the $2 billion development of the atomic bomb. But in fact the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber (above), able to carry a 2 ton payload 3,250 miles, cost $3 billion. The atomic bomb would have been useless without the B-29. No other American weapon could have carried “The Bomb” to Japan. But Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay, the man who made the B-29 legendary in the Tokyo firebombing, has acknowledge the big bomber “had as many bugs as the entomological department of the Smithsonian”, and came very close to being cancelled several times.

Each B-29 cost $500,000 (five times the cost of the British Lancaster bomber) consumed 13 tons of aluminum in its construction and required half a ton of valuable copper in its 9 ½ miles of electrical wiring. In addition to the 11 crew members, 74 people were required just to keep each 29 flying. 

But unsure the B-29 would ever work, the United States built a back-up bomber - the Consolidated B-32 Dominator (above). Built in Fort Worth, Texas, the B 32 was just as big, designed to fly just as high, was just as complicated and carried just as heavy a payload, and carried it 500 miles farther than the B-29 could But the B-32 had even more development problems, and ended up costing four times as much as the B-29.

In late 1943 the B-32 Dominator was re-purposed as the “modernized” replacement for the thousands of 
B-17's and B-24's  already bombing Germany into submission. Stripped of many of its innovations – i.e. , its pressurized crew compartment, its computerized remotely fired guns - the B 32 was converted into a heavy medium level (10 – 20,000 feet) bomber. 

It's first missions over Japan were in fact some of the last missions of the war. And the plane proved just as vulnerable to ground based anti-aircraft guns, and enemy fighters as the planes it was replacing. So it was fitting the B 32 was used to tempt the hot heads in the Japanese military to break the tentative peace agreement even before the shooting had stopped. After all the money and effort, the Dominator became a sacrificial lamb on the wing. Such are the economics of all wars, and all “defense” spending..

Once the Japanese acceptance had been received, MacArthur's Headquarters in Manila  issued prompt instructions to the Japanese Government via through the Swiss.  “Send emissaries at once…fully empowered to make any arrangements directed by the Supreme Commander….” And, as a sop for MacArthur’s deflated ego over the glorious Armageddon he would not get to oversee on the beaches of Kyushu, “…General of the Army Douglas MacArthur has been designated as the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers…”  The universe had finally recognized Doug as a supreme being, and that was all that he really wanted – public genuflection. His mother must have been very pleased.

Contact was quickly made with the Japanese government via radio. First, General MacArthur's staff designated the radio frequencies to be used in all future communications by the Japanese (13705 and 15965 kilocycles).  Emissaries to negotiate the mechanics of the surrender should leave Sata Misaki, on the southern tip of Kyushu, “between the hours of 0800 and 1100 Tokyo time” on the morning of Friday, 17 August,  in two transport planes, painted white with large green crosses on the wings and fuselage. They would identify themselves by the code world "Bataan"”  The Japanese replied that the Emperor had ordered the ceasefire for all Japanese forces to begin at 1600 hours on Thursday, 16 August, so the Americans did the same.

There were, of course, sparks of flame that refused to die. Sixteen suicide bombers attacked U.S. warships off Japan hours after the ceasefire had been ordered. All were shot down. I wonder if their commander even told the pilots of the ceasefire order? In fact, Tokyo shamefacedly informed MacArthur that members of the royal family had been dispatched to deliver the cease fire order in person to military units in China. That admission told the Americans volumes about the volatility of the situation in Japan.

In fact, this post cease fire incident also highlights how important it was that the two sides were now talking, even by radio, and could thus explain events that previously could only have been interpreted in the most antagonistic way. If they had simply started talking earlier, even while the fighting continued, thousands of lives might have been saved.

Finally, on Sunday, 19 August, the Japanese radioed, “The planes carrying the party of representatives have left Kisarazu Airdrome (in Tokyo) on 0718”. Again, there was fear on the Japanese side that a die hard might attempt to disrupt this mission for peace, so the planes took off secretly, with sealed orders. Only after becoming airborne was the flight plan revealed to the crews. 

Following the American instructions as closely as possible, the two aircraft (above), one a Mitsubishi G4M1-L2 (Betty) transport aircraft, and the other a Mitsubishi G4M1 (Betty) bomber (complete with a few bullet holes).

Both had been hastily modified for seating the 8 emissaries that flew in each plane. Each aircraft had been painted white with large green crosses on the wings and fuselage. They were known hereafter in Japanese history as the Green Cross Flights. 

They reached Sata Misaki on the southern tip of Kyushu at about 11 A.M, local time. They then flew, as instructed, south on a course of 180 degrees to a point 36 miles North of le Shima Island, off the western coast of Okinawa (above) , and began to circle at about 6,000 feet.

Almost immediately the two Green Cross aircraft were intercepted by twelve Lockheed P-38 twin tailed fighters, from the 49th fighter group, led by Majors Jack McClure and Wendal Decker. The two Bettys called out to the Americans in English on the prearranged frequency of 6970 kilohertz, repeating the password “Bataan”.   (It had been anticipated the Japanese would get the irony. They did not. But American voters back home certainly would.) Jack McClure responded, “We are Bataan’s watchdog. Follow us.” As the 14 aircraft continued on toward le Shima, the P-38’s began doing acrobatics to slow to the Berry's speed, and to thumb their noses at the defeated enemy.

 On the way they were joined by two 2 B-25’s (above) from the 345th bombardment group. The Americans were not going to let any die hard kamikazes or hot headed Americans interfere with this operation. 

Jack McClure landed first at Birch Airstrip on la Shima, followed by the two Betty’s.

The first Betty landed safely.

To the thousands of ground crews and pilots, based on le Shima, the day was exciting. To the Japanese it was tense. 

The second Betty made a rough landing on the crushed corral strip and ran off the end of the runway by several feet, damaging the plane's landing gear. 

Still the strange white machines with large green crosses were down safe, and immediately surrounded by armed guards.

On this tiny island, not much bigger than the airstrip that occupied it, men from both sides of the Pacific, who had spent three long years bathed in violence and fear, trained to despise each other, would for the first time since Pearl Harbor physically touch each other in peace.

One witness remembered how odd it was that the first Japanese out of the Bettys wore shorts.

Formalities were quickly performed.

And 20 minutes later the 8 commissioners were guided up a ladder into a big four engine C-54 transport plane. It was a luxurious accommodation compared to the war worn Japanese Betty’s.

The C-54 climbed off the coral and headed for Manila while the Betty’s crew members were guided to a holding area (above), where the American crewmen could observe how much pilots on both sides looked and acted alike..

On the flight to Manila the Japanese delegation was served box lunches with pineapple juice and coffee with sugar. It was a lunch America front line soldiers never saw, but it was common travel meal for senior American officers, and it had the intended effect upon the emissaries.

They were impressed with the American determination to transfer their lifestyles even into a war zone. And like the Japanese visitors to my fourth grade class some fifteen years later, the emissaries offered to tip the American crew. They were politely refused.

After arriving in Manila, the delegation was driven through the streets of a still devastated city, to the Rosario Manor hotel, where General MacArthur (above) waited. The Japanese were provided with a Turkey dinner; again an unexpected treat. Meat had been unavailable in Japan for over a year. And, wonder of wonders, the Japanese were each given a can of hard candies.What followed was a further surprise.

Taken next to the Manila City Hall on Dewey Boulevard,  the Japanese found that McArthur's chief of staff, Major General Richard Sutherland, was only interested in was solving problems (above). The Americans were often rude, occasionally even insulting in their cultural ignorance. But they were not cruel.  And when the Japanese asked that they be given 3 more days to disarm their own troops before the occupation began, Sutherland moved the process sea born landings from Saturday, 25 August to Tuesday, 28 August, with the advance communication troops to arrive at Atsugi Airfield outside of Tokyo on Sunday,  26 August 1945.  

There were problems, but most were quickly rectified by practical compromises. Nineteen hours later the exhausted emissaries left Manila, each with another can of hard candies but badly sleep deprived. It had all be easier than they had worried. The Americans were firm but not gloating. And the emissaries returned with the message that, by and large, a defeated Japan was going to be treated fairly by the Americans, if the Japanese simply stopped fighting. And the war was going to end as quickly as possible, because of it.

But it was after they returned to le Shima, that their mission of peace was almost derailed, right at the very edge of success.

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MAKING PEACE - One - Common Interests

I have begun to wonder just how we can end will the war in Afghanistan. In this endeavor we are haunted by

the old dictum from the American Civil War. Having surrounded a Confederate army in Fort Donaldson, Kentucky, General  U.S. Grant demanded their  " unconditional and immediate surrender." But the reality was that demand was immediately rejected by the Confederate commander, General Buckner. And Grant immediately modified his offer.  Despite this President Roosevelt issued the same demand in World War Two of both Germany and Japan. And because Germany was crushed and occupied, the “Greatest Generation” and their children, still expect all American wars to end like World War Two in Europe did. But the truth is that even WWII did not end in "unconditional surrender" in the Pacific, the most heartless bloodbath America has ever been caught up in.

Logically, America and Japan's war in the Pacific was decided on Sunday, 9 July, 1944. On that day, at 16:15 hours (4:15pm local time), the American commander Admiral Richmond J. Turner declared the island of Saipan secured. The victory had been decisive.

In the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot (AKA the Battle of the Philippine Sea), three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk and 600 aircraft and pilots were destroyed. 

The United States lost just 123 planes, and 80 of those experienced air crews were rescued. On  Saipan itself  30,000 Japanese soldiers and 22,000 civilians had died for the Emperor. The United States lost less than 3,000 dead, and 10,364 wounded. That ratio of 10 Japanese dead for every one American dead, had been fairly constant through the war in the Pacific.. 

And even before Admiral Turner’s pronouncement, U.S. Navy Construction Battalions ("the amazing C.B.’s") had begun turning Siapan into the world’s largest airport, from which, eventually, 2,000 B-29’s heavy bombers would turn Japanese factories and cities into torches.

The Japanese recognized it. Nine days after Admiral Turner's pronouncement, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, the architect of the war with America, and his entire cabinet (above) resigned. This was unambiguous proof that every Japanese senior commander knew that Japan had lost the war. But Japanese leadership now offered the dream that if the Japanese could kill enough Americans in just one more big battle, they would win a more favorable peace from the Americans - no occupation, and no war crimes trials, as were already being held in Germany. So they adjusted their strategy.

In conquering Iwo Jima  (above) the United States suffered 8,621 dead and 19,189 wounded. And at Okinawa, on the threshold of Japan itself, America suffered 12,513 dead and 38,513 wounded 

But in those two island battles,  Japan would lose 21,000 dead and 130,000 dead. The ratio of American to Japanese losses had been lowered. But the Americans still gave no public hint of bending on terms. The Japanese strategy was not working..

Even after those bloodbaths, no Japanese leader even hinted in public that they might be willing to negotiate a peace with the Americans. In part this was because the Japanese saw no evidence that America was having any second thoughts about "Unconditional Surrender", and in part because the Japanese military was driven by its most radical leadership.  It can be said that Japan's public silence on the issue of a negotiations  amounted to the mass murder of their own citizens and soldiers,  and of the U.S. forces closing in on them, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians in occupied China and the Philippines, caught between the avenging Americans and the fatalistic fanatics of Japan.

It takes only one nation  to start a war, but it takes two nations to make was peace. And there were only a few, mostly in Washington, D.C. and at Pearl Harbor, who realized it was in neither in America nor Japan's best interests to continue this slaughter.  How could these few find a way to convince the majority on both sides  to stop the killing?.

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PEACE- OPENING JAPANESE EYES

I am continually amazed that it wasn't until June 22nd, 1945, a year after the Tojo cabinet had collapsed - a year after Japanese leaders realized that they had lost the war -  that the Emperor finally called a meeting of his ‘Big Six" advisers, his official cabinet, to discuss how to get out of the war. He told them openly for the first time , "I desire that concrete plans to end the war, unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts made to implement them." Still, there was no talk of terms, and no effort to "push" the process.

The Japanese options had been reduced to just waiting for the invasion of their most southern island, Kyushu, the next logical target of the U.S. forces, where the Japanese military leaders were convinced they would win the "Big Victory" - that Okinawa was supposed to have been, that the Philippines was supposed to have been, that the Marianas was supposed to have been -  that would bleed the Americans enough to force them to offer better terms.

The terms the Japanese were seeking, at this late point in the war, were; 1) no allied occupation of Japan, or at worst only a symbolic one, 2).any war crimes trials to be in Japanese courts and prosecuted by Japanese officials, 3). retain the military in any Japanese government, and 4) to retain the Emperor, as the religious and political symbol in Japan.  For the generals and admirals, the survival of the Emperor had become a code word for the survival of their own power.

The leaders of Japan, meeting among the wreckage of Tokyo, were certain that a great enough slaughter, mostly of their own people, would drive the Americans to negotiate. And they were certain they could out-negotiate the Americans. Why such clever people were losing the war was a question never asked in public nor in private by the Japanese military leadership. In truth, none of these terms Japan was expecting to get would have been acceptable to the Americans, even a year earlier; with the possible exception of the retention of the Emperor in a symbolic role.

The Japanese plan, when it was agreed upon, was to use the Russians as a conduit to negotiate with the Americans.  And July of 1945 was spent trying to open that conduit.  It  seems never to have occurred to Japanese military leadership that the Russian dictator Stalin would see a weakened Japan, the nation which had humiliated Russia in 1905, as an opportunity too good to pass up. So the military was not suspicious when the Russian response to the requests for meetings seemed slow and dim witted, almost obstructionist. And the niceties of diplomacy slowed everything down even more. But, by the beginning of August, it seemed to the desperate Japanese leadership that some progress was being made with the Russians.

The plans of Japan's rulers did not begin to unravel until August 6th. 1945. Reports began coming in that morning that something unusual had happened in Hiroshima. First reports were of a “blinding flash and violent blast”.  Since no communications came out of the city after that first report, a staff officer was ordered to fly over and provide information. One hundred miles from Hiroshima the staff officer could see a huge cloud still rising from the blazing port ( two hours after the attack).

Surrounding villages were being swamped with vast armies of wounded, burned and simply stunned victims stumbling their way out of Hiroshima.

Relief workers began to press through to the city. Power to some parts of the town was restored the next day, and rail service the day after that. But to all intents and purposes, the core of the city of Hiroshima had been wiped off the map, the port facilities destroyed, and one of Japan's few remaining intact military bases was simply gone. There were at least 80,000 dead. Over the next five years, radiation would raise that toll to nearly 200,000.

The "Big Six" argued about what had happened, with most denying the Americans could even have such a weapon. The debate was settled sixteen hours later when Japanese monitoring posts picked up the broadcast of President Harry Truman announcing to the American people that, "The power of the sun" had been unleashed on Japan, and adding “We are now prepared to obliterate rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have…” It did not seem to be a threat. It seemed rather, to be a promise. 

And that might have seemed a powerful threat to make to the Empire of the sun. But one of the "Big Six", Admiral Soemu Toyoda, now argued that even if the Americans really had such a bomb they could not have many more. What he based that opinion on was unclear. But at least three of the Big Six took solace from the Admiral and continued to perfect their plans for their Oriental Gotterdamurung.  It was yet another pure delusion. And in retrospect, it was a delusion that should have been expected.

Even before the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Americans had crippled Japan. Hundreds of thousands had already been killed, well more than a hundred thousand in one March 1945 Tokyo fire raid alone. No train was safe in daylight, no city or factory safe.  Japanese soldiers in Korea and Manchuria were starving. Troops in Japan were spending as much time tending to rice fields as training. And the harvest so far that year had been very bad. Come winter, invasion or no, there would be mass starvation in Japan, and throughout the Japanese military.

Japan could do nothing to oppose the massive flights of B-29’s, now joined by B-17’s and B-24’s of the mighty 8th Air Force, freed from their conquest of Germany, which were together pounding Japanese cities and military bases, day and night.

And nothing hindered the mass waves of P-51's, P-47's and P-38's  based on Iwo and Okinawa, which were now doing to Japan what they had done to Germany; sweeping across the country at will, striking at "targets of opportunity", destroying and sinking everything that moved, be it a supply or passenger train, a single horse and cart or a poor fishing boat. There was almost nothing left to oppose them. What little remained of Japan's air force was being held back to oppose the landings. Japan's navy was scattered across the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Their cities were being reduced, one by one, to wastelands occupied by scarecrows.

And now, almost as an after thought, an atomic bomb had vaporized one of Japan's cities. And there was a threat of more to follow. And yet the "Big Six" council's only plan remained to wait for the American invasion of Kyushu and kill as many Americans as possible in order to force them to negotiate. About 40% of Japan's remaining military strength had been transferred to Kyushu to fight that battle. But that mass of forces was, in my opinion, and to borrow the words of historian Bruce Catton, describing the Confederate defenses of Fort Donaldson against Grant, "Too little to defend the place, and too much to lose."

Again, Japan failed to inform the Americans what their intentions now were to continue fighting for a better set of surrender terms. And to the Americans it seemed the Japanese were just insane and without logic, an entire nation of kamikazes, in love with death. And since the Japanese were not offering the Americans any alternatives, and since the Americans were not offering the Japanese any terms, there was no way for either side to consider any way out of the slaughter, without more slaughter. And this, a full year after leaders on both sides agreed that the Americans had effectively won the war.

And then, at about four AM on August 9th, 1945, the Soviet Union, which the Japanese leadership had expected to help negotiate a peace, announced they were voiding their non-aggression pact with Japan and joining the Americans in carving up the Imperial Empire. At the same moment Soviet air and ground forces invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria in great numbers and strength.  What remained of Japanese complacency began to finally collapse, not from the bomb, but from the Soviet military.

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