Invasion of Japan (Cont.)

Post Script

With the capture of Okinawa during the summer of 1945 the Americans in the Pacific had finally obtained what the allies in Europe had enjoyed all along, a large island capable of being used as a launching platform for invasion. Following the cessation of hostilities with Germany, millions of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen were being redeployed to the Pacific for the anticipated invasion of Japan. The center of this immense military buildup and the primary staging area for the invasion was the island of Okinawa.

American military planers knew that the invasion of Japan would be a difficult undertaking. Japan had never been successfully invaded in its history.

Six and one-half centuries before, an invasion similar to the planned American invasion had been attempted and failed. That invasion had striking similarities to the one being planned by the Americans that summer of 1945.

In the year 1281 A.D., two magnificent Chinese fleets set sail for the Empire of Japan. Their purpose was to launch a massive invasion on the Japanese home islands and to conquer Japan in the name of the Great Mongol Emperor Kublai Kahn. Sailing from China was the main armada, consisting of 3,500 ships and over 100,000 heavily armed troops. Sailing from ports in Korea was a second impressive fleet of 900 ships, containing 41,000 Mongol warriors.

In the summer of that year, the invasion force sailing from Korea arrived off the western shores of the southern most Japanese island of Kyushu. The Mongols maneuvered their ships into position and methodically launched their assault on the Japanese coast. Like human surf, wave after wave of these oriental soldiers swept ashore at Hagata Bay, where they were met on the beaches by thousands of Japanese defenders who had never had their homeland successful invaded.

The Mongol invasion force was a modern army, and its arsenal of weapons was far superior to that of the Japanese. Its soldiers were equipped with poisoned arrows, maces, iron swords, metal javelins and even gunpowder. The Japanese were forced to defend themselves with bow and arrows, swords, spears made from bamboo and shields made only of wood.

The battle was fierce, with many soldiers killed or wounded on both sides. It dragged on for days, but aided by fortifications along their beaches of which the Mongols had no advance knowledge; and, inspired by the sacred cause of the defense of their homeland, these ancient Japanese warriors pushed the much stronger Mongol invaders off the beaches and back into their ships lying at anchor in the Bay.

This Mongol fleet then set back out to sea, where it rendezvoused with the main body of its army, which was arriving with the second fleet coming from China.

During the summer of 1281, this combined force of foreign invaders maneuvered off shore in preparation for the main assault on the western shores of Kyushu.

All over Japan elaborate Shinto ceremonies were performed at shrines, in the cities, and in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese urged on by their Emperor, their warlords, and other officials prayed to their Shinto gods for deliverance from these foreign invaders. A million Japanese voices called upward for divine intervention.

Miraculously, as if in answer to their prayers, from out of the south a savage typhoon sprang up and headed toward Kyushu. Its powerful winds screamed up the coast where they struck the Mongol's invasion fleet with full fury, wreaking havoc on the ships and on the men onboard. The Mongol fleet was devastated. After the typhoon had passed, over 4,000 invasion craft had been lost and the Mongol casualties exceeded 100,000 men.

All over Japan religious services and huge celebrations were held. Everywhere tumultuous crowds gathered in Thanksgiving to pay homage to the "divine wind" that had saved their homeland from foreign invasion. At no time thereafter has Japan ever been successfully invaded. The Japanese fervently believed that it was this "divine wind" that would forever protect them.

During the summer of 1945 another powerful armada was being assembled to assault the same western coastline on the island of Kyushu, where six and one half centuries earlier the Mongols had been repelled.

The American invasion plans for Kyushu, scheduled for November 1, 1945 called for a floating invasion force of 14 army and marine divisions to be transported by ship to hit the western, eastern, and southern shoreline of Kyushu. This shipboard invasion force would consist of 550,000 combat soldiers, tens of thousands of sailors and hundreds of naval aviators.

The assault fleet would consist of thousands of ships of every shape, size and description, ranging from the mammoth battleships and aircraft carriers to the small amphibious craft, and they would be sailing from Okinawa, the Philippines and the Marianas.

Crucial to the success of the invasion were nearly 4,000 army, navy and marine aircraft that would be packed into the small island of Okinawa to be used for direct air support of our landing forces at the time of this invasion.

By July of 1945, the Japanese knew the Americans were planning to invade their homeland. Throughout the early summer, the Emperor and his government officials exhorted the military and civilian population to make preparations for the invasion.

Japanese radios throughout that summer cried out to the people to "form a wall of human flesh" and when the invasion began, to push the invaders back into the sea, and back onto their ships.

The Japanese people fervently believed that the American invaders would be repelled. They all seemed to share a mystical faith that their country could never be invaded successfully and that they, again would be saved by the "divine wind."

The American invasion never came, however, because the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if by a miracle, ended the war.

Almost immediately American soldiers, sailors and airmen, in for the duration, were being discharged and sent home. By the fall of 1945, there remained approximately 200,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen still on Okinawa, which would have been the major launching platform for the invasion of Japan, was now peaceful.

In October, Bruckner Bay, on the east coasts of the island, was still jammed with vessels of all kinds, from Victory ships to landing craft. On the island itself, 150,000 soldiers lived under miles of canvas, in what were referred to as "Tent Cities." All over the island, hundreds of tons of food, equipment and supplies stacked in immense piles lay out in the open.

During the early part of October, to the southwest of Okinawa just northeast of the Marianas, the seas were growing restless and the winds began to blow. The ocean skies slowly turned black and the large swells that were developing began to turn the Pacific Ocean white with froth. In a matter of only a few days, a gigantic typhoon had somehow out of season, sprung to life and began sweeping past Saipan and into the Philippine Sea. As the storm grew more violent, it raced northward and kicked up waves 60 feet high.

Navy Meteorologists eventually became aware of the storm, but they expected it to pass well between Formosa and Okinawa, and to disappear into then East China Sea.

Unexplainably, on the evening of October 8th, the storm changed direction and abruptly veered to the east. When it did do, there was insufficient warning to allow ships in the harbor to get under way in order to escape the typhoon's terrible violence. By late morning on the 9th, rain was coming down in torrents, the seas were rising and visibility was zero. Winds, now over 80 miles per hour blowing from the east and northeast, caused small crafts in Bruckner Bay to drag their anchors.

By early afternoon, the wind had risen to over 100 miles per hour, the rain coming in horizontally now was more salt than fresh, and even the larger vessels began dragging anchor under the pounding of 50 foot seas.

As the winds continued to increase and the storm unleased its fury, the entire Bay became a scene of devastation. Ships dragging their anchors collided with one another; hundreds of vessels were blown ashore. Vessels in groups of two's and three's were washed ashore into masses of wreckage that began to accumulate on the beaches.

Numerous ships had to be abandoned, while their crews were precariously transferred between ships.

By midafternoon, the typhoon had reached its raging peak with winds, now coming from the north and northeast, blowing up to 150 miles per hour. Ships initially grounded by the storm were now blown off the reefs and back across the bay to the south shore, dragging their anchors the entire way. More collisions occurred between the wind-blown ships and shattered hulks.

Gigantic waves swamped small vessels and engulfed larger ones. Liberty ships lost their propellers, while men in transports, destroyers and Victory ships were swept off the decks by 60 foot waves that reached the tops of the masts of their vessels.

On shore, the typhoon was devastating the island. Twenty hours of torrential rain washed out roads and ruined the islands stores of rations and supplies. Aircraft were picked up and catapulted off the airfields; huge Quonset huts went sailing into the air, metal hangers were ripped to shreds, and the "Tent Cities," housing 150,000 troops on the island, ceased to exist.

Almost the entire food supply on the island was blown away. Americans on the island had nowhere to go, but into caves, trenches and ditches of the island in order to survive. All over the island were tents, boards and sections of galvanized iron being hurled through the air at over 100 miles per hour.

The storm raged over the island for hours, and then slowly headed out to sea; then it doubled back, and two days later howled in from the ocean to hit the island again. On the following day, when the typhoon had finally passed, dazed men crawled out of holes and caves to count the losses.

Countless aircraft had been destroyed, all power was gone, communications and supplies were nonexistent. B-29's were requisitioned to rush in tons of supplies from the Marianas. General Joseph Stillwell, the 10th Army Commander, asked for immediate plans to evacuate all hospital cases from the island. The harbor facilities were useless.

After the typhoon roared out into the Sea of Japan and started to die its slow death, the bodies began to wash ashore. The toll on ships was staggering. Almost 270 ships were sunk, grounded or damaged beyond repair. Fifty-three ships in too bad a state to be restored were decommissioned, stripped and abandoned. Out of 90 ships which needed major repair, the Navy decided only 10 were even worthy of complete salvage, and so the remaining 80 were scrapped.

According to Samuel Eliot Morrison, the famous Naval historian, "Typhoon Louise" was the most furious and lethal storm ever encountered by the United States Navy in its entire History. Hundreds of Americans were killed, injured and missing, ships were sunk and the island of Okinawa was in havoc.

News accounts at the time disclose that the press and the public back home paid little attention to this storm that struck the Pacific with such force. The very existence of this storm is still a little-known fact.

Surprisingly, few people then, or even now, have made the connection that an American invasion fleet of thousands of ships, planes and landing craft, and a half million men might well have been in that exact place at that exact time, poised to strike Japan, when this typhoon enveloped Okinawa and its surrounding seas.

In the aftermath of this storm, with the war now history, few people concerned themselves with the obsolete invasion plans for Japan.

However, had there been no bomb dropped or had it been simply delayed for only a matter of months, history might have well repeated itself. In the fall of 1945, in the aftermath of this typhoon, had things been different, all over Japan religious services and huge celebrations would have been held. A million Japanese voices would have been raised upward in thanksgiving. Everywhere tumultuous crowds would have gathered in delirious gratitude to pay homage to a "divine wind" which might once again protected their country from foreign invaders, a "divine wind" they had named, centuries before, the "Kamikaze."

 

Notes by Jim Meeks