U.S. Naval Tsunami: How the United States Navy and Marines Won a War over One-third of the Earth’s Surface with Less Than 50,000 Fatalities

Kevin

OTHER BOOK BY THIS AUTHOR:

And the War Came:

The Slavery Quarrel and the American Civil War

Algora Publishing

New York, New York

2005

COVER PHOTOS

Top image: USS Wasp, USS Yorktown, USS Hornet, USS Hancock, USS Ticonderoga and others at Ulithi atoll in December, 1944 Source: United States National Archives and Records Administration

Image # 80-G-294131

Middle Image: USS Cuttlefish, mid-1943

Source: United States National

Archives and Records Administration

Image # 80-G-K-3350

Bottom Image: Service Ribbons –

Medal of Honor, Navy Cross,

Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart,

Presidential Unit Citation

LIST OF MAPS

World War II in the Pacific

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_Pacific_Theater_Areas.map1.svg

This image is the work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee made as part of that person’s official duties and is in the public domain

The Battle for Leyte Gulf

File:Map_of_Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf.jpg: United States Army

Author: Gdr at en.wikipedia has released image into public domain

CHAPTER ONE

ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN DECEMBER, 1941, I was playing basketball on an outdoor court with schoolmates. Someone, I don’t remember whether man or boy, rushed up and exclaimed excitedly, The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor. I was ten years old.

I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was but soon learned it was in Hawaii. I had heard of it. Suddenly, I hated the Japs.

I loved sports, baseball passionately, worshiped the home team Red Sox and hated the Yankees and school. 1941 was a very eventful year for this baseball-loving, ten-year old boy. It was the year Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games and that my hero, Ted Williams, batted .406, insisting on playing in a double-header on the final day, despite having a rounded average of .400 going in. He went 6 for 8. Neither mark has come close to being surpassed in the ensuing 72 years. DiMaggio was voted MVP (my first introduction to what I concluded was the bias and personal agenda of some sportswriters) and the Yankees, as usual, won the pennant and the Series easily.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was my second downer that year. My mother had died in April of Uremic Poisoning. She had been born in 1898, with only one kidney. No one knew that until her first child was born. He died that same day. My second bother and I were delivered by Caesarian Section and my mother was in the hospital for months after I was born.

She became ill just before Thanksgiving, 1940, and went into a coma until she died the next April. She was home all this time and I would often sit by her bed staring at her and thought how peaceful she looked. She only awakened once in that time, when my father, brother and I were doing the dinner dishes. My dad raced upstairs, two at a time, hoping to see her conscious, but she had slipped back into the coma before he reached her. She never awoke again. I do remember her, before sliding into the coma, putting both her hands on my cheeks and saying, I hope you are never sick. I have been blessed with a disease-and-sickness-free life for eighty-three years.

I watched my father endure his grief and noted that the first year was very difficult, the second less sorrowful but still encompassing and the third a recovery to near normal. He subsequently married again. I did not realize what I had lost at the time but remember, in my late teens, being amazed by the things which mothers did for their sons, things that I had become accustomed to doing for myself.

In my prayer life I have never been one to resort frequently to petitionary prayer but I have prayed that I would not lose my wife early on. That prayer has been answered as my wife and I have been married for 55 years.

A ten-year old boy knows nothing of war, of course, nor politics, economics nor much of anything except the excitement of being a youngster in the great and vibrant nation that was the America emerging from its Depression in 1941, a nation soon to become the leader of the world in most important aspects. You could sit in a grandstand seat for a double header, on Sundays or holidays, for 120% of the State minimum wage of a dollar an hour. When the Yankees and Red Sox played, you were watching a bevy of future Hall-of-Famers whose performance statistics beggar many of those now elected. Baseball then was our national pastime. You could not get a milkshake in our local drug store, except between innings, as the mixer created static on the radio tuned to the ballgame, and no one would stand for that. The mailman, who knocked on the door in those days, would chat for minutes about what’s wrong with the Red Sox. Sox fans would wait another sixty-three years for the team to win a World Series. Most would not live that long.

During the war, as with many young boys, the walls of my bedroom contained framed pictures of American fighter planes. They were sexier than bombers. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the Curtiss P-47 Thunderbolt and, later in the war, the P-51 Mustang hung on my walls. I looked at those planes every day for years. Since I was decorated with glasses at age seven, military flying would never be an option but during the Korean War, I was an air-controller for combat-air-patrol fighters while on a destroyer in the Pacific.

The P-51 was a marvelous airplane. Fitted with the superb Rolls-Royce, Merlin engine, it boasted nearly twice the miles per gallon attained by the P-38 or P-47 and could fly 750 miles with external fuel tanks, outdoing every allied fighter in the air. It flew brilliantly at all altitudes and reached speeds well in excess of 400 miles per hour.¹ For the first time, fighters could stay with the bombers, which, when unescorted, were being shot out of the air at alarming rates by German fighter planes. It changed the bombing efficiency of the Allies, as the fighters could then escort the bombers during their entire round-trip flights to virtually anywhere in Germany. It was a game-changer, providing the Allies with air supremacy in 1943-44. By March of 1944, the Mustangs were achieving proportionally three to five times the kills of the Thunderbolts.² The Luftwaffe was losing pilots at a fatal rate, including their best. From March through May of 1944, Germany lost 28 ace pilots, credited with a combined 2,108 kills and German pilots were transferred from the Eastern Front in a desperate gambit to stop the numbing bombardment of German-occupied territories and the homeland. In the first five months of 1944 Germany had lost 2,262 pilots. Between June and October that year, they lost 13,000 pilots and crewmen. The new crews had far less flight training and their inexperience made them no match for Allied fighter pilots.³

I remember what a German work associate said to me in the 1970’s. He related how depressed the hungry, German home-folk were, toward the end of the war, when they saw how well-fed the U.S. pilots looked, as they flew over, close to the ground, unopposed, with open cockpits. Yet they were thousands of miles from home while he and his family struggled to obtain basic foodstuffs. He was an interesting man and an accomplished pianist. He married a Jewess whose father disappeared, during the war, after leaving their house one day, never to be heard from again. My friend lived in the Black Forest after the war and he told me that whenever there was a knock on the door, his wife would run upstairs and hide under the bed.

He had a sense of humor. While living in the Black Forest, he ordered a Steinway grand piano from Paris. It arrived, disassembled, in an air-conditioned truck. The technicians assembled the piano in his home, remarking that they had just come from Artur Rubinstein in Paris where they had prepared a piano for his concert. When they were finished and leaving, my friend said to them, Tell Artur Rubinstein that you have just come from Otto Leipholz.

I think the major difference between those days and now, in America, was that a youngster heard the same message everywhere – from parents, aunts and uncles, teachers, coaches and clergy. You are responsible for your actions and must accept the consequences. We are trying to develop in you a sound character which will be the bedrock of a committed, purposeful and compassionate life which is to be lived as God, your parents and your mentors wish it to be lived. No one owes you anything. You must work hard to achieve worthiness and the respect of others.

It was a challenge to those charged with raising us. We were not angels. We were mischievous when we thought, or knew, no one was looking. We, as humans ever have, would try to get away with anything we could. But we did learn to mind, and mind quickly, at an early age when told what to do or stop doing by an authority figure. Speaking as a boy, I knew instinctively that we respected one thing above all others, a hard line, including physical punishment. Few were physically abused, all learned quickly to respect authority. Among the many men I have known from those times, I know of none who was not the better man for this upbringing. Our generation may or may not be The Greatest Generation but I think the record speaks for itself in terms of the sacrifices made in saving the country from our attackers, then building the greatest economy in the world and giving massive aid to the world’s underprivileged. Our efforts to put our attackers (Germany and Japan) back on their feet after the horrible war they started is, as far as I know, unprecedented in world history and one hell of a lot more than they would have done for us, if they had won.

Unlike Russia, who fed their soldiers like fodder into German cannons and who led millions of their military to slaughter in their great victory over the Germans, Britain and United States made every effort to minimize personnel losses while gaining their own great victories over the Germans and Japanese. It worked and we won with minimal losses, some four hundred thousand plus for America to twenty million divided roughly equally between military and civilian, for Russia. It was a continuation of the slaughter of their own citizens by their Communist Government since before the Great War, especially Ukrainians and non-citizens nearby, namely Poles. As brutal as Genghis Khan, but far more treacherous, the Russian leadership exterminated millions of its own innocent and helpless citizens in an orgy of cold, calculated, cunning, satanic godlessness.

Our generation was used to the concept of military service. My father was a Marine in WWI. My brother served on an aircraft-carrier in the Pacific in WWII. One of my great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War and I served on a destroyer in the Korean War. Yes, our generation enjoyed its superiority complex. We thought God was always, and justifiably, on our side, that America was the finest nation ever created, that freedom and democracy were the final manifestation of God’s will for people on earth, and that all people should be like us. But, we took it for granted that every young man owes his country his service, even his life, if necessary, and served willingly with total commitment. In the military, as later in life, we played as hard as we worked. We had a lot of fun and we did our job to the utmost of our ability. We always figured we had to make our own way and earn the respect of our peers, superiors, and subordinates as well as the love and admiration of our spouse and children.

For those who believe in an afterlife, as I do, a life well lived will result in an eternity well loved by God regardless of the fortune or ill-fortune of the life on earth. For those who do not believe in an afterlife, a life well lived is a life well lived. For most of the billions of people throughout human history, life on earth has been, in the main, one of numbing drudgery, galling impotence and frustrating injustice. We youngsters, in the America of 1941, knew none of that or even of our own Depression. We sensed, in our every day life, that our future was bright and exciting, without truly understanding that our non-college-graduate parents were immigrants, or children of immigrants, who worked very hard and willingly accepted their lack of material amenities and creature comforts, in order to provide a better life for their children. They basked in the encompassing warmth of inner peace and sense of accomplishment. They did have their enjoyments....for 120% of minimum wage, a long double-header to hear the crack of the bat.

Alas! The battered survivors of the Great Depression would shortly face the horror of the worst war in the history of the world and deep concern that their sons’ lives, and the opportunity they had striven so hard to provide them, might be forfeit.

It was far worse for those living in Europe, Russia, China and the rest of the Far East. Their combat casualties were far greater than America’s but, worse yet, for several tens of millions of non-combatants, life was hell on earth and for hundreds of millions of their relatives and close friends who observed the fate of their loved ones, life was filled with trenchant frustration, rage and despair.

This book addresses one area of the war, the Pacific War between America and Japan. It was very different from the trudging, mud-ice-and-snow slug-fest in Russia, the cat-and-mouse submarine vs. convoy war of the North Atlantic, the blitzkriegs of the Germans, the carpet-bombing of the Allies, the street fighting in Europe and the Japanese genocide in China. In the Pacific war, there were, relatively, far fewer casualties but there were championship-chess-like gambits of winning strategies and the phenomenon of the modern-day, lone-ranger cowboys, the bomber and torpedo pilots and the submarine skippers who impacted the war out of all proportion to their numbers. It was a fantastic victory for America and won in very unique ways. I have attempted to explore the key factors that made this war so distinctive. This book is written to remind us (and to sharpen our vigilance) of how insignificant men, from obscure backgrounds, can capitalize on a few, exceptional, personal traits in a political-crisis environment and lead a well-meaning, beguiled and/or bedeviled citizenry to participate in the slaughter and maiming of many tens of of millions of their fellow human beings. The world had never seen anything like the extent of the horror of World War II. This book, while acknowledging the sacrifices made by people of all nations, pays special tribute to the extraordinary contribution of a very small group of boys and very young men whose personal and singular efficacy destroyed the Japanese aircraft carriers, their best pilots and the nation’s merchant marine, thus dooming the nation that so dramatically stunned the world, much less America, at Pearl Harbor, all around the Pacific Rim and halfway across that Ocean.

When Japan attacked America, without warning, the War was already several years old in Europe and in China. Japan was allied to Germany and Russia before Germany attacked Russia. Japan was part of the Axis that also included Italy. Before embarking on our journey into the Pacific War, it is critical to understand the nature of our enemies and our ignominious Ally, Russia.

Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory, New York. Random House, 2013, pp. 123-127

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Ibid., p.130

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Ibid., p.130 & 135

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CHAPTER TWO

WHO WOULD DO SUCH UNSPEAKABLY horrible things to helpless tens-of-millions of human beings? Who?!!

Stalin -- Hitler – The leadership of Japan, primarIly the Military Leaders

and....those whose careers profited from serving them

and....those who were trapped in mortal fear of seeming not to serve them

and....those whose minds were too pitiful to discern utter evil

and....those who were intoxicated by a desperate need to feel they belong to the IN GROUP

Let’s take them in descending order of unutterable evil. Josif Djugashvili – later to modestly rename himself Josef Stalin (man of steel)

He was born at Gori, in Georgia, in 1879, to a peasant family. His face was pock-marked from a bout with smallpox at age five. The severe beatings his father repeatedly gave his mother bred in Josef heartlessness and feelings of vengeance toward everyone in authority. His mother loved him deeply and scrimped to send him to a Catholic Seminary where she hoped he would become a priest.

He was mentally tough but was small and not strong. As an adult he stood 5’ 4. He was a loner, incapable of forming strong attachments to others. He left the Seminary abruptly when he was nearly twenty. Two facets of his personality which had matured while in the Seminary were: a dogmatic approach to ideas; and, the tendency toward absolutes. He never had any attachment to religion, was skeptical of everyone and was attracted to the Marxist concept of the inevitability of class war. He was not an idealist. He was motivated by hatred. After he became a Communist, a group of comrades were casually speculating about what would constitute a perfect day, when Stalin blurted out, Mine is to plan an artistic revenge upon an enemy, carry it out to perfection, and then go home and go peacefully to bed."¹ Stalin was instinctively suspicious, especially of close associates and supporters. He was deceitful, treacherous, a behind-the-scenes murderer and terrorist on a scale previously unseen in human history. But he controlled his emotions and his burning, pathological passions. Genghis Khan threatened those he conquered with surrender or annihilation, their choice, and piled the skulls of those who resisted in giant pyramids. In Stalin’s case, others plunged the dagger for him, until their turn came to feel the surreptitious blade in the hands of yet another killer-lackey. The only thing that ended his iniquity was his death.²

After leaving the Seminary, Stalin spent the next ten years working in the Caucasus for Marxist cadres with several interludes in prison and exile in Siberia. He was attracted to Lenin’s subversive activities and became a supporter.

After the 1917 revolution that overthrew the Tsar and placed the Communists in power, Stalin rose in the Party through his skill at organization, in handling administrative tasks and through Lenin’s sponsorship.

Lenin became ill in 1922 and, sensing his approaching death, addressed succession issues. He felt that Stalin was too rude and inconsiderate to lead the Party. After Lenin’s death in 1923, the inevitable struggles for Party control found Stalin rising in influence while associates underestimated the pace of his ascendance.

The Ukraine’s are the second largest nationality in Russia and their land is the breadbasket of its vastness. Along with the North Caucasus, they provide half of Russia’s grain. The Communist collectivization of farming met with more resistance in the Ukraine than anywhere else. The peasants soon learned they were worse off under the Communists than they were under the old Tsarist landlords and they fought the Soviet collectivization efforts with peasant cunning.

Stalin went for the kill. In 1931, when harvests everywhere declined, Moscow demanded the same Ukrainian grain quota of 7.7 million tons to be provided to the Government despite a drop in the harvest from 23.9 million tons in 1930 to 18.3 million in 1931. The quota remained the same in 1932 despite a further decline in harvest to 14.7 million tons. The quotas left Ukranians without sufficient food and they began dying of starvation, which reached massive scale in early 1933, while the fruit of their labor was shipped to State storage.³ Even seed corn for next year’s planting was demanded from them. There were central reserves of grain that could have been made available, as was done under the Tsars in times of local famine, but Stalin refused aid. He would teach this truculent, peasant proletariat a lesson. Corpses were collected each morning and thrown into pits. Troops were stationed along the Ukrainian borders to prevent anyone from leaving. Stalin allowed no word about the famine to appear in the press.

Throughout Russia, the kulaks (land-owning peasants targeted by the Soviets for elimination) were deported to Siberia and other marginal regions. It is estimated that about three million peasant households were liquidated leaving no less than fifteen million people without shelter.⁴ Some were shot, some went to labor camps where, in some locations, all the inmates perished from the terrible winters. Many, especially children, died on the way. A third of these exiles were dead by 1935. Between 1930 and 1937, it is estimated that eleven million people died prematurely.⁵ More died in later years, so that Stalin’s purges killed more people than died as combatants for all countries in World War I.

Aside from genocide of the Russian people, was the Collectivization Program a success? It was an unmitigated disaster. Grain production declined, livestock losses approached 60%. As Khrushchev said in 1953-4 meetings with the Central Committee, grain production and numbers of cattle were less, per capita, than in Tsarist times.⁶ The Gulags were prison camps, largely in the frozen wastes of the Northern Territories and Siberia, which housed up to ten per cent of the Soviet population in forced labor in mining and construction. The inmates were often worked to death but were replaced by a steady flow of enemies of the State. No description of utter hopelessness in human life can be more devastating than the mind-numbing tragedy depicted in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. It is a long and classic work. Just read any 50 pages of it and you will drop to your knees and thank God for your blessings.

Stalin was General Secretary of the Party. Control of the Party was his mission. Opponents, supposed opponents, scapegoats for failed, ridiculous State policies, toadies, loyal supporters, long-time cronies, relatives, friends, henchmen, all met death or deportation to the wastelands, at his whim. Phony show-trials, broadcast to the world, exposed the perfidy of his enemies who had been tortured into wrongful confession and wrongful incrimination of other, unsuspecting lambs. The two-in-the-morning knock on the door signaled the quick exit of the husband and father, never to be seen or heard from again. Millions upon millions of his people, tens of millions by tens of millions of their relatives and friends subjected to soul-crushing misery and.......FEAR. Anyone could be next. I think Satan (alternately spelled S-t-a-l-i-n) laughed at God and said, I’m not your problem, your beloved creatures are. Free will!!....How did you come up with that one? It serves you right. Get off my back!

A typical incident was the 40-minute trial of M.N. Ryukin who worked in the Central Committee Secretariat and who headed the Party committee in one of Moscow’s districts. He had published a report, in 1932, criticizing Stalin’s policies and it was circulated to relatively few Party members who met to discuss it. A month later Ryukin and the other conspirators were arrested, as well as anyone suspected to have read