Nimitz’s Bypass: Pacific War Volume 2

By Carl L. Steinhouse

In May 1942, submarines begin inflicting heavy damage on Japanese shipping. The marines and Army invade the Gilbert, Marshall and Solomon Islands.
In November 1943, American forces, with heavy casualties, take Tarawa. Admiral Nimitz, over many objections, decides to bypass many strongly-held Japanese islands and blockade them to deprive the Japanese of supplies and food. Roosevelt publicly demands “unconditional surrender,” and the Japanese dig in their heels to fight to the death.
American forces attack the Solomon and Marshall Islands, creeping ever closer to Japan. MacArthur attacks New Guinea.
In June 1944, American forces invade the Mariana Islands of Saipan and Tinian, and later, Pelelui. With these islands in American hands, its bombers can reach the Japanese mainland. Saipan and Pelelui are captured with many American casualties. Fighting becomes a vicious no-holds-barred affair.
A famous American, now a pilot, is rescued by submarine, after his plane crashes into the sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728339108

Carl L. Steinhouse

Carl L. Steinhouse formerly a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice and later in private practice specializing in class actions, white-collar crime, and civil and criminal antitrust trials. He wrote or edited several textbooks for the American Bar Association on conducting antitrust trials and grand juries. During the Korean War, he served in as an intelligence analyst in the Army Counterintelligence Corps. He is a graduate of New York University and Brooklyn Law School. He has authored two legal thrillers, Harassment and Extreme Malice, one Holocaust novel, The Outfielder, Irreverent memoirs, Now What? seven books in his Holocaust Heroes series to rave reviews by scholars, three volumes on the Pacific War against the Japanese, and a book on the Atlantic U-boat war. See WWW.carlsteinhouse.com. Communicate with Mr. Steinhouse at [e-mail].

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© 2020 Carl L. Steinhouse. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/13/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3909-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3910-8 (e)

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Dedication

To the memory of my law school buddy and good friend, Frank Ronga, who taught me to eat and enjoy scungilli!

Contents

Dedication

Author’s Note

Excerpts From The Book

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1     Admiral Yamamoto is Dead, Now What?

Chapter 2     Halsey is Fighting Mad; Nagumo Does Not Believe Code is Broken

Chapter 3     Nimitz and his Submarines Go on the Offensive

Chapter 4     Japanese Admirals Ask: Can We Win the War?

Chapter 5     Eleanor’s visit

Chapter 6     What Army and Navy Discord?

Chapter 7     Nimitz and Howlin’ Mad off to the Races in the Central Pacific

Chapter 8     Bougainville and Tarawa

Chapter 9     FDR Demands ‘Unconditional Surrender’ and Backs Off ‘Germany First’; Plans to Bypass Some Japanese-Held Islands

Chapter 10   On to the Solomon Islands

Chapter 11   Nimitz and MacArthur Disagree; Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands

Chapter 12   The Unassailable Truk, the Japanese Gibraltar of the Pacific

Chapter 13   Eniwetok in the Marshalls; the Return of Admiral Ugaki–Oh, How Things Have Changed!

Chapter 14   MacArthur Goes after Biak, his Bombers Pound Truk; Submarines Cut Off Ugaki’s Supplies

Chapter 15   Japanese Admirals Looking for the ‘Decisive Battle’; The Navy’s Two-Platoon System; the Lack of Trained Japanese Pilots

Chapter 16   MacArthur Presses Biak Attack; Ugaki Faces Threat in Marianas

Chapter 17   Here Comes Nimitz and Howlin’ Mad Smith into the Marianas; Preparing to Attack Saipan and Tinian; Ugaki’s Plan

Chapter 18   Marines and Army Attack Saipan; No Geneva Convention Rules for the Japanese; Banzai Attacks

Chapter 19   Marine General Wants to Fire Army General

Chapter 20   If We are So Victorious, Why are the Allies So Close? The Massive Carrier Battle, The Great Marianas ‘Turkey Shoot’

Chapter 21   MacArthur Ordered to Honolulu; Saipan Banzai Attacks Repulsed; Leaping to Death

Chapter 22   Tojo Pressured to Resign; Attacking Tinian; The New Weapon–Napalm

Chapter 23   Formosa or The Philippines? FDR Decides on Philippines; Taking Tinian

Chapter 24   Pelelui, the Meat Grinder

Chapter 25   Saving Downed Pilots; Who Is This Lt. George H.W. Bush anyway?

Epilogue

Bibliography

Other Books By Author

Author’s Note

In Japan, personal names take the form of family name first, followed by the given name. To avoid confusion, the author adopts the Western/American form of address with given name first and family following. In Japan, friends address each other generally by their family name. That is their custom and not a sign of disrespect or impoliteness.

This book, Volume II of the Pacific War, takes us forward after the death of Admiral Yamamoto on April 18, 1943, when his plane was shot down by American fighter pilots, and up to September 1944, with the battle for Pelelui. You will remember that Admiral Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor but warned his superiors they could not win a war against the Americans.

Volume I mostly focuses on the Japanese military, particularly its admirals because most of the events, the battles, especially in the first year, 1942, were initiated by them. This Volume is more focused on the American admirals, who responded to the aggression and soon took the initiative away from the Japanese, setting them back on their defensive heels.

Volume III, when written, will take us to the end of the greatest and most far-flung war this planet has ever experienced and suffered and the occupation of Japan.

Carl L. Steinhouse

2019

Excerpts From The Book

As commander of our South Pacific Forces, Nimitz stated in a tone that brooked no argument, I intend to order the taking of various islands in the Marianas that are important to us and using my bypass approach, skipping those that are not—we’ll let the skipped ones, with their large Japanese garrisons, just die on the vine. They’ll have no one to kill and nowhere to go, and our blockade will see they get no supplies or food.

He looked directly at Generals Sutherland and Kenney. "You be sure to tell General MacArthur that when you see him."

***

Medic, Medic, send out a medic, another call that often broke the silence. No one moved. These Marines already learned their lesson when some of their buddies on Guadalcanal got themselves killed answering such bogus calls by the enemy. Even when the calls for medic were legitimate, care had to be taken because Japanese snipers would kill both the medic and the wounded man. This was a no-holds barred war!

***

That last-ditch banzai attack cost the Japanese over one hundred dead. This did not include their non-walking wounded. Those were all shot in the head by their comrades before the attack. In contrast, the banzai attack cost the Americans three dead and twenty-five wounded.

***

The Marine major, watching this mob racing toward him knew the ships could not help because the horde was too close to the American lines, precluding any naval bombardment. Some Marine companies reported that Jap soldiers waving white flags tossed hand grenades at them, if the Marines approached. The Marine major knew that the normal rules of war did not apply here. They understood that perfectly. It was kill or be killed.

Acknowledgements

I owe more than I can express to my wife, Diana, who put up with my long hours and grouchiness at her reasonable interruptions. She suffered reading the first drafts with grace and provided invaluable insights.

I appreciate the support of my children who encouraged me to keep writing and busy (and out of their hair!) in my retirement and old age.

Preface

The word samurai means those who serve and, in old Japan, most samurai held their land for a more senior overlord to whom they owed military service and allegiance. The samurai learned the art of sword fighting at an early age. When the country became united in the late 15th century, the samurai came out on top; they were the only ones permitted to carry a sword and were paid in rice by their feudal lords. The samurai’s sword, called a katana, has a blade that is master-crafted, very strong, sharp, and durable. The katana is usually accompanied by a shorter sword, a wakizashi, with an equally fine-crafted blade. The samurai, expected to be brave and tough-minded individuals, were skilled swordsman and horsemen, fiercely loyal to their lord, and willing to face death at any moment. Indeed, their moral code stressed frugality, loyalty, martial arts, and honor unto death—with the stress on death.

Though most of the naval and army officers were not of samurai stock, they considered themselves self-made samurai, adopting what they thought was the samurai creed, especially the part about carrying a samurai sword. The military, particularly the army, playing on the drama of the samurai code, glorified death and loyalty to the army unto death as its ideal. But the same army also involved harsh training and much punishment of the enlisted man, together with instilling the idea of Japan’s racial superiority and sense of invincibility through the Bushido or the spirit of Japan. The American officers, though not imbued with Bushido, carried not a sword but a forty-five-automatic pistol, a far more effective weapon in close quarters combat!

As set out in Volume I, in Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, the Americans killed the one person who might have been able to bring Japan to the peace table at a time well before the slaughter of soldiers on both sides in 1944 and 1945. Yamamoto had agonized over the folly of General Tojo (who later became prime minister) in embroiling the cream of the Japanese Army in a never-ending war with billions of Chinese that Japan could not or would not extricate themselves, thereby expending vital resources of manpower, planes, and tanks that were vitally needed and could have been used in the war they decided to wage against the Americans in the Pacific.

Volume I of the Pacific war ended with American codebreakers decoding a cable of Admiral Yamamoto’s schedule of his visit to the front, thereby permitting American P-38 fighter pilots to know precisely where his plane would be at a particular time. This permitted them to find and successfully shoot down two Japanese bombers, one carrying Admiral Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet (and the planner of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor), and the other plane carrying his chief of staff, Admiral Matome Ugaki. Yamamoto was killed outright but Ugaki survived, though seriously injured and hospitalized for many months before he could return to the war.

The incident worried both the Japanese high command and the American codebreakers. The codebreakers at Pearl Harbor were very apprehensive of the Yamamoto venture for fear that the Japanese would finally discover the American decrypting abilities. But protecting the secrecy of American code-breaking ability was not the decoders’ decision to make. Indeed, as the codebreakers feared, the Japanese began to suspect that that the Americans had been aware of Yamamoto’s plans and that awareness could only have come from decoding the cable detailing his visit to Ballale. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese ultimately gave up pursuing the possibility of a code break. Some of the General Staff with an overblown belief and pride in their own abilities and, scornful of the enemy’s, thought with a certainty that the Americans were incapable of either breaking their code or translating it into the Japanese, even if they did break it.

The Navy General Staff appointed Admiral Mineichi Koga as the successor to Yamamoto in the job of commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet.

Koga, tall and impressive, and had been somewhat of an eccentric, until he gained the spotlight as commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, preferred the traditional loose-fitting kimono over the uncomfortable military uniform. Now, his new high position forced him back, for most occasions, into the despised uniform.

We continue the story of the Pacific War at this point, Guadalcanal having fallen to the American Marines and Army shortly before Yamamoto died.

But at this point, Japan still ruled over a seventh of the globe and since much of it was the myriad of islands in great expanse of water in the Pacific Ocean, it posed a great problem to retake them.

CHAPTER ONE

Admiral Yamamoto is Dead, Now What?

April 20, 1943, Tokyo, Japanese Imperial Naval Headquarters, Office of the Navy Chief

The aide held out the paper. We received this coded telegram from the chief of staff of the Southeastern Fleet. The Americans downed two of our planes, one carrying Admiral Yamamoto and the other carrying his chief of staff, Admiral Ugaki.

Admiral Nagano looked up. Did they survive?

The aide took a deep breath. Yamamoto died and Ugaki is seriously wounded. The people in the Southeastern Fleet seem to think the Americans may have broken our code and thereby knew just where to find the admiral after Yamamoto had sent out his itinerary in a coded message. This is the telegram the chief of staff had sent us: He handed it to the admiral.

IT IS SUSPECTED THAT ENEMY IS AWARE OF OUR PLANS CONCERNING KO REPORT NO.1 OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF, SOUTH EASTERN FLEET.

IN CASE OF TELEGRAM CONCERNING THIS ACTIVITY, ASIDE FROM COMBINED FLEET SECRET TELEGRAM NO. 161107, HAVE SAME FORWARDED.

INVESTIGATE CAUSE OF ABOVE THOROUGHLY WHETHER DUE TO DECODING OF OUR CODE, ACTIVITY OF SPIES OR OTHERS AND REPORT OF SAME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Admiral Osami Nagano, more of an administrator that a battle admiral, held the post of Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, which was the highest organ within the Imperial Japanese Navy and in charge of planning and operations.

The aide waited until Nagano finished reading the cable. I think it was revenge for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor. What do you think?

Nagano shrugged. Who knows? Frankly, I doubt it. That would assume they broke our code which, I think, the Americans are totally incapable of doing, especially when they have to convert the code first into Japanese! I think it was just a case of plain bad luck, Nagano theorized, shaking his head.

But mind you, Nagano continued, we can’t take any chances because if there is any chance the Americans had staged an ambush of Yamamoto based on the itinerary he sent out, we are going to have a lot of trouble on our hands in the future. I’ll have my chief of staff conduct a thorough investigation and report back to me.

Yes sir, the aide responded swiftly. I’ll send the chief of staff in to see you.

***

They were wrong on the code being unbreakable. In fact, Station Hypo, code name for the American Navy code-breaking team at Pearl Harbor, manned by some of the world’s most skilled cryptanalysts, with the heavy traffic in Japanese coded messages, and given some time, were able, through mathematical process, and good guess work, strip each message down to its basics—that was the hard part—and deal with the code, using cryptographic-developed methods. It was enough to break only a fraction of the code, combined with previously recorded messages, to obtain useful information. The specialty of the group was the Japanese operational code.

Same Time, Pearl Harbor, Office of the Commander of Pacific Force

If the Japanese were concerned, so was Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance, chief of staff to the commander of the Pacific Force, Admiral Chester Nimitz, but for a different reason.

Spruance graduated the Naval Academy in 1907, and the Naval War College in 1927. He served on several battleships and ended skipper of the USS Mississippi in the late thirties. By 1941, had worked his way up to rear admiral.

Spruance ran a quiet ship. He did not like idle talk on the bridge. He wasn’t flamboyant like some of his compatriots such as Admiral William Bull Halsey, but he knew what he wanted from his men and expected them to perform to his satisfaction.

He also ran a calm ship. Orders were given concisely and clearly. But he was not without a sense of humor. Once, when a panicky ensign reported breathlessly, Captain, we’ve just accidently dropped a depth charge over the stern!

Spruance smiled. Well, pick it up and put it back.

Nimitz and most of the navy brass held Spruance in the highest regard. When Admiral Bill Halsey was felled with a severe case of the shingles, Halsey recommended that Spruance take command of the American naval force heading for battle at Midway. Whereupon, as we saw in Volume One, Spruance led his short-handed naval group to a stunning victory over the massive Japanese naval armada arriving to attack and invade Midway Island and, at the same time, hoping to lure most of the surviving American Fleet out of Pearl Harbor and into a decisive naval battle. And decisive a battle it was, but not in the way the Japanese anticipated. The out-gunned American ships, thanks to the information provided by the American Navy codebreakers, surprised and outflanked the Japanese force, sending many Japanese ships to the ocean bottom, and the rest hightailing it back to Japan.

Now, Spruance, meeting with Admiral Chester Nimitz, sighed and shook his head.

Nimitz caught it. What’s bothering you?

Spruance shrugged. I know you have a lot on your mind, and I don’t want to add to it.

Nimitz frowned. Come on Ray, spill it. What’s up?

Spruance rubbed his chin. I know this is water over the dam, but I’ve been having serious second thoughts about our mission that found and killed Yamamoto. In doing so, I think we may have revealed that we have broken the Jap naval code and that, Admiral, could have serious consequences down the line, far outweighing the advantage of eliminating Yamamoto.

Nimitz nodded. To tell you the truth, I had similar thoughts. You know that much earlier in my career, I captained submarines and became chief of our submarine fleet; so I am particularly sensitive to events that could affect our submariners. The information which our code-breakers obtain about Japanese shipping is invaluable to helping our submariners locate the Jap supply ships so we can sink them.

Then why go to all this trouble to get just one man. Did we fear him? Spruance asked.

I don’t think so. After all, his strategy led to the defeat of the Jap Navy at Midway. Nimitz replied.

Spruance interrupted. In fairness, I think that was due to our code-breaking, not his lack of strategy, which, I suspect, led to the Joint Chiefs of staff’s decision to get him. Me? I consider him one of our greatest enemies and by far, the Japs’ most effective admiral.

Nimitz continued. "The JCS? I’m not so sure. You know, I thought that decision should be made higher up than me, so