Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (116 page)

Southeast Asia attracted the emperor's attention as well. On January 7, 1944, he sanctioned an offensive from Burma into Assam Province, India. The aim was to preempt an Allied drive to recover Burma and possibly bring about an uprising of Indian nationalists against British rule. Although no documents indicate that Hirohito
himself actively promoted this particular offensive, it was just the sort of operation he had pushed for all through the war—aggressive and short-sighted. The Imphal campaign, justified partly to defend Burma and partly to restore troop morale, began on March 8 and bogged down in early April. T
j
and Sugiyama, who had been dubious about the operation from the start, dispatched observers to the scene and kept the emperor abreast of the deteriorating situation.
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Finally, on July 5, Hirohito accepted T
j
's recommendation and ordered the disastrous Impal campaign halted. By then, approximately 72,000 Japanese troops had been killed or wounded.
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V

Despite the cumulative impact of one major defeat after another, the determination of Hirohito and the high command remained undaunted. When a huge American armada closed on Saipan in mid-June to begin the conquest of the main Japanese bases in the Marianas, the Combined Fleet threw in a restored strike force of nine carriers and more than 460 aircraft to oppose the landings.
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The ensuing naval, air, and land battles of the Marianas, fought between June and August 1944, were the decisive battles of the war for the Japanese navy and its air force. Three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk and 395 planes shot down, without inflicting any serious damage on the American invasion force.
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After desperate fighting, in which Japanese ground commanders once again failed to prepare adequate defenses in depth, Saipan, Guam, and Tinian fell and quickly became forward U.S. bases for long-range B-29 (“Superfortress”) bombers. The capture of Saipan on July 7, 1944, was a particularly heavy blow for the high command. Resistance was bitter, and when it ended, after three weeks, Japan had lost virtually the entire garrison of 23,811 as well as ten thousand noncombatants.
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It had also lost control of the air and the seas everywhere in the Pacific.

Saipan and the remaining Japanese bases in the Marianas were now in enemy hands. In Europe the Allies had landed in Normandy and were fighting eastward and northward, while the Soviets were driving into Poland. Staff planners in Imperial Headquarters now had to anticipate that Germany would soon be defeated, and that enormous American military resources would presently be moving from Europe to the Pacific. The Philippines, Taiwan, Okinawa, and the Bonin Islands would be invaded. More important, the homeland itself was almost certain to become a battlefield, for Tokyo—1,272 miles away from Saipan—had at last come within range of B-29s.

Hirohito's reaction to this dismal state of affairs is of paramount importance in assessing the role he played in the war. Confronted with certain defeat, he dug in his heels and refused to accept it. “Rise to the challenge; make a tremendous effort; achieve a splendid victory like at the time of the Japan Sea naval battle [in the Russo-Japanese War],” he told Vice Chief of Staff Admiral Shimada in audience on June 17.
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The next day he warned T
j
: “If we ever lose Saipan, repeated air attacks on Tokyo will follow. No matter what it takes, we have to hold there.”
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Informed by his chiefs of staff on two successive days that the situation on Saipan had become hopeless, Hirohito ignored their advice and ordered Shimada to recapture it, whereupon the First Department of the Navy General Staff immediately poured all its energies into the problem. Working night and day, with a sense of “utter desperation,” staff officers finally completed a draft plan on June 21.
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Three days later, however, on June 24, after headquarters of the Combined Fleet had weighed in with its opposition, T
j
and Shimada formally reported that the recapture plan must be cancelled; Saipan was gone for good.
¹⁰¹

Still refusing to accept the loss of Saipan, Hirohito ordered his Chief Aide General Hasunuma to convene, in his presence, the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals so that he could consult them. The latter—two elderly princes, plus Nagano, Sugiyama,
Hasunuma, the chiefs of the general staff, and the heads of the operations departments—met in the palace on June 25. After they had presented their unified view that the previous reports of the chiefs of staff were appropriate, the recapture of Saipan was impossible, Hirohito told them to put that in writing and left the room.

In the ensuing discussion T
j
announced to the conference that the army had designed “balloon bombs,” and was planning to send thirty thousand aloft against the enemy in the autumn.
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There is a strong possibility that Hirohito had received an informal briefing on the balloon-bomb weapon program sometime between December 1943 and January 1944, and thereafter had taken a keen interest in its progress.
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At this bleak moment in the war, when Imperial Headquarters was about to turn to planning for future ground battles on the home islands, Hirohito may have drawn comfort from learning, in the report of the board, that army and navy preparations were well under way to retaliate for the anticipated B-29 bombing raids.