The Final Storm

A
LSO BY
J
EFF
S
HAARA

Gods and Generals
The Last Full Measure
Gone for Soldiers
Rise to Rebellion
The Glorious Cause
To the Last Man
Jeff Shaara’s Civil War Battlefields
The Rising Tide
The Steel Wave
No Less Than Victory

T
he story of the end of the war in the Pacific pushes us toward a delicate line between what we know to be simple history (the facts) and what many of us prefer to think
should
have happened. Sixty-five years after the event, many of us sit in judgment on the way the Second World War was brought to a close, some of us wondering if there could have been a better way, or perhaps a more
moral
way to end the war. In the American psyche, those debates are likely to continue for a very long time. But those debates will not be found here.

This story attempts to complete what I began in a trilogy that dealt with the war in Europe. Those stories involved America’s first involvement in the fight against the Germans and concluded with the fall of Hitler. Half a world away, there had been another, far more brutal war, against an enemy who was even more successful than Hitler in conquering a vast swath of territory and threatening to slice off an enormous part of the world from our definition of civilization. Had the Japanese been allowed to maintain the empire they sought (and nearly won), all of Asia, including China, Korea, and Indochina, Thailand, Burma, and Malaya, would have become part of an empire that would also have included Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the thousands of islands that spread from those lands all the way east to Hawaii, and north to the Aleutians. What might have followed is speculation, of course. Would the Japanese
have invaded the United States (which was one purpose of the conquest of the islands in the Aleutian chain, to serve as a base for such an operation)? Or, strengthened by the raw materials drawn from the riches of the lands under their control, would the Japanese have been strong enough to shove their armies across India, or drive southward to Central and South America?

The urgency of meeting the challenge in the Pacific seemed to many Americans to be secondary to the threat posed to our allies by Hitler. Despite the grotesque insult inflicted upon the United States by the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the government, particularly President Roosevelt, understood that Germany’s conquest of Europe, including England, was a more immediate threat. And so greater resources were poured out of American factories toward that part of the world. But the Pacific was hardly ignored. After Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back at the Japanese, and in what now seems an amazing feat, fought both wars simultaneously, against two very different enemies, in two very different ways.

Though my plan had been to complete this story with Europe, I could not just walk away without touching upon the Pacific. (I was also inspired by letters received from a number of Marines, who were quite vocal that “ignoring”
their
story was altogether inappropriate. It’s hard to disagree.) Some have written to me, expressing frustration that I am not attempting to tell the entire story of the Pacific campaigns through another complete trilogy. There are reasons for that, which include the requirements of my publisher. My choice was to follow
No Less Than Victory
in rough chronological order, and move through the spring and summer of 1945, to the final collapse of Japan. Thus this story deals with the extraordinary fight on Okinawa, and then, an event unique in world history, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The points of view vary considerably. Some are familiar: Admiral Chester Nimitz, President Harry Truman. Others are perhaps less well known: Colonel Paul Tibbets, General Mitsuru Ushijima, General Curtis LeMay. And then there are the unknown: Marine Private Clay Adams, Dr. Okiro Hamishita, whose voices have carried me far deeper into this story than I expected to go.

If you are looking for either a strident argument in favor of the atomic bomb, or an apology for American immorality, you will find neither here. This story is told through the eyes of the participants, whose perspectives and decisions and experiences reflected what was happening around them. There is no judgment in hindsight, no moral verdict on my part. That just
isn’t my job (and never will be). Libraries are filled with volumes that pursue an agenda, political or otherwise, about our role in ending the war. I am merely a storyteller, and this story is as accurate historically as I could make it, told by the voices of the men who made the decisions, who gave the orders, and who took their fight to the enemy. There was only one world for them, a world in which the enemy had to be defeated at all costs. That’s why I wanted to tell this story.

Every day, we lose countless numbers of those who participated in this fight. In every case, when I have spoken with veterans, they remind me that once they are gone, their memories will go with them. Unless, as one GI said,
someone tells the damn tale
. Fair enough. This is my attempt.

J
EFF
S
HAARA
April 2011

T
HE
P
ACIFIC
I
SLANDS

T
HE
I
NVASION OF
O
KINAWA
—
A
PRIL
1, 1945

N
ORTHERN
O
KINAWA:
T
HE
M
ARINES
S
WEEP
N
ORTHWARD
—A
PRIL
1945

M
ARINES
A
SSAULT
S
UGAR
L
OAF
H
ILL
—
M
AY
1945

M
ARINES
C
APTURE
S
UGAR
L
OAF
H
ILL
—
M
AY
20, 1945

U
SHIJIMA
W
ITHDRAWS FROM
S
HURI
L
INE
—M
AY
29, 1945

M
ARINES
O
BLITERATE
J
APANESE
N
AVAL
F
ORCES ON
O
ROKU
P
ENINSULA

A
MERICANS
D
RIVE
S
OUTHWARD:
U
SHIJIMA’S
“L
AST
S
TAND
”—J
UNE
1945

The following is a partial list of those original sources who provided voices for this story:

The following have graciously and generously provided me with research material. Thank you to all.