The Twilight Warriors (49 page)

The counteroffensive was a catastrophe from which the 32nd Army would never recover. Nearly 7,000 of the unit’s original 76,000 soldiers had been lost. Almost all their tanks were destroyed. The few surviving tanks would be buried to be used as immobile pillboxes. The once-formidable Japanese artillery on Okinawa had been reduced by half.

But the worst loss to General Ushijima’s army was its morale. The fighting spirit of the Japanese soldiers on Okinawa would never be the same. Though none yet knew it, they had just conducted the last Japanese ground offensive of the war.

A
s ordered, Col. Hiromichi Yahara appeared at the commanding general’s office. Standing at attention, he rendered a
silent salute. He had no idea why Ushijima had summoned him. It was the evening of May 5, and the disastrous offensive was finished. Was the general planning to sacrifice the rest of the 32nd Army in a final fight-to-the-death offensive? Was this the end?

General Ushijima was in his usual pose, sitting cross-legged on the worn
tatami
floor. He wore a pensive expression. “Colonel Yahara,” the general said in a soft voice, “as you predicted, this offensive has been a total failure. Your judgment was correct.” Ushijima told Yahara that meaningless suicide would no longer be their strategy. With what strength they had left, the 32nd Army would fight for every last inch of the island. “I am ready to fight,” said the general, “but
from now on I leave everything up to you.”

Yahara was speechless. Such an admission from a high-ranking commander was unheard of in the Imperial Japanese Army. Then, thinking about it, Yahara became furious. Now that the army had been beaten to exhaustion, Ushijima was ready to do what Yahara had been advocating since the beginning.

The trouble was, it was too late. Yahara calculated that if the army’s strength had not been squandered in the stupid offensive, they could have held out for at least a month longer. It might have made a difference in the outcome of the war. Thousands of lives might have been saved.

There was only one possible benefit from the disaster that Yahara could see. The offensive would make the enemy more cautious about any Japanese course of action.

As it turned out, it was just another false hope.

34
BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

KANOYA AIR BASE, KYUSHU
MAY 1, 1945

M
atome Ugaki had a bad case of diarrhea. The problem only worsened the admiral’s foul mood, which was caused by the news from Europe. Mussolini had been captured and executed by his own people. The Russians were in the streets of Berlin. Hitler had committed suicide.

Ugaki thought the Fuehrer’s death was a tragedy. “But his spirit will remain long with the German nation,” he wrote in his diary, “while the United States and Britain will suffer from communism some day and regret that their powerful supporter, Hitler, was killed.”

Another floating chrysanthemum operation—
kikusui
No. 5—was supposed to be coordinated with the counteroffensive by Ushijima’s 32nd Army on Okinawa. Ugaki was skeptical of the army’s chances. “This attempt does not have much prospect of success,” he wrote, “but better to be venturesome, hoping to put up a fight while they have enough guts, than to be knocked while idle.”

Ugaki was sending every plane he could muster into this next
kikusui
. It wasn’t enough—only 125 dedicated
tokko
aircraft, along with an equal number of conventional warplanes—but the admiral retained his high hopes. He was sure that with improved tactics they would cause even more destruction to the Americans than in the first days when the
tokkotai
were at full strength. The trouble was, American B-29s were showing up almost every night, cratering runways and making it risky to assemble the waves of
tokko
airplanes.

In the waning light of May 3, during a break from the bombers, Ugaki’s first wave of
kikusui
No. 5 rumbled into the sky.

T
o the tin can sailors on RP10, 73 miles west of Okinawa, it was the same old story—blips on the radar, klaxons blaring, bullhorns ordering the crews to battle stations. CAP fighters roared overhead, heading northward to intercept incoming bogeys. Nervous gunners aboard the tin cans peered into the pale gray sky.

A sailor with a dark sense of humor put up a sign on his destroyer with an arrow pointing eastward: “
Carriers That Way.”

Radarmen aboard the destroyer-minelayer
Aaron Ward
and destroyer
Little
were tracking a swarm of incoming bogeys. The fighter CAP—four F6F Hellcats—had already engaged the attackers, but they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Two dozen kamikazes swept over the destroyers and their four accompanying gunboats.

Within minutes, the picket ships were fighting for their lives.
Ward
’s gunners splashed the first two attackers, both Vals. Then came a faster-moving Zero fighter on the port side. Just before impact, the Zero released its 550-pound bomb. The explosion killed more than a dozen crewmen, jamming her rudder to port and slowing the ship to a crawl.

It seemed a replay of the
Laffey
ordeal two weeks ago. Sensing blood, more kamikazes appeared, but
Ward
’s gunners turned them away. She was out of danger, but only for the moment.

The nearby
Little
was in just as much trouble. Her gunners downed one kamikaze, then another, but it wasn’t enough. Four more, one after another, crashed into
Little
, wrecking the destroyer’s superstructure and breaking her keel. With the ship listing severely to starboard, her rails nearly submerged,
Little
’s skipper, Cmdr. Madison Hall, gave the order to abandon ship.

The order didn’t come too soon. Four minutes later,
Little
sank in 850 fathoms of water, taking thirty of her crew with her.

The carnage on RP10 continued. LSM(R)-195, a rocket-firing amphibious support craft, was at full speed to assist the
destroyers when she came under attack by a pair of kamikazes. The 203-foot-long gunboat lacked both the firepower and the speed to fight off the kamikazes. One crashed into her port side, exploding her rocket magazines, flinging fire and shrapnel around the decks. In fifteen minutes, the amphibious craft was gone.

Meanwhile, more kamikazes were pouncing on the damaged and smoking
Aaron Ward. Ward
’s gunners fought back, shooting down three attackers. Then, in quick succession, the destroyer took five more kamikaze strikes and bombs on her main deck, her hull on the port side, her superstructure aft, and her number two stack. Her engines were dead.
Ward
lay adrift, burning in the gathering darkness.

Incredibly, the destroyer stayed afloat. Through the long night
Ward
’s crew, aided by the destroyer
Shannon
and two gunboats, fought to save the ship. Early the next morning, the shattered but still defiant
Aaron Ward
arrived under tow in Kerama Retto.

For its opening day,
kikusui
No. 5 had been impressive. Two U.S. ships had gone to the bottom of the East China Sea. Several others were damaged, including
Aaron Ward
, so badly mangled she was out of the war. In the brief action of May 3, the picket ships had suffered 248 casualties. To the sailors on the tin cans, it didn’t seem that it could get much worse.

They were wrong.

B
iplanes?
The gunners on the destroyer
Morrison
the next morning couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They peered through the pall of smoke at the apparitions coming toward them. There were seven of them—old-fashioned biplanes, equipped with floats. They were lumbering toward
Morrison
at the approximate speed of a Jeep. Each of the ancient floatplanes had a 250-kilogram bomb strapped beneath it.

It was the latest twist in the battle at RP1. Since dawn
Morrison
, her accompanying destroyer,
Ingraham
, and their four gunboats had been under siege by a continuous wave of kamikazes.
CAP Corsairs had already taken down four at close range to
Morrison
, and two more were splashed by the destroyer’s guns. One of the bogeys, chased by a Corsair, glanced off
Morrison
’s bridge and crashed close astern. Another sheared a wing on the destroyer’s bridge.

Then
Morrison
’s luck had run out. Two Zeroes, pursued by Corsairs and hammered with antiaircraft fire, exploded into the destroyer’s topside, opening her hull and setting the ship ablaze. It was then, while the crew was battling the fire, straining to pick out the next wave of kamikazes through the smoke, that they saw the biplanes.

Code-named “Dave,” the antiquated aircraft were, in fact, highly effective kamikazes. Their wood-and-fabric structure made them nearly invisible on search radars. The proximity fuses of antiaircraft shells failed to detonate when they whizzed past the flimsy craft. Pilots of high-speed CAP fighters were having a devilishly hard time shooting the twisting, slow-moving biplanes.

On they came. Looming out of the smoke, one of the biplanes crashed into
Morrison
’s aft 5-inch mount, lighting off the magazine and causing a cataclysmic explosion. A second biplane, in no hurry, landed in the water behind the destroyer long enough to elude a pursuing Corsair, then took off again. The kamikaze continued straight into
Morrison
’s stern, touching off another magazine explosion.

It was the final blow for
Morrison
. Ripped apart, the destroyer rolled to starboard and sank stern first. One hundred fifty-two men—nearly half
Morrison
’s crew—went down with her.

The battle wasn’t going any better for
Morrison
’s escorts. One of the gunboats, LSM(R)-194, was caught in the stern by a diving Val. Within minutes her bow tilted up and she joined
Morrison
at the bottom of the sea. Thirteen men aboard the rocket-firing LSM went down with her.

It was a sobering sight for the crew of the nearby destroyer
Ingraham
, who had watched
Morrison
’s death throes while they
fought off their own attackers. Now the kamikazes were turning their full attention to
Ingraham. Ingraham
’s gunners and the CAP fighters shot down a succession of attackers, but it wasn’t enough.
Ingraham
had two near misses before a Zero crashed near her number two 5-inch mount, flooding the forward fire room and killing fourteen men.

The CAP fighter pilots overhead were astonished at the variety of kamikaze warplanes—everything from Betty bombers and Zero fighters to training planes and museum-piece biplanes. The Japanese were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Did they have anything left to throw at the Americans?

T
hey did. In the murky sky over RP14, Sub-Lt. Susumu Ohashi was lowering himself through the bomb bay of the twin-engine Mitsubishi Ki-46 “Dinah” bomber, settling into the cockpit of his
Ohka
guided bomb. Ohashi was one of seven Thunder Gods of the 7th Cherry Blossom Unit who had launched that morning from Kanoya airfield.

The Dinah bombers were an improvement over the slower G4M Bettys that carried the first
Ohka
guided bombs. Originally designed as reconnaissance aircraft, the Dinah was faster than the Betty, but it was more lightly armored. Now the pilot of Ohashi’s Dinah was becoming anxious. Enemy fighters had just spotted them. They were already swooping in a pursuit curve onto the bomber’s tail. Machine gun tracers were converging on the Dinah.

The Dinah pilot wasn’t waiting any longer. He gave the signal to Susumu Ohashi, who had just strapped himself into the cockpit of the
Ohka:
ready or not, he was going to be released
now
.

T
he gunners on the minelayer
Shea
were cursing the smoke. The visibility around them and their escorts was now less than three miles, and it was because of the damned smoke screen someone had laid down back at the Hagushi anchorage. The smoke had
drifted northward until it covered
Shea
and her escorts on their picket station.
Shea
’s nervous gunners were squinting through the murk, trying to pick out the first ominous silhouettes of incoming bogeys.