Appendices - Hirohito's War


A.	Submarines: America Draws Tight the Noose December 1941 – August 1945 [Charts: A.1]
	Planned Submarine Attack on the Panama Canal, The Failure of Japanese Submarine Design, Wasteful Dissipation of Japanese Submarine Force, Japanese Submarine Cargo Missions to Europe, Japanese Submarines’ Disappointing ‘Kill’ Performance, Japan’s ‘Long Lance’ Jockeys, Newport Torpedo Station, Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, US Submarine Achievements in the Pacific War, The Failure of Japanese Counter-Submarine Strategy, The Missed Opportunity [Photos]

B.	Oil, Raw Materials and Logistics: 'Just Start Swinging' December 1941 to August 1945 [Charts: B.1, B.2 ]
	Logistics of Oil in the Asia Pacific War, America’s T-2 Tanker, Japan’s Oil Tanker Fleet, Raw Materials Issues of the US Economy, Liberty Ships ‘to go’, Attack Cargo Ships, LSTs and Higgins Boats, Japan’s Cargo Ship Problems, Japan’s Air Force Logistics, US Supply Logistics in the Asia Pacific Region, Operation Olympic and Japan’s Logistical Denouement [Photos]

C.	Economics of the Pacific War: The 'New Deal' Mobilized [Charts: C.1, C.2, C.3, C.4, C.5, C.6, C.7, C.8, C.9, C.10, C.11, C.12, C.13, C.14, C.15 ]
	Management of the US Wartime Economy, Guns and Butter, Inflation and ‘General Max’, Production Line and Management Systems, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, Management, Labor, Blacks and Women, Managing the Scientists, Expansion of America’s Productive Capacity, US Aircraft Production, Tanks, Artillery, Trucks, Ordnance and the Problem of Obsolescence, Electronics, Radio, and Radar, Was the Depression a Boon or Hindrance to US War Mobilization?, Japan’s Wartime Economy, Conclusion [Photos]

D.	‘Victory Disease’: The Japanese Empire: From Co-Prosperity to Tyranny [Charts: D.1, D.2 ]
	The Four Phases of Japan’s Imperial Expansion, The Economics and Philosophy of Japan’s Co-Prosperity Sphere, Old Empire, Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria, The Structures of Japan’s New Empire, Slave Labor in Japan and in the Field, Cruelty and Suppression, Prisoners of War, The Psychology of Brutality, Unit 731 and the Secrets of Medical Experimentation, Conclusion, [Photos]

E.	Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze [October 1944 to August 1945] [Charts: E.1 ]
	Introduction, Halsey: After Leyte Gulf, Kamikaze: Individual Beginnings, The Formal Adoption of a Kamikaze as a Strategy, Recruitment, Motivation and Training, Japanese Government Propaganda, Developments in Kamikaze Technology and the US Response, Naval Kamikaze and Yamato’s Suicide Mission, US Defense Tactics, Fight to the Death and Operation KETSU (Decisive), Admiral Ugaki, The Last Kamikaze, The Cost and Effectiveness of the Kamikaze Campaign, Kamikaze: A Unique Japanese Phenomenon? [Photos]

F.	American Intelligence in the Pacific War
	ULTRA [Photos]

G.	Could Japan Have Won the Pacific War?
	Introduction , Distance, Logistics and Extension of Power , Mobilization, Logistics, Isolationism and the Will to Fight , Weapons that could have won Japan the War , Strategies for Japanese Victory , Conclusion

H.	Month by Month Timeline of the Pacific War [December 1941 - August 1945]

I.	The 'Pacific War': Sundry Tables and Lists

J.	Pacific War Photographs

K.	The Battle of Hong Kong
	Hong Kong [Photos]

L.	The Battles of Attu and Kiska
	Attu and Kiska [Photos]

M.	Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War
	Summary, Comparison of Pacific War Aircraft Carriers, Essex Class Carriers, US Light Carriers, Japanese fleet carriers [Photos]

N.	The Role of Oil in the Pacific War [Charts: N.1, N.2, N.3, N.4, N.5]
	Oil’s Early History, Development of the Oil Industry in the United States, Royal Dutch Shell, The Growth of Oil Fired Engines in the Marine Industry, The Rise of the Automobile, Tanks and Trucks Transform Battlefield Mobility, Aviation Gasoline, Interwar Development of the Aeronautical Industry, Global Oil Output, Oil and the Decision for War, Conclusion [Photos]

O.	Japanese - Soviet Conflict in Siberia, Mongolia and Manchuria [April 1945–5 September 1945] [Maps: 39.1, 39.2, 39.3, 39.4, 39.5, 39.6]
	Introduction, Russo-Japanese Relations from the Late Nineteenth Century, The Trans-Siberian Railway Transforms the Geopolitics of Northeast Asia, The Battle of Lake Khasan and Amur River Clashes, The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact, The Yalta Conference, Japanese Preparations for the Defense of Manchuria, Deployment of Soviet Forces, Soviet Invasion of Northwest Manchuria from Mongolia, Invasion of Northeast Manchuria from Far Eastern Siberia, The Battle of Mutanchiang, The Battle of Sakhalin Island, The Occupation of the Kuril Islands The Significance of the Soviet Invasions

E. Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze

Naval Kamikaze and Yamato’s Suicide Mission; [Map: 33.2] In addition to kamikaze planes, the Navy also developed kamikaze mini-subs known as kaiten. These one-man kamikaze submarines carried a 3,418lb warhead. In September 1944 the Imperial Japanese Navy opened a new school for torpedo boats in Kawatana (Nagasaki Prefecture). The school specialized in the training of frogmen and crews for midget submarines. To this list of specialties was added suicide boats (shinyo) and manned torpedoes, a naval equivalent of the ‘baka bomb’.

In October, Captain Miyazaki, who was sent to Kawatana as chief instructor offered his 400 students the choice of volunteering for training as kaiten or shinyo pilots; addressing his students he told them ‘I have new orders for you. You came here to prepare yourselves for conventional torpedo boats. You have just learned of two other weapons that have been authorized for study in this school. Starting tomorrow either of three courses of study will be open to you.’³⁰ 150 of his students chose to train as kaiten operators.

At Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, seventy suicide boats attacked MacArthur’s amphibious forces on the night of 9 January 1945. Most of them were sunk by gunfire but six got through and struck transport ships, four LSTs and two LCIs. One of the latter was sunk. A similar attack sank a US submarine chaser on 31 January. The amphibious invasion of Okinawa in March saw further attacks but only one suicide boat got through and managed to sink an LSM-12. Although the kaiten were a largely ineffective weapon, they did carry out a surprise attack on the US logistical base at Ulithi Atoll that accounted for the sinking of the tanker USS Mississinewa in a massive explosion that killed sixty-three sailors. In hindsight it is now known that the biggest test of the shinyo and kaiten would have come had the Japanese mainland been invaded. Most of the Navy pilots trained for these suicide vehicles were being prepared for this eventuality.

Perhaps the ultimate suicide mission was the last voyage of the super-battleship Yamato. The great ship, which had survived the Battle of Leyte Gulf, was lurking in Japan’s heavily defended Inland Sea, safe from the ravages outside. Admiral Toyoda ordered the Yamato, and the accompanying heavy cruiser Yahagi, to set out for Okinawa. Toyoda informed his commanders that

The fate of our Empire truly rests upon this one action. I have called for the organisation of a surface special attack unit for a breakthrough operation of unrivalled bravery so that the power of the imperial navy may be felt in this one action in order that the brilliant tradition of the Imperial Navy’s surface forces may be exalted and glory handed down to posterity.³¹

Other commanders were more realistic. Rear-Admiral Keizi Komura, aboard the Yahagi addressed his commanders and skeptically told them that they had been ordered “to engage in a kamikaze mission. No, this is not even a kamizake mission, for that implies the chance of chalking up a worthy target… such an operation would be a genuine suicide sortie.”³² In the discussions that followed there was rancorous debate between those who agreed with the mission while others openly attacked the stupendous, senseless waste of life. It was a meeting that showed that huge cracks were now appearing in the previous façade of blind obedience. The mission would go ahead nonetheless. As Vice-Admiral Ryunosuke Kasaka argued, “the whole nation would hate the Navy if the war should end with Yamato intact” and argued that the great battle ship was being spoken of as “a floating hotel for idle, inept admirals”.³³

Having scraped together the 4,000 tons of fuel needed to make a one-way voyage, the Yamato set sail early from Tokuyama on 6 April 1945. At midday, reconnaissance planes from the USS Enterprise’s carrier group spotted the Yamato and Admiral Mitscher launched a series of airstrikes that caught Japan’s great battleship some 175 miles south of Kyushu. The Yamato attempted to dodge torpedoes and she and her escort ships blazed away at the incoming aircraft for several hours before finally keeling over and sinking at 2.17 p.m. in the South China Sea after being riddled with dozens of hits. Over 3,000 Japanese sailors perished. Accompanying destroyers picked up just a handful of Yamato’s crew.

Appendices - Hirohito's War

E. Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze

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