Reading Twilight of the Gods

Ian W. Toll's magnificent "Pacific War Trilogy."

Back in 2015 I bought Pacific Crucible (2012) by Ian W. Toll at a deep discount (I think I paid $6 or something on amazon).  My library contains one shelf of books on the Pacific Theater of World War Two, most of which pertains to specific naval or island battles that were the hallmark of that conflict.  I bought the book because it was a great price for a nice hardback.  After reading it, my aim became to invest in an unfolding and updated general history of the theater.  I wanted this to compliment others that I owned including John Costello's excellent single-volume The Pacific War 1941-1945 (1981) and John Toland's classic two-volume telling, The Rising Sun (1970).
 

Pacific Crucible did not disappoint, covering the theater from Pearl Harbor through the critical Battle of Midway, roughly a seven-month period which basically ended any chance the Japanese may have had to “win” the war, even though the fighting would continue for several more years.  Toll does not make this point, exactly, even though it is true.  Toll's focus, however, was not so much on the island fighting that took place as it was on the US naval aspects of the conflict.  The book was almost entirely about naval operations.  There is very little in it about ground units.

Eager for more, I bought the next volume, The Conquering Tide when it was published in 2015.  This covered a greater span of time, from the Battle of Guadalcanal in August 1942 through the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944.  Again, the focus was primarily on the naval aspects of the war with specific island battles covered in a few pages or paragraphs.  While not entirely new to me, this naval-centric perspective offered a more detailed look at the operational conduct of the ships and aircraft on both sides in a manner I found informative and entertaining.  Toll is an excellent writer and brought many new details to my attention.  

Since it was the ground arm of the US Navy, Toll would offer more details on the 1st Marine Division and other marine fighting on the islands.  While the army divisions were mentioned in a few detailed sentences here and there, many more paragraphs were devoted to the marines.  Guadalcanal, for example, was chiefly viewed from the perspective of supplying the island by ship, the air war over the island, and the various naval engagements which directly affected the ability to supply the island.  But there are short sections describing the intensity of the island fighting to augment the reason both sides were trying to keep the island supplied to begin with.

So it was a no-brainer to purchase Twilight of the Gods (2020), the final volume of Toll's “Pacific War Trilogy.”  I only got around to reading it recently.  At 792 pages (not counting the end notes and index) it was a big chuck to bite off but I found it easy to read and Toll's wealth of technical, biographical, geo-political, and military information was, at times, spell-binding.  Altogether, the trilogy offers the reader well over 1,800 pages of well-researched an superbly written history.  Quite a journey for anyone interested in this epic story.

Twilight of the Gods begins with a surprisingly in-depth discussion of the Battle of Peleliu, this time from the ground.  There are many things about this battle that made it so horrific.  This was a battle for the tiniest of islands.  It was fought mostly on hard corral, which created tremendous difficulties in defending yourself (you can't dig into corral).  It created problems of sanitation (no latrines), wound care, sufficient drinking water, and exposure to the sun.  All of this in addition to the fighting, of course.

Peleliu was a glimpse of things to come in the final year of the Pacific War.  The Japanese were well-dug in, cutting caves and catacombs that were interconnected deep inside the high ground.  The 1st Marine Division pushed ashore believing the fight would be a cake walk.  The commander thought it would take 4 or 5 days to clear the island.  It ended up taking almost 3 months. The fighting was so intense that the 1st Marines were mostly rotated off the island for R&R before the battle ended.  They had suffered 1,300 dead among 6,786 wounded.

“Of the 28,000 marines and soldiers who fought on the island, nearly 40 percent were casualties, including about 1,800 killed and 8,000 wounded.  Nearly the entire Japanese garrison of 11,000 perished.” (page 158)  In this way, Toll let's the reader know that, although the US had accomplished much in defeating Japan from the perspective of the naval war, these final island battles would be the bloodiest of the war.  The vast majority of US casualties on Peleliu were marines.  Toll states that three marine regiments were “knocked out of action” and have to be “rebuilt over time.”  All for possession of an short air strip in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

This brief shift of focus to an island battle leads the reader in to the build-up for the largest naval battle in history, The Battle of Leyte Gulf.  By this point in the war, the Japanese navy was long-past its prime and its carrier air fleet was inferior both technically and in terms of training to its US counterpart.  Most of the best Japanese pilots had been shot down in previous engagements.  The few remaining skilled airmen were being held back for defense of Japan's home islands.  

As their situation grew more desperate, the Japanese cultural sense of honor was twisted into a bizarre suicidal cult.  Toll makes it clear that this was a perversion of the traditional “master race ideology of imperial bushido.  None of those ideas were anchored in the samurai tradition...In 1944, there was a simple, pragmatic case for aerial suicide tactics.  The new crop of Japanese aviators was simply not good enough to hit the enemy fleet using conventional bombing or torpedo attacks.” (page 198)

The US Navy had shot down over 1,000 Japanese planes in October 1944 alone, with little or no damage to the Americans.  The “Divine Wind Special Attack Force” (later known as the kamikazes) came into existence out of necessity.  It reflected a profound shift in Japanese thinking.  If they could no longer win the war, they would all “die with honor.”  This included the Imperial Navy itself.

I have several other books on the massive naval engagement around Leyte Gulf and Toll handles the story traditionally for the most part.  The battle was basically five separate fights, each different in many respects. The audacious Japanese plan was to use its severely weakened Imperial Navy against the vast US Navy “to suffer glorious annihilation, guns blazing to the last, thus sustaining the Japanese navy's honor in defeat.”

The Japanese plan involved two surface fleets approaching separately through the various straits of the Philippine Islands.  Their mission was to strike the American landing site at Leyte Gulf and hopefully disrupt the US Navy enough to force the withdrawal of American ground troops from the islands.  As these two fleets approached, the remaining Japanese aircraft carriers would approach from the north, launch their planes in a one-way attack on the US fleet supporting the invasion, then turn around and draw the American carriers away from the Philippines so that the other two fleets could make their attacks without air attacks from the US carrier fleet.

Because of logistical considerations and the usual overly complex Japanese plan, the three components of their attack were not optimally coordinated.  The first Japanese fleet to reach the Philippines was annihilated by the US through a combination of PT Boats, submarines and battleships in the Battle of Surigao Srait.  It was an overwhelming American victory but it also drew a large portion of the surface ships south – away from Leyte Gulf.

Meanwhile, the US Carrier Fleet under William “Bull” Halsey, wildly popular at home for his continued encouragement to “kill more Japs” to win the war, took the bait when it came under attack from the Japanese carriers, which were far to the north.  Toll writes that Halsey was “obsessed” with destroying the enemy carriers, effectively knocking Japan's navy out of the war.  So he ordered his more powerful carriers north to locate and sink the Japanese flattops, which were now devoid of aircraft.  

So, the Japanese plan worked in this regard.  Halsey left the Leyte Gulf area with only a few “escort” carriers to protect the American invasion force and headed north as fast as he could.  In the resulting Battle off Cape Engano the American sank the four remaining Japanese carriers and some of their escort ships.  It was another overwhelming victory of the the US.

But the Battle of Leyte Gulf was far from over.  As Halsey headed north and much of the remaining US force was defeating the Japanese south of Leyte Gulf, Admiral Takeo Kurita approached with the main Japanese surface fleet.  With him were the two largest battleships in the world, the Yamato and the Musashi.  The latter ship was sunk by US aircraft before Kurita's fleet made it through the Philippines en route to Leyte.  

But the Yamato and most of the other Japanese battleships survived.  Suddenly, the Japanese fleet found itself in the best possible scenario, facing several American escort carriers guarded only by their destroyer screen.  Kurita's orders were to attack everything in sight without regard to the safety of his force.  This is a tense story that has been told in more detail in other accounts, but Toll certainly does it justice.  This was the part of the larger engagement known as the Battle off Samar.

The book is filled with facts of which I was previously unaware.  An example of this is the detail Toll goes in to regarding the massive armament of the Yamato.  Its main guns fired 3,200 pound shells that would reach 20,000 feet at the height of their trajectory, traveling at 1,500 feet per second, which meant that the incoming salvo would hit its target silently, faster than the sound of it could arrive.  

Though the ship did not score a direct hit, Toll suggests that one shot probably inflicted critical damage to the escort carrier White Plains.  The near-miss explosion of the shell ripped a gigantic shock wave through the carrier requiring heroic work by her crew to save the ship.  “...the Yamato holds the singular honor of scoring the longest-ranged naval gunfire hit in history – 34,587 yards, or nearly 20 miles.” (page 266)

Oddly, Kurita did not follow orders and attack without regard to the consequences.  Though his attack was successful, his own ships had been disarrayed in the process and, by the time he had his fleet in order again, he deemed the other carriers too far away to catch.  Toll makes it clear that this was a mistake on Kurita's part.  Of all the Japanese objectives at Leyte Gulf, the pursuit of the US carriers by the main Japanese fleet was precisely what they had planned.  It might have inflicted grievous damage, but Kurita called off his pursuit and the Battle off Samar ended with a whimper.

As things turned out, it really would not have mattered much anyway.  As I said, Japan had already lost the war.  Due to the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, however, it was taking a lot of time for America to win the war.  One of the primary ways America won was through a highly successful submarine campaign.  Toll brings the reader in to close contact with this aspect of the war through the story of the US sub Wahoo.    

Japan depended completely upon their merchant shipping to bring resources (particularly oil) to the home islands from places they had captured by at the beginning of the war.  US submarines greatly damaged the Japanese ability to manufacture and wage war by simply sinking the merchant ships, effectively cutting the home islands off from the resources.  Wahoo was one of the most successful US submarines, credited with as many as 24 sinkings.

Toll uses Wahoo to illustrate some of the challenges facing the Americans in this aspect of the war.  Perhaps the biggest problem was faulty torpedoes.  It took the US many months to figure out why so many of their torpedoes were not exploding on impact or, worse, why sometimes they mysteriously turned around and approached the sub that fired them, resulting in frantic evasive maneuvers.  By 1943 these issue were largely resolved and the effectiveness of subs like Wahoo greatly increased.

Toll details the final seven voyages of Wahoo which was sunk on October 11, 1943 while attempting operations in the previously unchallenged Sea of Japan.  It was the first such submarine to approach so closely to Japan and represented the daring of American crews to attack sea lanes that were considered hazardous.  Overall, US submarines sank 1.2 million tons of shipping in 1943 and 2.5 million tons in 1944, disrupting much of Japan's already inferior manufacturing capacity.  Thereafter, the monthly totals began to decline due to “a relative scarcity of targets.”

Fighting in the Philippines continued unabated on Leyte and, later, Luzon.  The Japanese were fanatical in their resistance.  Toll graphically details the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in the waning stages of the fighting in and around Manila and elsewhere.  In many cases, the Japanese were ordered to kill all civilians.  

Toll writes: “In China, Manchuria, Malaya, and elsewhere the Japanese army had summarily wiped out entire communities suspected of aiding guerrilla or enemy forces, a practice known as Genju Shobun (“Harsh Disposal”) or Genchi Shobun (“Local Disposal”).  For more than three years, Japanese forces in the Philippines had given proof of their capacity for wanton violence and sadism directed against innocents.  But the stinging humiliation of defeat, combined with jubilation among ordinary Filipinos [at possible liberation by the US], incited an unprecedented series of savage reprisals.” (page 448)

The Battle of Manila brought out the worst of these.  Women and children were considered guerrillas and Japanese commanders ordered that all of them be put to death.  Mass murder ensued even as heavy fighting continued between Japanese and American troops for control of the Philippines.  Toll summaries: “The sack of Manila exposed the worst pathologies of Japan's military culture and ideology.  It was a glaring indictment of the 'no surrender' principle, revealing the depraved underside of what the Japanese glorified as gyokusai, 'smashed jewels.' [Japanese troops] were under direct orders, by officers whose authority was absolute and even godlike, to execute every man, woman, and child within their lines.  Many were instructed to perform the ghastly work with bayonets, or by burning their victims alive, in order to save ammunition.” (page 460)

Some Japanese soldiers refused to carry out these orders, but the horrific genocide, whose full extent went unreported in the US, served to impact American strategy about the fighting yet to come.  It dehumanized the Japanese in the eyes of many American commanders, made them into savages, a process that would only accelerate in the months ahead.  Overall, Japan lost 368,700 dead in the Philippines with only about 40,000 taken prisoner (after many months of fighting).  This was at the cost of 10,380 American dead out of 47,000 casualties.  Disease counting for another 90,400 American casualties.

Interestingly, Toll does not give a final estimate as to the number of Filipino civilian deaths.  Often there were over 1,000 per day, mostly burned to death.  The war in the Pacific was getting deadlier in every way as the war entered 1945.  The Battle of Iwo Jima would cost 24,053 American casualties.  The Japanese force of 22,000 was wiped out but for a few hundred prisoners.  Near the end many Japanese committed suicide.  

This was shortly followed by the Battle of Okinawa.  “No matter how you measured it, Okinawa had been a singularly harrowing battle.  American casualties (including naval, air, and ground) were the highest of any amphibious fight in the Pacific – 49,151, including 12,520 killed or missing and 36,361 wounded.  Among the dead was General Buckner, killed by artillery fire on June 18, the highest-ranking U.S. Military officer lost to enemy fire in World War II...The navy had suffered its worst beating of the Pacific War, with 368 ships damaged and thirty-six sunk, including fifteen amphibious ships and twelve destroyers.  The navy lost 4,907 officers and sailors killed in action, most in kamikaze attacks.” (page 639)

“But General [Mitsuru] Ushijima's forces had held out for nearly twelve weeks, inflicting heavy casualties on their enemies.  Despite steady pressure from Tokyo and Formosa to launch tactically foolish counterattacks, the army largely stuck to its original plan of stubborn yard-by-yard terrain defense.  In the end, as intended, nearly the entire army was lost, amounting to nearly 90,000 combatant and service troops killed, and 11,000 captured.” (page 640)  Toll goes on to point out that 94,000 Okinawan civilians were killed in the battle.  

Yes, the war in the Pacific was getting very bloody.  Though complete and detailed, there is not much new in Toll's telling of these two battles.  His mix of ground unit with sea action is more balanced than in the first two volumes.  This is probably because the two battles in question were enormous in size, though they were fought for comparatively small islands.

For me, the more impressive and interesting story Toll weaves into the final 300 pages of the book is that of the American B-29 Superfortress bombers.  Initially, “Japanese civilians regarded the B-29s with curiosity, fascination, and even admiration.  Whenever the tiny silver crosses appeared overhead, they crowded out into the streets craning their necks and pointing to the sky.” (page 527)  But this fascination soon turned to fear and existential dread.

With the capture of Saipan and Tinian, special two-mile long air strips were constructed for the B-29's.  From the long range of those islands (about 1,600 miles) they could hit most of Japan, flying at altitudes most Japanese fighters could not reach.   Originally, they were based in China as part of a political arrangement by FDR.  Tolls explains how this was a logistical nightmare.  Ultimately, the B-29s were all transferred to the islands of Saipan and Tinian, where massive facilities were built specifically for these innovative bombers.

But their effectiveness was nominal the begin with.  Bombing from 20,000 feet and higher was inaccurate and many tons of bombs were being wasted.  The commander of the bombers, General Curtis LeMay, decided to alter their missions.  Instead of the higher altitude, they would fly much lower, 5,000 feet or less.  This would attract far more Japanese fighters and antiaircraft fire, but the B-29s were equipped with multiple 50-caliber machine guns to handle the fighters.  Compensating for the risk would be an exponential increase in hitting the intended targets with monumental lethal force.

This lead to a bombing campaign against Japan that could be construed as genocidal.  Certainly, it was a crime against humanity to the extent that civilians were often knowingly targeted by the Americans.  Of the great March 10, 1945 firebombing raid over Tokyo, Toll writes:

“According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, the air raid killed 88,000, injured 41,000, and left almost a million homeless.  About 267,000 houses were completely burned down.  Sixteen square miles of the city lay in ashes.  In later estimates, the Japanese government put the death count at more than 100,000; other estimates ranged as high as 125,000...It seems likely that the March 9 – 10 firebombing of Tokyo killed more people, at least initially, than the atomic bombings of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.” (page 553)

No other conventional bombing mission against Japan was quite as destructive as this particular raid.  But the B-29s flew often and kept bombing city after city, day after day, for months.  Many were shot down by the Japanese.  About 4% of all B-29 takeoffs had to abort due to blowing an engine or some other mechanical mishap.  They frequently returned to base from a bombing run all shot up, effectively out of action until all the necessary repairs could be made.  But that did not matter.  The crews could simply board a vacant B-29 and keep flying.

By now, Toll tells us, this bombing campaign was at the end of an extraordinary supply chain.  American production was peaking and Germany was almost out of the war.  The priority for this massive industrial capacity shifted to the Pacific.  So many aircraft were now being built that they were flown to remote airstrips throughout the islands and left there.  The auxiliary pilots returned home to fly more over to the islands.  It was far more aircraft than there were trained combat pilots to conduct missions.  

There was far more of everything than the army and marines needed too.  The soldiers and artillery could not possibly fire all the ammunition that was available to them.  The Americans were fighting with excessive logistical support.  Meanwhile, Japan was hobbling along, rationing everything, much of their population on the verge of malnutrition.

Part of that logistical glut was due to pre-planning for Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan.  American politicians and commanders felt some trepidation about the situation.  To invade the homeland of Japan would likely be an even bloodier affair than Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  General LeMay was arguing to simply bomb them into surrendering.  General Douglas MacArthur, after his hard-fought victory in the Philippines, advocated invasion after sufficient build-up.

Toll does a great job of explaining all the geopolitical aspects of the war during this time.  The Potsdam Declaration was issued calling for Japan's “unconditional surrender.”  Japan was experiencing internal turmoil, with the prime minister and cabinet changing a couple of times within a few months, reflective of their confusion about how to respond to their hopeless situation.  Surrender was unthinkable to most Japanese.  They had never lost a war and the army and navy were still mostly in charge of the government.  A peace movement was trying to gain traction, but was met with timid support at best.

Toll points out that Prime Minister Kantoro Suzuki held a press conference to respond to the Declaration.  “In an apparently off-the-cuff remark, he told the press that the government intended to 'mokusatsu' the Potsdam Declaration.  This idiomatic Japanese expression translated literally as 'to kill with silence,' but could also be translated as to 'ignore,' 'reject,' or 'take no notice of.' […] The phrase was ambiguous even in Japanese, let alone in English translation.  Without clear contrary guidance form the government, the Japanese press reported that the prime minister had rejected the declaration with a contemptuous flourish.” (page 687)

Unfortunately, President Truman took this to mean that Japan was telling him “to go to hell,” a catastrophic interpretation.  The B-29 raids continued all over Japan.  Tens of thousands of civilians were dying.  And Truman ordered two atomic bombs shipped to a B-29 base where the 509th Composite Group was located.  This special group of airmen was separated from other pilots and personnel.  Its mission was top secret.  The group itself only knew that they were to deploy a special weapon called “the gadget” from high altitude.  They conducted practice runs with “pumpkin bombs” of the same size and weight as they would actually drop in the near future.  

With the gigantic B-29 being somewhat of a risk upon takeoff (almost one out of twenty had to abort and several crashed) the special crews trained to assemble the atomic bombs flew with the aircraft.  Only after a successful takeoff was the bomb assembly completed and activated.  I found this to be a remarkable fact that I did not know before.  After the gadget was dropped the plane was to perform a sharp turn, gain speed by descending altitude to fly away from the target as quickly as possible.      

48 seconds after it was dropped over Hiroshima, the world changed.  “...the interior of the plane was suddenly suffused with a blinding silver-bluish light...”  The blast of gamma rays upon the aircraft was sufficient to activate the fillings in the pilots teeth.  Everyone taste lead in their mouth.  On the ground 20,000 people were instantly vaporized.  “The initial shockwave raced away form the epicenter at a speed greater than sound, some 984 miles per hour.  Streetcars were lifted from their tracks and scattered like toys.  Clothing was torn from bodies.  Nearly all wooden buildings within 2.3 kilometers were completely leveled, and about half of all such buildings to a radius of 3.2 kilometers.  Later, investigators found the shadows of people caught within the inner radius around the hypocenter.  They had been vaporized, but their bodies had left faint silhouettes on the pavement or on nearby walls.” (page 697)

Still, it wasn't enough.  At first the Japanese government did not believe it had happened.  After confirmation they still could not decide what to do next.  Truman ordered the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki.  Toll is careful to point out that, although Truman told the public that the targets were military in nature, these cities were of little military value.  Toll does not make this point, but it seems reasonable that the greatest value of these cities was that they had not yet been bombed at all and the damage from the atomic blast could be singularly evaluated.

Toll ends this impressive finale of his magnificent trilogy with the delicate final negotiations to preserve the Emperor's title and throne, considered sacred to Japanese society.  And the resulting signing of the surrender document, upon which many Japanese of various ranks committed suicide.  Perhaps the most flamboyant of these was the final attack mission of Admiral Matome Ugaki who “refused to believe the 'hateful news' that the emperor had decided to surrender.”  He had sent thousands of kamikaze pilots to their deaths in the final months of the war, which, if insufficient, turned out to be Japan's most effective weapon.  Ugaki had ordered five planes to escort him on a final suicide mission against the American navy.  Eleven planes and crews ultimately volunteered.  All wearing Rising Sun headbands, they took off and were quickly in formation.

“According to the U.S. Navy reports, a handful of enemy planes had attempted diving attacks on transports anchored off Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa.  All were shot down by antiaircraft fire, and no American vessels were hit or damaged.  The next morning, the crew of a tank landing ship found wreckage of Japanese warplanes in the shallows off the island.  The bodies were extracted from the wreckage and buried on the beach.

“Back at the Fifth Air Fleet barracks in Kyushu, an orderly collected Ugakis's personal belongings, intending to send them on to his next of kin.  He found a handwritten note, evidently written earlier that day.  It read: 'Having a dream, I will go up into the sky.'” (page 744)

This is a first-class military history.  The story itself is extraordinary and complex.  Impressively, Toll does not get in his own way in telling it.  There is not much romantic glorifying or social critique.  The reader is given all the facts in an entertaining and coherent fashion and left to their own devices to cast judgment (or not) upon what did or did not happen.  That is what the best history always is; certainly not ambiguous but without a prejudice toward hindsight, as straightforwardly as possible.

There is so much more contained in this superb book that I could not touch upon.  I highly recommend the long journey Toll concludes with Twilight of the Gods.  It is not a complete history of the Pacific War.  You won't find much about operations in Burma and China in here, for example.  But it is a complete history of the US Navy's role in defeating Imperial Japan at sea, along with marines, soldiers, and aircrews involved in the island war.  I feel satisfied that my Pacific War bookshelf of my library is practically complete thanks to Toll.

Note: Today marks the 76th anniversary of the great Tokyo firebombing.