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Authors: Akira Yoshimura

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BOOK: One Man's Justice
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On the evening of the eighteenth of June, the mood at Western headquarters grew sombre. On the radio they had heard the farewell message from Lieutenant-General Ushijima Mitsuru, commander of the Thirty-second Army in Okinawa, to Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo, informing
his superiors that he was about to give his life for the Emperor's cause. ‘While our forces have fought with supreme heroism over the last two months, the enemy's overwhelming numerical superiority on land, sea and air means that this struggle has entered its closing stages. I most humbly report that the final preparations are in hand to lead those surviving soldiers to a glorious death.'

The final battle for Okinawa was a struggle of apocalyptic proportions. According to reports from pilots of reconnaissance planes, the pummelling of the southern tip of the island by concentrated bombardment from warships, ground-based artillery and the air was such that it looked as though there had been a huge volcanic eruption, with streams of tracer bullets, raging fires and plumes of grey and black smoke all adding a macabre effect to the hellish scene. Since the battle for Saipan and the struggles for the islands across the northern Pacific, non-combatants had been deeply embroiled in the conflict and had even lost their lives, together with the soldiers of each defending garrison. No doubt this tragedy had been repeated in Okinawa, with scores of old men, women and children losing their lives in the bombardment or choosing to die by their own hand.

That night, the news came that a force of fifty B-29s based in Saipan had attacked Hamamatsu and another thirty had raided the city of Yokkaichi, both attacks involving incendiaries and resulting in firestorms so destructive that the targets were virtually burnt to cinders. To date, the number of aircraft involved in bombing raids on targets in Japan had soared to over twenty thousand, claiming some
four hundred thousand lives, destroying one million six hundred thousand homes and producing six million three hundred thousand refugees.

The next morning brought blue skies, with the meteorological office forecasting fine weather all over Kyushu. To those in the tactical operations centre, this meant a drastically increased likelihood of large-scale bombing raids, and orders were issued for spotters to be particularly vigilant.

The daylight hours passed uneventfully, and when the sun dipped low in the evening the bright red of the western sky signalled that another fine day would follow. Within minutes of the sunset the sky was a mass of twinkling stars.

That night, at 7.50 p.m., a report came in from an electronic listening-post set to cover the Hyuga coastline that a force of aircraft was heading north-west over that quadrant of the Kyushu defensive perimeter. As there was nothing to suggest that this was friendly aircraft on patrol, Takuya immediately assumed that it was a force of B-29s from Saipan and issued an air-raid warning to all areas of northern Kyushu.

Knowing that a lone Superfortress had flown a reconnaissance mission over Fukuoka the previous night, Takuya expected that before long Kyushu's largest city would bear the brunt of an attack. Thousands of tons of incendiaries had already reduced major urban centres such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka to scorched wastelands, but so far the attacks on Kyushu had mostly been limited to military targets or munitions factories, and the island had been spared the
saturation raids aimed at razing towns and cities to the ground. Okinawa was now completely in American hands, and it was likely that their next move would be to obliterate the cities of Kyushu before launching an invasion force on to its beaches.

Red lights lit up on the otherwise darkened map of Kyushu on the wall of the operations room as one report after another of aircraft intruding into the perimeter came in from electronic listening-points. The sequence of the lights indicated that the enemy bombers were proceeding on a course toward northern Kyushu.

Processing the incoming data, Takuya realised that this force, comprising around seventy aircraft, had split into two separate groups somewhere over Hita city in Oita prefecture. Around ten planes were continuing straight on their original course, while the other sixty had veered slightly to the north-west. It was presumed that the ten aircraft were on what would be the fifth mission to drop mines in the Kanmon Strait, adding to the total of eighty planes that had already done so, and that the other, larger group was heading for Fukuoka. When incoming reports confirmed beyond a doubt that Fukuoka was indeed the target, the tactical operations centre immediately issued an air-raid warning for the city and its environs.

The first word that intruders had entered Fukuoka airspace came from Dazaifu, just south-east of the metropolitan area, and was soon followed by reports of aircraft sighted above the city itself. Takuya knew from the data that the bombers were deploying at a low level over the city, and by now would have started their bombing runs. The intruders
appeared to have followed the line of the Nakagawa river into the city and then dropped their load on Shin-Yanagi-Machi and the Higashi–Nakasu area, resulting in a rash of reports of fires raging in those areas.

Those in the tactical operations centre, a construction set partially into the ground and cased in reinforced concrete, were removed from the thunderous blasts of exploding bombs and the clamour of a city in the throes of incineration. Takuya and his fellow officers stood staring at the red lamps on the map of Kyushu stretched across one wall. The lights indicating the Fukuoka metropolitan area remained on, as did those representing the Kanmon Strait, confirming that the smaller force of ten aircraft had reached its predicted target.

Takuya sat motionless, staring at the map on the wall in front of his desk. Although the sky above the headquarters building was swarming with enemy planes, and the area around their safe haven was probably engulfed in flames, the atmosphere within the operations room was almost transquil. As the officer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligence, Takuya focused his attention solely on imparting information about the movements of enemy aircraft, and to him there was no difference between planes directly above and planes attacking a more distant region within the defensive perimeter.

Anti-aircraft batteries and searchlight units along the Kanmon Strait coastline had been reinforced in late May, and reports were now coming in that these units were engaging the Superfortresses dropping mines in shipping channels. Two hours after the initial sightings, these bombers
seemed to have finished dropping their mines and had turned back south. Around the same time, reports began to come in that the force that had targeted Fukuoka had started to move in a southerly direction. The Superfortresses had clearly completed their mission and were heading back.

One by one, red lamps went out as the smaller force of intruders headed south from the Kanmon Strait, then joined up again over Hita city with the main force which had ravaged Fukuoka, and changed to a course directly south-east. A short time later the aircraft were detected crossing the line between Hosojima in Miyazaki prefecture and Sukumo in Kochi prefecture. Similar reports followed from the listening-points covering the line between Aojima farther down the Miyazaki coastline and Sukumo over in Shikoku, confirming that the bombers were about to disappear across the Hyuga Sea, heading back toward Saipan.

Orders were issued to give the ‘all clear' for all areas of the Kyushu region, and only then was Takuya at last able to leave his desk. The enemy planes were officially recorded as having left Japanese airspace at 3.37 a.m., seven hours and forty minutes after the original intrusion.

Takuya wanted to see for himself what the situation was outside the confines of the operations room, and the lack of incoming reports meant in effect that he was finished for the night, so there was no reason not to slip away for a short time.

Delegating the remaining duties to his subordinates, Takuya hurried out of the room and down the dimly lit corridor. The moment he opened the double steel doors he was consumed by a deafening roar. Each breath of the
superheated air seemed to scorch the inside of his lungs. Everything on the outside – the trees, the headquarters building, the ground – was bright red. Powerful gusts of wind lashed the branches of trees, and singed leaves danced across the ground.

Takuya stepped away from the doors and ran a few paces to the edge of the backyard, where he stopped, riveted by the terrifying scene before his eyes. Huge swirling towers of flames reached skyward from a seething conflagration covering an almost endless expanse below him. One thunderous roar followed another, resounding like waves crashing into a cliff, hurling sheets of fire and angry streams of sparks into the night sky. The barracks just to the west of where Takuya stood had been razed, and a frenzied swarm of soldiers were using hoses and buckets to throw water on to the headquarters building. The men were all tinged red, like everything else in this inferno.

Takuya had heard reports of cities being devastated by incendiaries, but the destruction he was witnessing far surpassed anything he had ever imagined. Like masses of towering whitecaps soaring up from a tempestuous sea, myriad flames pressed upward from the heart of the blaze. His face felt as if it was on fire, and billows of smoke stung his eyes.

The city contained no military installations or munitions factories, so the purpose of the fire raid could only have been to kill and maim civilians and reduce their dwellings to ashes. The thought flashed through his mind that the scene he was witnessing had been repeated time and again in other cities and towns all over Japan, with innumerable non-combatants sent to their deaths.

The strength of interceptor fighter units in Kyushu had been dramatically reduced by US bombing attacks on air force facilities in the area, and that night, too, there were no reports of Superfortresses being shot down by fighters, so the anti-aircraft batteries had more or less been left to defend the island's skies themselves.

Takuya blinked in pain as he gazed into the sea of flames.

   

Dawn came, and reports flooded into the tactical operations centre, outlining the damage in Fukuoka city. The fires had been extinguished by around 6 a.m., but apart from the Tenjin-machi and Hakozaki-machi areas, the entire city centre had been burnt to the ground, with an estimated ten thousand dwellings destroyed in the fires. Early accounts suggested that the death toll would be extremely high.

Subsequent reports described citizens who had fled during the night returning that morning to survey the smouldering embers of what had been their homes. Later several dozen people had gathered around the front gate of the headquarters complex, clamouring for the execution of the captive airmen. There were said to be a large number of women among the crowd, and some of them had been weeping as they screamed for the crewmen to be killed. No doubt they were infuriated at the thought that the Americans were still alive, safe from the blaze thanks to the fire-fighting efforts of the garrison. While the prisoners might have been afraid of being burnt alive, they also might have felt some kind of satisfaction in knowing that it was their compatriots who were raining death and destruction on the city below.

Takuya had little difficulty understanding the thinking of the people who had gathered in front of the main gate. The prisoners not only had burnt to death thousands of defenceless old men, women and children, but were now being kept alive with a steady supply of food that the average person in the street could only dream about. Surely there was no reason to let them live any longer.

‘What the hell are they up to at headquarters? They should execute them as soon as possible,' muttered Takuya to himself.

Medical Officer Haruki's name was on the list of dead. In conjunction with his work as deputy head doctor at the military hospital adjacent to the headquarters building, he had been given the honorary rank of lieutenant, and he was attending a doctors' meeting when the air raid started the previous evening. Evidently he had been unable to make it to safety when their building caught fire. The casualty reports also listed the names of several non-commissioned officers and numerous enlisted men and civilian employees working at headquarters. Word also came in of family members of headquarters staff killed in the firestorms that had ravaged the city's residential areas.

Takuya could hear all this news being reported as he worked at his tasks as anti-aircraft intelligence officer. A deterioration in the weather meant that raids were unlikely from Saipan-based aircraft, but all the same, as the possibility of more short-range attacks by bombers flying up the line of the Nansei Islands from bases in Okinawa could not be ruled out, Takuya paid particular attention to reports coming in from the southern Kyushu region.

He had just finished eating a late lunch of sorghum with barley rice and a piece of salted salmon when a staff officer from headquarters briskly entered his room, stepped up to Takuya's desk and announced in an impassioned voice, ‘It's on.'

At Takuya's puzzled look, the lieutenant blurted out that eight of the prisoners in the holding-cells were to be executed, and that this was to be carried out immediately in the courtyard of what used to be a girls' high school, immediately behind the headquarters complex. Takuya was told that the prisoners were to be decapitated, and that headquarters staff with considerable experience in kendo had already been selected. Takuya was to arrange for two of his subordinates to be made available to participate in the executions.

Takuya nodded his understanding and beckoned the two sergeant-majors sitting on the other side of the room to come over to his desk. When he told them they would be taking part in the executions the colour drained from their faces and a look of trepidation came into their eyes.

‘One good clean blow. Don't let us down,' growled Takuya.

The two men stood stiffly at attention as they barked their reply.

They were men with much longer service records than his, including combat experience at the front, and Takuya could not comprehend how they had the gall to show even a trace of apprehension at the mention of the executions. A rumour that one of the men had reputedly succeeded in beheading two Chinese prisoners with successive blows
made their attitude all the more enraging. Possibly their stint at office work on the home front had dulled the mental hardness they would have honed on the battlefield.

BOOK: One Man's Justice
7.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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