The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 [Paperback ed.] 0812968581, 9780812968583

Citation preview

N

A

T

I

0

N

A

L

BESTSELLE

R

"[It] is quite possibly the most readable, yet informative account of the Pacific war." —Chicago Sun-Times

WINNER of the

PULITZER

THE The Decline

PRIZE

of the

988 Hi I 8m HI 8 .

Japanese Empire, 1936-194

r

Wimm •

.

.

■

wmmi ' Nr

AUT

AYS i

/

Boston Public Library Boston, MA 02116

viBidiJ oildu^ noteob

arr^QAM. Ships in the Sky Battle: The Story of the Bulge But Not in Shame The Dillinger Days The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe Adolf Hitler Hitler: The Pictorial Documentary of His Life No Mans Land: 1918, the Last Year of the Great War Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath Gods of War (novel) Occupation (novel) In Mortal Combat Captured by History: One Mans Vision of Our Tumultuous Century

THE RISING SUN

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/risingsundecline00john_1

John Toland

THE RISING

SUN The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire

1936-1945

THE MODERN LIBRARY NEW YORK

2003 Modern Library Paperback Edition Copyright © 1970 and copyright renewed 1998 by John Toland All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Modern Library and the Torchbearer Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. This work was originally published in hardcover in 1970 by Random House, Inc. ISBN 0-8129-6858-1 Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com Printed in the United States of America 4 6 8 9 7 5 3

Contents

Foreword

xiii

Part One—The Roots of War

1. Gekokujo 2. To

the

3

Marco Polo Bridge

3. “Then the War Will Be a Desperate One”

34 54

Part Two—The Lowering Clouds

4. “Go Back to Blank Paper”

89

5. The Fatal Note

121

6.

149

Operation

Z

7. “This War May Come Quicker Than Anyone Dreams”

173

Part Three—Banzai!

8. “I Shall Never Look Back”

211

9. “The Formidable Years That Lie Before Us”

237

10. “For a Wasted Hope and Sure Defeat”

258

11. “To Show Them Mercy Is to Prolong the War”

285

12. “But Not

302

in

Shame”

13. The Tide Turns

321

Part Four—Isle of Death

14. Operation Shoestring

345

15.

364

Green Hell

16. “I Deserve Ten Thousand Deaths”

389

17. The End

412

Part Five—The Gathering Forces

18. Of Mice 19. To

Men

435

the Marianas

467

and

20. “Seven Lives to Repay Our Country!”

498

Vlll

CONTENTS

Part Six—The Decisive Battle

21. “Let No Heart Be Faint”

523

22. The Battle oe Leyte Gulf

546

23. The Battle of Breakneck Ridge

573

24. Debacle

594

Part Seven—Beyond the Bitter End 25. “Our Golden Opportunity”

611

26. “Like Hell with the Fire Out”

639

27. The Flowers of Edo

670

28. The Last Sortie

682

29. The Iron Typhoon

704

30. The Stragglers

727

PART EIGHT—“One Hundred Million Die Together1'1 31. In Quest of Peace

741

32. “That Was Not Any Decision That You Had To Worry About”

760

33. Hiroshima

779

34. ... and Nagasaki

793

35. “To Bear the Unbearable”

810

36. The Palace Revolt

829

37. The Voice of the Crane

851

Epilogue

871

Acknowledgments

879

Sources

883

Notes

905

Index

931

Maps The War in the Pacific

xvi

The Japanese Conquest of Luzon

261

The Slot/Guadalcanal

369

Saipan

491

The Battle of Leyte Gulf

549

The Battle for Leyte

579

I wo J ima

645

Okinawa

707

To Orie and Tokiji

Matsumura

and Paul R. Reynolds

I

Foreword

After World War II most Westerners felt that General Tojo and other Japan¬ ese leaders—indeed the mass of Japanese—were no better than Hitler and his Nazi cohorts, and deserved whatever punishment and misfortune that befell them. Twenty-five years have passed and Japan has recovered from almost total moral and economic disaster to resume a respected place among na¬ tions of the world. Still, the question remains: How could we have come to admire and respect a people who often acted like barbarians during the war? This book, which is largely seen from the Japanese point of view, is an at¬ tempt to answer that question as well as others about the war that changed the face of Asia. Why did a country the size of California launch the suici¬ dal attack on Pearl Harbor which involved it in a death struggle with an enemy ten times stronger? Was war between the two nations, which today find so much in common, inevitable and essential? Did the winning of that war perpetuate American involvement in Asian affairs? I would not have attempted to write this book—even with the assis¬ tance of a Japanese wife and her family—but for two things: a drastic change in Japanese attitudes toward their own immediate past and the ap¬ pearance of significant new documents. In addition to the mountain of material already available in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military History Archives of the Japan Defense Agency, valuable doc¬ uments that had been hidden or lost were recently discovered, such as records of the imperial and liaison conferences, the supposedly burned portions of the Konoye Diary, and the thousand-page “Notes” of Field Marshal Gen Sugiyama, Chief of the Army General Staff from 1940 to February 21, 1944. Even more important has been the willingness of Japan’s former mili¬ tary and civilian leaders—including Marquis Koichi Kido, the Emperor’s chief adviser; Prince Mikasa, the Emperor’s youngest brother; Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, de facto commander at Pearl Harbor and Midway; and General Kenryo Sato, perhaps Tojo’s most trusted confidant—to talk freely and at length about the unhappy past. Gone is the reluctance, ap-

XIV

FO REWORD

parent only a few years ago during research for But Not in Shame, to discuss certain sensitive subjects. Moreover, they are convinced that Westerners, after their postwar experiences in Asia, will have more understanding of the blunders they made in Manchuria and China. Those who fought the war, from generals to privates, have also been more willing to talk of their mistakes, and speak of the unspeakable: cowardice, murder, cannibalism, surrender—and desertion. In the interest of accuracy these men, as well as everyone else inter¬ viewed whose story is included in the book, read the passages about them¬ selves and often added illuminating comments. The dialogue in the book is not fictional. It comes from transcripts, records and stenographic notes, and the memory of the participants. The extensive debates during the various imperial and liaison conferences, for example, are based on the Sugiyama “Notes”; the recently assembled official records; diaries; and interviews with Marquis Kido, who was given an immediate report of each conference the Emperor attended, and participants including General Teiichi Suzuki, Naoki Hoshino and Okinori Kaya. The Notes (at the end of the book) list sources for all material used, chapter by chapter. America’s greatest mistake in World War II, I believe, was in failing to recognize that she was fighting two different kinds of war simultaneously: one in Europe against another Western people and philosophy, Nazism, and one in Asia which was not only a struggle against an aggressive nation fight¬ ing for survival as a modern power but an ideological contest against an en¬ tire continent. Millions of Orientals saw Japan’s battle as their own, as a confrontation of race and color; they also saw in Japan’s victories their own liberation from Western domination. “Each nation, the United States not excepted, has made its contribution to the welter of evil which now comprises the Far East question.” Tyler Dennett, an authority on the Far East, wrote in 1922: “We shall all do well to drop for all time the pose of self-righteousness and injured innocence and penitently face the facts.” If we had done so, it is very probable that our negotiations with Japan in 1941 would have ended in peace, not war, and America would not have been forced to become the moral policeman of Asia for many years. And a moral policeman’s lot is not a happy one, particularly when his own morality is in question. What follows is a factual saga of people caught up in the flood of the most overwhelming war of mankind, told as it happened—muddled, en¬ nobling, disgraceful, frustrating, full of contradiction and paradox. I have done my utmost to let the events speak for themselves, and if any conclu-

Foreword

xv

sion was reached, it was that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is human nature that repeats itself, not history. We often learn more about the past from the present, in fact, than the reverse. The lessons of our own bru¬ talities in postwar Asia, for example, have undoubtedly given Americans in¬ sight into the actions of the Japanese a generation ago. J.T.

&mw GOBI

A

DESERT

;

BjMMMajll ? y'V

IS* iiiiii ibiiiiiIi ■

Sea of Japan hons t

PmtArthur ttimhim

tpLim Sba

N&fmk * Ckmtjking

|yj SHIKOKU

jjf I Manpsb4 i BUHmsrmn

kyushu

Sm *

China

RYUKYU is.

f.

OKINAWA

Kunming

mo

FORMOSA

am kmj HAINAN f ItfOf immm

hiuppinb

LUZON

Sea

Chirk Field

nisoom ?GULF s Of SIAM

Qwmmh Mg

LEYTE NEGROS

AkrrSmn

gebu:

Paitrnn umshsm

GUAM 4 A SAMAR

PALAWAN

MINDANAO PAL AU m j

■a LAVA

wiwwpr ># miMAHEm

mtr

Java Sea ^ Sumhmfl

java

imp ky pdacim

SAIPAN ,x TiK'IAN /

All STRAUA