It was, he decided sadly, time to move from this place to a safer one. Then he saw something that changed his mind. One of the mechanics opened the flap of a tent and, stacked neatly in the back, were several bags of rice. Even better, they were filled with wild rice, which was much more nutritious than the white version. If he could somehow get his hands on that rice, then he would be able to really improve his health and his chances of surviving. But was it worth the risk? He closed his eyes and wondered what Barb would have him do. The answer came quickly. Her last words to him had been "Come back to me."
On a densely wooded hillside in Kyushu near Nagasaki, Joe Nomura struggled with the radio supplied him by the OSS. It wasn't that the thing was bulky. It was surprisingly small and compact. The problem was operating it with only one hand with a beginner Boy Scout's skills with Morse code. There simply hadn't been time to make Joe Nomura an expert, and he struggled with what he had to say. This too was difficult. Never a great scholar, he now had to be the soul of brevity and conciseness, which were language skills he'd never considered important.
Of the two, brevity was the most in his best interest. It had been hammered into him that the Japs had listening devices and would, sooner or later, likely pick up his transmissions. Then they would try to locate him using triangulating devices that he only barely understood. He could only hope that they would discover him later, much later. Like 1950.
To help maintain his security, he'd been given a number of radio frequencies to use and the order in which to use them. All of this, coupled with the need to frame a concise yet accurate message about what he'd learned about conditions at Nagasaki and the other parts of Kyushu he'd seen, made him sweat with frustration. Then, of course, he had to put it into the very basic code they'd given him to use, which was basic to Johnson and Peters, but was difficult for him. Joe wondered how long it would take the Japs to decode it if they picked up his transmissions.
Finally he tapped out his message. It told his superiors of the lingering horrors of Nagasaki, of the people still dropping over and dying from the radiation sickness, and of the Japanese government's total inability to do anything about it. He closed his message by telling his unseen compatriots that he would have more information for them soon.
As he shut down the radio, he automatically looked skyward. He had been told that he would be transmitting to specially equipped planes that would be waiting for him to call. He fervently hoped they were indeed up there, circling. Then, using his teeth and his one hand, he repacked his gear. It was difficult, but he half-dragged and half-carried the equipment to a new site about a mile away. He didn't think the Japs had picked up this first signal, but he wasn't going to take unnecessary risks by transmitting from the same place twice.
When he'd finally hidden the radio in the ground and covered the site with leaves and branches, he walked away. In a few minutes, he was just another displaced and crippled Japanese soldier. Only he knew just how lonely and afraid he really was.
Chapter 16
President Truman slowly read through the handful of summary sheets while the others waited for him to finish. He was reading the updated overall plan for the invasion of Japan. It bore the code name Downfall and was divided into two different and sequential operations.
The first phase of Downfall, Olympic, was scheduled for November 1, 1945, which was only a little more than six weeks away. The second phase, Coronet, had a tentative date of March 1, 1946. Truman noted that the invasion dates were called X-Day, in silent testimony to the fact that D-Day would forever be associated with the Allied landings in Normandy in June of 1944. Prior to Normandy, every invasion date was referred to as D-Day.
Olympic was the invasion of the island of Kyushu, while Coronet was the invasion of the Kanto Plain on the island of Honshu. The Kanto Plain contained the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama and was the ultimate goal of the operation that would end the war. With Coronet clearly dependent on the success of the imminent Operation Olympic, the president found himself staring at the numbers and trying to assign them some identity.
Olympic would be the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted in military history. Nine divisions in three corps would assault three separate landing areas simultaneously. They would be backed up by five other divisions and at least one independently operating regimental combat team. Three of the divisions in the initial assault were marines, while the rest were army.
The numbers for the navy were even more staggering. Halsey's Third Fleet contained fourteen large carriers and six light carriers, along with nine new battleships, twenty-six cruisers, and seventy-five destroyers. Halsey was to attack targets inland.
Spruance's Fifth Fleet was even larger, with scores of escort carriers and more than four hundred cruisers and destroyers. Spruance was charged with protecting the amphibious force, which counted the almost fourteen hundred ships that would carry more than half a million men to battle.
The island of Kyushu had been chosen because it contained reasonably satisfactory landing areas, two magnificent deepwater anchorages, airfields, and, most important, was within range of land-based air cover from Okinawa and Saipan. This latter point was critical. Without land-based cover, the invasion would be dependent on carrier planes, whose operations were limited and could be shut down by the weather and were vulnerable to Japanese kamikaze attacks.
Despite its gigantic size, the Olympic part of Downfall had specific goals and only called for the conquest of the lower third of the island. Kyushu was about twice the size of Massachusetts and roughly divided in two by mountains that separated the north from the south. The army believed that the Japanese could be driven from the southern part and contained in the north while the south was developed as a base for staging and supporting Coronet.
November first had been chosen because it represented both the amount of lead time necessary to develop and launch the attack as well as being after the end of the annual typhoon season. Typhoons had savaged the American fleets off Okinawa and elsewhere, and a recurrence could be disastrous for the expedition. One typhoon had ripped through Okinawa in early August and caused a great deal of damage to equipment being gathered for the landings on Kyushu.
All of the units involved in the operation were among those already in the Pacific theater. No divisions would be drawn from Europe for Olympic, although two armored divisions were scheduled for deployment from Europe for Coronet in 1946. There were no appropriate areas for massed tank assaults on Kyushu, although there were such places on the Kanto Plain. The infantry and marine divisions would still have their regular quota of tanks, many of which would have flamethrowers instead of cannon.
On X-Day, the marines would attack the southwestern tip of the island and begin to drive overland across the Satsuma Peninsula toward Kagoshima Bay, which ran north-south and roughly split the southern end of Kyushu in half. The two army corps would land on the east side of Kyushu, and one corps would also drive on toward Kagoshima while the second took Ariake Bay. Ariake was on the southeastern end of the island and, even though it was the smaller of the two anchorages, was itself large enough to hold a large fleet.