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Notes -
Finished the final book in Ian W. Toll's Pacific War trilogy Twilight of the Gods last night. I didn't like this one quite as much as the other two, partially because it was nearly 50% longer, but mainly because after the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the outcome of the War in the Pacific became extremely clear, and so all the tension of the previous volumes was no longer present. The book also began to be a little repetitive: Toll covered ground he had already tread pretty extensively in the last book with covering the submarine war, and there is a tendency for biographic details about the American commanders to also be repeated between books. That said, I learned a lot from this book about the war, and am excited to move on to another period in history (although may have to check out various recommendations from other users on the forum). Some more specific history thoughts below.
The Japanese high command knew that the war was over after the battle of the Philippine Sea, but they couldn't make peace for another year for internal reasons. They basically needed either a huge victory that would bring the Americans to the negotiating table, or a huge defeat to break the power of the army/navy. The high-ups (admirals, generals, etc.) were beholden to the ideology of the mid tier of officers (captains, majors, etc.) that would have launched a coup if they knew that peace talks were happening. In fact, some officers in Tokyo did try and do this the night before Hirohito's surrender speech was released to the public, but they were foiled by the non-cooperation of key army officers. It was this same extremism in the officer corp that caused Japan's initial descent into fascism, and I wonder where the initial drivers of this ideology came from, considering that Toll points out that the philosophy of the militarists was quite different from both traditional samurai honor and the Meiji code of conduct.
In contrast to the last book, the Japanese leadership began to make tactically very smart decisions during the island hopping campaign. No more banzai charges or wasting air and sea power on stupid resupply, but defense in depth relying on elaborate fortifications and underground bunkers that were resistant to air strikes (maybe a lesson for the current Iran war). Kamikazes were also brilliant and presaged the age of guided missiles, which would challenge the supremacy of aircraft carriers. Americans overcame these barriers through material might and bravery on the ground, but it cost them a lot.
This book is very critical of two American commanders in the Pacific: Bill Halsey and Douglas MacArthur. Halsey makes a huge error at the beginning of the book where he sends his whole fleet to chase the Japanese carriers (and win glory for himself) rather than effectively protecting the landings on Leyte, making them extremely vulnerable to a surprise attack by the Japanese surface fleet, which only failed because of luck. Halsey also sails the fleet into two typhoons, and refuses to ever admit he made a mistake at Leyte, which doesn't help his case. MacArthur doesn't make as huge of tactical blunders, but conducts himself like an ass with the other theatre commanders, and declares that Manila has been liberated when there's still three months of fighting left to go. Neither man is really punished or censored because they're both so popular with the press.
Service rivalries in both Japan and America played a big part in decision making. The island of Pelieu, which probably could have been bypassed on the way to the Philippines for example, was invaded at least partially because Nimitz wanted to maintain command of marine divisions for a little longer. On the Japanese side, the entire Pacific War was the result of a service rivalry: the Navy needed a war of equivalent size to the one in China to justify its share of the budget. I wonder how large of an issue this is today, and if steps have been taken to unify the American command structure to prevent these kind of clashes.
This book at least partially convinced me that most of the fighting in the Pacific War was pretty unnecessary. Americans effectively had air supremacy over Japan starting in late 1944, and the combination of bombings and submarine attacks could have completely destroyed the Japanese economy without invasions of Okinawa or the Philippines at all, much less the planned invasions of the home islands. Of course hindsight is 20/20, and these things weren't so obvious at the time.
When I used to go to Catholic Church more and hang out in Catholic spaces, I always heard that the Nagasaki cathedral was the planned ground zero for the second atomic bomb, and that this somehow represented that America was using world war 2 to secretly destroy catholic hegemony (with other evidence from Monte Casino and other battles in Italy). Like all good conspiracy theories, this one contains a kernel of truth: the Nagasaki cathedral was destroyed in the blast, and a lot of Japanese catholics died. But the bombs original target wasn't even Nagasaki, but nearby Kokura. Only a series of hilarious mishaps and mistakes lead it to being dropped on Nagasaki, and the target was, if anything basically at random because visibility was so poor. Toll notes that the Shinto shrine in Nagasaki was spared from being destroyed, which many Japanese took to be a sign of the strength of their indigenous faith.
I was incredibly surprised by how quickly the Japanese people seemed to about-face and accept their occupation with good spirits. This was partially due to the fact that Americans behaved much better than expected, but also I think because the hearts of the Japanese people hadn't really been in the war since at least mid 1944, and they were ready to ditch the militarism, which was a historical aberration in any case. In this sense, the American maintenance of the authority of the emperor was very smart, as it allowed the Japanese to feel like they were returning to some tradition, rather than having their society totally disassembled.
Your write ups have reminded me of someone I think the motte would enjoy learning about: Ichizo Hayashi. He was a kamikaze pilot in the Japanese Navy and---oddly---a committed Christian. He has been particularly useful to historians because he kept a diary and wrote letters to his mother about his training regimen.
Just several days before his kamikaze mission, he wrote:
I added the bold. It's a quote from the bible that is quite well known in American Christianity, and widely recited by American chaplains on the eve of deployments. It still boggles my mind that this young Japanese man found meaning in his kamikaze mission via Christianity. And that Christians today who would otherwise find Hayashi incredibly foreign and evil derive the same meaning for the same work but an "enemy" cause.
This type of primary source history from the Japanese side is probably not what your actually interested in reading right now, but the book I read about this is Listen to the Voices from the Sea. It's got a lot more of Hayashi's diary entries and a handful of other authors as well.
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