ATOM BOMBS AND RUSSIA MADE JAPAN SURRENDER QUICKL)
were causing tremendous damage.
Nearly 100 Allied ships were lost or damaged off
Okinawa. The carriers Franklin and Bunker Hill,
among others, were left with gaping holes, battered
superstructures and heavy casualties.
Navy officials announced a defense had been
worked out against the Kamikaze. But west coast
shipyards issued frantic pleas for workers to repair
the wounded ships that were steadily coming in.
STALIN GETS READY
OTALIN had promised his allies he would get
^ into the war against Japan three months after
the Reich had crumbled, and in preparation for
the conflict he had denounced, on April 5, a “non
aggression” pact signed with Nippon in 1939. On
that same April day the world had been given a
glimpse of the jitters enveloping Tokyo: the cabi
net of General Koiso collapsed, and a new one
headed by the “moderate” Admiral Kantaro Suzuki
took its place.
Some observers envisaged an early end of the
war. out others—remembering vividly the tremen
dous toll at Iwo and Okinawa—-foresaw a long and
bitter struggle that would be finished only when
every cave on the Japanese home islands had been
fired and sealed. But none doubted that the enemy
already had been whipped
An Allied Victory ..
m
President Harry S. Truman, at the White House
August 14, 1945, announces that Japan will
accept the Potsdam surrender terms.
Tht tirst earner plane raids against Japan were
made m February, exactly one year after the firsi
carrier strike on Truk. For two days dive bombers
and fighters swooped over Tokyo in an operation
JNimiU <aid. that “fulfilled the deeply cherisned
aesire ol every officer and man in the Pacific fleet'
Airmen diot up airfields damaged plant' and engint
factories and bombed ar escort carrier
Mitschei took his fasi task force back to' hammer
Tokyo on February 25. and from then on Japanese
waters became the carriers' favorite roosting ground
Their planes ranged from the Kuriles to Kyusnu and
went over the Inland Sea to search out and batter the
remnants of the Japanese fleet.
Devastating as wei> the carrier strikes, they
were exceeded by the destruction now tumbling
down from the Superfortresses. This destruction
resulted primarily from incendiary bombs contain
ing a jelly that spread flames over vast areas.
On June 15 the head of Superfortress operations.
General Curtis Le May announced that 50 square
miles of Tokyo were devastated, with only 10 square
miles left in which the bombers had any interest
The once-great naval seaport of Yokohama was
completely gone The industrial centers of Kobe.
Osaka and Nagoya virtually were erased.
Enemy air opposition was weakening. The num
ber of Superforts on single missions rose to 500.
then to 600 Thousand-plane raids, with destructive
•tpabilities far greater than any that hit Germany
*ere only a few months away.
CHINA COMES SACK
pOR years the poverty-ridden Chinese had waited
* for enough supplies to run the Japanese in
vaders out. But for years the Japanese had held
most of the Chinese coast so that shipments across
the Pacific were imposible, and had closed the
Burma Road—China’s lifeline to India.
During the lean and hungry years American
transports had flown supplies—amounting to as
much as 30,000 tons a month—over the Hump to
India. Key American .officers had helped train the
Chinese army into a rugged fighting force. General
Claire L. Chennault’s U. S. 14th Air Force, and before
that his “Fying Tiger” volunteer airmen, had helped
to harass the enemy and keep him from making too
great inroads into China.
In January, 1945, Stilwell’s victories in Burma
opened the Ledo-Burma Road. Supplies to China
doubled. With the road came an oil pipeline to feed
gasoline and oil to a growing force of U. S. planes
based in China.
Chiang Kai-shek was ready to come back. His
troops repulsed an enemy attempt to take the
American air base at Kweiyang, and began an of
fensive against the long Japanese overland supply
line from Manchuria to Indo-China. The Chinese
hit the line at its weakest spot—Yungning—and
kept on going until the enemy’s Asiatic forces were
thoroughly split. By now the British had cleaned
up almost all of Burma — storied Mandalay had
fallen in .March, and Rangoon in May—and hun
dreds of thousands of enemy troops in Thailand.
Malaya and Indo-China faced annihilation.
Meanwhile, the enemy’s stolen possessions in the
Netherlands East Indies were imperilled. The Aus
tralians had gone onto the little island of Tarakan.
north of Borneo, on May 1 and had cleared it in
five days. They had moved down to Brunei Bay, in
British north Borneo, and from there had poured
into the British protectorate of Sarawak. On July
1 the big shell-battered refining port of Balikpapan
on the east coast was invaded.
In the Philippines, MacArthur continued his mop
up. Mindanao, the southernmost of the islands, had
been first invaded March 10. On May 6 he an
nounced liberation of Davao, the main city On
Luzon, the summer capital, Baguio, had been taken
April 29 after a drive through the mountains, and
the Yanks had continued north until they joined
other forces moying down the island after a land
ing at Aparri. On June 28. MacArthur announced
the liberation of the whole of Luzon. On July 5 he
announced the entire Philippines had been freed.
PRELUDE TO INVASION
rHE plans were being drawn for the invasion of
Japan’s nome islands. General MacArthur and
Admiral Nimitz had been designated as joint com
manders for the operation and it was possible now.
with Germany defeated,-to throw the full weight of
America’s war production and manpower into the
Pacific struggle.
Airfields were prepared on Okinawa, and erec
tion of invasion supply centers began in the Philip
pines But the experience gained in more than 60
amphibious leaps across the Pacific and the great
landing at Normandy taught that the region to be
invaded must first be thoroughly blasted by air and.
if possible, by sea.
The pre-invasion blitz of Japan reached great and
devastating peaks in July. In the first ten days 5.000
bombers and fighters roared against the homeland of
the Rising Sun. Everything of military value was
hit—big industrial plants, oil refineries, shipyards,
railroads, even the thousands of small backyard
workshops and homes where the Japanese turned
out parts for their war machine.
On July 10. more than 1,000 fighters, dive bom
bers and torpedo planes from Halsey’s 3rd Fleet
went up to blast 80 airfields near Tokyo.
Four days later Halsey sent his battleships, cruisers
and destroyers to pound iron and steel works only
275 miles north of Tokyo. The Japanese took it—and
kept their planes grounded and coastal guns silent.
The next day Halsey moved off Hokkaido, the
northernmost of the four home islands, to shell
Muroran, the second ranking steel-producing city
in the empire. Then with British warships, the
fleet moved down the Honshu coast again and a
cruiser-destroyer force hammered the entrance to
Tokyo Bay.
It was an amazing demonstration of boldness—
and a sensational sign of Japan’s weakness.
fly now it was obvious that Nippon would soon
be thoroughly ripe for invasion. The Tokyo Radio
spoke of “secret weapons” being forged to repel
the invaders, and said that Japanese troops were
entrenched in fortifications all along the coast. It
reported that civilians of all ages were being
formed into suicide corps to defend the “sacred”
homeland, and predicted that a vast network o;
caves and tunnels built into Honshu’s hills would
make Japan a super-Iwo for the Americans.
But the Superforts continued to pour their fire
bombs onto enemy cities at will, and began tc
warn the Japanese of the cities to be battered next
With submarines, they mined the enemy’s coastal
waters. Halsey’s fleet continued to prowl. In Amer
ica, great lines of troop- and supply-laden trams
headed lor west coast embarkation ports.
ULTIMATUM FROM POTSDAM
A NEW member of the “Big Three” appeared ai
Potsdam in July, when the heads of the United
States, Great Britain and Russia met again to makt
additional plans for the government of Germany
the settlement of European postwar problems anc
the war against Japan. He was Harry S. Truman
elected Vice President of the United States in 1944
who succeeded to the Presidency when Franklin D
Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage
in April.
Chiang Kai-shek conferred at long distance witl
Churchill and Truman and on July 26—even a:
Churchill was bowing out as Prime Minister as ;
result of his election defeat to Labor Leader Clemen
R. Attlee—the three issued a proclamation callinj
...An Axis Defeat
Mamoru Shigemitsu, aboard the U.S.S. Missou
September 2, 1945, signs Japan's surrender o
behalf of Emperor Hirohito.
upon Japan to cease resistance or be destroyed.
The proclamation warned that the Allies we
“poised to strike the final blow at Japan." It cahi
for unconditional surrender—and re-emphasized tl
terms of the earlier Cairo declaration to strip tl
Japanese ot all their aggressions and limit them
their ^ur main islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyusl
and Snikoku and some minor ones to be named
' A few days later Premier Suzuki announced th
Japan would ignore the ultimatum Tokyo broa
casters, in an obvious plea for a softer peace, told t
fable ot the man who pulled his overcoat tight
about him as the wind ble^' cold but removed
quickly when the sun shone gently.
But Roosevelt—and Truman -had committ
themselves to unconditional surrender. It remain
to be seen what the "final blow at Japan" would i
THE ATOM FALLS
ALONE Superior, ress appeared over the coast
Honshu Monday, August 6, 1945, and headed
the skies above the industrial city of Hiroshima.
As it roared over the heart of the city, it diopF
a small bomb which gently parachuted to the eai
There was a flash of light many times brign
than the sun. Slowly a thick, dark cloud contain
the pulverized bodies of human beings rose into
sky. Nothing else was visible below. Hiroshima
become in one minute virtually a dead city
That bomb had harnessed the energy of the a -
—and had unlocked the secret of the universe.