Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hell To Pay, Operation Downfall

In late July of 2015, four of us flew to Kodiak Island for a fishing charter. We flew in on Thursday and we supposed to fly out the next Tuesday.
Monday, we went out to Chiniak Bay on 8 foot seas and limited out on king salmon in one hour! THAT was an awesome experience I'll NEVER forget! LOL!
We were scheduled to fly out Tuesday morning.
Flights canceled due to fog.
Wednesday, flight canceled due to fog.
Thursday, Friday all cancelled.
We went to a restaurant to eat when a local told the story about Kodiak in WWII.

He said there were probably 500 or less military men on Kodiak.
Little did they know, because of the fog, that a Japanese invasion force of several thousand soldiers had anchored just off Kodiak.
Because the fog was so heavy and the Japanese had no intel on American military strength, they decided not to invade until they could gather better intelligence.
But the fog persisted and the Japanese naval officers resisted.
After 12 days of relentless, heavy fog, the army commanders told the naval commanders that their men had eaten all their invasion provisions and were working on the naval food supplies which were becoming extremely low.
The decision was made to weigh anchor and return to
Japan.
On day thirteen, after the Japanese had sailed away, the sun broke through to a gloriously bright, clear, sunny day!

This was the story related to us. How true it is, I can't say. I wasn't there! LOL!
But I do know we spent an extra 6 days on Kodiak Island due to fog!I

Any WWII geeks got any other data?

Things we are taught or simply absorb into our brains from propaganda from every angle are so often lies. Whether it's "history" or movies or what little Johnny heard Uncle Leonard say, we tend to swallow it whole. As George Carlin so eloquently stated, an informed populace is "not in their interest." "Them-They" are the pronouns we should suspect lurking beneath every heroic and solemn expression of why mass murder is so humane and essential to saving lives and ending horrific suffering. Why so many wars, of no threat to US interests, must be fought to save something, "Democracy" most often, is rarely questioned. One holy word to kill and die for and bleed money and endless debt to stateless banking dynasties that profit so richly from sanctimonious butchery and centralized control. Establishing Communism world wide, while killing off strong nationalist aspirations, is never mentioned as the real goal of WWII. But that was the result.

I’m thinking I recall one that was finally captured or gave up in the early 1970s. I was pretty young, but IIRC, he and an interpreter appeared on Tje Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The guy had been living on lizards and bugs better than 2&1/2 decades!
7mm

Whilst in Japan I met a university student that was very upset about the nuking of Japan. He toldebthay in Japan they had a saying followed by something I didn't quite catch. I should have tried better to understand but I simply followed up with in America we have a saying: paybacks are a batch.


Bb

IIRC, and it's the same guy, he wasn't captured. They found or contacted his former commander, who informed him the war was over, and ordered him to come in. Nit-picking, maybe, but I would not consider that surrender - just an end to his military career. More like retirement.

I wonder if he got back-pay?

My father enlisted in the US Navy prior to Pearl Harbor. Spent the entirety of WW2 in the European Theater on a destroyer doing convoy and anti-submarine duty. Heavily involved in the Italian Anzio Landing giving close in fire support to US Troops.

Following the German surrender his ship was sent through the Panama Canal to Seattle to have additional Anti-Aircraft Batteries fitted in anticipation of supporting the Japan invasion and Kamakazie attacks. He was was on Tinnian in the Pacific when Japan surrendered.

Same for Iwo Jima and Okinawa and look what it still cost in lives. The invasion of the Jap mainland would have cost millions of lives on both sides. To think otherwise demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the Japanese culture and mindset...

Japan, and the Minister of War Tojo, were imbued with Bushido. The Way of the Warrior. This went back a thousand years, to the days of the Samurai. Bushido dictated that you fought to the death. Surrender was for cowards and was unthinkable.

My dad was in ETO .. had enough points to get home early.
But was still in the service.
Waiting for orders to go to the Pacific.
Two bombs ended it and I remember him saying how happy he was ..........
Me too.

dave

Well I am 1 of many here who owe there very existence to the United States dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My dad was on a boat also in the Pacific training for the invasion of Japan. He told me alot of Americans survived because of the bombs. Alot more than if the invasion would have been necessary. People who have 20/20 hindsight bad mouthing the bombs are today's liberals fug them...mb

Mine too. He was waiting, after he had run the length of Europe without a scratch.

Japan was also training for the invasion. They didn't have weapons so they were training hordes of civilians to carry out mass attacks with clubs and garden tools. They hoped to overrun the invaders with overwhelming suicide charges. The deaths on both sides would have been incredible.

Still, it must have been lonesome for Harry Truman in the Rose Garden.

More on the Jap fuel situation.
D M Giangreco, pg 75 of Hell To Pay.
As I said, they had 3 times the fuel we had estimated, all set aside for kamikazes targeting troop transports!
From the sound of things, the allies were fixing to lose hundreds of thousands just getting a toe hold on Kyūshū.
7mm

My dad was in the navy during WW2 on an ammunition ship. Found an old diary he kept of his service during the war. They had been sitting off the coast of Japan for about ten days. Ammunition ships were usually several miles away from the main fleet for obvious reasons. Around midnight they heard guns going off and lots of noise. Figured they would soon know why they were there. Diary said the “old man” came on the radio and said Japan had just surrendered.
He credits Truman with saving thousands of American lives. But yes, it must have been very lonesome for Truman the day he made that decision.

87 pages into this so far. I'll give the author credit for excellent research but at times the detailed lists of the Japanese order of battle or accounts of the minutiae of meetings of high level government officials et al make parts of the book about as scintillating to read as a company's annual report.

But then there are little gems to be picked out to interest a gun nut, like the fact that the 20mm Oerlikons, which were the champion plane killers against normal bombing or torpedo aircraft, weren't very effective against the kamikazes since they would shoot the plane down or kill the pilot but wouldn't necessarily alter its trajectory into a ship. The 40mm Bofors was much better since it would blow the aircraft apart but the 3 inch/50 (76 mm cannon firing 45-50 rounds per minute) was the real kamikaze killer, being as effective as 2 to 5 quad mounted 40mm Bofors. There was a last minute rush to replace as many Bofors mounts with the 3 inch/50 auto loaded cannons as possible.

As noted already, while the Japanese had been cut off from their oil and raw material sources, they had hoarded a plentiful enough strategic reserve of aviation gas to fuel the 10,000 planes available to use as kamikazes. They had also honed their tactics in the Phillipines and Okinawa, using hills and valleys to hide the approaching planes from radar until the last minute, then appearing without warning to launch their attacks. Ships at sea might have had several minutes to prepare but those ships right off the invasion beaches would be sitting ducks.

The other takeaway so far is how well the Japanese read our intent even without good intelligence. They guessed very correctly when we'd attack and exactly where we'd attack and in what strength, right down to the specific invasion beaches, and constructed defenses and reinforced those areas accordingly. They still had some 5 million equipped soldiers in the home islands, including veteran divisions brought over from China. I get the impression that the initial landings could have made Omaha beach seem like a walk in the park.

Definitely an interesting book overall, good reading on these rainy late winter days.

My grandfather was on the Czechoslovakian border when Germany finally quit. He was sent home immediately, thinking he was getting discharged. When he got to port (never told me which one) he was immediately put on a train to the West coast and put on a ship headed to Japan. Imagine the feeling of getting back to the States and not even being allowed to visit home for a couple weeks. He was on the ship when the Japs surrendered. This time he was discharged. Oddly enough, he missed Army life and rejoined and went to Japan as part of the occupation. He did 30 years, fought in Korea and Vietnam. He apparently had a good time in Vietnam judging by the pictures we found in a footlocker after he died. Was a Command Sgt Major when he retired and probably not a enjoyable one to be around

No one who was in the Pacific theater and potentially a part of the planned invasion of the Japanese island thought nukes were a bad idea...including my Dad. I'll honor their memory and their judgment by believing they were correct. 👍

30 seconds over Tokyo

This. There is always a messy after the fact afterbirth.