Carl L. Steinhouse - Nimitzs Bypass: Pacific War Volume 2

NIMITZS BYPASS

PACIFIC WAR VOLUME 2

How Admirals Spruance, Halsey, and Mitscher
use the Nimitz ploy to confuse the Japanese
and beat them at their own game

CARL L. STEINHOUSE

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2020 Carl L. Steinhouse. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 12/13/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3909-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-3910-8 (e)

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To the memory of my law school buddy and good friend, Frank Ronga, who taught me to eat and enjoy scungilli!

Contents

In Japan, personal names take the form of family name first, followed by the given name. To avoid confusion, the author adopts the Western/American form of address with given name first and family following. In Japan, friends address each other generally by their family name. That is their custom and not a sign of disrespect or impoliteness.

This book, Volume II of the Pacific War, takes us forward after the death of Admiral Yamamoto on April 18, 1943, when his plane was shot down by American fighter pilots, and up to September 1944, with the battle for Pelelui. You will remember that Admiral Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor but warned his superiors they could not win a war against the Americans.

Volume I mostly focuses on the Japanese military, particularly its admirals because most of the events, the battles, especially in the first year, 1942, were initiated by them. This Volume is more focused on the American admirals, who responded to the aggression and soon took the initiative away from the Japanese, setting them back on their defensive heels.

Volume III, when written, will take us to the end of the greatest and most far-flung war this planet has ever experienced and suffered and the occupation of Japan.

Carl L. Steinhouse

2019

As commander of our South Pacific Forces, Nimitz stated in a tone that brooked no argument, I intend to order the taking of various islands in the Marianas that are important to us and using my bypass approach, skipping those that are notwell let the skipped ones, with their large Japanese garrisons, just die on the vine. Theyll have no one to kill and nowhere to go, and our blockade will see they get no supplies or food.

He looked directly at Generals Sutherland and Kenney. You be sure to tell General MacArthur that when you see him.

***

Medic, Medic, send out a medic, another call that often broke the silence. No one moved. These Marines already learned their lesson when some of their buddies on Guadalcanal got themselves killed answering such bogus calls by the enemy. Even when the calls for medic were legitimate, care had to be taken because Japanese snipers would kill both the medic and the wounded man. This was a no-holds barred war!

***

That last-ditch banzai attack cost the Japanese over one hundred dead. This did not include their non-walking wounded. Those were all shot in the head by their comrades before the attack. In contrast, the banzai attack cost the Americans three dead and twenty-five wounded.

***

The Marine major, watching this mob racing toward him knew the ships could not help because the horde was too close to the American lines, precluding any naval bombardment. Some Marine companies reported that Jap soldiers waving white flags tossed hand grenades at them, if the Marines approached. The Marine major knew that the normal rules of war did not apply here. They understood that perfectly. It was kill or be killed.

I owe more than I can express to my wife, Diana, who put up with my long hours and grouchiness at her reasonable interruptions. She suffered reading the first drafts with grace and provided invaluable insights.

I appreciate the support of my children who encouraged me to keep writing and busy (and out of their hair!) in my retirement and old age.

The word samurai means those who serve and, in old Japan, most samurai held their land for a more senior overlord to whom they owed military service and allegiance. The samurai learned the art of sword fighting at an early age. When the country became united in the late 15 th century, the samurai came out on top; they were the only ones permitted to carry a sword and were paid in rice by their feudal lords. The samurais sword, called a katana, has a blade that is master-crafted, very strong, sharp, and durable. The katana is usually accompanied by a shorter sword, a wakizashi, with an equally fine-crafted blade. The samurai, expected to be brave and tough-minded individuals, were skilled swordsman and horsemen, fiercely loyal to their lord, and willing to face death at any moment. Indeed, their moral code stressed frugality, loyalty, martial arts, and honor unto deathwith the stress on death.

Though most of the naval and army officers were not of samurai stock, they considered themselves self-made samurai, adopting what they thought was the samurai creed, especially the part about carrying a samurai sword. The military, particularly the army, playing on the drama of the samurai code, glorified death and loyalty to the army unto death as its ideal. But the same army also involved harsh training and much punishment of the enlisted man, together with instilling the idea of Japans racial superiority and sense of invincibility through the Bushido or the spirit of Japan. The American officers, though not imbued with Bushido, carried not a sword but a forty-five-automatic pistol, a far more effective weapon in close quarters combat!

As set out in Volume I, in Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, the Americans killed the one person who might have been able to bring Japan to the peace table at a time well before the slaughter of soldiers on both sides in 1944 and 1945. Yamamoto had agonized over the folly of General Tojo (who later became prime minister) in embroiling the cream of the Japanese Army in a never-ending war with billions of Chinese that Japan could not or would not extricate themselves, thereby expending vital resources of manpower, planes, and tanks that were vitally needed and could have been used in the war they decided to wage against the Americans in the Pacific.

Volume I of the Pacific war ended with American codebreakers decoding a cable of Admiral Yamamotos schedule of his visit to the front, thereby permitting American P-38 fighter pilots to know precisely where his plane would be at a particular time. This permitted them to find and successfully shoot down two Japanese bombers, one carrying Admiral Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet (and the planner of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor), and the other plane carrying his chief of staff, Admiral Matome Ugaki. Yamamoto was killed outright but Ugaki survived, though seriously injured and hospitalized for many months before he could return to the war.

The incident worried both the Japanese high command and the American codebreakers. The codebreakers at Pearl Harbor were very apprehensive of the Yamamoto venture for fear that the Japanese would finally discover the American decrypting abilities. But protecting the secrecy of American code-breaking ability was not the decoders decision to make. Indeed, as the codebreakers feared, the Japanese began to suspect that that the Americans had been aware of Yamamotos plans and that awareness could only have come from decoding the cable detailing his visit to Ballale. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese ultimately gave up pursuing the possibility of a code break. Some of the General Staff with an overblown belief and pride in their own abilities and, scornful of the enemys, thought with a certainty that the Americans were incapable of either breaking their code or translating it into the Japanese, even if they did break it.