The Japanese military didn’t know, but immediately after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Americans were in a very precarious position, as they were left without a single operational aircraft carrier. That day was apparently Navy Day in the United States and was dubbed “the worst Navy Day in history.” Supposedly, the Americans even considered withdrawing their garrison from Guadalcanal. In fact, after the war, many of their military historians noted that Japan could have recaptured Guadalcanal by mobilizing the Combined Fleet’s entire might at that juncture. But the IJN missed the chance of a lifetime by choosing to attack incrementally, once again, with small forces. It was the Americans, in their sink-or-swim position, who threw their entire force into battle.
The world’s largest battleship Yamato was anchored in Truk Lagoon just over 1,000 kilometers north of Rabaul but was kept safe, never once showing up at Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto and HQ staffers dined on lavish lunches to musical accompaniment courtesy of a military band while they issued orders to the officers and sailors fighting on the front lines. Do you know what us rank-and-file sailors called the Yamato?
The Hotel Yamato.
Nevertheless, the men on the front lines fought with everything they had. At Lunga Point, destroyers conducting a “rat transportation” were ambushed by four American heavy cruisers. While we did lose one of the destroyers, they accomplished the incredible feat of sinking one enemy cruiser and badly damaging the remaining three. Normally, there’s no contest between destroyers and heavy cruisers. It’s like pitting a compact car against a tractor trailer. But with a valiant counterstrike Fleet Commander Raizo Tanaka defeated the heavy cruisers.
I’m getting off topic here, but Fleet Commander Tanaka, who pulled off such a victory, fell into disfavor after the battle for some ridiculous reason. This was a man who earned the highest praise from the American naval forces, who called him “the bravest, most dauntless admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy.” By the way, even though the submarine I-26 put the USS Saratoga out of commission for three months, because it was thanks to a single hit with a torpedo, none of the crew from the captain on down were honored for their efforts. Those men had persevered just to make that strike and only survived after suffering twelve hours of ferocious retaliation from the enemy’s depth charges.
In general, the IJN was incredibly callous to those who risked their lives fighting on the front lines. It was an organization where commissioned officers from the Naval Academy rose up no matter how badly they screwed up, while self-made men were rewarded for their efforts only once in a blue moon.
We rank-and-file seamen and petty officers were treated from the start as nothing more than tools. For the joint staff, our lives didn’t rate higher than ammo. Those Imperial HQ people and Command were hardly human beings!
Oh, sorry. I got a bit worked up there. Let’s get back on topic.
So, while we managed to score some gains in combat, there were more than a few battles where we suffered major losses. During the night battle off Savo Island we lost a heavy cruiser to radar-guided fire from the American fleet, and in the Third Battle of the Solomon Seas two older battleships were likewise sunk. That time, too, the Combined Fleet was reluctant to deploy the Yamato and only sent out second-class battleships.
But worse still than individual naval battles were the dismal results of the transport operations. This was due to the fact that we did not control the airspace. Those 560 nautical miles proved too far a distance for aircraft to provide a screen for the Japanese supply ships. Later we built an air base at Buin on Bougainville Island, situated between Rabaul and Guadalcanal, and while that granted us some leeway, it was not close enough to regain mastery of the airspace over Guadalcanal.
That left support from aircraft carriers, but it was extremely dangerous for them to get anywhere near a powerful enemy air base situated on solid land. We had lost four carriers at Midway, which made the General Staff and the Combined Fleet Command too skittish to devise any remotely risky operation. They really should have, though.
It beats me why the Imperial Army and Navy chose to fight in a location where they couldn’t even supply their troops.
Regardless, the battle had already begun. In order to recapture the airfield on Guadalcanal, we absolutely had to destroy the enemy’s air power. And it was us, the pilots of the Rabaul Air Corps, who were tasked with the mission. It was from that point onward that Rabaul came to be known as the Airmen’s Graveyard.
The Rabaul Air Corps was rapidly depleted after the start of the conflict at Guadalcanal. The sorties continued day after day, and we lost no small number of aircraft each time. The unit that had the highest number of casualties was the medium bomber squadron comprised of Type 1 land-based bombers. I mentioned before how the Americans had dubbed the Type 1s “one-shot lighters” because of their poor defenses, right? The Zeros also had extremely poor defenses, but their exceptional maneuverability and combat prowess made up for their lack of armor. But the Type 1 bombers were horribly slow and defenseless in the face of enemy fighters.
By the fall of 1942, nearly half of the medium bombers launched were failing to return. On some missions, we lost every single one.
The bomber crews seemed to have given up all hope of surviving. And who could blame them? On each mission, there was a higher than fifty percent chance they would be shot down, and the sorties continued on and on and on. All trace of vigor had vanished from their faces, and their bodies gave off an aura of utter exhaustion. Yet they were brave up to the bitter end. They never once complained as they carried out their assigned duties. Just as the kamikaze pilots that came later took off having fully accepted their fate, the bomber crews of Rabaul went into battle with death as the premise.
The Zero fighter squadron also saw losses of one or two planes on each mission. The personal belongings of the pilot left behind in the barracks were collected and sent to his family back in the interior. Some of the men had written wills. Others hadn’t. I wrote one just in case, but more than a few felt that preparing for death might actually get them killed in action.
It wasn’t immediately after a battle when the pain of losing a comrade was keenest. It was at night, in the mess hall. The fellow pilot that you had breakfast with wasn’t there. They always cooked enough meals for everyone for dinner. Our seats weren’t assigned, but out of habit we tended to sit in the same places each time. That happens in company meetings, too, doesn’t it? People tend to always sit in the same places.
So at night, if there was an empty seat in the mess hall, it meant that the pilot who always sat there hadn’t returned to base. It was unbearable if it was the guy next to you. He’d been wisecracking just the day before, or rather that morning at breakfast, but was now gone. When a pilot dies in battle, there is no corpse. After a particularly intense battle, several seats in the mess hall would become empty all at once. That’s why we all stopped cracking jokes during dinner.
One day in September during breakfast, FPO2 Higashino, a senior of mine from the Yatabe Air Unit, said loudly, “Just once, I wanna eat a delicious rice cake stuffed with bean jam!”
Upon hearing that, I began to imagine a sweet rice cake and gulped audibly. I hadn’t had a single sweet rice pastry since arriving at Rabaul.