Two Roads to Tokyo

NEW GUINEA AND THE MARIANAS (435 pp.) -- Samuel Eliot Morison-- Little, Brown ($6).

Samuel Eliot Morison, the Navy's Boswell, has reached mid-1944 (and Vol. 8) in his projected 14-volume U.S. naval history of World War II, and the Pacific war takes on a grander sweep and a faster pace. For two years, General MacArthur's forces have been straining to break the Bismarcks Barrier. In the nibbling operations in the Gilberts and Marshalls, the Marines have taken a successful but costly bite at Tarawa. Meanwhile, the Navy has been unable to engage any large part of the Japanese fleet since Midway.

Suddenly, in the four months from April through July 1944, U.S. forces take giant steps to victory. MacArthur leapfrogs nearly 1,000 miles along the New Guinea coast to threaten the Philippines. The Navy moves into the Marianas, 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor, strips the Japanese fleet of its air arm in a great battle off Saipan and sets up new advance bases. And the Marines and Army take Saipan, Tinian and Guam.

By 1943, says Historian Morison, there was disagreement among U.S. commanders as to the best route to Tokyo. General MacArthur "firmly believed in the one road to Tokyo, his own," along the New Guinea-Philippines axis, with the Navy in a supporting role. The Navy was convinced that "relentless pressure by sea power could defeat Japan short of invasion." The Marianas, Admiral King felt, was the logical base from which to attack Japan's inner defenses. The Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered that both roads be taken.

On the Bird's Head. On April 22, 1944, like three streams of tracers arcing toward their targets, troops of MacArthur's 32nd, 24th and 41st Divisions landed at Aitape, Tanahmerah and Humboldt Bays. Their goal: three first-rate airstrips at Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea. Since the Japs had conveniently parked 340 planes, wingtip to wingtip, to be destroyed days before, mainly by General Kenney's Fifth Air Force, there was no air resistance. Bare of fighting forces, since the local Japanese commander expected to be attacked at Wewak, Hollandia proved to be a giveaway. Counterattacking Jap forces at Aitape were slaughtered, and MacArthur pushed west to Wakde and Biak.

Biak was no giveaway. Intelligence had placed the island's defenders at 2,000; there were actually 10,000, including crack veterans of the China campaign. Ably led and zealously fanatic, they fought for a month before they were subdued. In the meantime, MacArthur pushed on to Noem-foor and by July 31 was perched on the New Guinea bird's head at Sansapor about 600 miles from Mindanao. There Author Morison leaves him to backtrack to Admiral Spruance, "Operation Forager," and the Marianas.

Not Since North Africa. D-day at Saipan was June 15. The Navy assembled 535 combatant ships and transported 127,571 troops, more than two-thirds marines. Conducted over 1,000 miles from the nearest base, this amphibious landing was comparable, says Historian Morison, only to that of North Africa.

The 2nd and the 4th Marine Divisions landed abreast on a four-mile front, but accurate Japanese artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire made the going hot and heavy. Despite the plastering that ships' batteries and Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's Task Force 58 planes had given the beach and the island, Japanese pillboxes and emplacements were for the most part intact. Soaked radios and heavy casualties among naval liaison officers put most shore fire-control parties out of action, so that troops received little or no supporting ship-to-shore fire. By D-day's end, the 2nd Marine Division alone had lost 553 killed and 1,022 wounded. But General Saito, the island's defender, had also failed to make good his order to "destroy the enemy at the beachhead."

While this battle raged on to eventual victory some three weeks later, the Navy got the chance it had been waiting for since Midway. On that same June 15, the U.S. submarine Flying Fish spotted units of Vice Admiral Ozawa's mobile fleet threading their way through narrow San Bernardino Strait between Luzon and Samar. The next day, Spruance pulled most of his ships away from the Saipan beachhead to give battle. Ozawa's search planes had the U.S. fleet spotted by June 17, but Spruance and Mitscher were in the dark about Ozawa's whereabouts until they received a high-frequency, direction-finder report the next night. Dubious of the report, and fearful of a Japanese "end run" on the Saipan beachhead, Spruance vetoed Mitscher's suggestion that they steam toward Ozawa and surprise him in the morning.

The "Turkey Shoot." It was Ozawa who tried to pull the surprise. At 10:36 on the morning of June 19, 69 Zekes and Jills came roaring toward the U.S. ships. Hellcats from Task Force 58 went up to intercept. Forty-two of the attackers were knocked into the sea. At 11:39, a wave of 109 swarmed over and 94 were splashed. On the Japs' 1 p.m. raid, 40 out of 47 attackers escaped. But U.S. flyers made up for it on the fourth raid; of the 82 Japanese planes that attempted it, 73 went down with the dying rays of the afternoon sun. The greatest carrier battle of the war --the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot"-- was over. Says Morison: "The skill, initiative, and intrepid courage of the young aviators made this day one of the high points in the history of the American spirit."

Within hours, many of these same aviators owed their lives to the high humanity of their chief, "Pete" Mitscher. On June 20, having dispatched a late afternoon raid of his own on the still-stubborn Ozawa, Mitscher knew his planes would not make it back till after the quick tropical twilight. It was a pitch-black 8:45 p.m. before the first returning planes began circling the decks of TF 58. "Pete" Mitscher then made a decision that endeared him to carrier pilots forever. Heedless of enemy planes and submarines, he ordered the lights turned on. For two hours, in a crazy quilt of light that reminded one homing flyer of "a Hollywood premiere, Chinese New Year's and Fourth of July rolled into one," the planes landed. Eighty pilots, weary and out of gas, splashed into the sea, but relatively few lives were lost. The two-day score: 476 Japanese planes and 445 flyers lost, against 130 U.S. planes and 76 flyers lost.

Too Cautious? Reduced to 35 planes and minus two carriers, Ozawa hightailed it out of the Philippine Sea. Yet, since he had saved the bulk of his 55-ship fleet, Spruance and Mitscher felt small joy. Had Spruance been overly cautious? No, says Morison, he had the Saipan beachhead to think of. "Military men never get any credit for guarding against dangers that might occur yet do not; but they are quickly 'hanged' if they fail adequately to guard against dangers that do occur--witness Pearl Harbor." Moreover, Morison argues, the battle was fully as decisive as Ozawa thought it was when he radioed his fleet: "The fate of the Empire rests on this one battle."

A fleet denuded of its air groups was like a crab without claws. Saipan, Tinian and Guam were doomed. Sake-crazed and glory-minded, the Japanese made desperate banzai charges and blew themselves up with their own land mines. They paid with ten lives for every American marine and G.I. life they took. "On 12 August 1944," concludes Historian Morison proudly, "the Philippine Sea and the air over it, and the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, were under American control. May they never again be relinquished!"

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