The AAF Against Japan (1948)

This is a very good book written not long after the end of the war.

Chapter 1 is a general chapter about the air war in the East.

Chapter 2 is on Pearl Harbor reveals what I've found to be a theme in many of the earlier books, and that is the military had enough warning to know something was going to happen, and they should have been better prepared against an attack.

The author writes that the Army and Navy were at reduced stages of readiness despite three occurrences that should have aroused acute alarm:

The author first cites the sinking of a Japanese midget sub just outside Pearl Harbor as the first of the warnings. The second concerned a report from a Navy carrier pilot saying he was under attack, and the third was a radar station that detecting numerous approaching planes. The latter, if it had been taken as a warning, would have given the planes and ships at Pearl Harbor around 45 minutes to prepare for the attack.

The third chapter deals with Wake, Guam and the Philippines.

Chapter 4 is on the East Indies and Australia. Chapter 5 is about the Doolittle raid on Japan. Chapter 6 is on Coral Sea and Midway.

Chapter 7 is on the North Pacific (The Aleutian islands). It starts by noting that the Japanese moved out of Kiska and the Aleutians because their resources were needed elsewhere.

American naval intelligence learned about the planned attack on Dutch Harbor by intercepting messages, just as they did for Midway. Eventually a Zero was found almost intact and shipped to the continental US for study, allowing the US military to develop a plane that was better than the Zero.

Late in May, 1942, a Japanese submarine launched a reconnaissance seaplane off the Washington coast to scout Seattle's harbor. The plane made the flight without incident and found the harbor empty of carriers or other major warships.

Another submarine plane, similarly launched 100 miles north of Unalaska May 30, reported that only a few small merchantmen were in Dutch Harbor.

Enemy submarines shelled Esteban, British Columbia, and an American destroyer lying in the mouth of the Columbia river in Oregon, on June 22.1942]

The fight for Attu resulted in the loss of 552 Americans killed and 1,140 wounded, and 2,350 Japanese killed and 29 taken prisoner. The Japanese claimed the Americans had 6000 casualties.

Chapter 8 is on the South Pacific Campaign. Something which I had not read elsewhere was that Japanese submarines shelled Maui and Lanai islands southeast of Oahu a week after the Pearl Harbor attack.Later that month, they shelled Johnston Island, Hilo on Hawaii and Kahalui Harbor at Maui.

The chapter also includes information on the killing of Yamamoto, and the fighting on Guadalcanal, and the Solomons, and other areas.

Chapter 9 is on the fight for New Guinea.

Low-level attack, as a technique, had its first major test in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, early in March, 1943. Japanese naval strategists later called the mast-height attacks of that battle their greatest shock of the war. After the virtual annihilation of a large Japanese convoy in that engagement, Japan knew that she never again could send convoys beyond protective range of her own land-based planes.

Chapter 10 is entitled Gilberts to Guam.In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese in two days lost 428 airplanes, three carriers and two tankers, plus damage to other ships. The US lost 122 planes.

Chapter 11 is Asiatic Upheaval. Chapter 12 is Approach to the Philippines. Chapter 13 is The Return. Chapter 14 is Love, Mike and Oboe (which is about Luzon and the Philippines.)

Chapter 15 is The Bloody Isles, starting with Iwo Jima. Okinawa and the kamikaze attacks are discussed next. In the 81 days of the Okinawa campaign, 33 United States ships were sunk and 223 damaged, most of them by suicide planes. Through June 19, 11,260 Americans were killed-3,633 Army and 7,627 Navy men-and 33,769 wounded, 20,726 of them being Navy personnel. Many of the Army and most of the Navy casualties were inflicted by the kamikaze fliers.

The director of kamikaze operations at Okinawa and in the Philippines took issue with the idea of kamikaze being suicide pilots; he says that suicide was not the goal; the goal was to consider himself a human bomb to unleash against an enemy target. (Still, if they were supposed to be bombs, then wouldn't it have been more practical to make better bombs so they wouldn't have to use humans in place of bombs? )

Chapter 16 is The Burma Campaigns. Chapter 17 is China's War. Chapter 18 is Air Transport. Chapter 19 is Medicine and Morale. One thing the chapter notes is that of 42,000 Japanese on Guadalcanal, half died from disease or starvation, and 80% of the wounded died because of lack of adequate care and medicines.

Chapter 20 is Search and Rescue. Chapter 21 is The Specialists. Chapter 22 is Weapons and Warriors. Chapter 23 is The Sage of the B-29. Chapter 24 is A Torch to the Enemy. One of the things that Japan had a problem with was that their war industry was not diversified enough. 40% of aircraft engines were made in one city. 30% of aircraft assembly was in only two cities. 45% of the ordinance was made in seven cities, and so on. This made it easier to destroy the facilities since they were so concentrated. The home factories, on the other hand, were scattered and very vulnerable to fire.

Operation Starvation is detailed in the chapter. This was a mine-laying operation which proved quite effective. The chapter also includes a day-by-day listing of cities bombed, tons dropped and the number of B-29s involved.

The chapter summarizes what the B-29 bombing resulted in, including:

1. Demolished half of the housing units in areas attacked.

2. Reduced aircraft production by half.

3. Reduced steel production by 15%.

4. Knocked out 52% of storage capacity of seven oil refineries.

5. By mining operations, sinking 500,000 tons of shipping.

6. Shot down 969 Japanese fighters, and destroyed 202 planes on the ground.

Also, a variety of other accomplishments are listed.

Chapter 25 is The Pay-Off. This talks about plans for invasion of Japan, the atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
align=center>Japan main page