Appendices - Hirohito's War


A.	Submarines: America Draws Tight the Noose December 1941 – August 1945 [Charts: A.1]
	Planned Submarine Attack on the Panama Canal, The Failure of Japanese Submarine Design, Wasteful Dissipation of Japanese Submarine Force, Japanese Submarine Cargo Missions to Europe, Japanese Submarines’ Disappointing ‘Kill’ Performance, Japan’s ‘Long Lance’ Jockeys, Newport Torpedo Station, Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, US Submarine Achievements in the Pacific War, The Failure of Japanese Counter-Submarine Strategy, The Missed Opportunity [Photos]

B.	Oil, Raw Materials and Logistics: 'Just Start Swinging' December 1941 to August 1945 [Charts: B.1, B.2 ]
	Logistics of Oil in the Asia Pacific War, America’s T-2 Tanker, Japan’s Oil Tanker Fleet, Raw Materials Issues of the US Economy, Liberty Ships ‘to go’, Attack Cargo Ships, LSTs and Higgins Boats, Japan’s Cargo Ship Problems, Japan’s Air Force Logistics, US Supply Logistics in the Asia Pacific Region, Operation Olympic and Japan’s Logistical Denouement [Photos]

C.	Economics of the Pacific War: The 'New Deal' Mobilized [Charts: C.1, C.2, C.3, C.4, C.5, C.6, C.7, C.8, C.9, C.10, C.11, C.12, C.13, C.14, C.15 ]
	Management of the US Wartime Economy, Guns and Butter, Inflation and ‘General Max’, Production Line and Management Systems, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, Management, Labor, Blacks and Women, Managing the Scientists, Expansion of America’s Productive Capacity, US Aircraft Production, Tanks, Artillery, Trucks, Ordnance and the Problem of Obsolescence, Electronics, Radio, and Radar, Was the Depression a Boon or Hindrance to US War Mobilization?, Japan’s Wartime Economy, Conclusion [Photos]

D.	‘Victory Disease’: The Japanese Empire: From Co-Prosperity to Tyranny [Charts: D.1, D.2 ]
	The Four Phases of Japan’s Imperial Expansion, The Economics and Philosophy of Japan’s Co-Prosperity Sphere, Old Empire, Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria, The Structures of Japan’s New Empire, Slave Labor in Japan and in the Field, Cruelty and Suppression, Prisoners of War, The Psychology of Brutality, Unit 731 and the Secrets of Medical Experimentation, Conclusion, [Photos]

E.	Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze [October 1944 to August 1945] [Charts: E.1 ]
	Introduction, Halsey: After Leyte Gulf, Kamikaze: Individual Beginnings, The Formal Adoption of a Kamikaze as a Strategy, Recruitment, Motivation and Training, Japanese Government Propaganda, Developments in Kamikaze Technology and the US Response, Naval Kamikaze and Yamato’s Suicide Mission, US Defense Tactics, Fight to the Death and Operation KETSU (Decisive), Admiral Ugaki, The Last Kamikaze, The Cost and Effectiveness of the Kamikaze Campaign, Kamikaze: A Unique Japanese Phenomenon? [Photos]

F.	American Intelligence in the Pacific War
	ULTRA [Photos]

G.	Could Japan Have Won the Pacific War?
	Introduction , Distance, Logistics and Extension of Power , Mobilization, Logistics, Isolationism and the Will to Fight , Weapons that could have won Japan the War , Strategies for Japanese Victory , Conclusion

H.	Month by Month Timeline of the Pacific War [December 1941 - August 1945]

I.	The 'Pacific War': Sundry Tables and Lists

J.	Pacific War Photographs

K.	The Battle of Hong Kong
	Hong Kong [Photos]

L.	The Battles of Attu and Kiska
	Attu and Kiska [Photos]

M.	Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War
	Summary, Comparison of Pacific War Aircraft Carriers, Essex Class Carriers, US Light Carriers, Japanese fleet carriers [Photos]

N.	The Role of Oil in the Pacific War [Charts: N.1, N.2, N.3, N.4, N.5]
	Oil’s Early History, Development of the Oil Industry in the United States, Royal Dutch Shell, The Growth of Oil Fired Engines in the Marine Industry, The Rise of the Automobile, Tanks and Trucks Transform Battlefield Mobility, Aviation Gasoline, Interwar Development of the Aeronautical Industry, Global Oil Output, Oil and the Decision for War, Conclusion [Photos]

O.	Japanese - Soviet Conflict in Siberia, Mongolia and Manchuria [April 1945–5 September 1945] [Maps: 39.1, 39.2, 39.3, 39.4, 39.5, 39.6]
	Introduction, Russo-Japanese Relations from the Late Nineteenth Century, The Trans-Siberian Railway Transforms the Geopolitics of Northeast Asia, The Battle of Lake Khasan and Amur River Clashes, The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact, The Yalta Conference, Japanese Preparations for the Defense of Manchuria, Deployment of Soviet Forces, Soviet Invasion of Northwest Manchuria from Mongolia, Invasion of Northeast Manchuria from Far Eastern Siberia, The Battle of Mutanchiang, The Battle of Sakhalin Island, The Occupation of the Kuril Islands The Significance of the Soviet Invasions

E. Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze

Fight to the Death and Operation KETSU (Decisive); By June 1945 the sense of helplessness felt by Vice-Admiral Ugaki, who as head of the Kyushu based Fifth Air Fleet had primary responsibility for the defense of Okinawa, had become unbearable. From his base at Kanoya, Ugaki even watched as a US flying boat landed in Kagoshima Bay to pick up an American bomber crew that had been shot down. In his diary, he noted that “I can’t stand even to see an enemy submarine picking up survivors off shore, much less this arrogant behavior right in the middle of Kagoshima Bay.”³⁸

A despairing Ugaki started to prepare for his own death. Completed parts of his war diaries were sent to his home in Okayama, halfway between Osaka and Hiroshima on Japan’s main island of Honshu, where he had been born. In pantheistic reflection, his diaries turned increasingly to nature with comments about crops, the weather, fireflies and cuckoos.

By the end of June the lack of fuel, ammunition and skilled pilots meant that Ugaki’s Kyushu airfields were practically defenceless. Ugaki noted in his diary that while on a walk near his base, he saw ten American fighters attacking without any anti-aircraft fire or a single Japanese fighter to intercept. On 2 August 1945 Ugaki moved his headquarters from Kanoya to an underground bunker in Oita. Ugaki tried to work out what countermeasures could be taken and for the next few days worked on plans to deal with the expected Allied landings on Kyushu. Five days later the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. To add to Japanese misery, the Soviets declared war on 9 August while he was seeing a dentist at Beppu Naval Hospital. “Now this country is going to fight against the world”³⁹was his immediate reaction. Ugaki still believed that Operation KETSU (Operation Decisive) needed to make the American invasion so expensive in blood that they would be forced to come to terms; he asserted that “we can make the enemy finally give up the war after making it taste the bitterness of a prolonged struggle”.⁴⁰ He intended to fight to the end. As an Imperial General Army Staff officer had boasted in July 1945:

We will prepare 10,000 planes to meet the landing of the enemy. We will mobilize every aircraft possible, both training and ‘special attack’ planes. We will smash one third of the enemy's war potential with this air force at sea. Another third will also be smashed at sea by our warships, human torpedoes and other special weapons. Furthermore, when the enemy actually lands, if we are ready to sacrifice a million men we will be able to inflict an equal number of casualties upon them. If the enemy loses a million men, then the public opinion in America will become inclined towards peace, and Japan will be able to gain peace with comparatively advantageous conditions.⁴¹

In fact by August 1945 the Army still had 5,651 airplanes while the Navy had 7,074. Most of these had been turned into kamikaze aircraft. Although there were 8,000 Japanese pilots, they were barely trained and could not have fought as conventional pilots and aircrew. By mid-1945 the air-schools were turning out pilots who were only trained for one-way flights. Sufficient fuel had been set aside so that all the planes produced could make a single flight.

Appendices - Hirohito's War

E. Typhoons and Divine Winds: Kamikaze

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