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that a destroyer did pick up at least two of these Japanese sailors as samples of the rest. I guess I asked a very embarrassing question in my action report, as I remarked that it would be helpful if a definite policy would be enunciated concerning the treatment of Japanese merchant sailors, suggesting that it should be stated whether they should be left swimming in the water or whether they should be taken prisoner or killed. I have received no answer to that question.” A seaman wrote of his own attitude to the enemy: “We came to believe336 he was slime…not worthy of life; seeing dead Japanese in the water was like making love to a beautiful girl.” As the kamikaze offensive intensified, the concept of offering quarter to an enemy who waged war in such a fashion came to seem to the Allies not merely inappropriate, but redundant.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ashore: Battle for the Mountains

GEN. TOMOYUKI YAMASHITA had intended to fight his main battle for the defence of the Philippines on Luzon. Yet he found his judgement summarily overruled by his superiors. Field Marshal Terauchi allowed himself to be deceived by the navy, which asserted with shameless irresponsibility that its Leyte Gulf battles had ended in triumph. Japan’s fliers likewise reported that they were inflicting crippling attrition on American air forces. Fortified with such illusions, Terauchi and his staff became convinced that an important victory was within their grasp, if only Japan’s soldiers did their part to match the achievements of its sailors and airmen. In South Asia Army’s perception, “the Navy succeeded337 in the operations by sinking most of the enemy’s carriers (nine out of twelve), several battleships etc., in the Formosa Sea…It [was also] believed that the sea and air battle on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth resulted in a 70 percent victory for us. All information received at area army headquarters was favourable.” The navy’s recklessness in launching the Combined Fleet against Leyte Gulf was now, therefore, to be matched by that of the army, in the name of honour but in the service of folly.

Early in November, Lt.-Gen. Akira Muto arrived in Manila to assume the role of 14th Army chief of staff. “Nice to see you,” said Yamashita. “I’ve been waiting for you a long time.” Muto asked: “What’s the plan?” The general responded: “I’ve no idea what we shall do. You’d better have a bath, then we’ll talk.” Muto said ruefully that every stitch of spare clothing he possessed, down to his underwear, had just been incinerated in an American air raid. “Borrow mine,” said his commander generously. Yet even freshly clad, Muto felt no better when he learned of Field Marshal Terauchi’s insistence on a fight to the finish for Leyte. As Yamashita talked, Muto perceived that the general was furiously angry. Transferring units to Leyte by sea meant that many would be ravaged in transit, while those that got through could not be adequately supplied and supported. No reinforcement of Leyte could alter an outcome that was now inevitable. Yet there was nothing to be done. Terauchi was in charge. Yamashita’s orders to Gen. Sosaku Suzuki, his subordinate commander on Leyte, continued to pay lip service to that familiar Japanese expression of purpose, “annihilation” of the enemy. Yamashita knew full well, however, that the only forces destined for annihilation were his own.

Meanwhile, his orders were to throw every possible man onto Leyte, and he did his utmost to fulfil them. Between 20 October and 11 December, though substantial numbers died or lost their equipment, some 45,000 Japanese troops landed in the west and north of the island. Private Eichi Ogita of the 362nd Independent Battalion experienced the sort of nightmare passage familiar to many Japanese soldiers. He was dispatched from Luzon with his unit on a small wooden schooner, but on 25 October the vessel was sunk by an American submarine. Ogita and other survivors somehow struggled ashore on the north-west coast of Leyte. When daylight came, they found that their battalion commander was dead, while the