Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [158]
During the seaborne approach to Luzon 170 Americans and Australians were killed and five hundred wounded by kamikaze attacks. The strain on men’s nerves became acute. They found themselves obliged to remain alert every daylight hour for a guided bomb that could hurl itself into their ship’s upperworks, mangling steel and flesh. Aboard the heavy cruiser Australia, Pierre Austin was one of many sailors aggrieved by the enemy’s madness: “At this late stage, after all one had survived431, the feeling was: ‘Not now—please, not now!’ We knew it was going to be our war; we were going to win.” On 8 January, a Val dive-bomber crashed into Australia’s foremast, killing thirty men and wounding sixty-four, including Pierre Austin. His war ended in a hospital.
Oldendorf, commanding the naval force, warned MacArthur that he lacked sufficient air cover to hold off the kamikazes unless Third Fleet’s carrier aircraft could be diverted from attacking Japan to provide support, which of course they were. In the month beginning 13 December 1944, the cumulative toll from Japanese air assault was alarming—twenty-four ships sunk, sixty-seven damaged. Yet to the astonishment of the Americans, as MacArthur’s troops drove inland from Lingayen, the kamikaze offensive stopped. The Japanese had lost six hundred aircraft in a month. Only fifty remained on Luzon. Japanese fighter pilot Kunio Iwashita was at Clark Field, Manila, on 9 January when he was ordered to lead his squadron’s three surviving aircraft to a new strip. Some five hundred personnel, most of them ground crew, were left to join the retreat of the Japanese army, and face months of attrition and starvation. Just four of these men were afterwards recorded alive. A few minutes after Iwashita and his fellow pilots arrived at their new base, American aircraft struck, destroying all three fighters. The Japanese airmen escaped by sea to Formosa. On Luzon thereafter, neither the U.S. Navy nor Sixth Army faced significant air attack. Tokyo husbanded its remaining planes to defend Formosa, Okinawa and the homeland.
The American invasion of Luzon, January–June 1945
Krueger’s troops met only spasmodic artillery and mortar fire as they advanced inland, and there were soon 175,000 Americans ashore. While most of the Leyte fighting had engaged only four divisions, Luzon would ultimately involve ten, in addition to huge numbers of support troops. At first, climate slowed the advance more than the enemy. On 16 January alone, forty-nine men of the 158th Infantry were evacuated with heat exhaustion. Water was short. Five thousand tons of supplies were landed each day, but shifting them forward proved a nightmare, only marginally assisted by jury-rigging stretches of Luzon’s battered rail system. I Corps drove north and eastwards.
In the first three days ashore, the Americans lost just 55 dead, 185 wounded, while claiming 500 enemy killed. Krueger and his staff were bemused by the desultory resistance. When the Americans reached the hills, however, Yamashita’s plan became apparent. Knowing that he could not prevent the Americans from achieving a lodgement, he had instead concentrated most of his forces in the island’s mountain areas. Experience on Leyte had shown how effectively steep uplands could be defended. Fourteenth Army’s commander believed that he could inflict pain and delay on MacArthur by exploiting Luzon’s wildest