The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [156]
for a long moment, knew that once more, Yahara had done the amazing. The papers were a carefully detailed description of three alternatives that remained for the remnants of his army, each part of each plan detailed step by step. Yahara was as meticulous as always, but Ushijima knew that two of those alternatives had been detailed for one very good reason, to convince General Cho that they were two very bad ideas. One of those alternatives was to hold the Shuri Line, allowing the Americans to envelop what remained of his Thirty-second Army, forcing them into certain destruction, far sooner than Ushijima had hoped. Yahara knew that General Cho would likely favor that strategy over any other, but Ushijima did not want that debate, not while he believed that his army still had a fight to give, could still force the Americans into more costly frontal assaults. To his surprise, Cho’s fiery nihilism had seemed to temper, brought down perhaps by the great failure three weeks before of his glorious counterattack. The second bad choice involved a general retreat, to the Chinen Peninsula, the southeastern corner of the island. On the maps, Chinen would seem logical, but the landmass there was not large enough to allow Yahara to spread the army into a cohesive defensive position. Yahara already knew that Ushijima had sanctioned the third alternative, and Cho had agreed completely to abide by the plan, adding nothing of his own. Ushijima was more surprised when Cho responded to Yahara’s proposed alternatives with a shrug of acceptance, offering the meek explanation that, after all, Yahara was the chief strategist. The colonel’s strategy would be put into motion within two days, the length of time it would require for the staffs to organize the paperwork of the headquarters for travel. Everything left behind would, of course, be destroyed. Once the staffs were ready to move, they would withdraw from beneath the remains of the Shuri Castle and relocate in a series of temporary headquarters as they made their way to the Kiyan Peninsula, the southernmost tip of the island. Within a very few days, the senior commanders would follow along with the bulk of the army, withdrawing from the battlegrounds that even now the Americans were pushing through. The Kiyan area would be difficult for the Americans to assault, was protected by high bluffs that rivaled or exceeded the strength of the heights that had already cost the Americans so much blood. Even an assault from the sea could be a serious challenge, much of the southern tip of the island protected by tall cliffs that could easily be defended. Yahara had added one more element to the plan, drawing on tactics he had studied from Napoleon to Rommel. The withdrawal of the army away from the Shuri Line had been carefully designed so that overconfident Americans would assume their enemy had simply scampered away. Instead two powerful forces would remain hidden at each end of the line, and as the Americans advanced, those forces would launch a sudden attack against the Americans on both their flanks. It was a desperate gamble and would most likely sacrifice some of Ushijima’s best frontline troops. The victory would come if the inevitable American advance was delayed, for days or even weeks, Yahara predicting that the apparent indecisiveness of the American generals would be heightened over the uncertainty of any other surprises the Japanese might have in store. The added time would allow Yahara to position what remained of the army in the most advantageous defensive posture down south, to maximize the last great effort they could make to bring down as many Americans as possible. If the army was to be sacrificed, Ushijima believed that Yahara’s new plan would make that sacrifice as effective as possible.
To the west, along the coast, the Oroku Peninsula held the major airfield west of the city of Naha, and Ushijima was well aware that the American Marines on that part of the line had both the city and the airfield as their goals. The city itself was mostly ruins, a victim of constant bombardment