Danger’s Hour
What looks to be an interesting book by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, arrived in the mail today. For “Danger’s Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her“ Max interviewed survivors on both sides and heavily researched the attack on the aircraft carrier on May 11, 1945. But there’s another angle. Quick, scanning take:
The intro, all I’ve read so far, describes an effort to understand both the willingness of Americans to die in combat and sacrifice themselves for others, and the suicidal missions and ethos of the Japanese, who more explicitly used themselves as sacrifical weapons. The book includes a detailed bio, up to the last radio transmissions, of Kiyoshi Ogawa, the pilot who rammed his Zero into the Bunker Hill, and more on the program from surviving Japanese kamikaze vets.
Two cultures, American and Japanese, collided aboard the Bunker Hill that day. It was and is almost impossible for Americans to comprehend cultural forces that would obliterate the will to live. How could so many young men train for months for a mission whose success necessarily meant their own death? Particularly when the suiciders knew Japan was going to lose the war. As America struggles to come to terms with a global war on terror, and the realities of suicide bombing around the world, it is vital to understand the cultural forces that can overcome the basic desire to survive.
That’s one way of looking at it. The other way is, shoot first, ask questions later.
As history, Kennedy’s Bunker Hill/kamikaze research and its telling looks like a worthwhile read. Whether an understanding of kamikazes or sympathy with their plight contributes much to thwarting al-Qaeda’s suicide bombers is another matter. Looking at the chapter headings and scanning the epilogue, that seems to be more of an introductory concept, a suggestion of current context and maybe inspiration for his work, but not a premise that is heavily explored in the book. However, while the the bibliography* is predominantly World War II-related, it does include several references to articles on modern Islamic suicide bombings, so maybe the Islamic jihad angle gets salted in.
Walter Isaacson (”Benjamin Franklin: An American Life ” and “Einstein: His Life and Universe “) in his blurb at the Danger’s Hour link promises “critically important insights for today’s struggle against terrorists. Maxwell Taylor Kennedy shows how suicide bombers are recruited, the role they can play in asymmetric warfare, and how our military can be resilient in face of such attacks.”
Maybe. The epilogue’s closing line:
“The challenging lesson of the Pacific war may not be that aircraft carriers can extend American foreign policy around the world, but rather that a few determined men, willing to give their lives for a cause, may block that policy from ever being fulfilled.”
They didn’t have that effect in World War II, and they are not having it now. At least, not yet, despite the instincts of some American politicians to succumb to intimidation and view terror bombing campaigns as quagmires, insurmountable obstacles to security and stability, and reasons to give up. The U.S. military, while strained at times, has not had a resiliency problem then or now.
As Max notes, in World War II the use of kamikazes contributed to the strategic decision to use the atom bomb, because the Americans calculated, on that and other evidence, that the Japanese would resist a land invasion at horrific cost. The 2000 bombing of the USS Cole … which oddly doesn’t appear in Danger’s Hour index … showed a vulnerability that was threatened again as recently as last year by light Iranian gunboats in the Strait of Hormuz, but hasn’t been repeated. In today’s wars, as the events of the last two years in Iraq and now in Afghanistan are showing, suicide bombings and other terror tactics are proving counterproductive for al-Qaeda, turning the local populace against them. Counterinsurgency, maybe the diametric opposite of nuclear weapons, is becoming entrenched as the U.S. military’s strategy and tactics set of choice. Aircraft carriers floating offshore, in these wars, are weapons platforms that determined men on the ground can call on for assistance in those efforts, for better or worse.
In any case, the book, at 463 pages, looks more like a comprehensive, narrative history of how all the participants arrived on the deck of the Bunker Hill at the hour in question … politically, militarily and individually … and the world they lived in as sailors, aviators and kamikazes, including the obligatory chapter on race relations on board the ship. Doris Kearns Goodwin (”Team of Rivals“) and Stanley Karnow, (”Vietnam: A History“) just like it as history in their blurbs and don’t mention the AQ stuff. Ken Burns’ blurb also steers clear of jihad but posits that the kamikazes were “the most asymmetrical warfare we Americans have ever faced.” I suspect even Max might refer him to the VC or al Qaeda on that one, but who’s going to argue with a Ken Burns blurb?
One other thing, though. I have to say I’m a little put off by the introduction’s quotation of Macauley’s “Horatius At The Bridge,” with the remark that “This epic, a celebration of what bravery, determination, self-sacrifice and moral authority may accomplish in battle over a foe with grave numerical superiority, could have been written by any of the poets of Japanese Shinto, and echoes the strategy of kamikaze defense.” Sounds a little like someone’s fallen off the cultural relativism cliff. Memo to my buddy Max: Being willing to die in battle, even fighting to the death for one’s nation and friends, and turning oneself in a human bomb are not the same thing.
For that matter, I’m not sure where the equivalence is between the desperate Japanese kamikaze last-gasp defense against capital ships approaching the home islands, and al Qaeda’s considered strategy of suicidal attacks on civilians and military targets alike to create instability and chaos as a starting point that it can exploit. Same use of impressionable human bomb material, I guess, different tactics, context and goals.
(Here we go. Max has apparently scribbled a loon magnet. This ChiTrib reviewer, in a magnificent swandive off the cultural relativism cliff, explains he usually hates war books but loves this one’s heartwarming tale of a kamikaze who killed hundreds of American swabs. Great. Click here if you prefer your tales of wartime sacrifice cold, non-fuzzy.)
Like I said, it’s a preliminary take. I’m looking forward to reading the book. More later. For now, more Bunker Hill art, and a disclosure:
Damn. That is a bit like 9/11 to look at.
So’s that.
Full disclosure: Max and I were friendly acquaintances a few years back, talking for several wreckdiving stories and trying a couple of times with noted wreckdiver and mutual friend Barry Clifford to work together on diving gigs in various exotic locales, on historic wrecks that Barry was documenting. Efforts which didn’t work out for me, due to contractual publisher/broadcaster restrictions on unaffiliated scribblers. Too bad. The gigs sounded like a lot of fun, and Max is a good guy.
* The bibliography also includes this citation: “2 Jap Fliers Take 656 Toll on Carrier.” Boston Herald, 1945. My people at work back in the day. We still use abbreviations in headlines, but not that one.
You know, I forgot to mention, in the interest of fuller disclosure: I am an Australian-American, raised in Southeast Asia, where I camped as a boy scout on the River Kwai by the POW-built bridge, amid the Commonwealth Graves Commission cemeteries full of thousands of British, Australian, Dutch and American boys who were starved, beaten and worked to death. Along with thousands upon thousands of Thai and Burmese laborers they killed off. The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy overran one of my countries, attacked another, and were enroute to invade the ancestral homeland before they were turned back. I shed no tears for kamikaze bastards.
Topics: GWOT, history, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:59 pm on Tuesday, December 9, 2008
9 Responses to “Danger’s Hour”
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December 10th, 2008 at 7:25 am
There are lessons that apply from WW2 to today. Most of them are completely ignored or refused outright.
Lesson 1.
It is competent and proper for a military to conduct itself according to the enemy. If the enemy makes attempt at following the general laws and customs of land warfare, then similar consideration should be offered to that enemy.
If the enemy conducts itself with no regard to the laws and customs of land warfare and practices a no-quarter combat method, then no quarter should be offered to that enemy and the rules regarding conduct toward that enemy should be minimal at best.
Examples:
The German forces, in general, did make some effort to respect the laws and customs of land warfare when fighting against the American forces. The Japanese did not.
The Germans would offer quarter in most cases, the Japanese did not.
Our military conduct toward the Germans and the Japanese reflected that reality. Effort was taken to receive and care for German POWs. Not so much with the Japanese. It was often the case that when orders came down from on high to put effort into taking Japanese POWs, the orders would simply be ignored. Japanese POWs were taken, occasionally, but only because the grunts in direct contact with them were under direct supervision, or the grunts could be convinced that the POWs would provide actionable intel if captured. Otherwise, it was death to the last man for the enemy as was the enemy’s general behavior toward American forces.
It is human nature, and generally acceptable in American culture, to hold grudges and “do unto them what they done unto us, but do it harder and meaner if we get the chance”.
The American fighting man is an adaptable sort of man and has little problem in meeting an enemy head on at whatever level the enemy chooses, morally speaking. This has been changed in the last generation. Not so much in the hearts and minds of the American fighting man, but very much so in the lack of heart and mindless need to be seen as nice guys in the general American public.
So, now we give full quarter and hamstring our fighting men with ridiculous ROE that do little more than serve to give aid to the enemy, especially in allowing the enemy to pervert the meaning of those ROE and generate propaganda memes meant to alienate the general American public from the American fighting man.
Lesson 2.
Okinawa was the first full attempt at utilizing the Kamikaze attack format. It was much more successful than most want to admit or realize. The US Navy took horrendous casualties, in both shipping and men, off the shores of Okinawa. And Okinawa was a long way away from where the kamikaze took off from. That distance mattered. It mattered in that less bomb load was able to be placed on the suicide planes because of fuel needs. It also mattered in that at least rudimentary navigation skills were required for the pilots.
Also found at Okinawa were fortified, hidden caves along the shores in likely areas of amphibious landings by the American forces. Inside those caves were small, fast, attack boats that were still under construction, and therefore unable to operate against the invasion fleet. The boats were also suicide bombs. If construction of those boats had been completed before our fleet approached for the landing, the additional casualties could very well have been immense. Also, knowing that the island was potentially infested with such caves from which such boats could sally would have made keeping the amphibious support fleet off shore a very difficult thing to commit to doing.
As it was, with just the airborne kamikaze threat and the damage it was doing to the fleet, there were some in the US Navy command that wanted to pull the ground forces off the island and skedaddle out of the area.
Now, consider approaching the Japanese home islands where the distance is ever shorter for the pilots in the kamikazes, and the bomb loads they can carry grow ever larger as a result. Also that the best of the pilots and aircraft were not used in the Okinawa fight. And that it was proper to assume that the suicide boats would be fully operational by the time the invasion fleet could make its way to the landing sites…
There was some debate on whether or not sufficient strength in fleet and landing forces would survive the approach in order to make a successful landing possible.
There was also some debate that argued that kamikaze inflicted casualties would make sustaining a naval blockade highly problematic.
All that, combined with the known Japanese orders to execute all POWs, both military and civilian, if an invasion fleet approached the home islands, well, then, it only makes sense that we gave a no-quarter, no custom of land warfare adhering enemy a no-quarter option at the end.
Give up now, or you all die. Here’s two in proof that we mean it, now.
December 10th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Harrowing shots of the USS Franklin from the cruiser USS Santa Fe, from the Life Magazine photo archives at Google.
December 10th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Excellent summary Grimmy, my father told us about the no prisoners orders. He also told us about the women throwing their babies off the cliffs and then jumping themselves. The cost at Kyushu and Honshu would have been staggering.
A song called Shima Uta finally got it right. In the rational for the song the author stated that over 200,000 people died in Okinawa, with very few being killed by the U.S.
December 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Sorry, the women of Okinawa did the throwing and jumping.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
MikeH:
Civilians committing suicide in mass also happened at Saipan, iirc.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Here is the ‘mo who writes morally relativistic drivel for the ChiTrib.
December 11th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Grimmy, you’re probably right but I only heard about the Rock. My father’s brother was on Saipan after the fight and didn’t say anything about it.
Talking about retribution, my aunt’s husband, who was in the Navy, was in the march at Bataan and managed to make it all the way through. It took a toll on his mental makeup though. That was part of the rational for the no prisoners order.
December 14th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Grimmy,
Try “The Jacksonian Tradition”
by Walter Russell Mead at http://denbeste.nu/external/Mead01.html
The best articulation of the German versus Japanese prisoner issue from WWII.
From the reference:
” Warfighting ”
Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.”
Over the years I handed this to folks from other militaries to try and explain “us” to “them”.
Sometimes it has worked.
December 14th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
SWO:
The Jacksonian tradition, which I am a rather dedicated fan of, recognizes two forms of war.
Private war- such war is waged between private parties in a non nation state manner as vendetta.
Public war- Total war against a foreign enemy with the only possible end result of full, complete and un negotiated total surrender for either side.