The Longest Year by Victor Brooks

Author:Victor Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

The Gods of Sea and Sky

On June 6, 1944, as the Allies were landing in Normandy, the most powerful fleet in the history of naval warfare to that time was beginning to rendezvous on the other side of the world. Newly captured Eniwetok Island was now the staging point for Operation Forager, the first American attempt to pierce the boundaries of Japan’s prewar empire while also reclaiming the first piece of American soil captured by the enemy in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The American target was the Marianas island chain and its two most important islands, Saipan and Guam.

Just as Anglo-American military leaders had spent much of the previous year discussing and debating the invasion point for Operation Overlord, American Army and Navy officials had engaged in intense deliberations to discover the most expedient method of penetrating the inner defense perimeter of the Nipponese Empire. While the choice of Normandy for Operation Overlord was based on relatively cordial discussions between American and British commanders, the debate over the best way to approach the Japanese homeland was far more vociferous and did not fall into the scope of traditional Army-Navy rivalry.

Four different senior American military commanders proposed four different “best” routes to a decisive confrontation with the enemy at the gateway to its home islands. General Henry “Hap” Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, was anxious to demonstrate the capabilities of the new aerial superweapon B-29 Super Fortress, which the “bomber barons” believed could incinerate Japan into surrender from operational bases near the coast of China. General Douglas MacArthur insisted that the springboard to the Nipponese homeland would be to recapture the now Japanese-occupied Philippine Islands, which, in turn, would be the base for a massive amphibious invasion of the enemy homeland. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, viewed the island of Formosa as the operational center for the final invasion. Finally Nimitz’s superior, Admiral Ernest King, insisted that the collapse of Japan could be accomplished through severing the supply line between the home islands and their recently acquired empire through the capture of their geographic jugular vein, the Marianas Islands.

The prospect of a four-way free-for-all loomed for the ultimate arbiter of the dispute, the commander in chief of the armed forces. However, before Franklin Roosevelt was forced to make difficult choices that would leave at least some senior commanders disgruntled, a series of events occurred that allowed a relatively tolerable compromise to emerge before the president had to don his executive decision-maker persona. A massive early 1944 Japanese offensive in China quickly overran the prospective base sites intended for Arnold’s superforts; Ernest King assured his naval colleague that, since Formosa was closer to Japan than the Marianas, an invasion of that island could remain on the operational list after the Marianas were captured; and, finally, the president assured Douglas MacArthur that his beloved Philippines were not forgotten and that their liberation could be addressed after the Marianas were safely under the American flag. Therefore, Ernest

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