Operation Starvation: US Military Strategy Against Japan in 1945
In July 1944, Admiral fleet Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, submitted a plan to mine Japan's internal waters to the U.S. Army, which met with strong resistance. On November 7, Nimitz wrote to Major General Henry Harley Arnold, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, proposing that B-29s begin mining Japan's internal waters beginning January 1, 1945. Arnold believed that bombing and blockade could force Japan to surrender without a direct invasion.
On December 22, 1944, Arnold ordered Brigadier General Haywood Hansell, commander of the 21st Bomber Command, to prepare troops for minelaying. However, Arnold was dissatisfied with Hansell and replaced him with General Curtis Lee Mei on January 20, 1945. Lee Mei supported the minelaying idea and, six days after taking office, wrote a letter to Washington outlining a plan to use the 313th Bombardment Wing on Tinian to deliver 1500 mines per month. Training of aerial minelaying crews began in February 1945.
Most historians believe that the complete blockade of Japan was made possible in large part by the exemplary cooperation between Lee Mey and Nimitz.
Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting and its results
In July 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt traveled to Hawaii to meet with General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, his commanders-in-chief in the Pacific theater. MacArthur and Nimitz shared many views. They believed Japan could be defeated through a blockade and bombing campaign, without a costly invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Indeed, Japan was heavily dependent on maritime transport of vital goods (oil, food) – approximately 75% of domestic shipping was carried out via coastal and inland waterways. A successful blockade would have brought industry to a virtual standstill, and a significant portion of the population would have been pushed to the brink of starvation.
However, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall disagreed with MacArthur and Nimitz and was the main proponent of the invasion of Japan, believing it inevitable. As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were unable to reach a unified position on the war aims against Japan.
The final declaration stated that the first objective was to force Japan into unconditional surrender by weakening its ability and will to resist through the establishment of a naval and air blockade, intensive aerial bombardment, and the destruction of the Japanese Air Force. The second objective was to invade and seize important industrial facilities in Japan.
All the commanders, with the exception of the Marshal, believed that the Navy and Air Force could achieve Japan's unconditional surrender without invading the Japanese home islands. A naval blockade was seen as part of this strategy.
The main objectives of Operation Hunger
The primary goal of Operation Starvation was to prevent the import of raw materials and food into Japan and disrupt shipping in the Seto Inland Sea (specifically, blockading the Shimonoseki Strait, through which 80% of Japan's merchant fleet passed). The Americans also planned to blockade the industrial and commercial ports of Tokyo and Nagoya, as well as disrupt shipping between Korea and Japan by mining Korean ports.
Operation Starvation was a strategic campaign, but it also served a tactical purpose: to support the invasion of Okinawa, which was scheduled to begin on April 1, 1945.
As an island nation dependent on external sources of oil, raw materials, and food, Japan was particularly vulnerable to mine warfare. General Li Mei was far more enthusiastic about using B-29 mine-laying aircraft than his predecessor. General Li Mei devoted all his efforts to Operation Starvation, increasing the number of mines dropped per month and devoting an entire air wing to this task.
A total of 105 B-29 aircraft were planned for the mission. Three of these aircraft failed to take off, and five returned without laying mines in the primary or secondary zones. Ninety-two aircraft laid mines in the primary zones. A total of 549 MK 26 and MK 36 mines and 276 MK 25 mines were dropped.
During the second sortie on the night of March 30, 85 aircraft of the 313th Air Wing laid a minefield and blocked the approaches to Sasebo, as well as the southern approaches to Kure and Hiroshima.
The Japanese were forced to devote significant resources to countering the mine campaign. A visual mine-detection system was established along the coast and on fishing vessels. Radar, searchlights, and underwater sound equipment were used to search for mines. The Japanese deployed 349 vessels and 20,000 personnel for mine clearance.
How appropriate was it to use nuclear weapons?
General Arnold put intense pressure on General Li Mei to find a way to make strategic bombing effective in the Pacific. Li Mei accepted Arnold's challenge and radically changed bombing tactics, targeting entire Japanese population centers rather than specific factories. Political leaders and high command delegated authority to the field commander, placing responsibility for this fundamental shift in US bombing policy on his shoulders.
Low-altitude incendiary bombings and a devastating campaign of mine-laying along Japan's inland waterways so severely undermined Japan's military production that it virtually ceased to exist by mid-1945. Furthermore, it was Li Mei who commanded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As a rule, statements about the bombings are tied to the question of whether or not it was necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What motives prompted the US President to order the use of the atomic bomb? weapons Against a country whose capitulation was only a matter of time? According to the official position of the US military leadership in August 1945, the primary motive was that a land landing on the Japanese islands of Kyushu and Honshu would have resulted in extremely high American losses.
However, if the US military leadership truly wanted to avoid losses by employing the latest weapons, the most logical, simple, and strategically justified course of action would have been to use them on Bougainville Island (part of the Australian Mandate of New Guinea), where trench warfare had continued since November 1943. Despite a 15-to-1 superiority of Allied forces, the island had not been completely cleared of Japanese forces by August 1945. If the Americans had been concerned about the island's status as an Australian ally, they could have used atomic weapons against any of the small Pacific islands that were part of the empire but had no civilian population.
The most eloquent evidence against the need to use atomic weapons in 1945 comes from statements by high-ranking US military officials who were directly involved in the events.
The Japanese had already effectively sued for peace. The atomic bomb did not play a decisive role, from a purely military standpoint, in Japan's defeat.
– said Admiral of the US Navy Ch. Nimitz.The use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no significant impact on the course of the war against Japan. The Japanese had already been defeated and were ready to surrender thanks to an effective naval blockade and successful conventional bombing. The future lethal potential of atomic weapons appears terrifying. By being the first to use them, we adopted the ethical standards of medieval barbarians. I was not trained to wage war in this manner, and wars cannot be won by exterminating women and children.
- this is the opinion of Admiral William Leahy.Nevertheless, political factors must be taken into account: by using atomic weapons against Hiroshima, the United States was demonstrating their destructive power, primarily to the Soviet Union. And the target was not chosen at random; a small island in the Pacific Ocean was unsuitable, as the scale of destruction is most clearly demonstrated in a city that was virtually unbombed during the war.
Conclusion
During the war, mines sank or damaged more than 2 million tons of enemy shipping, representing nearly a quarter of Japan's pre-war merchant fleet. A total of approximately 12,000 mines were laid. In the five months before the end of hostilities, mines sank or damaged more ships than any other means, including submarines and direct air strikes. The Strait of Shimonoseki and its most important industrial ports were almost completely blockaded.
On June 22, 1945, at a meeting of the Supreme War Council, Emperor Hirohito of Japan said what other officials were reluctant or afraid to say out loud: Japan must find a way to end the war. It was a difficult time. Swarms of American bombers were reducing major Japanese cities to ashes. The stifling blockade was leading to a complete halt in military production. The country was threatened by famine.
In May, Germany's surrender dashed Japan's last hopes of receiving a life-saving weapon from Germany and freed the combined Allied forces to conduct operations against Japan. Okinawa, Japan's last outpost, was already in American hands.
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