Hunter Sniper

CHAPTER EIGHT

In his headquarters aboard USS Nashville, General Douglas MacArthur studied the maps that had been secured to the steel bulkhead. One of the maps displayed the entire Pacific theater of operations, its surface showing a great deal of blue water dotted with chains of islands that, until a few short years ago, had been unknown to the average American, such as the Marianas, the Marshall Islands, and the Gilbert Islands.

Some of the names had become not only familiar but synonymous with terrible battles: Guadalcanal, Guam, Saipan. Thousands of young American lives had been lost in those places, fighting the Japanese Empire.

Other islands were so small that it required a fair amount of squinting to make out their names on the map, considering that the smallest were little more than a grove of trees on an elevated pile of sand that managed to keep above the tide line — if just barely.

The general knew all too well that just because an island was small on the map did not mean that it was insignificant. Peleliu was one such example. Measuring just five square miles, about one-fourth the size of Manhattan, the fight for Peleliu had cost the lives of more than thirteen hundred marines.

Some had called the American campaign “island hopping,” and that was an accurate description.

After all, Japan itself was an island nation that had built its empire largely of other Pacific islands, along with several swaths of the Asian continent that held the precious natural resources that Japan needed to feed its industries and its war machine — raw materials such as rubber, metals, and all-important oil to fuel its ships and planes.

The map showed how many more islands there were to go as US forces pressed ever closer to the Japanese home islands, especially Iwo Jima, the smaller Ryukyu islands, and Okinawa. Adding those islands to the list of American conquests promised to cost so many more lives on both sides that the very thought of the battles to come was daunting.

MacArthur was a commanding general, but he wasn’t a monster. He both understood and dreaded the price that would be paid. He often thought of General Ulysses S. Grant, whom some had seen as a butcher for his willingness to grind down his own army in search of victory. That reputation had always cast a shadow on Grant.

Could he do what Grant had done? In the end, MacArthur knew that he might not have much choice.

There had been rumors at the highest levels that the United States was developing a superweapon of such destructive power that it would strike fear into the Japanese Emperor’s heart. Even a general as high ranking as MacArthur didn’t know the details, but he didn’t have a lot of faith that anything less than the equivalent of Zeus’s thunderbolt would bring the Japanese to their knees.

Pacing his office, he paused long enough to put his hands on his hips and glare at the territories on the maps still held by the Japanese, as if willing the enemy to surrender.

MacArthur’s chief of staff came in. Born in Maryland, Dick Sutherland had been raised in West Virginia and had come to the army by way of Yale. Thirteen years younger than MacArthur, he had helped chase Pancho Villa in Mexico and fought the Germans on the Western Front during the Great War. Smart and capable, he was a tough taskmaster who oversaw the headquarters staff with an iron fist and an unrelenting attention to detail. It might be said that he was the general’s hatchet man and lobbyist, which hadn’t won him any friends in Washington.

The two men had experienced their ups and downs. They had even come close to falling out over MacArthur’s disapproval of Sutherland’s mistress — the wife of an Australian army officer — until Sutherland had come to his senses. Sutherland remained fiercely loyal to MacArthur — if a Japanese assassin had burst in, he wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a bullet for his boss.

He saw MacArthur looking at the maps yet again.

“Kind of makes you wonder why they don’t surrender, doesn’t it?” Sutherland asked.

“No,” MacArthur said. “You know damn well that we wouldn’t surrender either. We have to keep hitting them until they can’t hit back anymore.”

“From your lips to God’s ears.”

Sutherland left some papers on MacArthur’s desk and went back out, leaving the general to his ruminations.

The map that held the most interest for the general showed operations on the island of Leyte, where thousands of his troops had recently landed.

“Sir?” Another staff officer who was far junior to Sutherland poked his head cautiously through the door. They all knew that the general didn’t like to be interrupted, but from time to time, one of them appeared to update the maps.

“Go on,” MacArthur said.

As swiftly as possible, the man made a few marks on the map and retreated with a palpable air of relief from the general’s inner sanctum. Tall and imposing, MacArthur’s regal appearance tended to have that effect on his staff. He was not one to engage his staff in hale and hearty conversation.

The fact that he called his junior staff by their rank and not their actual names had convinced them that the general did not consider them worthy of notice.

It was interesting that officers in different branches of the service seemed to favor a certain “type” or look. Senior naval officers preferred a thin appearance, skinny as the fox-faced Lord Nelson in an old oil painting. Sometimes it almost seemed as if those navy boys were having a competition to see who could be the leanest.

Army generals tended toward bulkiness, and MacArthur was no exception. Heavy through the shoulders and chest, with a thick neck, six feet tall, he somewhat resembled an old bull and could project an air of intimidation.

Early in the war, he had picked up the nickname “Dugout Doug” for keeping to his bunker while his troops fought on Bataan. Those who questioned his courage seemed to have forgotten that as a young officer, he had single-handedly killed several enemy soldiers in combat, both in Mexico and in the Philippines, sometimes against overwhelming odds.

Alone again, the general nodded with satisfaction at the updated map. Truth be told, he had most of the maps committed to memory, but they gave him something to look at while he strolled around the confines of his office. The general did his best thinking on his feet.

The lines showed his own forces were advancing and that the areas under Japanese control were shrinking. In other words, things were moving in the right direction. This was progress.

The only place where the positions were murky remained in the jungle interior of the island, where small US patrols battled like-size Japanese forces. Again, the general knew that “small” did not mean insignificant to the men fighting and dying in those battles.

He was sure that the Japanese commander, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, had similar maps on the damp walls of his cave or bunker or wherever the hell it was that he had gone to ground. The picture presented by Yamashita’s maps would be far bleaker, MacArthur knew.

MacArthur had successfully landed on Leyte, returning to the Philippines. His return had been a promise made and kept. Now that he had set foot on shore, he had to seize the rest of the nation from the Japanese.

He had not shifted his headquarters from USS Nashville to the shore, though that might have been more symbolic. From the general’s point of view, remaining at sea was strictly a practical consideration. The truth was that the ship enabled far better communication thanks to its powerful radios and electronics.

Simply staying in touch with commanders across the vast Pacific counted for a great deal in terms of military success. Also, the ship provided comfortable quarters and decent food.

There were also interservice rivalries to consider. MacArthur thought there was sound advice in the old saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.

Being a guest of the navy was a bit like staying at a hotel where one didn’t need to be concerned about practical matters such as changing the sheets or cleaning the bathroom. MacArthur found that he could focus all his energies on the needs of his forces.

The shore was a short boat ride away whenever he needed to get there in person. For now, the reports coming in and the occasional updates to the maps provided all the information he needed.

The maps were carefully marked with troop positions, both those of his own men and, to the extent that observation and intelligence reports allowed, the disposition of the enemy troops.

Enemy. It was a powerful word, he thought. He knew that it came from the Latin word inimicus. Julius Caesar would have used the word to describe the Gauls or the barbarians of Germania.

The word implied a certain amount of hostility, even hatred. MacArthur searched his mind, then shook his head. He didn’t feel hostility. Instead, he thought of the Japanese as his adversary or opponent. People like Admiral “Bull” Halsey crowed about “killing Japs” to the delight of the press and presumably of the folks back home as well, a growing number of whom had lost husbands, sons, or young men from their communities in the Pacific conflict. It was understandable if they wanted some blood.

Back home, the US government had even seen fit to round up Japanese Americans and put them in camps to keep an eye on them. That action had been motivated in part by hatred and bigotry toward the Japanese.

MacArthur didn’t feel the same way. However, MacArthur’s equanimity toward the Japanese went only so far. In particular, he was concerned about the treatment of American POWs held by the Japanese.

Long before the invasion of Leyte, reports had come in of Japanese cruelty to their prisoners of war. The prisoners were generally American, British, or Australian. The cruelty involved starvation, beatings, and brutality of all stripes, even murder. He believed that captured soldiers should be treated with honor.

The very thought of the Japanese cruelty toward his men was one of the only things that really angered MacArthur. When it came to the enemy, it was the one issue that made his blood boil.

It was why he had made a statement about the treatment of POWs and punishment for those who harmed them one of the cornerstones of the speech that he had made on the beach a few days before. Once the Philippines were more secure, he planned to locate and liberate the POW camps as quickly as possible.

To some extent, his landing on the beach had been staged for publicity purposes, but those words of warning to the Japanese regarding the treatment of POWs hadn’t been hot air. MacArthur meant them deeply. He had issued a warning to the Japanese, and he planned to stand by it. He wanted them to understand that, make no mistake, there would be punishment and retribution for harm to American POWs.

“I have no shortage of rope to hang every last one of those sons of bitches if necessary,” he had once told Sutherland.

On the other side of the coin, there were relatively few Japanese taken prisoner, given their adversary’s determination to die for the Emperor. The Japanese were indoctrinated that surrender or capture would bring dishonor on themselves and their families, perhaps for generations to come. They were told that a man who surrendered could never return home again. Given these high cultural stakes, you couldn’t blame the average Japanese for refusing to give up.

Nonetheless, at least a few Japanese had the sense to surrender or were captured. But bitterness flowed both ways. He knew that sometimes Japanese prisoners did not make it back to the POW compound behind the lines. He frowned on such things and discouraged it. He wanted his soldiers to be men of honor, right down to the lowliest private. They needed to practice self-control.

Then again, MacArthur had seen the bodies of men killed by the Japanese. Some of the bodies had even shown signs of torture. The sight had sickened him. He could understand why Japanese prisoners sometimes didn’t survive for long in combat areas, but the general did not condone it. Americans were better than that.

Once Japanese prisoners reached the POW compound, they were treated well. They were given food, clean clothes, medical attention. It was another sign of American power that they could be generous and magnanimous toward prisoners of war.

After all, US forces were winning. The maps indicated that MacArthur was driving back the Japanese on all fronts. One thought that troubled him almost as much as the Japanese was the disposition of the US Navy. He was in constant operational contact with naval forces, and they certainly had a common enemy, but the two branches of the service were always trying to make an end run around the other.

The way that MacArthur saw it, the navy would gladly have tried to win this war on its own and taken all the credit for it. To be fair, the same attitude was probably true of the army.

The truth was that he didn’t always know everything that the navy was up to. To that end, he had a plan.

If his junior staff believed that MacArthur never bothered to learn their names, they were sadly mistaken. There was not much that escaped the general’s attention.

He leaned into the hallway and bellowed, “Oatmire!”

Working in a cramped room two doors down, Captain Jim Oatmire heard his name being shouted by the general and very nearly threw up his recent breakfast of powdered eggs and black coffee.

Holy crap!

Having been summoned from on high, Oatmire had no choice but to come running, his footsteps echoing through the metal hallways of the ship. Other officers glanced at him but were careful not to meet his eyes. They just figured that Oatmire was running toward his doom.

Oatmire had gone ashore with a small contingent of General MacArthur’s staff during the general’s initial landing on Leyte. He hadn’t exactly been in combat, but he had been close enough to hear the shooting.

Come to think of it, so had the general. MacArthur hadn’t appeared to be troubled the least bit by the sounds of combat.

Since then Oatmire had found himself back aboard USS Nashville, wielding nothing more lethal than a sharp pencil and dodging nothing more dangerous than the mess hall’s version of meat loaf.

“Sir?” asked the breathless young officer, who like most of the other junior staff remained in awe of the general. That awe and apprehension was clearly written on his face.

“Pack a seabag, son. I’m sending you as a liaison over to USS Kalinin Bay with the Seventh Fleet. The captain is an old friend of mine, and I’ll lay on some story about interservice learning and cooperation. He’ll probably smell my bullshit from a mile away, but he’ll laugh about it. I just need you on that ship. I hear they’re heading out to pay a visit to the Japanese Navy.”

“Yes, sir.” Oatmire’s blank look indicated that he still had no idea what the general had in mind. What the hell was interservice learning and cooperation, anyhow? “What do you want me to do while I’m there, sir?”

“Relax, Oatmire, you’re not being transferred to the navy. Not yet, anyhow. I want you to observe and report back to me.” A smile creased the general’s face. “You’re going to be my fox in the navy henhouse. In other words, son, you’re going to be my spy.”