CHAPTER FIVE

More than a thousand miles away across the blue Pacific, on the island of Leyte in the Philippines, the Japanese were preparing to meet the threat of invasion.

A key aspect of the coastal defense was being constructed at Guinhangdan Hill. Rising more than five hundred feet above the coastal plain, the hill offered a commanding view of the beach and Leyte Gulf beyond. From the Y-shaped crest of the hill, the sleepy town of Palo and the slow-moving Bangon River were in plain view.

The ancient volcanic core created a natural fortress, and the Japanese forces had taken advantage of that by gradually adding to its defenses since occupying the Philippines in 1941.

“Harumph,” grunted Major Hisako Noguchi, surveying the work that had been done. On the one hand, he was amazed that they had accomplished so much. But on the other hand, there was still so much to do.

He watched with a dispassionate gaze as an officer beat a slow-moving Filipino laborer with a stick. Such cruelty did not bother him. Noguchi concerned himself only with the results.

With his engineer’s eye, Major Noguchi studied the placement of the artillery positions, some of which had been designed to accommodate “disappearing guns” that could fire and then roll back into a cave, out of sight, making them frustratingly difficult targets.

In the last few months, construction efforts had risen to a fever pitch. Every available Japanese soldier had been put to work, trading their rifles for shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. Mechanized equipment that was so familiar to US forces was virtually nonexistent here in the Philippines.

Instead, alongside the soldiers, work details of conscripted Filipino men of all ages had toiled from dawn to dusk, under constant threat of swift punishment if they appeared to slack off for even one moment under the brutal heat and torrential tropical rains.

If the Japanese troops were underfed and treated poorly, then it was far worse for the Filipinos, who were considered to be little more than slaves. Weakened men were pushed aside, and fresh conscripts took their place, although these were often boys or very old men. No matter — the desperate Japanese occupiers treated them all harshly. A mass grave near the base of the hill, not far from the nearby town of Palo, now occupied by the Japanese, was testimony to the backbreaking work and the treatment that the Filipinos received at the hands of the occupying force.

Those almost inhuman efforts had produced incredible results. Gun pits and firing positions now honeycombed the promontory. Extensive caves, complete with electric lighting and ventilation systems, ensured that not even the heaviest enemy air or naval bombardment could reach the defenders. They were well prepared for an attack that they were sure was to come.

The man in charge of this operation, Major Noguchi, was an artillery officer, one of those men who could instantly calculate a complicated firing azimuth in his head. He also had a talent for building fortifications and a sly cunning for managing to disguise them from the enemy.

The smell of freshly dug dirt and curing cement hung over the hill. Noguchi nodded in satisfaction. Let them come.

He was a squat, unimposing man — even a little chubby, and he wore thick glasses. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Noguchi on appearances alone. Within him burned the spirit of a warrior.

Noguchi walked on, huffing and puffing with exertion as he made his way up the hillside, the soldiers he passed barely acknowledging him.

It was no wonder. On more than one occasion he had been reprimanded for wearing simple work clothes rather than his officer’s uniform. He did not bother with carrying a sword, like many officers, but preferred a shovel, sometimes joining in alongside the soldiers who were busy digging and carting loads of soil.

It was grueling labor. After all, there was no heavy equipment to do all this work. They had built it all by hand, as if they were laborers from a thousand years ago. Their efforts were so different from those of their enemy, who brought along ships filled with bulldozers and even backhoes as they advanced across the Pacific, ever closer to Japan.

“Faster, faster!” he admonished a group of soldiers digging a sniper pit. “You will wish that you had already dug ten more of those once the Americans arrive.”

The soldiers looked past Noguchi to the expanse of empty ocean beyond. There was a cloud or two on the horizon, but no sign of enemy ships. They didn’t dig any faster. One or two stopped digging to wipe their brows or take a drink of water.

Another soldier approached. He was younger than Noguchi, and not any taller, but he was far more graceful, moving like a fabled Tsushima leopard cat through the construction zone. He was not an officer, but a gunsō, or sergeant.

“You heard him,” the sergeant said. His voice was no more than a purr, but there was menace in it. “Dig faster. My men and I are the ones who will be in these pits, while you are safe underground. Make it deep, and then dig another.”

Immediately, the soldiers bent to their work with fresh energy. They didn’t fear Noguchi, with his shovel and his dusty clothes. But they all knew Sergeant Akio Ikeda. He carried a rifle with a telescopic sight. He commanded the sogekihei squad — men with special ability as sharpshooters. Rumor had it that he sometimes drank too much sake and sat up here on the hill, picking off Filipino laborers in the distance.

“Thank you, Sergeant Ikeda,” Noguchi said.

“You should hit one with your shovel from time to time,” replied Ikeda. “Show them you’re the boss.”

Noguchi shrugged. “Maybe you are right. But you must admit, the men have worked very hard overall.”

Even Ikeda had to agree. He gave the officer a rare smile. “Hai. The Americans will break upon this hill like the sea dashing upon the rocks.”

“Indeed,” Noguchi said.

Together, the two men continued their inspection of the defenses. It had been an intense matter of debate and even disagreement, but General Yamashita, overall commander of Japanese forces on Leyte, one of the nine main islands that made up the Philippines, had declared that the American invasion should not be met with defenses at the shoreline.

To many military minds, this seemed like an unnatural way to defend an island. Shouldn’t the defenses be at the shoreline? Wouldn’t the Japanese want to meet the enemy at the beach and hurl them back into the sea, preventing them from gaining any foothold on Leyte? Many officers could be forgiven if they didn’t understand why this strategy was being abandoned in favor of allowing the American forces to land with relatively little opposition.

General Yamashita had ordered that the beaches be left undefended for the most part. He had sound reasons for this strategy. Any defenses at the beach itself would be out in the open, vulnerable to the naval bombardment that would surely precede the American landing. No matter how many men and guns they put on that beach, there might be nothing left but churned ground by the time the enemy guns fell silent.

Instead, General Yamashita had moved the bulk of defenses inland. The Americans would land, but they would soon be drawn into a deadly trap. Hidden in the hills and jungles, the big guns could do little against the well-entrenched defenders.

But this did not mean the landing would be met with a welcome mat. There would be more than a few machine-gun positions close to the beach. It would be fairly easy to move the machine gunners into position after the American bombardment ended. With overlapping fields of fire, the machine guns would exact a bloody toll before they were silenced.

Guinhangdan Hill would be another thorn in the Americans’ side, anchoring the Japanese coastal defense strategy. The hill itself was what remained of an ancient volcano. Much of the volcanic stone had been hollowed out for defensive fortifications. The stone was almost made to order for this purpose — hard enough to withstand enemy shelling, but porous enough that it could be dug away by men using picks and shovels.

From up here, the artillery could fire down on the beach and also at the invasion fleet itself. No matter how much firepower the Americans threw at the hill, no matter how many planes flew overhead to drop their bombs, Major Noguchi had helped ensure that the only way the hill could truly be taken would be for those troops to march inland and storm it — at great expense.

Still, even someone as steadfast in his duties as Noguchi could not ignore the fact that the island might be overrun in the end. Other islands had fallen under the American advance. Would Leyte be different? Whatever the outcome, he was sure that the Americans would be very sorry that they had come ashore. Noguchi would make them sorry, as would Ikeda and his snipers. He smiled with satisfaction at the thought.

Ikeda had noticed the officer’s smile. “I know what you are thinking, sir.”

“Do you?”

“You are thinking that you are very glad that we are not the ones who will have to attack this hill.”

Major Noguchi barked a laugh. “You would be correct in that assumption, Sergeant Ikeda.”

The two men continued to climb the hill, Ikeda moving easily up the slope, while Noguchi huffed and puffed. He paused from time to time to catch his breath and to inspect what was ultimately his handiwork. Groups of men labored to dig sniper holes or to add a few more sandbags to the entrance to an artillery position, passing the sandbags up the hillside in a daisy chain that reminded Noguchi of a line of ants.

It was quite a variety of ants, considering that the growing manpower shortage meant that men of all ages had been conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. Some of the soldiers were barely more than teenagers, while a few had hair shot through with gray. The older soldiers might easily have been the grandfathers of the youngest conscripts, considering that men from ages fifteen to sixty were now being drafted. Under the old rules, national service had been limited to ages seventeen through forty.

In truth, the army was something of a catchall for men who wouldn’t hold much promise as pilots or sailors — but a man of just about any age could hold a rifle or throw a grenade. This did not mean that the soldiers lacked fervor — almost each and every one of them was ready to sacrifice his life for Japan and the Emperor — so much the better if he took a few enemy soldiers along with him.

Most of the men worked in their undershirts or had even stripped to the waist in the heat. Their pants and boots were covered in dust, making some of the men almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. Each night, they went to sleep grimy and sweaty in fetid quarters, then rose at dawn to do it all over again.

Noguchi did not trouble himself too much regarding the welfare of the men. They were simply a means to an end, which was the construction of this fortress against the impending American attack.

Yet even he had to admit that the work was taking its toll. Sadly, many of the soldiers looked too thin, their rib cages showing or their chests hollowed out. They had spent endless hours laboring on this hillside, and the truth was that they lacked decent rations. Most of them were surviving on a bowl of white rice a day, with a small serving of some meat or fish or canned crab perhaps every other day. It was barely enough food to sustain a child, let alone a Japanese soldier doing hard labor all day. These underfed soldiers would soon be expected to put down their shovels and pick up their rifles. Would they even have enough strength left to fight?

Noguchi felt a little guilty about his own sturdy frame, if not exactly corpulent, then definitely well fed. Then again, officers had access to much better food, and the major had never been one to deny himself. As for Ikeda, the major wondered if the man needed to eat at all — he seemed to have endless reserves of energy to fuel his wiry strength. The man reminded Noguchi of a coiled steel spring.

Noguchi paused for breath, taking the time to observe a group of men working nearby. One of them seemed to only be poking at the soil with his shovel rather than actually digging. In fairness to the soldier, he appeared to be nearly as thin as the shovel handle. “You, there, put your back into it,” Noguchi said.

The man bent to his work, but the tip of his shovel still only scraped ineffectually across the rocky soil, resulting in the unpleasant sound of metal screeching over rock.

Quick as a flash, Ikeda stepped forward and swatted the man in the side of the head. “You heard the major. Dig! You are a lazy disgrace!” For good measure, Ikeda kicked the man so hard in the seat of the pants that it raised a cloud of dust from the soldier’s dirty trousers.

Hai! Hai!” the soldier shouted, redoubling his efforts. The soldiers around him also worked harder to avoid Sergeant Ikeda’s boot. Dirt flew. In the Japanese military, physical punishment of soldiers was common. When Japanese officers heard that their American counterparts had to respect the individual rights of servicemen, they were astonished. How could the Americans hope to fight a war? And yet, somehow, they did. A war that they were winning.

Finally, the two men approached the summit of Guinhangdan Hill. The view was impressive, with the sweep of the beach below clearly visible. Aqua water broke in gentle waves upon the shore. It was an idyllic scene and almost impossible to imagine that it would be interrupted all too soon by the sight of an invading force.

Near the summit stood Noguchi’s pride and joy, a sight even more rare than a coveted black pearl. A massive cave had been carved into the volcanic rock, yet the entrance was so cleverly disguised that it was hard to spot from the air or even from the sea. Like the hollow eye of a massive skull, the cave managed to disguise its contents. In a sense, this cave and its contents were Noguchi’s masterpiece as a military engineer. From within the cave, like the head of a hydra, jutted the muzzles of three massive guns. Their sheer size made them monstrous, dwarfing any of the artillery on that hill — or anywhere else on Leyte, for that matter.

It was a mystery why the guns had been sent to Leyte, clearly part of some master plan that Noguchi was not privy to. But he had obeyed his orders by putting them into position, and he knew how to use them well enough.

These were Type 94 eighteen-inch naval guns that had been designed for the Yamato, the largest of Japan’s naval ships. Only a very few guns of this size had been manufactured. Each gun could fire a three-thousand-pound shell up to twenty-six miles, delivering a truly devastating blow. The guns had also been designed to use special “beehive” antiaircraft rounds that could sweep clear entire sections of sky. If the Americans planned an aerial assault on Leyte, they would be in for a nasty surprise.

Installing the guns had been a tremendous task, considering the overall weight of the battery. It had been akin to dragging an entire section of a battleship up the hillside, all done with ropes, pulleys and chock blocks, and sweat.

But Noguchi hoped that the effort had been worth it. If Leyte’s defenses had been impressive before, they were now downright formidable.

An artillery officer approached, scrambling down from the cave mouth. “Sir, we have reports of a target off the coast.”

“A target?”

“An American ship, sir. It is just within range. Forty thousand meters.”

Noguchi nodded. Could this be the first of the American invasion fleet? He could see Ikeda peering out to sea, as if hoping for a glimpse of the American ship, but that was impossible at this distance. He even put his rifle to his shoulder and peered through the telescopic sight.

“Stop wasting your time, Ikeda,” Noguchi said.

At that distance, the ship couldn’t be seen by the most powerful binoculars, because the destroyer was hidden by the curve of the earth itself. It was like holding an upside-down bowl in front of your eyes and trying to see what was on the other side.

But that did not mean the American ship was out of reach of the battery, which some had nicknamed Orochi after a multiheaded dragon from children’s tales.

“Captain, I think that this would be an excellent time to exercise the guns.”

“Hai!” The younger officer snapped off a salute, his excitement evident from his broad grin as he turned back toward the cave.

“Sir, you are actually going to shoot that thing?” Ikeda asked.

“Even better, Sergeant Ikeda. We are going to sink an enemy ship.”

Quickly, preparations were made. It required a tremendous crew to operate the guns, with more than twenty men assigned to each gun. A clever mechanical system carried the heavy shells and gunpowder up from the armory deep within the hill itself. The guns were not quick to load, and each could only fire approximately one round per minute. Noguchi smiled, thinking that the slow rate of fire would be more than compensated for by the sheer firepower those guns delivered.

As the guns themselves were loaded by their crews, the artillery officers made firing calculations. Noguchi left them to it.

“Come,” he said to Ikeda. “Let us get inside the cave. We do not want to be standing out here when those guns fire, believe me.”

Noguchi sent another officer to order the men off the slope in front of the guns, offering a clear line of fire. Although the muzzles would be elevated, he didn’t want anyone near the guns when they went off.

It was a curious thing that artillery crews on both sides were not offered any sort of hearing protection. Some men were smart enough to stuff cotton in their ears, but the accepted practice was simply to cover your ears with your hands. As a result, the most common word in any artilleryman’s vocabulary was, “What?”

“Ready, sir,” the artillery captain said, looking at Noguchi. The major gave a curt nod.

All around them, the men put their hands over their ears — except for the artillery captain and Noguchi, who both kept high-powered binoculars trained on the horizon. The captain also wore a headset that put him in radio contact with the spotter plane that had sighted the American warship. The report from the spotter would be the only way that they would know if they had missed. They might then have a chance to adjust their aim, but by then the ship would be zigzagging across the surface, trying to present a more difficult target for any enemy submarines or planes. The only thing visible out there was ocean and more ocean, stretching to where the sea met the horizon, another reminder of the vastness of the Pacific. The crew of the ship probably thought that it was safe. The massive guns would be quite unexpected.

In rapid succession, the three guns fired. The entire hill shook, rattling the men to their very bones. Firing these guns was nerve-racking enough due to their immense power. It was hard to even begin to imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end.

Considering the distance involved, it took a minute and a half for the heavy shells to make their flight. Their ears ringing, the gun crew waited with tense anticipation, ready to scramble into action to reload the massive guns.

The radio headset crackled into the ringing silence. “One splash! Two hits!” the artillery captain shouted. “The enemy ship is sinking!”

A cheer rang through the cave. Noguchi grinned with satisfaction, then patted the captain on the shoulder. This had been the first firing of the battery in anger, so to speak. The success promised to be an omen of good things to come.

The captain had more details from the spotter plane. “The spotter says that the enemy ship was broken in half and has already slipped beneath the waves. He can see a few men in the water, but no lifeboats — there wasn’t time.”

“Are there any American ships in the area to rescue the survivors?”

“No, none very close.”

“That’s too bad. We might have claimed another target. Still, sinking a ship was an excellent outcome. The men did well, Captain. You did well. Orochi did well.”

It might not have been acceptable military practice, but the younger officer couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you, sir!”

Beyond the mouth of the cave that sheltered the battery, medical personnel could now be seen on the hillside beneath the guns. They were tending to a handful of soldiers who had been too slow clearing the area and had found themselves close to the muzzle blast. They had all suffered concussions. Curiously, the men were naked, or nearly so. The shock wave caused by the force of firing the tremendous guns had ripped their clothing from their bodies. The men wandered in a daze, their eardrums bleeding. It was yet another reminder of the powerful nature of this battery.

Noguchi turned to Ikeda, who had observed the firing of the guns with just as much amazement as anyone. His own rifle felt puny by comparison to the massive power of those artillery guns. “You are not the only one who is a sharpshooter,” Noguchi observed with pleasure.

“How would I ever hit a ship with a rifle?”

“That is why these guns are so important. With one volley, we can destroy a ship. Imagine what we will do to the invasion fleet.”

“That may be true, sir.” Ikeda gave a rare smile. “But when the Americans eventually come ashore, you will be glad of my rifle to protect your precious guns.”

“Of that I have no doubt, Sergeant Ikeda. You and me, we are a team.”

Ikeda looked the short, stout officer up and down, as if contemplating that possibility. Noguchi had demonstrated the power of his impressive guns, but soon enough Ikeda knew that he would be able to demonstrate the ability of his snipers.

“Yes,” he finally agreed, tightening the grip on his rifle.

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