Never before in history has such an enormous task confronted any navy as faced ours at the cessation of hostilities with Japan. Demilitarization and scrapping of the Japanese war-making potential were the immediate tasks, but at the same time almost as pressing was the job of repatriation of widely scattered Japanese to their homeland.
There were numerous other projects accomplished as a part of the Navy’s duties in its supervision of maritime matters for the occupation. Most important of these were minesweeping, policing of the adjacent seas, supervision of salvage of Japanese warships, converting Japanese naval establishments into U.S. naval establishments.
Some of these projects are continuing at the present time, their importance and scope being governed directly or indirectly by the current situation. For example, salvage of sunken ships is governed by the cost of steel. As Japan recovers economically, more ships will be salvaged.
In demilitarizing the Japanese Navy, the Japanese themselves did the major portion of the work. They spiked the guns or removed them from the ships. Ammunition, guns, and other items of value in naval warfare were put aboard barges and towed to deep water and sunk under Navy supervision. Japanese crews were kept intact aboard their ships or stations as much as possible immediately after the surrender, but the morale picture was exceedingly dim. Crews were not getting paid; the officers had no real authority and were able to get only those men loyal to navy tradition to work at the demilitarization of the ships. Some of the senior officers who had homes in the mountains abandoned their commands and went home. The ships’ companies were split into two factions; those who were bitter and rebellious, and those who were still loyal to what was left of the Imperial Navy. The rebel group spent their time looting the ship of those items of personal or saleable value, the obedient in carrying out the directives of rendering the ship unable to fight. The two groups ate, slept, and worked apart.
In the actual contact of personalities at the beginning of the occupation the situation was tense. The Japanese Navy men gave up their weapons quickly and quietly, obeying a military order that had the Emperor’s suasion behind it. But the surrender of arms is not the surrender of spirit, and we were encompassed with hostile attitudes of fierce fighting men who had suffered a great loss of all-important face. The liberty party went ashore with “C” rations, a canteen, and a carbine.
Before the arrival of the U.S. troops the Japanese women believed they would be raped by the conquerors. This belief was likely generated by the historical fact that the same thing did occur to Chinese women at the hands of the Japanese troops a few years before. Japanese officers who received the U. S. Navy forces in Tokyo Bay were amazed at the gentlemanly conduct of our officers. Although feelings were strong, yet on the officer level all was orderly. The Japanese naval officer’s attitude was that men must fight wars, someone must lose, it is a great game, and the sportsmanlike attitude should prevail to the victor and the vanquished. These same ex-Navy officers state that had the war resulted in the occupation of America we would have been subjected to the disciplinary measures Japanese occupation forces used in China.
Minesweeping was one of the major problems confronting the U. S. Navy at the time of surrender. B-29s and our submarines had laid over 10,000 mines in and near the approaches of Japan. There were in excess of 55,000 Japanese-sown mines in this same area and in the Inland Sea. Due to the complexity of the detonation devices on our mines and the helter-skelter method of laying them there had to be certain methods of sweeping worked out before the operation could begin.
The Navy set up major shore establishments at the former Naval Bases of Yokosuka and Sasebo to implement SCAP’s directives. The principal duties of these establishments, designated Fleet Activities, were policing areas of responsibility, demilitarization, inventory, and disposal of enemy equipment, and the maintaining of harbor facilities for fleet units.
There were various naval groups in Japan on specific missions in late 1945. There was the Naval Analysis Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. This was an organization of 340 officers and men. Rear Admiral Ofstie was the senior naval member. The headquarters for this group was established in Tokyo. Their operations were conducted from sub-headquarters in Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Other naval activities present were the U. S. Naval Technical Mission to Japan, Captain C. G. Grimes, senior member; Communications Units; The Branch Hydrographic Office Tokyo; Aircraft Units; The United States Marines, and various Fleet Units.
To understand the enormity of the tasks facing our naval forces at the time of the Japanese surrender it is necessary to consider the situation. Japan, a maritime nation, had been practically isolated for the previous four months. All outside sources of Japan’s support had been cut off except for a trickle of supplies from the Asiatic mainland. The closing of Japanese harbors with mines and the control of shipping areas by the Allies had reduced her industry drastically.
Ruinous air raids had so devastated industrial Japan and destroyed personnel as to overshadow some major disasters in world history. One raid on March 9, 1945, resulted jn greater havoc and loss of life than the Plague of London, the San Francisco Earthquake, and the Great London Fire combined. Burned to the ground were 16 square miles in the heart of Tokyo in which, according to Japanese estimates, 97,000 were killed and 125,000 were injured.
The Navy sent an officer to war-torn Japan as chief administrator of affairs that were under naval jurisdiction. He was Vice Admiral J. J. Ballentine. As U. S. Pacific Fleet Liaison Officer with the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Admiral Ballentine served in naval matters that were at the same time urgent, complex, and gravely important.
Speaking of his assignment, the Admiral says, “It was necessary to establish the activity to be known as the Fleet Liaison Officer with the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (FLTLOSCAP) in order to have a representative of the Commander in Chief, U. S. Pacific Fleet in Japan with the Staff of the Supreme Commander, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, to handle naval matters in connection with the surrender, such as disarmament, demobilization, repatriation, merchant shipping control, etc. At the time of my assignment to duty as FLTLOSCAP, I had command of Carrier Division Seven, the Night Carrier Task Group of the Third Fleet. I received immediate dispatch orders while in my flagship, the U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard, and was lifted by a destroyer a few hours later and made a high-speed run to Iwo Jima, where I was taken aboard an airplane and flown to Guam, the Headquarters of CinCPac, where I reported to Admiral Nimitz. There I was furnished an R5D airplane, hurriedly assembled a staff, and flew to the Philippine Islands. After reporting to General MacArthur in Manila we flew to Okinawa and then to Atsugi Airfield in Japan and landed in company with SCAP on the afternoon of 30 August 1945.”
Japan had upwards of 4,000,000 nationals outside the homeland. Shipments of food and supplies for these men had halted when supply lines were cut off, in some cases as early as April, 1944. These men were in China, Korea, Indonesia, Manchuria, French Indo-china, and many islands which had been bypassed in the Allied sweep to Tokyo. It was the Navy’s job to effect transportation for these Japanese nationals back to their homeland and also to repatriate some 1,000,000 other nationals from Japan.
This became the immediate task of Commander Fifth Fleet, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, to be accomplished through FLTLOSCAP.
There were numerous difficulties that were apparent from the outset as to how this mass evacuation could be handled. There was a general lack of logistical support for Japanese merchant shipping. The war had drained the fuel and oil barrels. Men and machines that provided terminal support for vessels suffered from war weariness. Repatriation service by existing Japanese shipping, even if stretched over an eleven-year period and added to the necessary economic shipping, would put such a restriction on the Japanese food supply as to reduce the diet of a Japanese to the minimum to keep him alive—provided he performed no effort other than lying in bed and breathing!
As of August 21 all Japanese shipping had ceased in compliance with General Order #1, with certain exceptions. Notable among these were the sailing of the hospital ship Hikawa Maru on September 10 for Mille for 2,393 patients who had been isolated there since the Marshall Islands Campaign in early 1944, sending the Takasago Maru to Woleai for 1,628 patients, and sending a merchant vessel to Marcus.
It was decided to augment Japanese merchant shipping with demilitarized ex-naval vessels. Would the Japanese cooperate? Would they man and sail their own and U.S. ships, unescorted and unaccompanied by military observers? Consider their position for a moment. Here was a group of proud fighting men who had slugged it out with superior forces time after time. These naval officers and men had been humbled in a manner bitter to a face-saving oriental. Now the defeated Navy was being ordered to accept responsibility under enemy authority.
Admiral Ballentine summoned Vice Admiral Gihachi Takayanagi of the Imperial Japanese Naval Ministry Department and told him the situation and informed him of what was expected of the Japanese ex-Navy. Admiral Ballentine’s view was that since “The Japanese repatriates were starving in the isolated islands of the Pacific ... it was to their advantage and to the advantage of the Japanese Government to get them home, as much as it was to our advantage. Having demonstrated complete reliability on these early emergency trips, it was believed that they would handle the whole job satisfactorily.”
Vice Admiral Gihachi Takayanagi designated Captain Watanabe to organize, co-ordinate, and write the sailing orders for the Japanese ex-warships that were to be used in repatriation work. Captain Watanabe had been Admiral Yamamoto’s logistics officer during the war and he was familiar with the type of task to which he had been assigned.
Watanabe encountered difficulty in getting his plan into operation. The crews of most of the ex-naval warships were divided between those loyal to their officers and those who believed all was lost and that their ships, soon to be destroyed, were proper objects of looting. So, at first, some of the men were insubordinate.
Captain Watanabe established a scale of wages and a fixed calorie diet to be furnished by the Japanese Government. With these inducements he was able to get crews to man the ex-warships.
They used 125 vessels of the following types: two CV, three CL, twenty-eight DD, sixty-three DDE, nine AT, three hospital, and seventeen from the merchant marine. These totaled 250,000 tons displacement.
The ex-Navy repatriation fleet carried about 40% of their wartime crew strength and were composed of former Navy men up to about 90%. This fleet sailed the seas for fifteen months, calling at distant ports for repatriates and taking on supplies at those places where Japanese stocks of war supplies existed. For their colors they flew the Japanese Merchant ensign without rays plus International Easy with triangular cutout. The crews wore their uniforms until other clothing was available.
Minesweeping has been an important phase in the U. S. Navy’s part of the occupation of Japan. U.S. minesweeping was initially confined to clearing areas of strategic military importance to the occupation. Later U.S. sweeping was done in the Inland Sea for the purpose of aiding the Japanese economy.
The Japanese Government was directed to conduct minesweeping in the Inland Sea and in harbors and approaches to the harbors of the Japanese Empire. Minesweeping by the Japanese was initially vital to the program of restoring Japanese economy by placing her shipping back on the seas, and it is still continuing in order to aid restoration of safe sea travel.
Minesweeping as conducted by the Japanese has been supervised by the U. S. Navy. The personnel engaged in minesweeping operations conducted by the Japanese were all ex-Navy men.
From the close of the war, August 15, 1945, until September 1, 1945, some minesweeping was done by the Japanese pursuant to GHQ Allied Powers orders. On September 1, 1945, Japanese minesweeping was suspended for reorganization. Admiral Ballentine, acting for Commander Fifth Fleet and SCAP, ordered the Japanese Navy to have all minesweeping vessels report to the various responsible U. S. Fleet Commanders at the ports of Kure, Yokosuka, Sasebo, and Osaka. Minesweeping was then resumed.
Commander Fifth Fleet directed early in November, 1945, that all Japanese minesweepers be placed under the control and supervision of Commander Task Group 52.10. Under CTG 52.10 minesweeping by the Japanese was carried out systematically for the first time since the surrender. On March 26, 1946, the supervision of Japanese minesweeping passed from CTG 52.10 to Captain Donohu, U. S. Navy, who was the Minesweeping Officer on the Staff of Commander Naval Forces Japan.
Summarizing the first two years of minesweeping, the Japanese Government said of its efforts, “The fact that the organization has been able to continue minesweeping for over two years, clearing all of the moored mines and a majority of the influence mines in spite of the deterioration of morale and prevailing uneasiness and commotion among the personnel which was overcome only after conscientious efforts, is wholly due to the effective and pertinent leadership of the U. S. Navy on the one hand and to the zealous efforts of K. Tamura (ex-naval Captain, now Chief of the Minesweeping Division, Sasebo), and his subordinates on the other.”
One incident marks the temperament of the Japanese minesweeping crews of this period. While sweeping off Saishu-to in March, 1946, one cut-off mine chanced to be floating in swept waters and was seen by the crews of the sweepers. Such fear was aroused in the crews that they refused to continue their work. Crews were changed and additional inducements were afforded them in order to resume operations.
No vessel has ever been mined, nor has any mine been recovered by U.S. sweepers in waters swept by the Japanese. The Japanese minesweeping officials are justly proud of their record and also take pride in the fact that they have helped to reestablish Japanese economy by opening shipping lanes and harbors.
In the period immediately following the surrender Japan was prohibited from building ships. Hence, the reclamation of damaged vessels was of importance to a nation which depends heavily upon water transportation. On September 18, 1945, the Japanese were directed by FLTLOSCAP to undertake repairs to their damaged or laid-up merchant vessels with all possible speed.
Rear Admiral D. B. Beary assumed the duties of Shipping Control Authority for Japan (SCAJAP) on October 11, 1945. Until that time FLTLOSCAP, under SCAP, had exercised control of Japanese merchant and demilitarized naval shipping. When COM-NAVJAP was established, SCAJAP continued to carry out the details of the broad directives of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers that were given to COMNAVJAP.
Six hundred vessels grossing one million tons had been sunk in the territorial waters of Japan. If a sunken ship was a menace to navigation, the Japanese Government was ordered to clear that ship from the fairways. In 1948 all fairways were declared free of these menaces to navigation.
Salvage was first begun on vessels afloat. A ship owner was allowed to salvage his own vessel. Japanese Government subsidies were awarded to some salvage companies and salvage became big business.
Where practical, other nations’ ships were salvaged by the Japanese Government. These were returned to the country from which they had been captured, through negotiation with the Japanese Ministry of Transportation and SCAP’s Civil Property Custodian.
Sunken cargo and submerged articles were also salvaged. At Sasebo was reclaimed a considerable amount of cable which had been cast overboard to prevent its falling into allied hands.
Warships were cut up into 20-ton or smaller sections as a means of eliminating them as a war potential. These sections were later reduced to melting-pot size.
The Navy’s check on warship scrapping progress was accomplished by means of authenticated photographs submitted periodically by the salvage operator to SCAJAP through the Japanese Government.
When COMNAVJAP was established the Naval activities ashore in Japan consisted of Fleet Activities Yokosuka, the Fleet Liaison Officer with the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (FLTLOSCAP), the Shipping Control Authority for the Japanese merchant marine (SCAJAP) and ten Port Directors.
Admiral Spruance with units of the Fifth Fleet was in Japanese waters and the Second Marine Division was occupying Kyushu under the operational control of the Eighth Army. The above activities were under the control of Commander Fifth Fleet, but were progressively turned over to COMNAVJAP soon after its establishment.
From June through September, 1946, the primary naval mission in Japanese waters was the suppression of illicit sea traffic in Tsushima Straits. Many Korean nationals had already been repatriated to their homeland at their request, recalling perhaps the conditions in Korea prior to the occupation by Japan and the subsequent exploitation of the Koreans as slave laborers in Japan. The Korea they went back to, however, was not the Korea they had left; it was anything except a desirable place to make a living. There has been an overwhelming desire on the part of Koreans to return to Japan. It is to their economic advantage to live in Japan, and some have strong family ties that make illegal entry worth almost any risk.
Smuggling of products of black market value into Japan and the seizure of Japanese fishing vessels has been a lively business. Japan had previously confiscated numerous Korean vessels which were subsequently lost in the war. The Koreans, never in love with the Japanese, sought replacements for their fishing vessels from the Japanese by direct methods.
The Navy’s part in the occupation has made gradual changes since its inception. From demilitarization, demobilization, and policing activities has developed a period of lessened restraint in which the Japanese have been encouraged to establish themselves as an economically self-reliant people. The U.S. Navy’s part in establishing democratic bastions in Japan is exemplified in the zone of naval responsibility at Yokosuka.
Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka felt that as of June, 1946, it was time to use something more subtle than a mailed fist to make ourselves an ally.
In the ensuing four-year period the Japanese mind there was subjected to an active reconstruction treatment. Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Rear Admiral Decker, U. S. Navy (Retired), with the assistance of his staff and the cooperation of civic leaders, brought economic progress and social reforms to Yokosuka that spell a democratic way of life to its citizens. Fleet Activities Yokosuka has been rebuilt from a veritable scrap heap into an efficient ship serving and repair terminal that would cost the U.S. taxpayer 600 million dollars to duplicate. At this activity are machine shops, quarters, drydocks, huge cranes, and a large Naval Hospital. There also are facilities for poultry raising, mushroom culture, yachting, roller skating, bowling, swimming, and numerous others which make Yokosuka a fine liberty port for visiting ships and a pleasant place for the shore based personnel and their dependents to live.
Within the sphere of influence of the Navy and other Military Services in Japan, the Japanese have learned and enthusiastically exercised democratic privileges and practices. There is faith among our military leaders in the Far East that these newly acquired rights will be tenaciously retained.
Enlisting in the Navy in 1933, Chief Ingram has had extensive experience in Naval Aviation. He participated in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands raids and in those against Wake and Marcus, took part in the Battle of Midway, and saw action in the landing and the first and second Battle of the Solomons. Commissioned an ensign in 1944, he had advanced to the rank of lieutenant in 1949 when he was reverted to his permanent rate of Chief Aviation Machinist’s Mate. At present he resides in Tokyo and is plane captain on the staff plane, Naval Forces, Far East (Flag Allowance).