The American battleship USS IDAHO fires its 356mm guns against a shore target.
CHAPTER 10 – DEATH FROM THE SEA
06:11 (Japan Time)
Thursday, August 25, 1932
Bridge of the American battleship BB-46 U.S.S. MARYLAND
Flagship of the United States Navy China Task Force (TF-26)
Sailing off Sasebo, Island of Kyushu, Japan
“Admiral, the latest report from our marines on the ground in Shanghai.’’
“Thank you, mister!’’ said Admiral Frank Brooks Upham as he took the message handed to him by a young ensign. Reading it quickly made him nod his head in satisfaction: the combined force of U.S. marines and French soldiers in Shanghai had been able to chase away the last Japanese soldiers and secure the perimeters of both the International Settlement and of the French Concession. With the imminent arrival there of the marine battalion that had been previously stationed in the Philippines, the allied commanders were now confident that they were going to be able to resist any attempt by the Japanese Army to retake downtown Shanghai. There were also signs that the Japanese units in China were starting to run out of ammunition and fuel, which had been the desired effect of the tight allied sea blockade which had cut the maritime links between Japan and the Chinese coast. The Imperial Japanese Navy was now a mere ghost of its former self, with all its major combatants sunk and with only a motley collection of destroyers, submarines and coastal patrol ships left to it. Even now, French aircraft from the aircraft carrier GLOIRE and from the three aviation cruisers sailing near Japan kept scurrying the sea and looking up the various Japanese ports, in search of any surviving Japanese warships they could sink. That last thought made Admiral Upham snicker to himself: those arrogant and aggressive Japanese Navy officers who had been part of the militarist faction, instead of gaining ‘glory’ and extra power, had instead reaped death and had caused the near extinction of their cherished navy through their megalomania and xenophobia. Upham’s mind then broached on the recent fate of Admiral Montgomery Taylor, who had been until two weeks ago the commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet and who should logically have been in charge of this task force. Taylor was without a doubt an excellent naval officer and a top fleet commander, but one factor had caused his demise: his deep sympathies towards the Japanese. He had publicly said that he agreed with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and had cultivated friendships with many Japanese navy officers, plus had pushed for U.S. leniency towards the actions of the Japanese Army in China. That had been tolerated for a while in Washington but the massacre of American citizens by the Japanese in Shanghai and the ensuing American public outrage had finally forced the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Pratt, to relieve Taylor of his command and return him to the United States. The single attempt by Taylor to protest his loss of command, by publishing an opinion piece in a major newspaper, had badly backfired on him and had resulted in his outright dismissal from the U.S. Navy, on top of gaining him widespread public condemnation. Upham’s thoughts were interrupted when his flag operations officer approached him and came to attention.
“Admiral, our scout floatplane is in position over the Sasebo Naval Arsenal and is ready to direct our fire. All the main guns of the fleet are loaded and ready.’’
“Very well! Pass to the gunnery officer : commence registration fire and switch to fire for effect once we will have the correct range.’’
“Yes, Admiral!’’
The operations officer then went to the nearest bridge telephone to pass those orders to the gunnery officer. Approaching one of the windows of the bridge, Upham raised his binoculars to his eyes to observe what he could of the Sasebo Naval Arsenal and of Sasebo Harbor, some ten miles away. Preliminary reconnaissance flights by his scout floatplanes had revealed important damage already done by recent French bombardments, with a number of huge craters plastering the naval arsenal, but some of the dry docks had miraculously escaped destruction and needed to be taken out, in order to make the arsenal completely useless. Upham’s strike force of eight battleships was here to do just that. Some forty seconds later, the U.S.S. MARYLAND was firing its first 406mm shell.
06:18 (Japan Time)
Sasebo Naval Arsenal
Hiro Nomura had been one of the few lucky engineers of the naval arsenal to come out unscathed from the terrifying bombardment that had wrecked the arsenal more than three weeks ago. Since then, he had been tasked to direct one of the cleanup work crews that had been laboring day and night to attempt to return the arsenal to some degree of functionality. He had argued then that what the arsenal needed was a complete rebuilding, a job that would take at a minimum close to two years, but the naval district commander had ordered him to shut up and get to it, so he had shut up and went to work, even though he believed that the work being done was close to useless: you didn’t reactivate a naval arsenal just by shoveling away debris.
His night shift, with its some 200 laborers under his supervision, was about to be over when he had noticed the arrival on the horizon of a long line of large warships. From their deportment, he had quickly understood that they were not Japanese warships and had tried to lead away his workers as a precaution, but the young (and stupid in Hiro’s opinion) naval officer watching the work crew had forbidden the men from leaving the site. That ensign, so typical of the kind of brainwashed young men coming out of the Imperial Naval Academy and of the Imperial Military Academy, had even drawn his sword and threatened Hiro with it when the latter had insisted. So, Hiro had kept his men working while mentally swearing at the young ensign. He however tensed up, now expecting the worse, on noticing a single biplane that had started to perform circles at medium altitude over the arsenal. He certainly got the worse three minutes later, when the first battleship shell came in with the noise of an approaching freight train and exploded some 300 meters away from Hiro but well within the limits of the naval arsenal. Crouching quickly first to avoid the blast of the explosion, he then got back up and shouted at the top of his lungs to the workers now frozen by fear.
“EVACUATE THE ARSENAL! EVACUATE NOW!’’
The workers didn’t hesitate for long to obey him and broke into a run, heading towards the nearby town. The naval ensign watching them and Hiro also reacted quickly, but not in the way common sense would have dictated. Running to Hiro and drawing out his sword, he pointed the tip of his blade at the naval engineer.
“RETURN TO WORK NOW! YOU DIDN’T GET PERMISSION TO LEAVE YET.’’
“ARE YOU CRAZY? DON’T YOU REALISE THAT THOSE ENEMY SHIPS OFF SASEBO HAVE STARTED FIRING REGISTRATION FIRE ON THE ARSENAL? SOON, ANYONE STAYING HERE WILL BE KILLED!’’
“YOUR WORDS ARE THOSE OF A COWARD! I WILL…’’
BONK
The ensign collapsed, unconscious, at the feet of Hiro, unmasking one of the manual laborers of his work crew, who was holding a heavy steel shovel and who was smiling to him. The man was in his early fifties and Hiro knew him as a farmer who had been commandeered by the Navy to work at the arsenal.
“I believe that your decision to leave is the right one, Honorable Sir.’’
“You are most right, good man. LEAVE NOW, MEN! RUN!’’
Hiro then followed his own advice and started running as quickly as he could, just as a second shell landed and exploded within the arsenal’s grounds. two more minutes and the arsenal turned into a cauldron of raging, powerful explosions. The unconscious naval ensign didn’t survive that bombardment, to Hiro’s secret satisfaction, but his workers did.
After some 26 minutes of slow but steady and precise bombardment and over 900 406mm and 356mm shells expended, Admiral Upham decided that the job was now completed and ordered his task force of eight battleships and twelve destroyers to take speed and head towards its next objective, the Maizuru Naval Arsenal, situated on the western coast of Japan, near Kyoto. He knew that French battleships should be presently bombarding the crucial naval arsenal and naval base of Yokosuka, near Tokyo, and would then move south to the Kure Naval Arsenal, near Hiroshima. Once those four arsenals would be utterly reduced to rubble, Japan was then going to find itself incapable of replacing the warships it had lost in the last month. Ports, coastal industries and secondary naval bases would then be next targets for the combined battleship guns of the French and American fleets, and that until most of the onboard ammunition will have been expended. After that, a trip to Indochina would follow, where the shell rooms of the battleships would be replenished. If by then Japan was still trying to fight and refused to surrender, another round of naval bombardment would follow…and another one…and another one, until common sense would prevail in Japan.