Posted on 07/30/2015 4:16:05 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/6/30.htm
July 30th, 1945 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Frigates HMS Veryan Bay and Whitesand Bay commissioned.
JAPAN: The Japanese reject the Potsdam ultimatum. Nevertheless General of the Army George C Marshall, Chief of Staff, US Army, directs General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Commanding General US Army Forces in the Pacific, Lieutenant General Albert C Wedemeyer, Commanding General, US Forces in the China Theater, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific, to proceed with plans for a surrender.
In the Kurile Islands, 8 US Eleventh Air Force B-24s based in the Aleutians are dispatched to bomb targets in the Kuriles but are recalled because of weather disturbances.
Over Japan:
- 60+ B-25s and A-26 Invaders of the US Far East Air Force bomb Omura Airfield and 4 of the planes hit airfield at Izumi; P-47s support the strike and also hit numerous nearby targets of opportunity; B-25s, failing to find targets on a shipping sweep over Korean waters, bomb shipping, a railroad, and a warehouse in the Sendai area and covering P-51s also hit nearby targets of opportunity; 80+ P-47s bomb Sendai, leaving much of the town in flames; P-51s on photo reconnaissance of southern Kyushu destroy trains and small craft; and nearly 80 P-47s attack the Miyazaki, Karasehara, and Tomitaka areas, firing warehouses and damaging barracks, hangars, towers, and other buildings, and blast buildings and construction on and near Shibushi Airfield.
- US Twentieth Air Force P-51s based on Iwo Jima attack airfields, railroads, and other tactical targets throughout the Kobe-Osaka area.
- American and British carrier-based aircraft attack airfields and industrial targets in central Honshu and Maizuru Bay. 1842 RN Sqn, Corsair aircraft #KD621 off HMS Formidable piloted by Lt (P) James Finlay Ross RCNVR of Truro, Nova Scotia killed. Lost, wing folded on take off and crashed at sea.
- US Navy Task Unit 34.8.1 consisting of 3 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers and 10 destroyers complete the bombardment of targets at Hamamatsu on Honshu. The Royal Navy battleship HMS King George V and 3 destroyers also participate in this operation.
The US heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) is torpedoed by Japanese submarine HIJMS I-58 northeast of Leyte at 12.02N, 134.48E. After delivering parts of the atomic bomb to Tinian, USS Indianapolis was dispatched to Guam where she disembarked men and reported for onward routine to Leyte. From there she was to report to Vice Admiral Jesse B Oldendorf for further duty off Okinawa. Departing Guam 28 July, USS Indianapolis proceeded by a direct route unescorted. Early in the morning, 0015 hours, 2 heavy explosions occurred against her starboard side forward, and she capsized and sank in 12 minutes. The ship had been hit by two torpedoes. The seas had been moderate; the visibility, good, USS Indianapolis had been steaming at 17 knots. When the ship did not reach Leyte on the 31 July, as scheduled, no report was made that she was overdue. This omission was due to a misunderstanding of the Movement Report System. Thus it was not until 1025 hours on 2 August that the survivors were sighted, mostly held afloat by life jackets, although there were a few rafts which had been cut loose before the ship went down. They were sighted by a plane on routine patrol; the pilot immediately dropped a life raft and a radio transmitter. All air and surface units capable of rescue operations were dispatched to the scene at once, and the surrounding waters were thoroughly searched for survivors.
NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: LOA KULU MASSACRE: After surrendering to overwhelming numbers of Japanese troops, around one hundred members of the Netherlands East Indies Army were disarmed and for a while permitted restricted freedom in the town of Samarinda , in Borneo, where most of the soldiers lived with their families. Early on the morning of July 30, all prisoners, including their families, were rounded up and taken before a Japanese officer who summarily sentenced them all to death. No reason was given as they were bundled into lorries and taken to Loa Kulu just outside the town. There they had their hands tied behind their backs and as the men and children watched, the women were systematically cut to pieces with swords and bayonets until they all died. The screaming children were then seized and hurled alive down a 600 foot deep mine shaft. The men captives, forced to kneel and witness the butchery of their wives and children, and suffering the most indescribable mental torture, were then lined up for execution by beheading. When the grisly ritual was over, the bloodied corpses and severed heads of the 144 men were then thrown down the mine shaft on top of their murdered wives and children. The horror of Loa Kulu was discovered by Australian troops who had earlier started a search for the missing Dutch soldiers. (Denis Peck)
CANADA: Destroyer HMCS Saguenay paid off.
U.S.A.:
Destroyer USS Carpenter laid down.
Destroyer USS Noa launched.
There are two other points in the #6 article that are interesting. First, Goro Morishima is returning to Moscow with a request for Stalin to broker a peace treaty, since the declaration that Suzuki is rejecting comes from the US, Britain, and China, and Tokyo erroneously believes Stalin is still neutral.
Second, "drafting" the fishermen into a "volunteer" corps is simply the next step in the re-enactment of Germany in April, with the recruiting of old men and boys to become the supposed final line of defense. The Japanese might be buying it, but the allies are not, as demonstrated in the #7 article.
JAPAN: The Japanese reject the Potsdam ultimatum. Nevertheless General of the Army George C Marshall, Chief of Staff, US Army, directs General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Commanding General US Army Forces in the Pacific, Lieutenant General Albert C Wedemeyer, Commanding General, US Forces in the China Theater, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific, to proceed with plans for a surrender.
With inhuman atrocities such as this, the Japanese brought the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on their own heads.
I don’t believe the report that “the seas had been moderate; the visibility, good” for the Indianapolis. According to survivors the opposite was true. But the claim was made as part of what became the making of the Captain into the scapegoat.
Rare photos from the USS Indianapolis:
http://www.usni.org/ussindianapolis
http://photos.usni.org/category/uss-indianapolis-photos-from-the-alfred-j.-sedivi-collection
Little things
Iwo Mustangs:
Lt O’Hearn was unable to drop a wing tank, and faced the prospect that his plane’s fuel consumption would not permit him to complete the return trip to Iwo. Captain Clark knocked the loose tank from O’Hearn’s plane with his wingtip.
Three Japanese Planes in Air:
“I saw a ten car passenger train heading into the sw end of one of the tunnels for all it was worth, said Lt Morris, “The way it was traveling, the engineer couldn’t have stopped before he reached the other end. And we had the ne end plugged tight. There must have been quite a train wreck inside.”
Japanese turn down surrender:
At least the stock market was up.....
Division change in Prospect:
Tanks, tank destroyer , and anti aircraft made integral to division. More riflemen in each division.
And yet we let the muzzies get away with the same or more... Our leaders are gutless turds.
Lots of reference to navel mining operations which I started to research. But found the following reference, note it is dated 1943. This was used mostly in WWI but interesting it was considered in WWII.
Made me think that it was a good think the Japanese didn’t use this technique like they could have on Iwo Jima and other islands and maybe the homeland.
“Underground Mining Operations in Warfare” from Tactical and Technical Trends
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt07/mining-in-warfare.html
Naval Mining.
Wikipedia has a good information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine#Influence_mines
Operation Starvation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation
https://ghb67.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/operation-starvation/
OPERATION KETSU-GO
http://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap4.htm
in the summer of 1945 Japanese strategists identified the will of the American people as the U.S. strategic center of gravity and a critical vulnerability as the infliction of high casualties.(12)
Well, the Japs may not have been able to capitalize on that understanding, but the North Vietnamese sure did just a few short years later, thanks to the leftist American media.
OPERATION KETSU-GO
Other tidbits:
Deployed throughout Kyushu and on adjacent islands, the Sixteenth Area Army had three armies and two special forces with a total of 15 divisions, 7 independent mixed brigades, 3 independent tank brigades and 2 fortress units.
In late 1944, the Japanese also sent a team of officers to debrief the Germans on their defenses at Normandy and how the Allies assaulted to gain a foothold in Europe.
Inaccessible high ground should be selected as protection against flame throwing tanks.(19)
At the end of the war, Japan had approximately 12,725 planes. The Army had 5,651 and the Navy had 7,074 aircraft of all types.(25) While many of these were not considered combat planes, almost all were converted into kamikaze planes. The Japanese were planning to train enough pilots to use all of the aircraft that were capable of flying.
there would be rows of suicide frogmen called “Fukuryu” in their diving gear 30 feet or so beneath the water. The outermost row of Fukuryu would release anchored mines or carry mines to craft that passed nearby. Closer to shore, there would be three rows of divers, arrayed so that they were about 60 feet apart. Underwater lairs for the Fukuryu were to be made of reinforced concrete with steel doors. As many as 18 divers could be stationed in each underwater “foxhole”.(26) Clad in a diving suit and breathing from oxygen tanks, a Fukuryu carried an explosive charge, which was mounted on a stick with a contact fuse. He was to swim up to landing craft and detonate the charge. The Navy had hoped for 4,000 men to be trained and equipped for this suicide force by October.
The Japanese were determined to fight the final and decisive battle on Kyushu.
Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsushiro_Underground_Imperial_Headquarters
Construction began on November 11, 1944[2] and continued until Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945. Construction was 75% completed at the end of the war, with 5,856.6 square meters (63,040 sq ft) of floor-space (59,635 cubic meters (2,106,000 cu ft) of volume) excavated.
in March 1945, secret orders were issued to add a palace to the complex.[
I guess the Japs weren’t privy to the wisdom of George S. Patton:
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
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