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Hase Temple
(Hasedera) in Kamakura is a popular place to visit
in Kamakura. It's hillside gardens are spectacular
and there is a great view of the city from an
outdoor deck where you can have a snack and relax.
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TOKYO — There is no
massive statue at Sagami Bay of an angel with a sword and
a coronet. No rows of white crosses above "99
Beach."
Narita is just an
international airport. Yokohama, a seaside metropolis. The
Great Buddha sits peacefully among the trees of Kamakura.
That the region around
Tokyo isn't dotted with American war memorials is a matter
of science, luck, politics — and endless controversy.
These were all objectives in Operation Coronet, the
planned seaborne attack on Tokyo in World War II. The
greatest battle that never was.
Guadalcanal, North Africa,
Italy, Tarawa, Saipan, D-Day, Iwo Jima, Okinawa — even
the planned invasion of the southern Japanese island of
Kyushu — were all prelude. Each a step toward victory,
with more steps to get to the end.
Coronet was to be the end.
None of it happened because
of two shattering flashes of light and heat: the atomic
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of
1945. Japan capitulated. The final surrender was signed
Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo
Bay.
Why travel across the
Pacific to visit beachheads that ended up as nothing more
than a file in a Pentagon drawer?
For me, the answer is
simple mathematics. While the average age of a combat
soldier in World War II was 26, the invasion of Japan
would have required a massive infusion of fresh troops.
Volunteers had to be 17. At 18, they could be drafted.
High school kids like my father. Maybe he never would have
gone to war. Maybe he would have fought and come home to
march in those Veterans Day parades.
Or maybe he would have been
one of those white crosses above a beach in Japan. He'd
never meet mom. So, no me. Or my children.
Instead, he and the rest of
the Class of 1946 were the first in several years to
graduate into a world at relative peace. There are tens of
millions of Americans and Japanese who exist today because
the invasion of Japan didn't lop off their family tree.
A "what if" tour
of the final invasion is frustrating, yet easy.
Frustrating in that there are no markers for a battle that
never occurred, and maps are in just a few specialty books
on the subject. Easy in that most of the Coronet sites are
an easy day trip from Tokyo.
A quarter million American
troops supported by a deadly canopy of bombers would have
smashed their way past a half million Japanese troops on
the beaches. Fighting their way through smoldering ruins,
the troops could come up against the most fanatical
citizens who would heed the generals' call to be "100
million shields of the Emperor" and die fighting or
by suicide.
The 1st Army would have
landed at Kujukuri Beach on the Boso Peninsula, the
stretch of cliff-backed sand just 40 miles from Tokyo.
Known popularly as 99 Beach after an old Japanese measure
of its distance, the 50-mile long beach is a place where
urbanites go to beat the sweltering heat of summer.
Surfers ride waves where, in 1945, landing craft with
soldiers and Marines would have hit the beach, attacked by
fukuryu, submerged suicide divers who would swim toward
landing craft to detonate mines they carried on their
backs. The Japanese planned massive human wave attacks, in
part to blur the line of combat so that U.S. warplanes
couldn't strafe the beach without killing their own
troops.
One of the three American
spearheads was assigned to fight west and take a minor
airfield where kamikaze aircraft, including jet-powered
manned flying bombs called ohka, could be launched. It's
now Narita International Airport, the main gateway to
Japan. The eastern approaches to the city, where Japanese
troops would have put up a last-ditch fight to stop troops
from reaching the Imperial Palace, lead right past Tokyo
Disneyland.
Some of the greatest
fighting would have occurred just below one of Japan's
most popular tourist attractions.
The Great Buddha at
Kamakura is a short train ride from the capital. The
40-foot-tall bronze statue, cast in 1252, sits serenely on
a wooded hill. It has survived disasters including a 15th
century tsunami that swept away the temple that once
housed it, and the 8.3 magnitude Great Kanto earthquake of
1923. What no guidebook I have found tells visitors is
that the Buddha would have been in the midst of the
largest invasion in history, just two miles away at Sagami
Bay. Ten days after the troops landed at 99 Beach, the
second of the two Coronet waves of troops would come
ashore — including the first armored divisions to be
used in the Pacific. The Buddha, which had survived nearly
700 years, would need something approaching divine
intervention not to be destroyed in the onslaught.
Eighth Army troops would
have pushed north through what are now dense suburbs. The
hotel that Gen. Douglas MacArthur would eventually use as
his headquarters is now a small building in the booming
port city with the nation's tallest building and a Ferris
wheel that lights up at night. History buffs can stay in
the New Grand Hotel, new being 1927, where MacArthur first
lived after the surrender. It was one of the few brick
buildings in the area, so it survived the firebombing
raids that destroyed much of the wood-and-paper structures
of traditional Tokyo and Yokohama. The suite where he
lived has been kept in the style of the war era and can be
rented by booking well in advance.
Tokyo itself has the most
resonant sites associated with the war. In the center of
the city sits the Imperial Palace, where wartime Emperor
Hirohito ruled until his death in 1989, though stripped of
divinity and any vestiges of power. His son, Akihito, the
125th emperor, still lives there. The white-walled palace
with a dark, traditional pagoda roof is a 1960s replica of
the 1888 palace that was destroyed by U.S. bombers in
April 1945. A concrete-lined, bunkerlike basement is where
Hirohito decided to surrender in August 1945. The imperial
family makes two public appearances each year when
tourists are allowed into the inner grounds — on Jan. 2
to celebrate the New Year and Dec. 23, the emperor's
birthday. The rest of the year the interior is closed to
the public, though tours can be booked of the outer
buildings, gardens and the famous "double
bridge," which reflects in the mirrorlike waters of
the moat.
The most intriguing, or
perhaps appalling, site is Yasukuni, the Shinto shrine to
the kami (spirits) of those who served the emperor,
especially those who died fighting in Japan's wars. Though
it was dedicated in 1869, the shrine has become the center
of nationalistic sentiment rarely expressed in post-World
War II Japan. Those deified by the shrine are recorded in
a register. Among the nearly 2.5 million names are top war
criminals from World War II who were executed by the
Allies.
The museum attached to the
shrine has a vast collection of military artifacts,
including an ohka bomb. But the displays paint Japan as
justified in its expansion into Asia, claiming that
regional colonialism ended because Japan forced the
Western powers out of the Far East. It touches lightly on
Japan's own totalitarian rule, most notably the massacre
at Nanking. Japan was forced into attacking Pearl Harbor
and surrendered only when the Americans used an inhumane
horror weapon in the atomic bomb. One of the trees in the
courtyard is said to be the place where the kami of dead
kamikaze suicide pilots gather.
Even within normally
restrained Japanese society, Yasukuni is controversial.
Right-wing groups dressed in black with rising-sun
headbands rally around its perimeter. Visits to the shrine
by politicians are a societal litmus test — those who go
are praised as strong by the right and seen as
revisionists by the left. Those who stay away are American
lapdogs to the right or realists who own up to Japan's own
crimes to the left. The shrine and grounds are beautiful,
and depending on the day, the stage will be filled with
traditional dancers or a sumo exhibition. It's a strange
mix. A similar shrine and museum in Germany to dead Nazis
would be unthinkable.
I've balanced my trips to
Coronet's beaches and Yasukuni with trips to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Seeing the tricycle of a 3-year-old boy
immolated in the Hiroshima blast, I felt a deep sickness
inside. History will weigh the morality of the various
ways of ending what historian John Dower called "the
war without mercy" in the Pacific.
While U.S. estimates of
casualties varied widely, a simple fact tells the scope of
the invasion of Japan: The U.S. made 495,000 Purple Heart
medals to be given to the wounded and the families of the
dead. With the war's end they went into storage for future
use. The supply lasted through the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, the Cold War, the invasions of Grenada and Panama and
the first Persian Gulf War, as well as a dozen smaller
conflicts. New medals weren't pressed until 1999, when
U.S. troops were serving in Kosovo.
———
IF YOU GO:
GETTING THERE: Flights
arrive at Narita International Airport, which has a great
observation area and an aviation history museum. Aviation
buffs should check out the terminal's specialty gift
shops, which sell airliner models and airline logo garb.
WHERE TO STAY:
Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. The
1923 masterpiece by Frank Lloyd Wright survived the 8.3
magnitude Great Kanto earthquake the year it opened and
the World War II firebombing of Tokyo, only to be torn
down in 1968 for a banal replacement. Parts of The Old
Imperial Bar are all that remain of the original hotel.
Still, its location near the Imperial Palace and the
Yasukuni shrine make it a good choice. Rooms from $300 per
night. 1-1, Uchisaiwai-cho 1-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo.
imperialhotel.co.jp
New Grand Hotel, Yokohama.
Built in 1927, the hotel was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's
first headquarters upon arriving in Japan. Babe Ruth and
Charlie Chaplin were also guests before the war.
MacArthur's suite is kept in the style of the period and
can be rented. Make sure to ask for a room in the historic
section or you'll end up in the tower added next door in
1991. Rooms from $257. 10 Yamashita-cho, Naka-ku,
Yokohama. hotel-newgrand.co.jp/English.
SITES:
Sagami Bay. A 10-minute
walk south from Enoden Railway Hase Station brings you to
the landing beaches that would have been used by the
Eighth Army. The peaceful bay is fringed with houses, surf
shops and small restaurants. The Great Buddha of Kamakura
is five minutes north of the station. Shops along the
street to the temple sell treats, including mitarashi
dango, rice dumplings on a stick covered in a sugary soy
sauce. Nearby is Hase Temple, with sweeping views of the
bay. The Enoden is a trolley-like train that makes its way
through the back yards and lanes from its terminal next to
the main Japan Rail station in Kamakura.
Kujukuri Beach. The beach
was chosen for the landing by the First Army because of
its long, straight coastline and lack of coral reefs.
Known popularly as 99 Beach for its length in ri, an old
Japanese form of distance measure, the 50-mile beach was
where American troops would first come ashore. A good map,
but little else in English, can be found at
99beach.com/beach/index.html. The easiest rail link is
from Tokyo to Kujukuri town. It's just under two hours
from Tokyo to Choshi Station on the JR Sobu Line limited
express, where visitors change to the Choshi Line for
Inubo-saki Station.
Imperial Palace, Tokyo. A
10-minute walk from Tokyo Station is the home of the
emperors since they moved the capital from Kyoto in 1868.
Built over the remains of the shogun-era Edo Castle,
today's residence dates from the mid-1960s but is built in
a late 19th century style. The palace is surrounded by
parklands, moats, lakes and lovely gardens that bloom with
cherry blossoms in the spring and turn deep red with
Japanese maples in the autumn. In addition to the
traditional New Years and Emporer's Birthday visits, the
public can enter the inner grounds this year on Nov. 20 to
mark the 20th anniversary of Akihito becoming emperor.
Tours can be arranged online through the Imperial
Household Agency at www.kunaicho.go.jp/eindex.html
Yasukuni. Controversial
Shinto shrine to those who served the emperor, including
war criminals. The modern museum next door tells a
decidedly pro-Japanese version of World War II.
Demonstrations of traditional Japanese arts often take
place in the gardens. 3-1-1 Kudankita, Chiyoda-ku, in
Tokyo. The nearest subway stop is the Kudanshita station.
yasukuni.or.jp
BOOKS:
"Code-Name Downfall:
The Secret Plan to Invade Japan," by Thomas B. Allen
and Norman Polmar (Simon & Shuster, $29.95). Combing
through the often conflicting documents of politicians and
military figures on both sides, the book makes the case
that the invasion of Japan remained a real possibility
until the second bomb destroyed Nagasaki.
"The 25 Best World War
II Sites, Pacific Theater" by Chuck Thompson. (Greenline
Historic Travel, $19.95). A great addition to the military
travel bookshelf, this is one of the few guidebooks that
gives war sites in the Pacific the kind of roundup that
you can find in several European theater guides (including
Greenline's own excellent companion volume). It has little
on the Japan invasion sites, but is top-notch for
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Yokohama and lesser known
sites like the kamikaze museum in Kyushu. A must have.
Lonely Planet Japan (Lonely
Planet, $17.99). Lonely Planet's typical wide-ranging,
getting off the beaten track guide into areas like the
Boso Peninsula and sites besides Kamakura along Sagami Bay
that are skipped over by other mainstream guidebooks.
TRAVEL INFORMATION: Japan
National Tourist Office at 212-757-5640 or jnto.go.jp
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