World Battlefronts, THE ENEMY: Truk's Echo

• Share

The thunder at Truk echoed from Tokyo. In a move without precedent, Japan's rulers summarily sacked the chiefs of the Army and Navy General Staffs, openly admitted the loss of two cruisers, three destroyers, 13 transports, 120 planes.

Even to Japan's befuddled man-in-the-street it was plain: the punishment did not fit the crime. Seemingly the two chief strategists were penalized less for Truk than for the bankruptcy of their strategy of an impenetrable sea perimeter.

Victims and Successors. Out went: Field Marshal Gen. Sugiyama, the brilliant, irascible, Occident-hating Army Chief of Staff, opposite number of the U.S.'s George Marshall; and big, competent (to a point) Fleet Admiral Osami ("Elephant") Nagano, opposite number of the U.S.'s Ernie King.

In came: as Army Staff Chief, Premier General Hideki ("Razor") To jo, a keen smalltime politician, a crack police expert, concurrently serving also as Minister for War, Munitions, Education; as Navy boss, Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, Navy Minister and oldtime administrative wheel horse. General Jun Ushiroku, Tojo's military-academy classmate, went up to serve as the Army Staff's Vice Chief.

The Crisis. In both cases able minds have been replaced by less able. To Tojo the bitter pill of Truk was sugared by his triumph over his old rival Sugiyama. To Sugiyama and Nagano the bitter pill was sugared with appointment as "highest military advisers to His Majesty."

But the Army and Navy could no longer gloss over or glorify defeats at Attu, Kiska, the Solomons, Tarawa, Kwajalein and Truk. Suddenly they had emerged as stages in a U.S. strategical plan for which Japan had as yet found no defensive answer. Even the man-in-the-street now knew: the crisis in the Pacific approached.