World War II Day by Day

Aboard the U.S. Carrier Shangri-La • July 14, 1945

On this date and the next in 1945, less than four months after the start of the joint U.S. air and naval effort to strangle Japa­nese mari­time traf­fic by the aerial mining of Japan’s har­bors and straits, aptly named Opera­tion Star­va­tion, Navy air groups destroyed over half the train ferries between the north­ern Japa­nese island of Hok­kaido and the main island of Honshū. The largest, most populated of the Home Islands, Honshū was the center of Japan’s indus­try and the site of most of the coun­try’s rail lines. Almost over­night the amount of Hok­kaido coal delivered to Honshū fac­tories dropped more than 80 percent, seriously crippling Japanese industry.

Literally between a rock and a hard place, Japan saw its imports of selected com­modi­ties, in­cluding coal and food­stuffs, which totaled over 20 mil­lion tons in 1941, cut in half in 1944 and plum­met to 2.7 mil­lion tons in June 1945. Japa­nese censors blocked deli­very of letters to service mem­bers over­seas on account of civilians com­plaining bitterly about the lack of food, water, petro­leum pro­ducts, and just about every­thing else back home. Vice Admiral Paul Wen­neker, German naval attaché in Tokyo (1940–1945), believed it was sub­marine war­fare that brought island inhab­i­tants to their knees. Wen­neker had per­sonal know­ledge of the U.S. sub­marine block­ade of Japan, for he was in charge of the blockade-running naval opera­tion that brought German goods such as opti­cals, machine tool equip­ment, special service personnel, and plans for air­planes to Japan in return for vital Asian mate­rials like qui­nine and tin. “But this was not so easy an arrange­ment because of the Amer­i­can sub­marines on the route between Japan and the south,” by which he meant Penang or Sin­ga­pore on the Malay Penin­sula. “It was ter­rible,” he told his Amer­i­can inter­ro­gator. “Some­times the entire convoy including all my mate­rial would be lost. It seemed that nothing could get through.”

Yes, the U.S. submarine blockade had been respon­sible for the drop in imports through the early part of 1945; how­ever, it was the B‑29 air-dropped mines of Opera­tion Star­va­tion, over­seen by Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, that provided the tip­ping point. By August 1945, the month in which LeMay’s 509th Com­pos­ite Group, part of the U.S. Twen­tieth Air Force, vapor­ized Hiro­shima and Naga­saki, the coun­try had less than half the food and raw mate­rials needed to con­tinue the fight. Reports surfaced of hungry civil­ians reduced to eating saw­dust while Japan’s fleet of war­ships rusted at anchor due to lack of fuel, and while Tokyo’s mili­tary rulers dithered over accepting the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender as expressed in the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945.

After the bombing of Hiro­shima and Naga­saki Japan’s Emperor Hiro­hito (post­humously referred to as Emperor Shōwa) person­ally had no fight left, which made all the differ­ence. In a royal under­state­ment, Hiro­hito told his sub­jects in a radio broad­cast on August 15: “Despite the best that has been done by everyone . . . the war situ­a­tion has devel­oped not neces­sarily to Japan’s advan­tage.” To con­tinue the fight would “result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation.”

Grabbing Japan’s Attention: Operation Starvation

Left: Beginning on March 27, 1945, four-engine B‑29 Super­for­tresses assigned to Opera­tion Sta­rva­tion dropped 1,000 para­chute-retarded influ­ence mines with mag­netic and acous­tic exploders. The initial sortie of heavy bombers was followed up by 1,528 more. Some models of mines had water-pres­sure-dis­place­ment exploders. Aerial mining proved the most effi­cient means of destroying Japa­nese shipping during the war. In terms of damage per unit of cost, it sur­passed the stra­tegic bombing and the U.S. submarine campaigns.

Right: A 1,000 lb M26 sea mine being dropped by a B‑29, 1945. The Twen­tieth Air Force laid 12,135 mines in 26 fields on 46 sep­a­rate mis­sions. Even­tually most of the major ports and straits of Japan were repeatedly mined, severely dis­rupting Japa­nese logis­tics and troop move­ments for the remainder of the war. The mines sank or damaged 670 ships totaling more than 1,250,000 tons.

Left: Imperial rescript from Emperor Hirohito ordering Japan’s capitu­la­tion and the end to World War II. It was written by the Japa­nese govern­ment on August 14, 1945, in response to the Allies’ Pots­dam Declara­tion of July 26, 1945, sanc­tioned by the emperor, signed by the cabinet, and recorded by Hiro­hito on a phono­graph record. Then at noon on August 15 the rescript was broadcast to the nation. In his Gyo­kuon-hōsō (lit. “Jewel Voice Broad­cast”), Hiro­hito admonished his sub­jects to “endure the unen­dur­able and bear the unbearable.” Click the audio bar to hear Hirohito read the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. 

Right: A leaflet dropped from a B-29 on Japan after the bombing of Hiro­shima. Trans­la­tion: Notice to the Japa­nese People! Evacu­ate the city immedi­ately. What this leaf­let con­tains is extremely impor­tant, so please read care­fully. The Japa­nese peo­ple are facing an extremely import­ant autumn. Your mili­tary leaders were pre­sented with thir­teen articles for sur­render by our three-coun­try alli­ance to put an end to this unprof­it­able war. [The refer­ence here was to the Pots­dam Declara­tion issued by the U.S., Great Britain, and Nation­alist China on July 26, 1945.] This pro­posal was ignored by your army leaders. Because of this the Soviet Republic inter­vened. In addi­tion, the United States has devel­oped an atom bomb, which had not been done by any nation before. It has been deter­mined to employ this fright­ening bomb. One atom bomb has the destruc­tive power of 2000 B‑29s. This fright­ening fact should be under­stood by you by observing what kind of situ­a­tion was caused when only one was dropped on Hiroshima.

1945 U.S. Army Air Forces Strategic Bombing of Japan