editorial -- 9 January 1995

Useless sacrifice

What does one do when one remembers a battle that was fought 50 years ago? Few of the participants are still alive -- and the younger generations can grasp only intellectually the passions that drove the combatants. At best, the younger generations can speak about how past enmity has thawed into friendship.

And if, by benefit of hindsight, the younger generations regard the reasons for the war as stupid or unrealistic, they will hesitate to say so. If the younger people were to say that there was little reason for laying down one's life, they would feel uncomfortable about praising the heroism of those who suffered and died.

It is with this sense of unease that we remember the Japanese who opposed the landing of the American forces at Lingayen Gulf 50 years ago today.

The Japanese were not exactly powerless, but their army, navy and merchant service had sustained staggering losses because of Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi's decision that the battle for Leyte had to continue at all costs.

Almost 80 percent of the ships that Japan sent to Ormoc were sunk en route, and by December, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita decided that the Japanese troops in Leyte would have to fend for themselves. He did not have the means to supply them or to take them off Leyte. Even as he wrote off Leyte, General Yamashita made plans to retreat into the mountains.

Hence, it is not surprising that much of the Japanese resistance to the landing in Lingayen Gulf was mounted by kamikaze forces. Vice Admiral Jesse Oldenforf's 164-ship task force, which sailed from the Surigao Strait to Lingayen Gulf, was harassed by Japanese planes, many of them kamikazes.

On just one day, Jan. 6, 1945, kamikaze planes sank one ship, damaged 11 others and killed hundreds of persons, including an American rear admiral and a British lieutenant general. This was the most effective kamikaze attack of the war in relation to the number of planes employed -- 28 kamikazes and 15 fighter escorts.

It ``was the worst blow to the United States Navy sinced the Battle of Tassafronga on 30 November 1942,'' wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison. ``It was more difficult to bear because the recent naval victory at Leyte Gulf had made men believe that Japan was licked.''

During the landings in Lingayen Gulf, the fleet was harassed also by suicide boats -- which the Japanese used for the first time. These were fast plywood boats about 18 feet long, manned by two or three persons. Each boat carried two 260-pound depth charges, one light machine gun and a few hand grenades. About 70 suicide boats sortied; they sank one landing craft and damaged eight others.

The attacks by kamikaze planes continued, but all these sacrifices were in vain. ``By January 12, the Japanese had expended every aircraft in the Philippines,'' Mr. Morison wrote.

Today, younger people -- including young Japanese -- find it difficult to understand why the pilots of 50 years ago could go to their deaths so willingly... how they could adopt the attitude expressed in the ``Song of the Warrior,'' which went this way:

``In serving on the seas, be a corpse saturated with water./ In serving on land, be a corpse covered with weeds./ In serving the sky, be a corpse that challenges the clouds./ Let us all die by the side of our sovereign.''

Presumably, these young men went to their deaths in the firm belief that the sacrifice of their lives would mean something.

But this presumption only raises larger questions. How could the Japanese High Command order its pilots to crash their airplanes on enemy ships? Or did the Japanese generals honestly believe in January 1945 that Japan could still win the war?