Japanese counterpart to Ulithi Atoll...

Click here for Part I...

The reason for Japan's defeat in WWII was never an unwillingness to fight, nor a reluctance to die for their Emperor-god...Their efforts were doomed the moment they set out to attack without first securing their own supply lines...Japan's main military strength was in its sea force, but not even a superior striking body such as the Japanese Imperial Navy (JIN) can expect to attack with impunity forever...

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, CIC of the Combined Fleet, knew this from his travels and study in the United States, and said as much after receiving the news that the destruction of Pearl Harbor Naval Base was incomplete, and that the attack had occurred before Japan's formal declaration of war...In an interview on January 9,1942, Japanese journalist Taketora Ogata quoted Yamamoto as saying:

"A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."

Yamamoto's words were prophetic on a personal level as well, as his inspection flight of Japanese forces was intercepted and ambushed over Bougainville by a squadron of Lockheed P-38's less than 18 months later...The aircraft involved in the attack were all manufactured in the USA after America's entry into the war...Yamamoto was killed during this action on the direct order of President Franklin Roosevelt...

Japan had few natural resources for production of war materials, and relied instead on imports of all iron, coal, petroleum, rubber and secondary metals needed for land vehicles, ships, aircraft, ammunition plus any replacement parts...This fueled their lust for conquest in the oil and rubber rich Indonesian islands,and from the SEA mainland north into Korea where they hoped to establish permanent colonies...

This necessitated their taking by force the islands forming the southwest Pacific Ring in order to establish a defensive perimeter...They enslaved the native islanders there, forcing them to work for subsistence...Defending this ring against opponents meant maintaining forward naval bases prepared to repel invaders...They used the many natural harbors and anchorages for their larger warships, and established a number of airfields on remote islands...

One immediate disadvantage was in their enemies' knowledge of their exact locations, and another was in the logistical problem of maintaining repair facilities for the inevitable battle damage...The aforementioned lack of raw materials for manufacture meant not only fewer supply ships, but fewer replacement parts and a lack of dockside repair depots...Damaged warships and transports that could return to mainland naval arsenals such as Kure or Sasebo stood a better chance of adequate repair before returning to sea...

But ships unable to return to Japan had to find shelter in a harbor at one of the forward bases where basic repairs could be carried out making it seaworthy enough to return to a mainland arsenal for overhaul...The other alternative was waiting until the only Japanese repair ship in the Combined Fleet, the Akashi, could tie up alongside and make more extensive repairs...

Again lacking the necessary raw materials, the IJN could only launch one dedicated repair ship during the war...It lacked many of the facilities made available to the US fleet by their superior manufacturing power such as portable dry docks and endless chains of ships for resupplying...One ship as opposed to a 10,000 vessel massing such as Service Squadron Ten automatically guaranteed the outcome of the battle for control of the Pacific...

Most of the Akashi's port time was spent anchored at Truk Lagoon, a major IJN forward base until it was finally destroyed by the US Fleet in Operation Hailstone...By this time Truk had lost its strategic importance to the Allies, and was simply bypassed as Japanese forces withdrew...Later in the year the Navy's logistics command saw more value in establishing a new forward repair base at Ulithi Atoll rather than salvage what was left at Truk...

Following the attack in Operation Hailstone, the Akashi was sunk by US air power near the Palau Islands, depriving the Combined Fleet of any major forward repair facilities...At the time of the attack on Truk, US Marine Major Gregory Boynton was being held prisoner there by the Japanese, having been shot down over Rabaul...He was taken from there to a prison on mainland Japan where he was released shortly after Japan's surrender...

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