Location: Wakkanai
Course: None
Attached to: TF 21
Mission: Surface combat
System Damage: 5
Float Damage: 0
Fires: 0
Fuel: 475
Orders: Return to Wakkanai
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Excerpt from "Naval Battles of the Pacific, Volume 9: Steel Sunset" by Morris Elliot Samuelson; Harper, Row, and Fujimori, New York, 1965
Initial gains for the Allied invasion forces were swift. By 10 June Hagi, a port ten miles up the coast from the Nagato landing site, had been secured, while inland American tanks were at Ogori, a mere five miles from the city of Yamaguchi. The only opposition thus far encountered was sporadic civilian resistance (which we will discuss at greater length in the following chapter).
The Japanese, for their part, were attempting to respond as swiftly as possible. Their greatest fear was that Allied troops would reach the vital port and rail center at Hiroshima before they could reinforce the defenses there. This would give the Allies the ability to bring troops ashore at a far greater rate. Throughout Honshu Japanese infantry formations began to move in that direction. Lack of transportation hindered them, however, as did the generally battered state of Japan’s railways. Most Japanese soldiers were forced to move on foot.
On Kyushu the Japanese pulled as many units as they felt they could spare from Kagoshima, Nakasaki, and Sasebo and set them moving towards the Kanmon Strait. While there was some concern among Japanese military leaders that the Allied attack was only a diversion they recognized, after some debate, that they could not afford to treat it as anything but the main attack. While Japan’s defenses everywhere were thus weakened enough troops remained in key areas to at least, they hoped, discourage the enemy from trying an improvised attack elsewhere.
While things were going well for the Allies on the ground trouble was developing elsewhere. The biggest threat to the operation, as discussed previously, was the dangerously long and tenuous supply line through the Korea Strait. The original plan had been for aircraft based at Tsushima Island to protect this supply line. When Japanese efforts to hinder the development of the airfields there proved effective the task of protecting the supply line fell to the Allied carrier forces.
On 9 June the remnants of the Combined Fleet were spotted in the eastern Sea of Japan. Accordingly most of the fleet carriers moved east to screen the vital ports on Fukawa Bay. This left the defense of the Korea Strait primarily to escort carriers. These small but useful ships proved appallingly vulnerable to Japanese kamikaze attacks. On 10 June three were sunk and three others were damaged and forced to retire. With the Allied air defense thus in disarray several freighters and troop transports were also hit.
Allied forces responded by stepping up their bombing attacks on Japanese airfields throughout the region. On 11 June the airfields around Hiroshima received a ferocious pounding, destroying many Japanese planes and leaving the facilities there in shambles. The aerial blitz continued the following day with attacks on…
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Allied ground movements, June 8 – 10:
