The Evening Star (August 28, 1945)
AIRBORNE TROOPS BEGIN PREPARING ATSUGI FIELD FOR GEN. MACARTHUR
Task force moves into Tokyo Bay
28 Jap warships found lined up for surrender
Where Yanks land
Plane symbol and pointer locate Atsugi, where U.S. troops landed in Japan yesterday. Ship symbol illustrates reported movement of naval units into Tokyo Bay from Sagami Bay. (AP Wirephoto)
Nimitz will arrive in Japan tomorrow; to sign surrender
SAGAMI BAY, Japan (AP) – Adm. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Ocean areas, will arrive in Japan tomorrow and make the battleship USS South Dakota his flagship, it was announced today.
Adm. Nimitz took no part in preliminary discussions on the terms of Japan’s surrender, remaining at his headquarters at Guam.
He will, however, sign the formal surrender papers aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay Sunday for the United States.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) – U.S. airborne troops took command of Tokyo’s Atsugi Airfield today, simultaneously with the careful but dramatic entry of the Third Fleet’s special advance squadron into Tokyo Bay.
The first forces consisted of 150 technical specialists, but the occupation of the enemy’s homeland was actually in progress after irritating delays caused by Japanese negotiations and bad weather.
Meanwhile, 28 of Japan’s remaining 55 warships, most of them destroyers or submarines, were found lined up for surrender in Kyushu’s western port of Sasebo. Mitchell bomber pilots on reconnaissance flights from Okinawa sighted the vessels and said three damaged carriers, still under camouflage; light cruisers, destroyers and destroyer escorts were all lined up in groups.
Prepare way for MacArthur
The sole task of the advance echelon at Atsugi was to prepare the way for the triumphal entry of Gen. MacArthur. supreme Allied commander, at the head of 7,500 troops.
Two Associated Press correspondents with Adm. Halsey’s Third Fleet reported the first forces would land at Yokosuka tomorrow.
Joy of the first 180 communications experts, who landed at 9 a.m. today (8 p.m. Monday night, EWT) in three transport planes, at becoming the first troops to land in Japan was tempered by the announcement that 20 of their comrades had been killed in a takeoff on Okinawa.
Robert Shaplen, NBC and Newsweek war correspondent, said in a broadcast last night from Okinawa that among those killed were men who had been in service since the early days of the New Guinea campaign. Considerable equipment was also lost, he reported. Another plane and personnel was substituted immediately.
The first group was followed with in three hours by 38 more transports carrying combat troops, gasoline, oil and additional equipment.
Two separate jobs confronted the advance group in preparing Atsugi for the general arrival – the setting up of communications with the Okinawa staging area and making as safe as possible the comparatively short runways. Only two runways – 5,500 and 5,100 feet – are currently usable and none too long for the giant C-54 Skymasters and other troop transports.
When preparations are complete, Gen. MacArthur will leave the Okinawa staging area for the formal entry into Japan. About the time he is landing at Atsugi, his schedule calls for 10,000 Marines and Navy personnel to begin occupation of Yokosuka, Japan’s second largest naval base, off which the advance units of the Third Fleet anchored today.
At noon today (about 11 p.m. EWT), Rear Adm. Oscar C. Badger, aboard his flagship, the light anti-aircraft cruiser USS San Diego, steamed through Uraga Strait into Tokyo Bay.
Twenty miles away, around Miura Peninsula, in Sagami Bay, much of Adm. Halsey’s Third Fleet and about a score of British warships rode at anchor, awaiting the signal to enter Tokyo Bay for the Yokosuka landings. Screening this great force, the remainder of Adm. Halsey’s fleet stood off Japan.
Eight U.S. and two British battleships were among the force anchored within two miles offshore, in Sagami Bay. Four battleships and more than a score of aircraft carriers were among the warships cruising farther out.
While preparations for the initial landings were still going on the Japanese began worrying about future ones, seeking information from Gen. MacArthur on airfield facilities which would be needed in the “Tateyama area” when the Eighth Army lands to begin occupation of the Tokyo-Yokohama regions.
Gen. MacArthur sent his personal representative, Col. Charles T. Tench of Alexandria, Virginia, to Atsugi in one of the first transports to land there to supervise preparations for his coming.
At the Atsugi airfield, to facilitate the flow of planes due to arrive and takeoff at three-minute intervals, four radio control tower operators and two officers of the 68th Army Airways communications system took in two jeeps, especially mounted with portable radio receivers and transmitters.
The 354 heavily-loaded troop transports, making flights of almost 1,000 miles from Okinawa to the outskirts of Tokyo, will have little gasoline to spare in circling over Atsugi in a traffic pattern waiting to be given the green landing light. Pilots will receive their instructions from the jeep-mounted control towers, will taxi off the runways and make room for the next planes.
While Adm. Badger’s force was moving from Sagami into Tokyo Bay, two Japanese submarines were sighted being taken into Sagami by American prize crews. The submarines were taken yesterday off Northern Honshu.
One was a small 100-footer with a crew of 16, the other a larger vessel with a crew of 44.
From the transport USS Grimes, in Sagami Bay, Associated Press Correspondent Murlin Spencer radioed that American troops were giving thanks for the atomic bomb. He said they were deeply impressed by the difficulties they would have faced had they been required to fight their way ashore over the rugged terrain around the bay.
Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters announced that evacuation of Allied prisoners of war would be started by ships and planes “almost simultaneously” with the occupation. Prisoners released from camps in China and Manchuria as well as in Japan – where there are 12 main camps – all will be evacuated through Manila. Efforts will be made to start the liberated Americans homeward by plane or ship five days after they reach Manila.
Virginian commands first plane
Col. John H. Lackey Jr. of Norfolk, Virginia, a commander of the 317th Troop Carrier Group, piloted the C-47 which spearheaded today’s historic flight to Atsugi.
Col. E. K. Warburton of Westboro, Massachusetts, of the 5th Air Force Service Command, is commanding the Far East Air Forces and 5th AAF advance echelon, and as such took over command of the Atsugi Airfield on his arrival.
Col. Charles R. Hutchison of Arlington, Virginia, headed the advanced headquarters supply group.
On these men and their assistants rested the success of the aerial occupation two days hence.
Supervisor of air traffic control operations was Capt. Warren Dean of Highland Park, Illinois, with Lt. Martin W. Waring of Chattanooga, Tennessee, as his assistant.
One hour after the initial landings this morning, C-46 transport planes began arriving at the airdrome with combat-equipped troops. Two hours later, 15 glistening C-54s of the Air Transport Command landed with gasoline and oil to refuel the smaller transports for the return to Okinawa.
Japs ask MacArthur for ‘understanding’
MANILA, Philippines (AP) – With a token Allied occupation force already on Japanese soil the Japanese government and imperial headquarters to night petitioned Gen. MacArthur for a conference before the formal surrender signing Sunday, “to obtain full understanding in advance on certain points regarding manners and stages of executing the terms.”
In another broadcast monitored by the Associated Press’ Manila radio, the Japanese repeated a request that they be allowed to provide their own currency to American forces rather than have the Americans issue and disburse their own “invasion” yen.
There has never been any headquarters announcement of a reply to the previous Japanese monetary appeal to Gen. MacArthur.
Japan also informed Gen. MacArthur today that “conditions in Northern Korea have taken a sudden turn for the worse since August 23 and lives and properties of Japanese residents are exposed to imminent danger.”
“These deplorable situations if left unremedied will in all probability spread to Southern Korea, forcing local Japanese authorities into an extremely awkward position with regard to the maintenance of peace and order.
“Accordingly, local Japanese authorities eagerly wait for early arrival of Allied forces which are to take over maintenance of peace and order from Japanese forces in Southern Korea and urgently desire that Allied forces will fully take into consideration actual conditions on the spot before proceeding with the disarmament of Japanese forces and the transfer of administrative organs from Japanese.”