Explanation of Japanese Plan for Chichi
Jima
Editor's Note: These pages contain scans of an original document typed by Major Y. Horie, Japanese officer in charge at Chichi Jima, the central base of supply and communication between Japan and the Bonin Islands. The document was written by Major Horie on December 23, 1945 and kept by my uncle, a U. S. Navy radarman on LST 871. His vessel went to Chichi Jima with five wooden minesweepers to clear the minefields and channels. Major Horie reports that after Iwo Jima, the U. S. forces went to Okinawa and did not bother with the Bonin Islands. U. S. forces occupied those islands after the war. The meetings with Major Horie were held on the ship. Major Horie had the maps and offered to share his knowledge of the Japanese defense plan, a strategy based not on the possibility of victory, but on inflicting the maximum number of casualties on American fighting men (estimated at 150,000). Major Horie indicates that the decisive blow to Japan was the result of American "greatness of mass-production, superior technique, skillfull movement and especially pre-eminence of joint operation." This document was given to my father by my uncle in 1992.
Note on Chichi Jima: Former President George Bush was rescued by a submarine when he was forced from the sky near Chichi Jima as a Navy flyer in 1944. The novelist Jack London (Call of the Wild, White Fang) wrote a monograph in 1895 while at Oakland High School (Bonin Islands: An Incident of the Sealing Fleet of '93). The British established an outpost there in 1830. Commodore Perry arrived in 1853 and bought some land for $50 from an American. Chichi Jima was the first territory in the Eastern Pacific to come under the jurisdiction of the United States. Ironically, descendants of mutineers, adventurers and swashbucklers from the 19th century are gradually disappearing as Japanese culture dominates.
Here is the title page of the document, followed by links to the scanned pages of the original document, and references to Major Horie in other accounts:
Title Page
Table of Contents
Page 1 - Preface; General Situation; Japanese Strength
in Spring and Summer, 1944
Page 2 - Situation of Bonin Islands, 30th of June, 1944
Page 3 - Defense Plan; Estimate of Enemy's loss; Conclusion
References to Major Horie in World War II history books
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