For the men of the 9th Army, the victory in Europe was a pivot toward a new slaughter, hidden in intelligence notes and silhouettes kept secret until the archival record was opened.
Four ghost units were funded by a secret Washington branch, but the operational reports of their missions were scrubbed from the record, leaving only the cost of the carnage.
Thousands of troops stood ready to storm the Japanese coast in 1945, only to be replaced by an occupation force built on a contingency plan that the record refuses to explain.