A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (124 page)

Third, even before the long-range fighter aircraft appeared on the scene in 1943, the Luftwaffe had lost large numbers of fighter planes in its attempts to defend against bomber attacks. Every time a Messerschmitt went down, however, it took with it a pilot; and although most German pilots bailed out over friendly territory, not all survived. Pilot training took years, placing a huge burden on the Luftwaffe when it had to send up inexperienced youngsters to stop the waves of bombers over German skies. That had a cascading effect: inexperienced pilots were easier to shoot down. In short, the strategic bombing campaign worked more effectively than anyone had dreamed. By June 6, 1944, in the skies over Normandy on D-Day, the Allies could put eleven thousand aircraft over the battlefield. The Germans responded with two, a pair of desperate Messerschmitt pilots who made a single pass over Normandy before fleeing with the satisfaction that “the Luftwaffe has had its day!”
³⁹

“Remember Bataan!”

But the road to D-Day was long and rugged. Despite the strategic concern with Hitler, most Americans had turned their attention first, in 1942, to events in the Pacific, where Japan continued to crush opposition. Singapore, Britain’s powerful naval base in Malaysia, fell in February 1942, when Japanese armies cut off the city’s water supplies, having used bicycles to negotiate the dense impregnable jungle. When they arrived, they were short on food and water, and they took the base largely through bluff and luck. Moreover, the Japanese soldiers only had a hundred rounds of ammunition per man left. A vigorous defense of the city would have rendered General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s troops virtually unarmed, but the legend of the invincible Japanese soldier already had started to set in, and the British surrendered.

By that time, Japan had eliminated virtually all Allied naval forces east of Pearl Harbor. The British battleships
Repulse
and
Prince of Wales
had left Singapore, only to be destroyed by air strikes in December. Australia to the south and Pearl Harbor to the east lay open to Japanese invasion, and Australia found itself hamstrung by its own socialist policies and labor unions, whose stevedores “refused to modify their union contracts in order to aid the war effort,” including clauses that “allowed the laborers to refuse work when it was raining.”
⁴⁰
American forces in the Philippines held out until April ninth, but before the surrender President Roosevelt ordered the American commander, General Douglas MacArthur, to relocate in Australia, where, as commander in chief of Allied forces in the Pacific, he organized a more tenacious defense. Following the surrender of the American island bastion of Corregidor, some eleven thousand Americans on the Bataan Peninsula were marched inland on hot jungle roads with no food or water. This Bataan Death March revealed the Japanese to be every bit as vicious as the Nazis. Japanese soldiers bayoneted American soldiers who fell by the wayside or tied them up in barbed wire to be eaten by ants. “Remember Bataan” and “Remember Pearl Harbor” would soon become the battle cries of GIs who stormed the beaches of Japanese-held islands.

The constant drumbeat of disasters enhanced the image of superhuman Japanese fighting forces. When a Japanese sub surfaced off the coast of Oregon to lob shells harmlessly onto continental U.S. soil, American planners anticipated that it indicated an imminent invasion of San Francisco, San Diego, or the Los Angeles area. Bunkers were thrown up at Santa Barbara; skyscrapers in Los Angeles sported antiaircraft guns on their roofs; and lights on all high-rise buildings were extinguished or covered at night to make it more difficult for imperial bombers to hit their targets. Local rodeo associations and the Shrine Mounted Patrol conducted routine reconnaissance of mountains, foothills, and deserts, checking for infiltrators. No one could guess that this shocking string of victories actually marked the high tide of imperial Japanese success, not the beginning.

Understanding the psychological impact of the Japanese successes in 1942 is critical to explaining Roosevelt’s decision to put Japanese American citizens of California, Oregon, and Washington State into “relocation camps.” Some 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, were removed from their homes and moved to inland centers in Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, California, and Arizona.
⁴¹
Opponents of the internment of Japanese Americans formed an odd political mix. Conservatives included FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who thought the move unnecessary, and Robert Taft of Ohio, who was the only congressman to vote in opposition to the 1942 bill. Liberal critics included Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black and future Chief Justice Earl Warren (California’s Republican governor).

Liberal historians have ascribed racist motives to the Japanese American relocation, pointing to the fact that the same thing was not done to German Americans or Italian Americans on the East Coast.
⁴²
In fact, both groups already had been under close scrutiny by the FBI and other agencies, a holdover policy from World War I, when German Americans had indeed experienced persecution and been denied fundamental civil liberties. Yet the comparison of the two is otherwise untenable. Although Germany had for a short time threatened the eastern U.S. coastline, by 1942 the Germans not only lacked a blue-water fleet, but also had not staged a successful amphibious invasion in two years. Germany had no aircraft carriers and no troopships. And Germany had certainly not launched an air strike two thousand miles from its home base across an ocean as had Japan at Pearl Harbor.

Today, with the benefit of hindsight, most can agree that the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II was an unfair and mistaken policy. Although the wartime Supreme Court supported Roosvelt’s policy (Executive Order 9066), a subsequent ruling vacated the World War II decision, making the relocation order inoperable (but stopping short of overturning it). Subsequently, Nisei internees were awarded $1.25 billion in reparations during the Reagan administration. Yet with the benefit of the same hindsight, one must say that the relocation was not, as two historians label it, a policy of “hysterical racial repression.”
⁴³
Instead, Roosevelt took understandable precautions to protect national security in the face of what most Americans firmly believed was an impending attack.

A few contemporary liberal scholars continue to call the Japanese American internment camps concentration camps. Considering that this same term is also applied to the Nazi and Japanese camps, its usage is loaded indeed. In fact, there existed critical and simple distinctions between the two. Can anyone honestly compare the American camps—where perseverant, brave, and industrious Japanese Americans grew vegetables and flowers, published their own newspapers, established schools, and organized glee clubs and Little League baseball teams for their children—to Auschwitz and Bataan? Can anyone forget the brave Nisei men who, despite the wrongs they had suffered, left the camps to join and fight bravely in the U.S. Army’s European theater? Moreoever, had Germany won the war, does anyone actually believe the inmates in the Nazi camps would have been released—let alone paid reparations? The fact that the United States not only addressed the constitutional violations with shame, and ultimately attempted to make restitution speaks volumes about the fundamental differences in worldviews between America and the Axis.

Yet the constant string of bad news that produced the internment camps, and the apparent Japanese invincibility, masked a fatal flaw in the Japanese war mentality. Like other non-Western cultures, Japan, despite her rapid modernization in the early twentieth century, had not adopted the fundamentals of a free society that produces westernized soldiers. Bushido, the warrior code, combined with the Shinto religion to saddle Japan with a fatal strategy employing surprise and quick strikes—all aimed at forcing the United States to exit the war with a treaty. Japan did not understand that it was at war with a westernized democracy with a tradition of civic militarism—an American nation that fought with intense discipline, yet incorporated the flexibility of individuality. Whereas Japanese admirals went down with their ships, American admirals transferred to other vessels, realizing that long after their ships were gone, the navy would still need their talent. Junior officers of all ranks respectfully criticized war plans and offered suggestions, providing a self-evaluation for the armed forces that did not exist in Germany or Japan. Above all, the Western way of war, with its emphasis on the value of the individual and his life, demanded an unrelenting campaign to the finish—a war of annihilation or total surrender, without a face-saving honorable exit.

American victory, however, seemed in the far distance as Japan conquered Burma, closing the Burma supply road to China; captured Wake Island; and threatened Port Moresby in New Guinea. In its relentless march of conquest, Japan had grabbed more territory and subjugated more people than any other empire in history and, for the most part, had accomplished all this in a matter of months—all for the net cost of one hundred aircraft, a few destroyers, and minor casualties in the army. Threats still remained, however. Destroying the four American aircraft carriers in the Pacific, which had escaped the Pearl Harbor massacre, remained a prime strategic objective for the imperial fleet, especially after the shocking bombing of Tokyo in April 1942 by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s force.

Doolittle, convinced that the United States needed a victory of some sort to regain its confidence, conceived a mission in which highly modified B-25 bombers (fittingly named the Mitchell bombers for Colonel Billy Mitchell) would take off from a carrier, bomb Tokyo, then continue on to safe airfields inside China. Even in the planning stages, Doolittle doubted that most of his aircraft would make it to China. Their chances grew slimmer when the
Hornet
’s task force was discovered and Doolittle had to launch early. Nevertheless, the strike force attacked Tokyo in broad daylight as flabbergasted Japanese warlords looked on (described in Ted Lawson’s famous book,
Thirty Seconds over Tokyo
).
⁴⁴
Although some of the crews were killed or captured—three were beheaded after Japanese trials—the raid exceeded American expectations.

Not only did Doolittle’s brave crews buck up morale, but the attack also so incensed imperial planners that it goaded them into reckless attacks in the Coral Sea and near Port Moresby. And it convinced Yamamoto that Midway Island was a strategic target. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, American and Japanese fleets engaged in the first naval engagement in history fought solely by carrier-launched aircraft. Most history books call the battle a draw, with both sides losing a carrier and the American carrier
Yorktown
suffering what most thought was crippling damage. In fact, however, the loss of the
Yorktown
, which headed for an expected two-month repair job at Pearl Harbor, left the Allies with exactly two undamaged capital ships—carriers
Enterprise
and
Hornet
—in the eastern Pacific to confront the entire Japanese fleet.

Miracle at Midway

What occurred next was nothing short of what historian Gordon Prange termed a “Miracle at Midway.” Determined to force the last two carriers out in the open and destroy them, Yamamoto moved an invasion force toward Midway Island. His real goal, though, was to lure the American carriers into positions for destruction. Midway’s airfield had to be eliminated first. Japanese attacks failed to knock out the airfield, requiring second strikes. But where were the carriers? After receiving reports from scout planes he had sent in an arc around Midway, Yamamoto ordered a second attack on the island. Only one scout had yet to report when Yamamoto rolled the dice and ordered his tactical bombers to rearm for another attack on the island.

In the midst of this tedious reloading process, word arrived from the last scout: the American carrier fleet was right below him! At that point, Yamamoto countermanded his previous order and then instructed the aircraft to prepare for attacking the carriers (which required a complete change in the types of armaments on the planes). Apparently out of nowhere, several squadrons of American planes from the two U.S. carriers—launched independently and groping blindly for the Japanese fleet—all converged at the same instant. They all were shot down. This, actually, was good news in disguise.

In the process of wiping out the attackers, the Japanese Zeros ran out of fuel, and there was another delay as they landed and refueled. Suddenly another squadron of American dive-bombers appeared above the Japanese fleet, which, with no fighter cover and all its planes, bombs, and fuel sitting exposed on its carrier decks, was a giant target in a shooting gallery. The American aircraft, astoundingly enough, had come from the
Yorktown
, her three-month repair job completed in forty-eight hours by some twelve hundred technicians working nonstop. In a matter of minutes,
Yorktown
’s aircraft had sunk three of the carriers, and a follow-up strike by the other U.S. carriers’ reserves destroyed the fourth.
Yorktown
herself was again badly damaged, and was sunk by a Japanese sub on her way back to Pearl, but the United States had pulled off its miracle. Not only did Japan lose four modern carriers, but more important, more than three hundred trained pilots died when the ships sank. Japan never recovered, and in the blink of an eye, the empire’s hopes for victory had vanished. The Japanese never won another substantial victory, and even though bloody fighting continued on many islands, Japan lost the war in June 1942.

The End of the “Thousand-Year Reich”

Germany’s invasion of Russia in May 1941 led to a string of victories as sweeping and unrelenting as Japan’s early conquest of Asia, putting Nazi forces just ten miles outside Moscow. In retrospect the German assault on Russia was a huge blunder, pitting Nazi armies against the bottomless pit of Soviet manpower and the vastness of Russian geography. At the time, even many Wehrmacht officers knew they lacked the resources to pull off such a military operation. Germany’s supply lines were widely overextended; and Hitler’s generals, who had warned him they needed far more trucks and tanks, displayed astonishment at the incredible size of Russia, which seemed to swallow up their army.