home | 1901-World War II | War in Europe, 1941-45

Admiral Yamamoto. Click for details

Japanese controlled areas during the
stalemate of 1940, in yellow. Click for minor enlargement.

Japan's Conquests to 1942

Attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines

By 1940, the war between the Chinese and Japanese had bogged down into a stalemate. The Chinese were unable to make military gains in driving the Japanese from their homeland, but their resistance had stopped the Japanese. Japan's offensive was proving to be a failure. In response, the frustrated Japanese tried harder. They started the "Three Alls Policy" - kill all, loot all, burn all (三光政策). They followed the same course that Germany followed during World War I. Rather than admit failure and withdraw to Manchuria, they chose more offense. The Japanese were proud. Japanese warriors don't withdraw for the sake of peace and  for less than their goal in war.    

In March 1940, Japan's parliament, the Diet, unanimously passed a declaration of support for holy war against China, and in the spring of 1940 the Japanese launched a new offensive there. Hostility toward Japan increased among Americans, and some began to wonder about the scrap metal, oil and other materials that American businesses were selling to Japan.

In May 1940, the U.S. Navy moved the base of its Pacific Ocean fleet from San Diego to its "impregnable" naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. Admiral Yamamoto, commander of Japan's Combined Fleet since August 39, described this as "tantamount to a dagger pointed at our throat." [note]

In the summer of 1940, the Germans rolled over the French and Dutch in Europe, and Japanese strategists were concerned that the victorious Germans might wish to re-establish a presence in the South Pacific. Germany's successes encouraged Japan to expand into the Southeast Asia and South Pacific region. Japan was using around 28,000 gallons of oil a day in China, and it needed steel for its war machine. For the sake of "imperial self-sufficiency," Japan was interested in acquiring secure oil supplies and other materials from European-ruled Southeast Asia - the Dutch in the Indonesian Archipelago, the British in Malay and northern Borneo, and the French in Indochina.

With Germany threatening Britain, Japan's strategists saw Britain as too occupied to defend its interests in East Asia. There was the problem of the Americans, but on July 2, Japan's leaders met at one of their Imperial Conferences and decided not to be deterred by the possibility of war with the United States in fulfilling their ambitions. They affirmed their commitment to victory in China and to building a "Co-prosperity Sphere" in East Asia.

The Japanese bargained with the weakened French and won permission to move into northern Vietnam, which they did on September 22. From here they began bombing southwest China, adding to their blockade against Chiang Kai-shek's forces. Hirohito was bothered by what he saw as his nation acting dishonorably, "like a thief after a fire," taking advantage of France after its defeat. But he went along with it, not wishing to be out-of-step with what was seen as necessary for Japan's war effort.

The United States responded to Japan's move into Indochina by abrogating America's commercial treaty with Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt's administration embargoed scrap iron and steel that U.S. companies had been selling to Japan - nearly seventy percent of Japan's supply of these materials. Roosevelt encouraged the Dutch in Indonesia to stop selling oil to Japan, while allowing U.S. sales of oil to Japan to avoid pushing the Japanese into war with the U.S. and to keep oil as a bargaining lever against the Japanese.

The Japanese responded to Germany's call for a pact. Japan had been reluctant to tie itself to European conflicts but now saw advantage in it. On September 27, 1940, Japan signed a treaty with Germany and Italy - the Tripartite Pact. Japan, Germany and Italy promised to join either of the other two should one of them go to war against any power not presently at war - a pact aimed against the United States. Joining the pact, in late November was Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Bulgaria was to join on March 1, 1941.

Following the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the U.S. State Department ordered all Americans to return home from the Far East - except for military personnel, mainly in the Philippines. The British announced that they would open a road through Burma, north to Chongqing, to overcome Japan's blockade from northern Vietnam, and Tokyo threatened to declare war on Britain.

Hoping to cripple Britain, Germany was trying to encourage Japan to move against the British at Singapore - the island and naval base at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. Germany's foreign minister, Ribbentrop, advised Japan's military attaché in Berlin that while moving south "the best way to keep America out of the war" would be not declaring war.

The Japanesse to the Germans that preparations for taking Singapore would be completed by the end of May and that war with the United States could not be ruled out. Meanwhile, Admiral Yamamoto was concerned that when Japan moved against Singapore and into the Indonesian Achipelago, the U.S. could send its forces out from Pearl Harbor and hit Japan's forces on their flank. In early 1941 Yamamoto announced to his colleagues that simultaneous with Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia and the unhappy event of a war with the United States, Japan should cripple America's Pacific fleet by an air offensive. This he believed would damage American civil and military morale, perhaps to the point of rendering the Americans helpless and would prevent the U.S. from launching "disturbing air strikes" against Japanese cities. Such a mission against the Americans, Yamamoto admitted, would be risky and, with much at stake, divine assistance would be needed.

Invading Hawaii with troops was rejected, although it would have given the Japanese greater control over the Pacific. Japanese intelligence was over-estimating the size of the American forces in the Hawaiian Islands. The Japanese believed they could not spare troops from their invasion to the south, and adding troop transports to the strike force against Hawaii would slow it to eight knots and, they believed, perhaps cause its detection by the United States. 

United States Readiness

In Washington, the War Department (later to be called the Defense Department) was working everyday and into the night concerning itself with military readiness. In October 1940 its War Plans Division had recommended withdrawal of all U.S. forces in the Pacific east of the 180-degree meridian (halfway between Wake and Midway Islands.

In January, Peru's minister to Japan had heard something about Japan planning to attack Pearl Harbor, and he told an American embassy official. On January 27, the U.S. embassy in Japan telegrammed this information to the U.S. State Department. Secretary of State Cordell Hull passed the message on to Army intelligence and the Office of Naval Intelligence, and, on February 1, naval intelligence contacted the commander of the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Naval Intelligence advised Kimmel that it "placed no credence" in the rumors that Japan was planning to attack Pearl Harbor and that "no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or planned for in the foreseeable future." [note]

In March a new Consul General from Japan arrived in Hawaii, and with him was Takeo Yoshikawa, a trained spy. Yoshikawa joined an untrained agent, Kohichi Seki, a treasurer at Japan's consulate in Hawaii, who had been gathering information about the movements of American ships. Meanwhile the House Committee on Un-American activities had been investigating spy activities among the Japanese in the United States. It was concerned with Japanese on the west coast who were loyal to Japan. Japanese-American fishermen on the west coast were under intense scrutiny, although fishermen were seeing little more than could be seen by anyone on board the large ships from Japan that regularly anchored on the Pacific coast. The chairman of the committee Martin Dies was getting much publicity, and he announced that the time had come "for a showdown of Japanese spy activities in this country." [note]

The view of U.S. military intelligence, and of Admiral Kimmel, was that the major threat to the fleet at Pearl Harbor was from local saboteurs - not from a military force from Japan. Hawaii had a good number of people of Japanese decent, and their loyalty was questioned - although no cases of espionage by Japanese-Americans had been uncovered.

U.S. strategists were concerned with the limited supplies and manpower available to defeat enemy forces, and on June 2, Roosevelt's Joint Army-Navy Board decided that in the event of hostilities between the United States and the axis powers - Germany, Italy and Japan - Germany and Italy would be defeated first, while war against Japan would be defensive. U.S. strategists believed that the Japanese were not likely to attack the Philippines because of the strength of U.S. forces. They believed, as did Douglas MacArthur, that the Americans and Filipinos could more than adequately defend themselves against the Japanese. MacArthur told an American reporter, John Hersey, that the Americans, British and Dutch could handle the Japanese with half the forces they had in the Pacific, that if the Japanese went to war against them "the Japanese navy would be either destroyed or bottled up tight." [note]

Steps toward War

The United States and Japan were still talking, with the Roosevelt Administration at least ostensibly trying to bargain with the Japanese, while objecting to the Japanese troops in China proper and Japan's claim to economic supremacy in China and East Asia's Pacific region. The Roosevelt Administration suggested a negotiated settlement between China and Japan that was "advantageous and acceptable" to both sides, including cooperation between China and Japan against "communist activities." The Roosevelt administration suggested that it might recognize Japan's hold on Manchuria and also support the Philippines becoming neutral. [note]

Negotiations were damaged by Japan's move to Saigon on July 25 - the Japanese having made another agreement with the French. The Japanese also mobilized a million of its reservists. It appeared to the Americans that Japan was choosing war. The Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, urged that all practical steps be taken to increase  "defensive strength" in the Philippines. Roosevelt ordered the merging of American and Filipino troops into a single army with MacArthur as its commander, and the U.S. froze all Japanese assets in the United States, closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping and forbade the export of oil, iron or rubber to Japan. And Britain and the Dutch in Indonesia declared similar embargoes.

The attitude of Japan's government was expressed in a coded message that its Foreign Office sent its embassy in Germany. It complained that the empire had "to break asunder" the "ever-strengthening chain of encirclement" being woven around Japan.  The Philippines, the message claimed, was "a pistol aimed at Japan's heart," and it spoke of Japan's need for military bases in Thailand and control over Thailand's rubber, tin and rice. [note]

On September 6, another Imperial Conference in Japan decided that if the United States did not become agreeable by  the end of October, Japan would then set a date certain for commencing hostilities "against the United states, Britain and the Netherlands." In deference to Emperor Hirohito's continuing hopes for peace, talks with the United States would be allowed to continued.

Yamamoto and his colleagues were conducting secret war simulations in an effort to increase the feasibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor. The game trials failed to produce assurance of a military success at Pearl Harbor, and work continued to polish the operation.

On September 26, fourteen companies of soldiers arrived in the Philippines, and, in early November, an under strength regiment of Marines arrived from Shanghai. The War Department assured General MacArthur that 50,000 more men would arrive in February, 1942. The Navy stationed in the Philippines had three cruisers, thirteen destroyers and eighteen submarines, and the Army Airforce promised to send some B-17 bombers that were being held in California because of a lack of spare parts. MacArthur was upbeat. He spoke of Filipino trainees being eager to learn. A new airfield was being built and some PT boats were scheduled to arrive. Everything, he said, was coming along splendidly. [note]

The Filipinos were delighted to see the Japanese evacuating their nationals. When the Filipinos in Manila were told of air raid shelters being built in Tokyo they laughed, and they were indifferent about none being built in Manila.

More Preparations

On November 5, Japan's Imperial Conference set early December as the time for starting its war against the Americans, British and Dutch, with the proviso that the war could be called off if negotiations with the Americans were successful.

On November 27, Secretary of War, Stimson, was made aware of a large Japanese force sailing from Shanghai. Stimson suggested to Roosevelt that the War Department cable MacArthur telling him to be ready for an attack, and Roosevelt agreed. The message to MacArthur spoke of negotiations with the Japanese appearing to be "terminated to all practical purposes" and it went on to read:

HOSTILE ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT. . . IF HOSTILITIES CANNOT, REPEAT CANNOT, BE AVOIDED, THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT. THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT, REPEAT NOT, BE CONSTRUED AS RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPARDIZE YOUR DEFENSE. [note]

MacArthur asked for clarifications and reported that "everything is in readiness for the conduct of a successful defense."  The next day the military command in Washington, in the person of General "Hap" Arnold sent orders to MacArthur and to Pearl Harbor that steps were to be taken "to protect your personnel against subversive propaganda, protect all activities against espionage, and protect against sabotage of your equipment, property and establishments." To this end, aircraft were to be moved together, wing tip to wing tip. [note]

That same day, the 28th, Roosevelt met with his war cabinet, including Stimson. Stimson suggested striking against the Japanese force moving southward without warning. Others preferred warning the Japanese that the U.S. would attack once the force crossed a certain line. Roosevelt agreed and suggested sending a message to Emperor Hirohito asking him to stop the drift toward war. Stimson opposed the idea, saying the one does not warn an emperor. Roosevelt agreed again.

In Hawaii, Admiral Kimmel continued to believe that Japan would not attack Pearl Harbor and that the main threat was sabotage, but both and the army's commander at Pearl Harbor, Lt. General Walter Short, saw it as their duty to be prepared for a possible attack. Meanwhile, the carrier Enterprise, three cruisers, nine destroyers, twelve Marine Corps fighter planes and some army bombers were sent to Wake Island.  The carrier Lexington, three cruisers, five destroyers and eighteen Marine Corps fighter planes were sent to the Midway Islands. A third aircraft carrier, the Saratoga, was in San Diego for repairs.

On December 2 and 3, Japanese reconnaissance planes flew over Luzon. On the 5th and 6th, MacArthur ordered twenty-four hour alerts, including the guard doubled at airfields and more air reconnaissance patrols. By now, Admiral Yamamoto and his aircraft carriers were on their way to the Hawaiian Islands. Responding to the warnings from his superiors of a possible attack by the Japanese, Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii, on Saturday, December 6, was nervous. Around him was talk that Japan was heading deeper into Southeast Asia and that Japan would not, or could not, divide its forces by also attacking Hawaii. But Kimmel saw it as his duty to be prepared. He discussed his options with two operations officers and suggested that all liberty parties be recalled, that everyone be put on alert and that the entire fleet be sent out to sea in silence after dark. The two operations officers with him, Captain Charles H. McMorris and Rear Admiral Walter DeLany, objected, and it was agreed to follow the orders of Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, that nothing be done to alarm the people of Honolulu. [note]

The Attack at Pearl Harbor

That  Japan's naval force heading for Hawaii sent radio messages and that secret messages describing the impending attack on Pearl Harbor were were intercepted, deciphered, and translated prior to the attack have already been discredited - recently by the eminent historian of Pearl Harbor, Gordon Prange in his detailed, 928-page work, At Dawn We Slept.

Early on the morning of December 7, a radar operator in Hawaii spotted the Japanese attack force and sent a message to Lieutenant Kermit Tyler at the Fighter Control Center about unusual activities to the northwest. Believing that this was caused by a flight of B-17s that were arriving in transit to the Philippines, and due from the mainland, Lieutenant Tyler told the radar station to "forget it," and he did not pass the report on to others higher up in command.

The first wave of 189 aircraft off of the Japanese carriers arrived at their targets around 7:50. The second wave, with 161 aircraft, came an hour later. The attack lasted a total of two hours and twenty minutes and included strikes at Wheeler Field in the middle of the island, Oahu, the naval air station at Kaneohe, Ford Island and Ewa Field. Twenty-nine Japanese aircraft were shot down, and, in their eagerness, U.S. gunners mistakenly shot a few U.S. fighter planes. [note]  The attack killed 2403 Americans and wounded 1178 others. Fourteen ships, including eight battleships, were put out of service, and the battleship Arizona was a total loss. Seventy-seven  aircraft of all types had been destroyed. Three U.S. aircraft carriers, the Saratoga, Lexington and Enterprise, had been away on duties.

The Japanese pilots saw themselves as honorable men. They had attacked only military targets. They were amazed by the lack of preparedness they had found among the Americans - including a lack of torpedo nets. They believed they had done the job that had been expected of them, that they had done their patriotic duty. They were exultant, and their task force withdrew.

The Attack on the Philippines

News of the attack at Pearl Harbor arrived in the Philippines at 3 a.m. local time - 8 a.m. Hawaii time - but not to MacArthur or any other army officer. An army radio operator on watch heard of the attack while listening to a California radio station. He called his superior, who called another superior, and within a few minutes MacArthur was awakened by telephone. By 3:40 he was rushing to get dressed. At 5:30 he received a radio gram notifying him that the United States and Japan were at war.

The Japanese at their base in Formosa (Taiwan) were worried that an air strike from the Philippines would arrive in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, but no strike came. MacArthur believed that he was under explicit orders not to initiate hostilities against the Japanese and he denied General Brereton, at Clark Field (fifty miles northwest of Manila) permission to attack with his B-17s.

Arriving that morning from General Arnold was a command to avoid the mistake made at Pearl Harbor by dispersing aircraft on the ground. A report arrived also from a local radar station that unidentified aircraft were headed for Manila and Clark Field. General Brereton ordered thirty-six P-40 fighter planes into the air and seventeen of his B-17s to cruise out of harms way. The approaching Japanese planes changed course. The P-40 pilots could not find them and thought they had been sent up on a false alarm and returned to base, believing perhaps that the attack on Pearl Harbor had been a hoax and that they were being tested for readiness. The B-17s also returned to base.

Around noon the radar station sent another warning to Clark Field, by teletype, but the teletype operator was out to lunch. The radar station sent a message by radio, but the transmission was made unclear by static. A radar officer telephoned a lieutenant at the base, and the lieutenant promised to pass the word along "at the earliest opportunity." [note] A few minutes later a radio station being listened to during lunch announced "an unconfirmed report" Clark Field was being bombed. The people who heard this news laughed. Then they began to hear a low moaning sound, which grew louder and louder. The Japanese were attacking with 181 Mitsubishi bombers and 84 Zero fighter-bombers. Base personnel had no air raid shelter or slit trenches to dive into. Only four planes managed to get off the ground. Most of the anti-aircraft rounds that ground crews managed to fire were old and exploded from two to four thousand feet short of the Japanese planes. The Japanese bombed and strafed Clark Field for a little more than an hour then left, leaving the base in total ruin. Most of MacArthur's aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. MacArthur was dismayed and wondered whether it had been Germans flying the Japanese planes.

On the same morning that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, they moved against the British at Hong Kong. And that day they move into Southeast Asia's only independent country, Thailand, and against the British on the Malay Peninsula - Saigon having been a staging area for these two assaults.

Japan had asked Italy and Germany to join them in their war against the United States, and they did so. Hitler was eager to declare war on the United States before the United States declared war on Germany, and he did so on December 9, and when he spoke to parliament (the Reichstag) on the 11th that rubber-stamp body responded with jubilation. The war that Roosevelt wanted with Germany had come to be - as Germany doing rather than Roosevelt's.

On December 10, Japanese troops invaded Guam and landed at various points in the Philippines, including Luzon and Mindanao. On December 15 they landed against the British in northern Borneo - that area important to them because of its oil. The Japanese in mid-December were fighting to take Hong Kong. On Luzon, meanwhile, the Japanese forces numbered around 50,000 - half the number of those fighting under MacArthur. But they swept MacArthur's force aside, and on the afternoon of the 22nd they pushed MacArthur and company out of Manila. MacArthur's forces - 15,000 U.S. troops and 65,000 Filipinos - withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula, across the bay and twenty miles west of Manila, where they lacked food and the Americans called themselves the Battling Bastards of Bataan.

MacArthur made his headquarters on the island of Corregidor, at the mouth of Manila Bay and three miles from Bataan's coast. He was hoping for relief in the form of the Soviet Union entering the war against Japan. Roosevelt urged this from the Russians, but the Russians were busy enough fighting the Germans and not about to break their non-aggression agreement with Japan.

On December 22, while fighting was still taking place in Borneo, Wake Island fell to the Japanese - Japan's second assault on that island - its first assault repelled by the Marines there. In mid-January, the Americans on Bataan were forced to retreat to Corregidor. By mid-February the Japanese, on bicycles, had fought their way to the southern end of the Malay Peninsula. The British at Singapore had not been prepared to defend themselves from as assault by land, through the jungles of the Malay Peninsula. They had foreseen a threat only by naval forces, and much of their navy was involved in the war against Germany, far away. And the Japanese had air superiority.

On the 15th of December about 70,000 reinforcements for the British arrived at Singapore - just in time to join others in surrender and captivity, including the surviving British, Canadian and Indian troops at Hong Kong. And, following their capture of Singapore, the Japanese began a slaughter of local Chinese, believed by the Japanese to be either pro-British or Communists. Around 20,000 Chinese from Singapore were rounded up and systematically butchered.

Passion, Rumors and Myth

In a speech to Congress that was broadcast across the nation, President Roosevelt described the attack at Pearl Harbor as a "dastardly deed" and a day that would "live in infamy." This for many set the tone. Americans were aroused. Some who had tolerated other aggressions, from Mussolini's attack into Ethiopia to Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, were outraged by Japan's bombing of military targets in Hawaii. Some were saddened rather than outraged - saddened by the hardships that they foresaw - while feeling an enhanced sense of community and duty. Generally, Americans were more outraged than they had been in response to the sinking of the Maine or the Lusitania. And Congress responded to Roosevelt's request and declared war against Japan.

Passion mixed with contempt, with many people using the phrase "dirty Japs." And a primitive habit as old as Biblical times resurfaced:attributing guilt collectively. Americans of German descent were not being lumped together with the doings of Germany, but Americans of Japanese descent were being lumped together with the doings of Japan. On the west coast of the United States came the breaking of more glass, not as bad as Kristallnacht, but with frightened Japanese couples hearing the cursing mob while hoping for the police to arrive.

Rumors spread that Japanese in Hawaii had sneaked onto the bases in Hawaii early Sunday morning before the air attack and slit the throats of American servicemen. Humanity's old habit of myth making included a story that Roosevelt's advisor, Harry Hopkins had purposely transferred planes away from Hawaii just before the attack. Another story described Roosevelt and Churchill as having plotted the raid with the Japanese, and it was rumored that British and Americans had piloted at least some of the attacking aircraft.

The enhanced sense of community that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor inspired widespread volunteering for military service, and there was widespread acceptance of being drafted into the military - with some mild contempt for those who could have joined but did not. And the average American went off to war without fanaticism, and few joined for the sake of glory. Glory was more the goal of fascists. Rather than glory, the average enlistee saw himself as making a very modest contribution - the ethos of democracy. Those in combat did what they believed they had to do for the sake of those alongside them. "The Greatest Generation" would be the hyperbole of later times.

Rumors and the Great Conspiracy

The rumor arose that Roosevelt had kept the base at Pearl Harbor uninformed about a coming attack in order to arouse the American public to favor going to war. To carry out such a strategy, Roosevelt would have needed the co-operation of numerous people around him, including military leaders working with the War Department - men with at least a little integrity toward their duty and their devotion to the well being of American servicemen. The conspiracy theorists did not explain why, if the top brass in Washington were attempting to keep Pearl Harbor uniformed, Kimmel was indeed alerted to the possibility of an attack. Moreover, to arouse the public, Roosevelt did not need commanders to be more aware of the possibility of an attack than they were:an attack on Pearl Harbor under any circumstances - or an attack against U.S. forces in the Philippines - was sufficient for outrage in the United States and for war to be declared.

Conspiracy theorists would speak of the scapegoating of Admiral Kimmel, signs received by Americans that the Japanese carriers were heading toward Hawaii, the fact that Kimmel was not told every detail in the functioning of military intelligence,  the belief of some that Pearl Harbor would indeed be a target, and perhaps some fictions, and leap to the conclusion - in the manner of conspiracy believers - that Roosevelt and the military brass in Washington purposely kept the military at Pearl Harbor uninformed in order to arouse public anger.

Internment of Japanese-Americans

The FBI had been monitoring Japanese American activity for several years before the war broke out, and right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, swept into Japanese American communities and arrested possible subversives. FBI head J. Edgar Hoover told President Roosevelt that the West Coast was secure, and he recommended that the Japanese American communities be watched. He did not recommend mass arrests.

U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle warned President Roosevelt that the forced removal of American citizens was unconstitutional. Although we were also at war with Germany and Italy, there was no mass detention of German Americans or Italian Americans.

On the West Coast, some were busy describing not only the evil-doings of  the Japanese of Japan but also the dangers emanating from Japanese-Americans. Some people feared that their vegetables, gown by local Japanese farmers, might have been injected with poison. And some white farmers disliked the competition they had from Japanese-American farmers.

The government always had the option of apprehending and prosecuting anyone caught passing damaging information to Japan's government or destroying property. But, for some, the chances of a Japanese taking action in support of Japan was so great that the Japanese had to be restrained collectively. A distinguished liberal journalist, Walter Lippmann, led the attack. Lippmann claimed that the fact that the Japanese had not yet been found committing treasonous acts meant that they were waiting for a later time to strike. He charged that in the interest of national security Japanese-Americans should be interned, and he criticized bureaucrats in Washington for being slow to act.

On February 10, 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, doing little damage, but it exercised excitable people in California. On February 14, General John L. De Witt, commander of U.S. Army units west of the Mississippi, left his post at the Presidio in San Francisco and went to the capital in Washington D.C. to push for interning the Japanese. He described the Japanese as "an enemy race." "While many of them have become Americanized," he said, "the racial strains are undiluted." De Witt feared that the Japanese might land on the West Coast, and, like Lippmann, he described no sabotage having taken place as an indication that the Japanese-Americans were waiting for the most opportunistic moment. He asked for the authority to remove from society all Japanese and other persons suspected of being "actual or potential spies and potential saboteurs or fifth columnists."

President Roosevelt considered the matter. He asked an expert at the State Department, Frank Schuler, his opinion whether Japanese in the United States were a danger. Schuler replied that some were a danger and some were not. "But how," he asked, "can you separate the good from the bad." Roosevelt decided to err on the side of security. He issued executive Order 9066 to relocate all Japanese on the West Coast to detention camps inland. And California's Attorney General, Earl Warren, approved.

The Japanese in Hawaii were not interned, although they were closer to Japan and at the center of operations of the Pacific war. They benefited from the lesser bigotry of people in the Hawaiian Islands and from their number. As a third of the work force in the islands, removing them would have destroyed the islands' economy, and somehow the danger from sabotage failed to materialize as an issue.

Japan's Military Advances, 1942

By February, Japan was advancing against the Dutch in the Indonesian Archipelago, and they were being welcomed as liberators by the Indonesians. Here they captured not only Dutch military men, but British, Australian and some Americans who had been sent to help the Dutch defend themselves from the Japanese.

In taking Indonesia, the Japanese captured around 30,000 Allied military men, who were added to the 130,000 military men they had captured in their capture of Malay and Singapore. This group of war prisoners neared 200,000, guarded by men who looked down upon those who surrendered as contemptible and evil. The Japanese saw themselves as victors and were proud of it. Lowly guards were content to have someone lower than they and to exercise the brutality that their superiors had taught them to respect. Having chosen not to sign the Geneva Convention guidelines for the treatment of prisoners of war in 1929, the Japanese believed that their prisoners-of-war had no rights. They were disconcerted by the number of prisoners they found themselves having to manage, and they were unprepared for and indifferent to supplying their prisoners with adequate food and medical care. They were concerned about controlling their captives, and to help rule through fear the camp commanders had a few men taken from the ranks of the captives and shot in front of the other prisoners - a lesson also for the lowly guards about being merciless.

To Burma and the Philippines

In mid-February, the Japanese struck at Australia's port of Darwin, approaching undetected with aircraft carriers, damaging Allied aircraft and ships and killing 238 Australians. The Japanese were advancing in Burma, where they hoped to cut the Allied supply line - the Burma Road - to China and to take advantage of Burma's resources. And, on March 8, the Japanese overran Burma's capital, Rangoon. On March 11, MacArthur and a few others left the Philippines by patrol boat to Australia - having been ordered to do so by his superiors.

On April 18, 1942 - nine days after Japan overran the Bataan Peninsula - Colonel James Doolittle led sixteen B-25 bombers off of the carrier Hornet. They journeyed 600 miles and surprised Tokyo, bombing that city but doing little damage. The planes landed or crashed in China after running out of gas, and one plane landed in the Soviet Union, where its crew was interned. Japan's military leaders were embarrassed, and the military retaliated at what it saw as the evil airmen by beheading three of the eight in captured in China and by slaughtering Chinese it believed had helped other U.S. airmen escape.

On May 6, Corregidor fell to the Japanese.. The Japanese took 15,000 Americans and marched them 65 miles to a Prisoner of War camp, creating what was to become known as the Bataan Death March.

From the Marshall Islands, which Japan had been ruling since the end of World War I, the Japanese had extended their rule to the southern Gilbert Islands. By June they occupied Attu and Kiska islands in the Aleutians. To prevent another Doolittle-style raid on Japan, the Japanese were moving against Midway and hoping to draw the U.S. navy into battle.

The Empire of Japan was now at its greatest extent. Its conquests since Pearl Harbor was accomplished with  half the men in had in China - no more than 400,000 men (fewer than the number that the U.S. would have in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 70s).  The Dutch, British and American forces in the area had been no more than 100,000. And Japan still had much of China to conquer.

Japan's Combined Fleet Headquarters was planning for invasions of the Hawaiian Islands, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the Indian Ocean, and Australia. Japan's War Ministry was dreaming of empire that included Ceylon and India, Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Western Canada, the state of Washington, Central America and the Caribbean islands. [note]

In May, however, the U.S. inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese Navy at the Battle of the Coral Sea, which prevented the Japanese from cutting the Allied supply line to Australia.  Then, in June, the Japanese ran into defeat at the Battle of Midway. Being able to read Japanese messages, the Americans knew Japan's battle plans, its strengths and the dispositions of Japan's ships prior to battle. Japan failed to take the naval and air base at Midway, and in a one-day battle it lost  four of its aircraft carriers: the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu. The U.S. lost the carrier Yorktown.

From this battle on, Japan would be overwhelmed by the productive capacity of the Allied economies and by its greater manpower. The ships damaged at Pearl Harbor, except for the Arizona, were repaired and returned to service alongside other warships and other war materials being produced. And the United States was producing every day almost as many airplanes as the Japanese had destroyed at Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese had miscalculated, but not entirely. In 1940 Admiral Yamamoto had said:

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

to the top | 1901-World War II | War in Europe, 1941-45

Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.

address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch22b.htm