1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls

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1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls Page 52

by Winston Groom

Kimmel and, 90, 92

  Marshall and, 68

  Pearl Harbor and, 169n

  on prospect of war with Japan, 64

  Roosevelt and, 66

  on Wake Island, 108

  war warning messages, 67, 92–93

  war with Japan and, 65, 90

  starvation. See Death Marches; food supply and starvation; prisoner of war (POW) camps

  State Department, U.S., 39, 50

  Stephenson, William, 247, 248

  Stimson, Henry L., 41, 64, 159

  Storey, Jerold B., 370, 402

  submarines, 71–72

  Suez Canal, 377–78

  Sullivan brothers, 331

  Sunda Strait, Battle of, 173

  Sutherland, Richard, 129, 139, 316

  Taivu Point, 307

  Taiwan. See Formosa

  Takagi, Takeo, 199–202

  Talbot (destroyer), 271

  Tanaka, Raizo (“Tanaka the Tenacious”), 334, 339–40

  Task Force 107–10

  Tenaru, Battle of the, 286

  Tenaru River, 284, 307

  terrorism, xiii–xiv

  Teters, Dan, 249

  Thailand, 114

  Thomas, Francis, 81

  Thorpe, Amy Elizabeth (“Cynthia”), 247, 252, 402

  Tizard, Henry, 31

  Togo, Shigenori, 23

  Tojo, Hideki, 188–89

  background and overview, 49

  coming into power, 48–49

  conviction and execution, 398

  decision to go to war with U.S., 65

  final words, 398

  Kurusu and, 51

  refusal to withdraw from China, 48

  speech about “annihilating” the West, 83

  Tokyo Express, 321, 334, 339

  Tokyo raid. See under Doolittle

  Tokyo Rose, 246, 399

  Toland, John, 95, 115, 127

  Tolstoy, Leo, 195

  Tone (cruiser), 233

  Torch, 347–49, 382

  torpedo-bomber squadrons, 234–37

  torpedo bombers, 90, 400

  Torpedo Squadron 233–35

  torture. See also Japanese, brutality methods of, 250–52

  Toulon, 350

  Toynbee, Arnold, 12

  Tregaskis, Richard, 284

  Truk, 321

  Tsuji, Masanobu, 184, 399

  Tsuneyoshi, Yoshi, 182

  Tulagi, 269, 278

  Tunis, 386

  Tunisia, 377, 386, 394–95

  Turner, Richmond Kelly, 264, 268, 275, 308, 315

  Twain, Mark, xii

  Tyler, Kermit, 74

  U-boats, 373

  “unconditional surrender,” demand for, 396–98

  United States. See also specific topics

  anti-Japanese propaganda, 55–56

  declaration of war against Japan, 99

  domestic problems and challenges, 214–15; 254–55, 295

  economic problems, 54–55. See also Great Depression

  expansionism, 26

  soldiers, 164–65

  war-related industries and materials, 255, 296

  women in workplace, 164

  U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance, 400

  U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, 38

  Utah (battleship), 77

  Vandegrift, Alexander Archer, 322

  background, 261

  Clemens and, 280–81

  Ghormley and, 303

  Guadalcanal and, 279, 403

  Kawaguchi and, 303

  marines, 276, 328, 403

  Maruyama and, 327

  Tulagi and, 276

  Turner and, 303, 315–16

  Willis Lee and, 333

  Versailles Peace Conference, 22

  Versailles Treaty, 8, 12

  Vichy French, 247–49, 349, 390

  Vichy government, 42, 348

  “victory disease,” 226

  Vietnam, 42

  Vincennes (cruiser), 274

  Vouza, Jacob, 283, 405–6

  Wainwright, Jonathan (“Skinny”)

  after the war, 407

  Homma and, 213

  MacArthur and, 213

  Philippines and, 136, 145, 148, 155, 206, 211

  Philippines surrendered by, 212–13

  Silver Stars awarded by, 208

  Wake, U.S.S., (gunboat), 112, 249

  Wake Island, 101–13. See also Marine Corps

  Midway Island compared with, 223

  Waldron, John, 233, 343

  Walt, Lewis W., 277

  war crimes, 396. See also under Japanese

  war-crimes tribunals, 398–400, 402

  War Department, 38, 93

  War Plan 5, 45

  War Plan Orange, 140, 142

  War Powers Act, 54

  War Relocation Centers, 160. See also internment camps

  war warning messages, 65, 87, 92–94. See also Pearl Harbor attack, who to blame for

  Ward (destroyer), 76

  Ward Road prison, 368–69

  warships, 22. See also specific ships

  Washington (battleship), 333, 334

  Wasp (aircraft carrier), 291–92

  Water Tank Hill, 211

  “water treatment,” 250–51

  Wavell, Archibald, 126

  Weinstein, Alfred, 183

  West Virginia (battleship), 78

  Westrick, Gerhard, 36

  Wheeler, Burton K., 33

  Whitney, Courtney, 139n

  Wildcat fighter planes, 106–8, 291–93. See also Grumman F4F Wildcat

  Wilkes (destroyer), 352

  Willow Run, 163

  Wilson, Woodrow, 10

  “wizard war,” 15

  Wohlstetter, Roberta, 93

  Woolley, John B., 369–71, 402

  World War I, 1–4, 10, 22

  World War II, 413–16. See also specific topics

  as defining event of twentieth century, ix

  impact, xii

  opposition to. See isolationism

  Wright, Wesley A., 219

  Yamada, Sadayoshi, 267

  Yamaguchi, Tamon, 242

  Yamamoto, Isoroku, 242, 321, 346

  Akagi and, 239

  military strategies, 47, 225–26

  Aleutian Islands and, 219, 225

  assassination, 400–401

  attitudes toward war, 45–46

  background and overview, 46

  Doolittle raid and, 198

  mid-Pacific operation instigated by, 198

  on Pearl Harbor, 47

  suicide mission against Pearl Harbor, 171

  Yamashita, Tomoyuki, 124–27, 399

  Yamato, 321

  Yardley, Herbert O., 39

  York, Edward J. (“Ski”), 192

  Yorktown, 220, 199–205, 232, 240, 243

  damage to, 219, 240–41

  death of, 245

  Yoshikawa, Takeo, 89

  Zaragoza Bridge, battle at, 140–41

  Zero fighters, 230, 263, 291, 339, 346

  Zuikaku (aircraft carrier), 203, 205

  *At that point, in fact, the Pentagon was the largest building in the world.

  *A great story, apocryphal or not, was once told by Mark Twain, recounting how he went down the Mississippi River just after the Civil War had ended and arrived at a fashionable party on a plantation near New Orleans as a full silver moon came rising up against the live oaks and magnolias. Twain remarked, offhand, to one of the black serving women on how lovely and full the moon was that night. Her response, handing him a mint julep, was, “Oh yessir it shore is, but you ought to have seen that moon befo’ de war!”

  *As many have recently remarked, Pearl Harbor has eerie parallels to the events of September 11, 2001.

  *It has been argued, though not conclusively proven, that the German government intentionally printed money to devalue its own mark and thus avoid paying the hated war reparations. In other words, if the German mark became almost valueless, then the amount previously designated to be pa
id to the victors under the Versailles Treaty would be nearly valueless also.

  *The swastika consists of two interlocking Greek crosses, thought by the ancient Germans to bring good luck.

  *For instance, in order to avoid international reaction to the building of a formal air force, the Germans organized presumably harmless civilian “flying clubs” in which young men were secretly taught by World War I flying veterans all the techniques of aerial combat.

  *Led by German-American academics and writers, and their associates, this soon resulted in what became known in scholarly politics as the “textbook wars.”

  *If in fact the U.S. Congress had ratified the League of Nations treaty and put its considerable teeth behind it, things could have turned out differently. But by then the United States, in the throes of the Great Depression, had dismantled its “considerable teeth,” like most of the Allied nations, and its armed forces by the early 1930s ranked behind even the country of Portugal.

  *After Chamberlain left Munich, Hitler privately referred to him as “a worm.”

  *The attack on Poland opened with a typical Hitler sneak. Earlier, he had sent a battleship, the Schleswig-Holstein, on a “courtesy visit” to the city of Danzig, which Germany had lost under the Versailles Treaty following World War I . Without warning or a declaration of war, on the morning of September 1, 1939, this great naval behemoth opened a devastating barrage on Danzig, which was also the signal for thousands of German soldiers who had entered Poland dressed as tourists to go into action.

  *At this point in Japan’s history the emperor was merely a figurehead. The shogun, a military governor, actually ruled the country.

  *Each of the sixteen Great White Fleet battleships fired a twenty-one-gun salute.

  *This last part of the treaty—the American concession not to build up its naval bases in the Pacific—is now seen by many military strategists as the equivalent of allowing Japan to build a dozen or more unsinkable aircraft carriers, since the many islands it inherited following World War I as mandates would soon be developed with airstrips from which Japanese warplanes swarmed by the thousands.

  *Japan was not being treated with scorn but with suspicion. Her actions in the Far East had alarmed the other members of the conference, the Western powers of France, England, and the United States, who saw a rising militarism and no concomitant interest in joining in their own mutual interests.

  *The Japanese islands are approximately the size of California but the population density—340 people to the square mile—was ten times greater. The average Japanese farm just prior to the war was a mere one-quarter acre. Not only that, but in the twenty years between the Australian prime minister’s remarks and the beginning of World War II the Japanese population had grown by another ten million people.

  *A perfect example of the isolationist mood in America; when the issue came up a year later of whether or not to extend the draft, it passed by just a single vote.

  *The person who enlightened Sengier to the dire possibilities of uranium was none other than the noted British scientist Sir Henry Tizard, who told him five months before war broke out that the British government would like to buy his entire supply of this radioactive element. The deal did not get done, but Sengier remembered the conversation, which ended with these parting words by Tizard: “Be careful, and never forget that you have in your hands something which may mean a catastrophe to your country and mine if it were to fall in the hands of a possible enemy.”

  †There were not many volunteer enlistees in those days. The salary of a private in the U.S. Army was $31 per month. In the months that contained thirty-one days, he was making a dollar a day.

  *Ford had also been America’s best-known pacifist during the First World War.

  *Many people subsequently interpreted Lindbergh’s remarks as demonstrating that he was an arch anti-Semite. In fact, he was probably no more so than most people of his time. He felt genuinely for the plight of Jews in Germany and voiced concerned predictions that if America entered the war the Jews would suffer even more horribly than they had already—a forecast that proved all too true.

  *Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945) was a Norwegian fascist who set up a puppet Nazi government in his native country after Hitler invaded it. After the war the Norwegians hanged him.

  *Two years after publishing The American Black Chamber Yardley decided again to capitalize on his inside knowledge of U.S. code breaking with a new book, Japanese Diplomatic Secrets, but this time he was stopped, literally, by an act of Congress, which hastily made it a criminal offense to reveal cryptology secrets.

  *Including the intercepts of the Japanese civilian espionage activities on the West Coast.

  *Indonesian hostility toward the Dutch and other European colonists was touched off by a cataclysmic event nearly sixty years earlier. In 1883 the giant volcano Krakatoa, in the straits between Java and Sumatra, exploded with such force that it was felt worldwide and killed some 30,000 natives in the islands. Islamic mullahs who had migrated from the Arabian peninsula years earlier used the tragedy to persuade their converts that Allah was against Western infidels and had blown up the volcano to show his displeasure. This prompted a wave of radical Islam, which to this day remains vexatious in what has since become the nation of Indonesia.

  *The two had met briefly in 1918 at a banquet in England when Roosevelt was a young assistant secretary of the navy and Churchill was Great Britain’s minister of munitions. Churchill did not remember the encounter.

  *The main U.S. Pacific bases were the Hawaiian Islands, Midway and Wake Islands, Guam, and the Philippines. The Japanese controlled the Marshall and Gilbert Island chains, which they obtained control over following Germany’s surrender in World War I.

  †Interestingly, this was also in fact the strategic plan of the U.S. Navy, not including of course the part about being sunk by the Japanese.

  *There are numerous versions and translations of this remark, but the one given in Dr. Morison’s The Rising Sun in the Pacific seems to hold up as well as any.

  *Hull actually had a lisp, but it made him no less brusque.

  *When the U.S. Eighth Army occupied Japan after the war, its commander, Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, went looking all over Tokyo for the emperor’s white horse so he could give it to MacArthur as a present. He never found it.

  *For example, there were at that time some 20,000 U.S. troops, including artillery and tanks, waiting on the docks at San Francisco for ship transportation to the Philippines.

  *The Germans were far more circumspect and hid their atrocities; the world would not see extensive pictures of them until after the war.

  *Even General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the U.S. Far East forces during the fall of the Philippines, subscribed to this notion. After witnessing the skill of Japanese fighter pilots during the Battle of Manila, he concluded that the planes must have been flown by Germans or other Europeans—not ignorant, nearsighted Japanese. Interestingly, Winston Churchill agreed with this assessment.

  *These small islands would soon enough become all too well known to U.S. soldiers, sailors, and marines. Among them: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Bougainville, Peleliu, New Georgia, Saipan, I wo Jima, and Okinawa, to name a few.

  †Mitchell was a flamboyant U.S. Army Air Corps brigadier general and airpower advocate who in the 1920s, after sinking a leftover German World War I battleship in a demonstration of what aerial bombing could accomplish, got himself court-martialed for being too vociferous on the matter.

  *The Japanese foreign minister later declared that “breaking off negotiations was clearly a cessation of peace, that is to say, a resort to war.” A formal declaration of war in this note, he said, “would merely reiterate the obvious.” The Americans, however, did not see it quite that way.

  *The carriers were Akagi (Red Castle), Hiryu (Flying Dragon), Kaga (Increased Joy), Soryu (Green Dragon), Shokaku (Soaring Crane), and Zuikaku (Happy Crane). Before the war ended, all would lie at the bottom of the
ocean—the first four within the next six months—as would all but one of their escort fleet, a lone destroyer.

  *The Hawaiian Islands had been discovered in 1778 by the English explorer Captain James Cook, who named them the Sandwich Islands after a patron, the Earl of Sandwich. Cook returned the following year but, while ashore, the Hawaiians clubbed and stabbed him to death in plain view of his ship, and later dismembered him and returned some of his body parts to his crew. America annexed the islands in 1898 and in 1906 established the Pearl Harbor naval base. In 1940, with the rising tensions between Japan and the United States, President Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Pacific Fleet moved from its West Coast base and permanently stationed at Pearl as a “deterrent” to Japanese aggression. The then fleet commander, Admiral James O. Richardson, objected because of logistics and morale (“too few white women; shopkeepers gypped the sailors”), but when he complained to the president he was fired and replaced by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel.

  *Snafu was a naval term that came into use during the war. It stood for “Situation normal, all fouled up.”

  *American battleships were named for U.S. states, cruisers for U.S. cities; destroyers were named for influential or heroic people. In those days U.S. aircraft carriers were named for Revolutionary War battles—Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown—or stinging insects—Hornet, Wasp—and there were also the Enterprise and the Ranger.

 

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