HOW TO HIDE
AN EMPIRE
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE
GREATER UNITED STATES
DANIEL IMMERWAHR
CONTENTS
Introduction: Looking Beyond the Logo Map
A Note on Language
PART I: THE COLONIAL EMPIRE 1. The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone
2. Indian Country
3. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Guano but Were Afraid to Ask
4. Teddy Roosevelt’s Very Good Day
5. Empire State of Mind
6. Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom
7. Outside the Charmed Circle
8. White City
9. Doctors Without Borders
10. Fortress America
11. Warfare State
12. There Are Times When Men Have to Die
PART II: THE POINTILLIST EMPIRE 13. Kilroy Was Here
14. Decolonizing the United States
15. Nobody Knows in America, Puerto Rico’s in America
16. Synthetica
17. This Is What God Hath Wrought
18. The Empire of the Red Octagon
19. Language Is a Virus
20. Power Is Sovereignty, Mister Bond
21. Baselandia
22. The War of Points
Conclusion: Enduring Empire
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and the author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development, which won the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Award. He has written for n+1, Slate, Dissent, and other publications.
ALSO BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR
Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development
To the uncounted
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
1: Draft of the “Infamy” speech: Draft 1, Significant Documents Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
2: Philippine ten-peso note: U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing
3: Indian Country in 1834: Data from U.S. Forest Service, Tribal Lands Ceded to the United States
4: Map of Indian removals: After Theodore Taylor, The Bureau of Indian Affairs: Public Policies Toward Indian Citizens (Boulder, CO, 1984), 13
5: A delirious land rush: Studio of William S. Prettyman / Oklahoma Historical Society
6: Sheet music: Jay T. Last Collection of Agricultural Prints and Ephemera, Huntington Library
7: U.S. guano island claims, 1857–1902: Data from Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (New York, 1994), appendix
8: Navassa rioters: Thomas I. Hall and Columbus Gordon, The Navassa Island Riot (Baltimore, 1889)
9: Young Theodore Roosevelt: George Grantham Bain / 2009633164, Library of Congress
10: The Greater United States: Allen C. Thomas, An Elementary History of the United States (Boston, 1900)
11: The Greater America Exposition: Greater America Exposition (Omaha, 1899), Huntington Library
12: Balangiga Massacre site: Courtesy of Gloria Sommer
13: First Lieutenant Pedro Albizu Campos: Folder 1, box 38, Ruth M. Reynolds Papers, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, City University of New York
14: The governmental center of Baguio: I1626, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
15: Legislative Building: Filipinas Heritage Library
16: Corpses in Ponce: Carlos Torres Morales / “Palm Sunday Massacre” folder, box 257, Harold L. Ickes Papers, Library of Congress
17: New wartime globe-style map: David Rumsey Map Collection, courtesy of the Richard Edes Harrison estate
18: Tanks on Beretania Street: Hawai‘i War Records Depository 1054, Archives and Manuscripts Department, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa
19: Honolulu children’s book: Frances Baker, We the Blitzed (Honolulu, 1943), Hawai‘i War Records Depository, Archives and Manuscripts Department, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa
20: Major Marston and Alaska Territorial Guard member: Rusty Heurlin / 1976-021-00157, box 826, Ernest Gruening Papers, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, Archives and Manuscripts, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
21: “I have returned”: Gaetano Faillace / U.S. Army
22: Manila, 1945: I10836, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
23: The Quirinos’ neighbors: IIIA2014, American Historical Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University
24: Legislative Building after shelling: U.S. Army / 01218902, Getty Images page 219: Solomon Islanders unloading crates of beer: U.S. Army / 111-SC-339250, United States National Archives
25: Presidential in-office trips: Data from State Department, history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president
26: Polar azimuthal projection: Fortune, March 1942 / Cornell University Library, courtesy of the Richard Edes Harrison estate
27: Original UN emblem: Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (San Francisco, 1945)
28: Forty-nine-star flag: “Mts.—Seals & Flags” folder; box 70; 9-0-2, Office of Territories Classified Files, 1907–1951; Records of the Office of Territories, Record Group 126; United States National Archives, College Park, Maryland
29: GIs protesting in Manila: Dave Davis, ACME Photos / 2008680591, Library of Congress
30: Martin Luther King Jr.: Associated Press File Photo
31: “El Fanguito”: Jack Delano / 2017798176, Library of Congress
32: Oscar Collazo: Harvey Georges / Associated Press
33: B. F. Goodrich worker: DC-54, Lot 3464, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
34: “Synthetica, a New Continent of Plastics”: Ortho Plastic Novelties / Fortune, October 1940
35: Conquest of the Japanese main islands: Data from Kenneth Hewitt, “Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73 (1983), table 3
36: “The All-Red Line Around the World”: George Johnson, The All Red Line: Annals and Aims of the Pacific Cable Project (Ottawa, 1903)
37: Sign at army hospital: MAMAS D44-145-1, National Museum of Health and Medicine
38: Herbert Hoover: Harris & Ewing / 2016882827, Library of Congress
39: Wartime poster: National Aircraft Standards / Industrial Standardization, January 1943
40: Li Yang: China Photos / 73813303, Getty Images
41: Ernest Gruening: Paradise of the Pacific, January 1938
42: The pointillist empire today: Foreign bases, David Vine, www.basenation.us/maps; domestic/territorial bases, www.data.gov
43: Marine Corps Air Station Futenma: Wikimedia Commons
44: Sony transistor radio and mascot: Courtesy of Michael Jack
45: Major coalition airfields: After Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Washington, DC, 1992)
46: The face of battle in a war of points: Steve Horton / 070807-F-9602H-101, U.S. Air Force
INTRODUCTION:
LOOKING BEYOND THE LOGO MAP
The only problem is
they don’t think much
about us
in America.
—Alfrredo Navarro Salanga,1 Manila
December 7, 1941. Japanese planes appear over a naval base on O‘ahu. They drop aerial torpedoes, which dive underwater, wending their way toward their targets. Four strike the USS Arizona, and the massive battleship heaves in the water. Steel, timber, diesel oil, and body parts fly through
the air. The flaming Arizona tilts into the ocean, its crew diving into the oil-covered waters. For a country at peace, this is a violent awakening. It is, for the United States, the start of the Second World War.
There aren’t many historical episodes more firmly lodged in national memory than this one, the attack on Pearl Harbor. It’s one of the few events that most people can put a date to (December 7, the “date which will live in infamy,” as Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it). Hundreds of books have been written about it—the Library of Congress holds more than 350. And Hollywood has made movies, from the critically acclaimed From Here to Eternity (1953) starring Burt Lancaster to the critically derided Pearl Harbor (2001) starring Ben Affleck.
But what those films don’t show is what happened next. Nine hours after Japan attacked the territory of Hawai‘i, another set of Japanese planes came into view over another U.S. territory, the Philippines. As at Pearl Harbor, they dropped their bombs, hitting several air bases, to devastating effect.
The army’s official history of the war judges the Philippine bombing to have been just as disastrous as the Hawaiian one.2 At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese hobbled the United States’ Pacific fleet, sinking four battleships and damaging four others. In the Philippines, the attackers laid waste to the largest concentration of U.S. warplanes outside North America—the foundation of the Allies’ Pacific air defense.
The United States lost more than planes. The attack on Pearl Harbor was just that, an attack. Japan’s bombers struck, retreated, and never returned. Not so in the Philippines. There, the initial air raids were followed by more raids, then by invasion and conquest. Sixteen million Filipinos—U.S. nationals who saluted the Stars and Stripes and looked to FDR as their commander in chief—fell under a foreign power. They had a very different war than the inhabitants of Hawai‘i did.
Nor did it stop there. The event familiarly known as “Pearl Harbor” was in fact an all-out lightning strike on U.S. and British holdings throughout the Pacific. On a single day, the Japanese attacked the U.S. territories of Hawai‘i, the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, and Wake Island. They also attacked the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and they invaded Thailand.
It was a phenomenal success. Japan never conquered Hawai‘i, but within months Guam, the Philippines, Wake, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong all fell under its flag. Japan even seized the westernmost tip of Alaska, which it held for more than a year.
Looking at the big picture, you start to wonder if “Pearl Harbor”—the name of one of the few targets Japan didn’t invade—is really the best shorthand for the events of that fateful day.
*
“Pearl Harbor” wasn’t how people referred to the bombings,3 at least not at first. How to describe them, in fact, was far from clear. Should the focus be on Hawai‘i, the closest target to North America and the first bit of U.S. soil Japan had struck? Or should it be the Philippines, the far larger and more vulnerable territory? Or Guam, the one that surrendered nearly immediately? Or all the Pacific holdings, including the uninhabited Wake and Midway, together?
“The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves,” Roosevelt said in his address to Congress—his “Infamy” speech. But did they? JAPS BOMB MANILA, HAWAII was the headline of a New Mexico paper;4 JAPANESE PLANES BOMB HONOLULU, ISLAND OF GUAM was that of one in South Carolina. Sumner Welles,5 FDR’s undersecretary of state, described the event as “an attack upon Hawaii and upon the Philippines.” Eleanor Roosevelt used a similar formulation in her radio address on the night of December 7,6 when she spoke of Japan “bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines.”
That was how the first draft of FDR’s speech went, too. It presented the event as a “bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines.” Yet Roosevelt toyed with that draft all day, adding things in pencil, crossing other bits out. At some point he deleted the prominent references to the Philippines and settled on a different description. The attack was, in his revised version, a “bombing in Oahu” or,7 later in the speech, “on the Hawaiian Islands.” He still mentioned the Philippines, but only as an item on a terse list of Japan’s other targets: Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway—presented in that order. That list mingled U.S. and British territories together, giving no hint as to which was which.
Roosevelt’s December 7 draft of the “Infamy” speech. “Squadrons had commenced bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines” on the seventh line has been changed to “squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu.”
Why did Roosevelt demote the Philippines? We don’t know, but it’s not hard to guess. Roosevelt was trying to tell a clear story: Japan had attacked the United States. But he faced a problem. Were Japan’s targets considered “the United States”? Legally, yes, they were indisputably U.S. territory. But would the public see them that way? What if Roosevelt’s audience didn’t care that Japan had attacked the Philippines or Guam? Polls taken slightly before the attack show that few in the continental United States supported a military defense of those remote territories.8
Consider how similar events played out more recently. On August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda launched simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Hundreds died (mostly Africans), and thousands were wounded. But though those embassies were outposts of the United States, there was little public sense that the country itself had been harmed. It would take another set of simultaneous attacks three years later, on New York City and Washington, D.C., to provoke an all-out war.
An embassy is different from a territory, of course. Yet a similar logic held in 1941. Roosevelt no doubt noted that the Philippines and Guam, though technically part of the United States, seemed foreign to many. Hawai‘i, by contrast, was more plausibly “American.” Though it was a territory rather than a state, it was closer to North America and significantly whiter than the others. As a result, there was talk of eventual statehood (whereas the Philippines was provisionally on track for independence).
Yet even when it came to Hawai‘i, Roosevelt felt a need to massage the point. Though the territory had a substantial white population, nearly three-quarters of its inhabitants were Asians or Pacific Islanders. Roosevelt clearly worried that his audience might regard Hawai‘i as foreign. So on the morning of his speech, he made another edit. He changed it so that the Japanese squadrons had bombed not the “island of Oahu,” but the “American island of Oahu.” Damage there, Roosevelt continued, had been done to “American naval and military forces,” and “very many American lives” had been lost.
An American island, where American lives were lost—that was the point he was trying to make. If the Philippines was being rounded down to foreign, Hawai‘i was being rounded up to “American.”
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan” is how Roosevelt’s speech began. Note that in this formulation Japan is an “empire,” but the United States is not. Note also the emphasis on the date. It was only at Hawai‘i and Midway, of all Japan’s targets, that the vagaries of the international date line put the event on December 7. Everywhere else, it occurred on December 8, the date the Japanese use to refer to the attack.
Did Roosevelt underscore the date in a calculated attempt to make it all about Hawai‘i? Almost certainly not. Still, his “date which will live in infamy” phrasing further encouraged a narrow understanding of the event, one that left little room for places like the Philippines.
For Filipinos, this could be exasperating. A reporter described the scene in Manila as the crowds listened to Roosevelt’s speech over the radio. The president spoke of Hawai‘i and the many lives lost there. Yet he only mentioned the Philippines, the reporter noted, “very much in passing.” Roosevelt made the war “seem to be something close to Washington and far from Manila.”9
This was not how it looked from the Philippines, where air-raid sirens con
tinued to wail. “To Manilans the war was here, now, happening to us,” the reporter wrote. “And we have no air-raid shelters.”
*
Hawai‘i, the Philippines, Guam—it wasn’t easy to know how to think about such places or even what to call them. At the turn of the twentieth century, when many were acquired (Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Hawai‘i, Wake), their status was clear. They were, as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson unabashedly called them, colonies.10
Yet that spirit of forthright imperialism didn’t last. Within a decade or two, after passions had cooled, the c-word became taboo. “The word colony must not be used to express the relationship which exists between our government and its dependent peoples,”11 an official admonished in 1914. Better to stick with a gentler term, used for them all: territories.
It was gentler because the United States had had territories before, such as Arkansas and Montana. Their place in the national firmament was a happy one. The western territories were the frontier, the leading edge of the country’s growth. They might not have had all the rights that states did, but once they were “settled” (i.e., populated by whites), they were welcomed fully into the fold as states.
But if places like the Philippines and Puerto Rico were territories, they were territories of a different sort. Unlike the western territories, they weren’t obviously slated for statehood. Nor were they widely understood to be integral parts of the nation.
A striking feature, in fact, of the overseas territories was how rarely they were even discussed. The maps of the country that most people had in their heads didn’t include places like the Philippines. Those mental maps imagined the United States to be contiguous: a union of states bounded by the Atlantic, the Pacific, Mexico, and Canada.
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