How to Hide an Empire

by Daniel Immerwahr

  63 special uniform: Rovere and Schlesinger, MacArthur Controversy, 42.

  64 $50 per Filipino trainee: James, Years of MacArthur, 1:608.

  65 “an integral part” … “entirely inadequate”: MacArthur to Quezon, October 1940, reprinted in ibid., 1:541–42.

  66 “to the width”: Joseph Driscoll, War Discovers Alaska (Philadelphia, 1943), 20.

  67 “negligible”: Henry Stimson, quoted in Kenneth S. Coates and William R. Morrison, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The U.S. Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Norman, OK, 1992), 26.

  68 Alaska had an air force: Brian Garfield, The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians (Garden City, NY, 1969), 64.

  69 “in little more”: Harry W. Woodring, quoted in Perras, Stepping Stones, 21.

  70 “‘We’re not going to waste’”: Gruening, Many Battles, 295.

  71 B-17 bombers: Costello, Days of Infamy, chap. 2. A good assessment of the War Department’s provisioning of MacArthur is Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines (Washington, DC, 1953), chap. 3.

  72 “the decisive element”: Quoted in William H. Bartsch, December 8, 1941: MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor (College Station, TX, 2003), 98.

  73 other priorities: Linn, Guardians, 217.

  74 “More speed!”: “Speed! Congress! Speed!” Paradise of the Pacific, February 1939, 32.

  75 Hawai‘i’s defenses: Linn, Guardians, 217.

  76 “absolutely indefensible”: Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries: The War in the Air in the Pacific, Middle East, and Europe, 3 October 1941–8 May 1945 (New York, 1946), 17.

  77 past tense: Timothy P. Maga, Defending Paradise: The United States and Guam, 1898–1950 (New York, 1988), 164.

  78 “By no stretch”: Perras, Stepping Stones, 53.

  79 U.S. Army contingent: On troop sizes, Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 49, 27.

  80 canvas shoes: Glen M. Williford, Racing the Sunrise: Reinforcing America’s Pacific Outposts, 1941–1942 (Annapolis, MD, 2010), 102.

  81 helmets: Holt and Leyerzapf, Eisenhower Diaries, 405.

  82 artillery: Connaughton, MacArthur, 155.

  83 never even fired their rifles: Rigoberto J. Atienza, A Time for War: 105 Days in Bataan ([Philippines], 1985), 10; Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 28.

  84 growing air force: Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 39, 42.

  85 “the Philippines could be defended”: “Destiny’s Child,” Time, December 29, 1941, 16.

  86 “glaring deficiencies” … “unprepared”: High Commissioner’s Office to FDR, November 30, 1941, “Civilian Defense” folder, box 1, HC–Pol/Econ.

  11. WARFARE STATE

  1 “God’s way”: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, August 12, 2008. The joke is often misattributed to Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain. Various incarnations can be found dating to the nineteenth century, but not by Bierce or Twain.

  2 build a road: See Philip Paneth, Alaskan Backdoor to Japan (London, 1943); David A. Remley, Crooked Road: The Story of the Alaska Highway (New York, 1976); Kenneth S. Coates, ed., The Alaska Highway: Papers of the 40th Anniversary Symposium (Vancouver, 1985); Kenneth S. Coates and William R. Morrison, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The U.S. Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Norman, OK, 1992); and John Virtue, The Black Soldiers Who Built the Alaska Highway: A History of Four U.S. Army Regiments in the North, 1942–1943 (Jefferson, NC, 2013).

  3 11,150 troops: Coates and Morrison, Alaska Highway in World War II, 47.

  4 heavy equipment: Ibid., 41.

  5 An anthropologist: Julie Cruikshank, “The Gravel Magnet: Some Social Impacts of the Alaska Highway on Yukon Indians,” in Coates, ed., Alaska Highway, 182.

  6 “greatest piece of roadmaking”: Malcolm MacDonald, quoted in Virtue, Black Soldiers, 160.

  7 the men abandoned them: Remley, Crooked Road, 60.

  8 $1.2 billion: César J. Ayala and José L. Bolivar, Battleship Vieques: Puerto Rico from World War II to the Korean War (Princeton, NJ, 2011), 25.

  9 number of restaurants: “Honolulu … Island Boomtown,” Paradise of the Pacific, May 1944.

  10 bank deposits: Gwenfread Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, 1941–1945 (Honolulu, 1950), 284.

  11 Eight parlors … The overcrowded brothels: Beth Bailey and David Farber, The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (Baltimore, 1992), 105, 103.

  12 new governmental intrusions: Discussed cogently in James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (New York, 2011). Sparrow’s book, from which this chapter takes its title and inspiration, deals exclusively with the mainland.

  13 turned over all effective power: On wartime Hawai‘i, see Allen, Hawaii’s War Years; J. Garner Anthony, Hawaii Under Army Rule (Palo Alto, CA, 1955); and Bailey and Farber, First Strange Place. The definitive account of martial law is Harry N. Scheiber and Jane L. Scheiber, Bayonets in Paradise: Martial Law in Hawai‘i During World War II (Honolulu, 2016).

  14 third of O‘ahu: Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, 221.

  15 University of Hawaii graduates: Louise Stevens, “A Gas Mask Graduation Class,” Paradise of the Pacific, August 1942.

  16 “enemy country”: Frank Knox to FDR, quoted in Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 135.

  17 an uncomfortable moment: Allen, Hawaii’s War Years, 120.

  18 “One Mighty God”: Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 86.

  19 “hostility or disrespect”: Territory of Hawaii, Office of the Military Governor, General Orders 31 and 42, Uncatalogued Subject Files, box 8, HWRD.

  20 General Orders read like: Territory of Hawaii, OMG, General Orders 129, 164, 167, 84, 88, respectively, in ibid.

  21 “My authority”: Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 59.

  22 “I’ve got a .45”: Jim A. Richstad, The Press Under Martial Law: The Hawaiian Experience (Lexington, KY, 1970), 13–14.

  23 “known to be overzealous”: George Akita, diary excerpted in Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board, Japanese Eyes … American Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers (Honolulu, 1998), 40.

  24 a single judge: “Taking Stock of Hawaii,” Honolulu Star Bulletin, April 6, 1942.

  25 98.4 percent resulted: Anthony, Hawaii Under Army Rule, 27, 52.

  26 They were tried for: Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 109.

  27 keys in the ignition … playing cards: Territory of Hawaii, OMG, General Orders 113 and 134, HWRD.

  28 One motorist: Drew Pearson, “Demand Cessation of Military Rule in Hawaii,” Washington Post, December 26, 1942.

  29 One of the most disturbing: Important complicating factors: The defendant, Fred Spurlock, begged for mercy and got his sentence commuted to probation. But then Spurlock was arrested again, for getting into a fight. The Honolulu Provost Court, noting that Spurlock was on probation, sentenced him to five years’ hard labor on the spot. Spurlock wasn’t allowed to testify or call witnesses. The trial, according to him, lasted fewer than ten minutes. Ex Parte Spurlock, 66 F. Supp. 997 (D. Hawaii 1944).

  30 sentences of more than: On sentencing, see Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 109–10. By March 1944, O‘ahu’s prison contained fewer than a hundred convicts, far short of the thousands who had been convicted in Honolulu’s provost court. Ernest May, “Hawaii’s Work in Wartime,” Honolulu Star Bulletin, May 18, 1944.

  31 “American ‘conquered territory’”: Harold Ickes, quoted in Scheiber and Scheiber, Bayonets, 214.

  32 “heterogeneous population”: Quoted in Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304, 333 (1946).

  33 “Racism has no place”: Duncan, 327 U.S. at 334 (Murphy, J., concurring).

  34 “Somebody ought”: Michael P. Onorato, ed., Origins of the Philippine Republic: Extracts from the Diaries and Records of Francis Burton Harrison (Ithaca, NY, 1974), 154.

  35 Half of them died: The ordeal is detailed in Nick Golodoff, Attu Boy, ed. Rachel Mason (Anchorage, 2012).

  36 brought relics fr
om: Leocadio de Asis, From Bataan to Tokyo: Diary of a Filipino Student in Wartime Japan, 1943–1944, ed. Grant K. Goodman (Lawrence, KS, 1979), 65.

  37 surprisingly light touch: Sam Lebovic, Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America (Cambridge, MA, 2016), 118–25.

  38 had his mail opened: Claus-M. Naske, Ernest Gruening: Alaska’s Greatest Governor (Fairbanks, 2004), 73.

  39 “Are we foreigners”: Quoted in Joseph Driscoll, War Discovers Alaska (Philadelphia, 1943), 27.

  40 “introduction of Gestapo methods”: Quoted in Robert David Johnson, Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 160.

  41 catch-22: Naske, Gruening, 77.

  42 “quietest war theater”: “Alaska Quietest War Theater—In Communiqués,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1942.

  43 “hidden front”: William Gilman, Our Hidden Front (New York, 1944).

  44 Aleut internment: My account relies primarily on Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied (Washington, DC, 1982); Ryan Madden, “The Forgotten People: The Relocation and Internment of Aleuts During World War II,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 16 (1992): 55–76; Dean Kohlhoff, When the Wind Was a River: Aleut Evacuation in World War II (Seattle, 1995); and Russell W. Estlak, The Aleut Internments of World War II: Islanders Removed from Their Homes by Japan and the United States (Jefferson, NC, 2014).

  45 “fundamental injustice”: Civil Liberties Act of 1988, 102 Stat. 904.

  46 white residents of Unalaska: Madden, “Forgotten People,” 62.

  47 “while eating”: Kohlhoff, Wind, 70.

  48 “Feels funny”: Driscoll, War Discovers Alaska, 48.

  49 “I have no language”: Kohlhoff, Wind, 116.

  50 “no place for,” etc.: Personal Justice Denied, 339.

  51 “As we entered,” etc.: Ibid., 340.

  52 Pribilovians: Ryan Madden, “The Government’s Industry: Alaska Natives and Pribilof Sealing During World War II,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 91 (2000): 202–209.

  53 MacArthur ordered police: “25,000 Japanese Interned,” Manila Tribune, December 9, 1941; Richard Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Woodstock, NY, 2001), 189.

  54 raided Japanese homes: John Hersey, Men on Bataan (New York, 1942), 35–36.

  55 “People hooted”: Pacita Pestaño-Jacinto, Living with the Enemy: A Diary of the Japanese Occupation (Pasig City, 1999), 3.

  56 civilians hunted: Eliseo Quirino, A Day to Remember (Manila, 1958), 20.

  57 Filipinos who helped: “Filipino Arrested for Hiding ‘Friend,’” Manila Tribune, December 12, 1941.

  58 raped … ransacked: Maria Virginia Yap Morales, ed., Diary of the War: World War II Memoirs of Lt. Col. Anastacio Campo (Quezon City, 2006), 30, 43–46.

  59 parked trucks: “Internees Cower as Sirens Sound,” Manila Daily Bulletin, December 29, 1941.

  60 shooting prisoners: Hiroyuki Mizuguchi, Jungle of No Mercy: Memoir of a Japanese Soldier (Manila, 2010), 33–36. Further abuses are described in P. Scott Corbett, Quiet Passages: The Exchange of Civilians Between the United States and Japan During the Second World War (Kent, OH, 1987), 50–52.

  61 “the indescribable wave”: Kiyoshi Osawa, The Japanese Community in the Philippines Before, During, and After the War (Manila, 1994), 222.

  62 swift and brutal revenge: Described in Marcial P. Lichauco, “Dear Mother Putnam”: A Diary of the War in the Philippines (Manila, c. 1949), 17. See also Hayase Shinzo, “The Japanese Residents of ‘Dabao-Kuo,’” in The Philippines Under Japan: Occupation Policy and Reaction, ed. Ikehata Setsuho and Ricardo Trota Jose (Quezon City, 1999), 247–87.

  63 “Words cannot describe,” etc.: Osawa, Japanese Community, 162.

  64 Hawai‘i’s war bond sales: William K. Hanifin, “Bond Sales,” April 30, 1946, folder 66, box 37, HWRD.

  65 Alaska’s, as of: Naske, Gruening, 97.

  66 “Up until then” … “did not know what resentment”: Ernest Gruening, Many Battles: The Autobiography of Ernest Gruening (New York, 1973), 210. On Alaskan segregation (which Gruening opposed vigorously), see Terrence M. Cole, “Jim Crow in Alaska: The Passage of the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945,” Western Historical Quarterly 23 (1992): 429–49.

  67 might turn their guns: Muktuk Marston, Men of the Tundra: Eskimos at War (New York, 1969), 156.

  68 “fellow citizens” … “eyes and ears”: Henry Varnum Poor, An Artist Sees Alaska (New York, 1945), 123.

  69 “We will give”: Marston, Men of the Tundra, 58.

  70 “Everywhere I found”: Gruening, introduction to Marston, Men of the Tundra, 4.

  71 twenty thousand Alaska Natives: Captain Richard Neuberger, “Eskimo Guerrillas,” Saturday Evening Post, February 17, 1945, 6; Marston, Men of the Tundra, 156.

  72 Pletnikoff: Ray Hudson, “Aleuts in Defense of Their Homeland,” in Alaska at War, 1941–1945: The Forgotten War Remembered, ed. Fern Chandonnet (Anchorage, 1995), 163.

  73 fortifying Alaska’s north: Charles Hendricks, “The Eskimos and the Defense of Alaska,” Pacific Historical Review 54 (1985): 281.

  74 enlisting at rates: Ibid., 292.

  75 shocked to see armed men: C. F. Necrason, epilogue, Marston, Men of the Tundra, 179.

  76 “guinea pigs”: Masayo Umezawa Duus, Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and the 442nd, trans. Peter Duus (1983; Honolulu, 1987), 113.

  77 “We knew that we had to be”: Robert Asahina, Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad (New York, 2006), 35. The history of the 100th/442nd has been told often, with Asahina’s book one of the best renditions. A useful global perspective is T. Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans During World War II (Berkeley, CA, 2011), chap. 5.

  78 Daniel Inouye: Story and quotations from Daniel K. Inouye, Journey to Washington (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967), 150–54.

  79 Medal of Honor: Medals for the 100th/442nd and army divisions counted from list at U.S. Army Center of Military History, history.army.mil/moh.

  80 Pound for pound: On comparing decorations between units, see James M. McCaffrey, Going for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers in the War Against Nazi Germany (Norman, OK, 2013), 346–47.

  12. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN MEN HAVE TO DIE

  1 near-simultaneous strike: On the attack, see especially Louis Morton, The Fall of the Philippines (Washington, DC, 1953); D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2 (Boston, 1975), chap. 1; John Costello, Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill—The Shocking Truth Revealed (New York, 1994); Richard Connaughton, MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines (Woodstock, NY, 2001); and William H. Bartsch, December 8, 1941: MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor (College Station, TX, 2003).

  2 “ace unit”: Douglas MacArthur, quoted in Bartsch, December 8, 193.

  3 Thick fog: Costello, Days of Infamy, 20–21.

  4 “The sight which,” etc.: Connaughton, MacArthur, 169.

  5 “bewildering” … “and we shall”: William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston, 1978), 206, 205. Manchester hypothesizes that MacArthur may have suffered “input overload.” John Costello, using notes from an unpublished 1942 interview with Lewis Brereton, MacArthur’s air commander, suggests a more damning possibility: MacArthur did meet with Brereton that morning (despite Brereton’s and MacArthur’s subsequent denials) and ordered Brereton not to strike back; MacArthur hoped to keep the Philippines neutral, and thus intact, in the coming war with Japan. Costello, Days of Infamy, 23. A more cautious account is James, Years of MacArthur, 2:3–15.

  6 “We could see”: Costello, Days of Infamy, 34.

  7 “one of the blackest”: Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries: The War in the Air in the Pacific, Middle East, and Europe, 3 October 1941–8 May 1945 (New York, 1946), 44.

  8 Now it was inoperable: Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 95–96.

  9 “worst disaster”: Winston S.
Churchill, The Second World War (1950; Boston, 1985), 4:81.

  10 North Luzon Force: James, Years of MacArthur, 2:45.

  11 slab of oak: John Gunther, Inside Asia, war ed. (1939; New York, 1942), 309.

  12 “a masterpiece”: Manchester, American Caesar, 218.

  13 “It was hard to believe”: Fernando J. Mañalac, Manila: Memories of World War II (Quezon City, 1995), 10.

  14 five bomb craters: “Ethel Herold’s Baguio War Memories,” Bulletin of the American Historical Collection 10 (1982): 12.

  15 MacArthur’s three-year-old: Frances Bowes Sayre, Glad Adventure (New York, 1957), 232.

  16 dragon’s hoard: Ibid., 235; Steve Mellnik, Philippine Diary, 1939–1945 (New York, 1969), 116.

  17 eighty thousand … twenty-six thousand: James, Years of MacArthur, 2:35.

  18 The men ate half rations: Morton, Fall of the Philippines, 367–68.

  19 horses, dogs, etc.: Ibid., 369–70.

  20 “it looked like”: Connaughton, MacArthur, 273.

  21 eating cigarettes: Rigoberto J. Atienza, A Time for War: 105 Days in Bataan (Philippines, 1985), 102.

  22 “There are no atheists”: Carlos P. Romulo, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines (Garden City, NY, 1943), 263.

  23 “I give to the people,” etc.: Roosevelt, Message of Support to the Philippines, December 28, 1941, APP.

  24 “too much of the immediate,” etc.: Quoted in John Hersey, Men on Bataan (New York, 1942), 257.

  25 “In our mind’s eyes”: Atienza, Time for War, 119.

  26 “Our fight” … “Surrender”: Quoted in Romulo, Fall of the Philippines, 108.

  27 menus from the Manila Hotel: Atienza, Time for War, 117.

  28 “It was only the Americans”: William A. Owens, Eye-Deep in Hell: A Memoir of the Liberation of the Philippines, 1944–45 (Dallas, 1989), 102.

  29 “It was bitter”: Roosevelt, State of the Union address, January 6, 1942, APP.

  30 “I cannot stand,” etc.: Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain, MacArthur: 1941–1951 (New York, 1954), 56.