Inferno - Max Hastings [130]
Geoffrey Perrett has observed that the United States was not ready for Pearl Harbor, but was ready for war. This was true only insofar as a large naval building programme was in progress. In the week following the attack, American yards launched 13 new warships and 9 merchantmen, harbingers of a vast armada that was already on the stocks and would be launched during the next two years. The nation had under construction 15 battleships, 11 carriers, 54 cruisers, 193 destroyers and 73 submarines. Nonetheless, it was plain to the governments of Britain and America, if not to their peoples, that a long delay was in prospect before Western land forces could engage Germany on the Continent. For years to come, Russia must bear the chief burden of fighting the Wehrmacht. Even if, as the U.S. chiefs of staff wished, the Western Allies launched an early diversionary landing in France, their armies would remain relatively small until 1944.
Roosevelt and Churchill consequently accepted, as some of their commanders did not, the necessity to undertake secondary operations, plausible only in the Mediterranean theatre, to sustain a sense of momentum in the minds of their peoples. The bomber offensive against Germany would grow as fast as the necessary aircraft could be built. But as long as the Eastern Front remained the decisive ground theatre, aid to Russia was a priority. Even if quantities of material available for shipment remained relatively small until 1943, both Washington and London acknowledged the importance of making every possible gesture to deter Stalin from negotiating a separate peace. Anglo-American fears that the Russians would be beaten, or at least driven to parley with Hitler, remained a constant spectre in alliance relations until the end of 1942.
Meanwhile in the east, Japan held the initiative, and deployed formidable forces on land, at sea and in the air. “We Japanese,” asserted the field manual distributed to all Hirohito’s soldiers as they embarked for their assault on the Western empires, “heirs to 2,600 years of a glorious past, have now, in response to the trust placed in us by His Majesty the Commander-in-Chief, risen in the cause of the peoples of Asia, and embarked upon a noble and solemn undertaking which will change the course of world history … The Task of the Showa Restoration, which is to realise his Imperial Majesty’s desire for peace in the Far East, and to set Asia free, rests squarely on our shoulders.” Having devastated the battleships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Japanese now fulfilled their longstanding ambition to seize the American dependency of the Philippines, together with the vast natural resources of the Dutch East Indies—modern Indonesia—and British Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma. Within the space of five months, against feeble resistance, they created an empire. Even though this would prove the most short-lived in history, for a season Japan gained dominance over vast expanses of the Asian landmass and Pacific seascape.
CHAPTER NINE
JAPAN’S SEASON OF TRIUMPH
1. “I Suppose You’ll Shove the Little Men Off”
MANY JAPANESE welcomed the war, which they believed offered their country its only honourable escape from beleaguerment. The novelist Dazai Osamu, for instance, was “itching to beat the bestial, insensitive Americans to a pulp.” But it would be mistaken to imagine Osamu’s society as a monolith. Lt. Gen. Kuribayashi Tadimichi, who had spent two years in the United States, wrote to his wife asserting his strong opposition to challenging so mighty a foe on the battlefield: “Its industrial potential is huge, and its people are energetic and versatile. One must never underestimate the Americans’ fighting ability.” Eighteen-year-old Sasaki Hachiro mused to his diary: “How many really die ‘tragic deaths’ in this war? I am sure there are more comical deaths under the disguise of tragic deaths … Comical deaths involve no joy of life, but are filled with agony without any meaning or value.