• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1259 0

U.S. Cartridge Company of St. Louis issued millions of rounds of defective ammunition, though such chicanery could cost lives. Citizens sought otherwise unavailable commodities through the black market, and many businesses evaded price controls. An American observed ruefully that Europe had been occupied, Russia and China invaded, Britain bombed; but the United States was “fighting this war on imagination alone.” Pearl Harbor, together with racism soon fuelled by tidings of Japanese savagery, ensured that Americans found it easy to hate their Asian enemy. But from beginning to end, few felt anything like the animosity towards the Germans that came readily to Europeans; it proved hard even to rouse American anger about Hitler’s reported persecution of the Jews. Combat historian Forrest Pogue later observed wonderingly of Bradley’s army in France: “The men have no great interest in the war. You can’t work them up unless the Germans hit some of their friends.” A behaviourist noted for his work with rats, Professor Norman Maier of Michigan University, suggested that Americans could be more effectively galvanised into a fighting mood by cutting off their gasoline, tyres and civil liberties than by appealing to their ideals. This was an overly cynical view, for some people displayed real patriotism, and on the battlefield many Americans would display much courage. But it was true that the remoteness of the United States from the fighting fronts, and its security from direct attack or even serious hardship, militated against the passion that moved civilians of nations suffering occupation or bombardment.

After Pearl Harbor, America’s political and military leaders knew that they, like the British, must suffer defeats and humiliations before forces could be mobilised to roll back the advancing Japanese. There was much ignorance and innocence about the enemy, even among those who would have to fight them. “Suddenly we realized that nobody knew anything about the Japs,” said carrier pilot Fred Mears. “We had never heard of a Zero then. What was the caliber of Jap planes and airmen? What was the strength of the Japanese Navy? What kind of battles would be fought and where? We were woefully unprepared.” Many Americans had acknowledged for months the logic of their nation’s belligerence. Yet it is characteristic of all conflicts that until enemies begin to shoot, ships to sink and loved ones—or at least comrades—to die, even professional warriors often lack urgency and ruthlessness. “It was amazing how long it took to get the hang of it and to react instantly in the right way,” an American sailor, Alvin Kiernan, observed. “War, we gradually learned, is a state of mind before it can be anything else.” Ernie Pyle wrote: “Apparently it takes a country like America about two years to become wholly at war. We had to go through that transition period of letting loose of life as it was, and then live the new war life so long that it finally became the normal life to us.”

All this makes it remarkable that, within a mere seven months of Pearl Harbor, American fleets had gained victories which turned the tide of the Asian war. Germany dominated western Europe for four years, but by autumn 1942 the Japanese perimeter was already beginning to shrink; the speed of the American resurgence in the Pacific reflected the fundamental weakness of the Asian enemy. First, however, came the pain. In the weeks following 7 December 1941, the Japanese seized Guam, Wake, and other U.S. island outposts. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding the defence of the Philippines, rejected his air commander’s plea to strike back during the ten hours which elapsed between news of Pearl Harbor and a devastating Japanese air assault that destroyed almost 80 U.S. aircraft undispersed on the ground.

Next day, MacArthur began to make belated preparations to withdraw his Filipino and American troops to Luzon’s Bataan Peninsula, which alone might be defensible. But it was a huge task to quickly shift supplies there: the general had dismissed proposals to do so before war came,