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By Root 984 0

and these were still fighting against other Japanese forces. Homma, however, was preoccupied with the island of Corregidor, a rock square in the middle of the mouth of Manila Bay. He bombarded and bombed it for a month, by which time the weakened defenders were reduced to a state of complete collapse, hardly aware that they were by three months and a good thousand miles the last defenders of the great colonial empires. On the night of the 5th-6th of May, a Japanese assault battalion crossed from Bataan and got ashore. The opposition was weak and sporadic, the defenders were utterly worn down. On the afternoon of the 6th, MacArthur’s successor, General Wainwright, opened surrender negotiations. This time Homma was not to be cheated of his prize; he insisted Wainwright surrender all the troops in the Philippines. Under the threat of reprisals Wainwright finally did so, and after agonizing arguments and shifts, the Americans and Filipinos everywhere in the islands laid down their arms.

Many of the Filipinos took off their uniforms and went home; many of the Americans went into the jungles as guerrillas, but the majority, led by Wainwright, went into prison camps, where they remained for the rest of the war. Homma went home in disgrace, for having taken so long to win his campaign. Still, the victory, though belated, was complete. The Japanese were masters all the way to Australia and the islands of the southern Pacific. Now they had what they wanted; now in leisure they could prepare their defensive perimeter. It was the slack high tide of empire.

Yamamoto had guaranteed six months of victory; his masters believed they were going to get eighteen months’ grace. He was right and they were wrong.

In the United States, after the first initial shock, there was an explosion of fury. The Americans might have been extremely dubious about participation in the war, but all that doubt was swept away by Pearl Harbor; if ever a nation leapt to arms, it was the United States in December of 1941. That was little help to the hollow garrisons of the western Pacific, but it seems to be the fate of regular soldiers and sailors to buy time for their carefree civilian masters. While American soldiers in the Philippines and sailors in the Java Sea bought that time, the mightiest—and the luckiest—nation in the world flung itself into the war effort with frantic energy.

The apparently unending stream of Japanese victories only inflamed the American public; the tide must turn. But until it did, there was an increasing public clamor for offensive action. The clamor coincided with the desires of the military leadership; engraved on every soldier’s heart was a cardinal principle of war: it is the offensive which brings victory. Defense only staves off defeat.

The most important thing for the moment was to secure the supply route to Australia. As the Japanese lapped eastward past the Indies and New Guinea and threatened to spill down into the Solomons and the Coral Sea, strategic attention had to go to this area. To the American public, however, strategic maneuvering east of Australia was not very exciting. They wanted dramatic action. The military Chiefs of Staff for once agreed with them and decided that a surprise move would throw the enemy off stride. It could be no more than a pinprick, but it might develop into something. They agreed to bomb Tokyo.

On the morning of April 18, sixteen twin-engined B-25 bombers groaned off the heaving deck of the carrier Hornet. Sighted by a Japanese picket ship, they had to go 150 miles farther than planned. The extra distance meant they would be unable to return to the carrier and would have to fly to the Asian mainland. Led by Colonel James Doolittle, thirteen of the planes roared over Tokyo; the others hit Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. They carried only four bombs apiece; they did almost no damage. Swooping over their targets, they were cheered by civilians who thought they were Japanese planes. Within seconds they were gone, on to China or Russia, where the planes crashed, out of fuel. The few fliers captured