Penguin History of the United States of America (106 page)

These developments created enormous difficulties for America. She might, in theory, have acquiesced in the Japanese adventure and traded with the new empire until it foundered. But this would have been to conspire with an aggressor nation against the people of China; would have been to frankly condone imperialism; would have led to a quarrel with Japan’s rivals and America’s friends, the European democracies, which were also, by an unfortunate chance, the only important European imperialists (Portugal did not count, and Germany had lost her colonies after the First World War); and would have brought on a ceaseless storm of protest and denunciation from the American businessmen and missionaries who still hoped to exploit China themselves. Besides, the United States had colonies in the Pacific (the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii) which, thanks to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 – 2, were inadequately defended. Now that Japan was the predominant naval power in the western Pacific she could pick off America’s possessions at any time. The possibility did not make Washington feel any more kindly towards her.

Yet the intense pacifism of the inter-war years stopped America from attempting any resolute and effective preventive action. The Chinese were
helped, but only enough to irritate the Japanese, not enough for victory (for one thing, the Americans were backing the wrong horse, and sent all their aid to the corrupt and lethargic Kuomintang instead of to the communists). When, in December 1937, an American warship, the USS
Panay
, was bombed on the river Yangtse, the United States protested, but no more. Protest became a habit. Then, very late in the day, America began gradually to deny Japan access to the raw materials she needed to carry on her war – as much because the United States needed the materials itself as because they would be used by the Japanese against China, and possibly against the French, Dutch and British Empires. By the summer of 1941 an American embargo was denying Japan oil, iron and rubber.

It was at this point that the cross-purposes of the two countries took a tragic turn. Going somewhat beyond the President’s intentions, American diplomats made it a cardinal point that Japan must cease her war of aggression and would get no supplies until she did; but they offered her no positive inducements to behave. Perhaps there were none to offer. China was an irremovable stumbling-block. The United States could not recognize Japanese hegemony in North China, or the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, or even, it seemed at times, the conquest of Korea (which Japan had ruled since 1905): apart from anything else, any such recognition would have been patently inconsistent with American objections to Hitler’s empire-building. It was too late to adopt a policy of free trade, admitting Japanese exports and sending raw materials in return: the Japanese armed forces would never have accepted it as an adequate reason for getting out of China. The embargo, in short, was the very least the Americans could do to mark their serious displeasure with the Chinese Incident; but by hampering the Japanese in their war it affronted what they defined as one of their most vital interests, a point not properly understood in the State Department.

A similar blindness afflicted the Japanese. They wanted a free hand to get on with their unjust war against China; and for that purpose they laid claim to the supplies from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies which were sustaining British’s battle for survival against Hitler. This was a vital interest of the West, and in common prudence Japan should have respected it (just as, in common prudence, the British should have taken greater pains either to avert or to resist a Japanese attack). But the wilder elements were in control in Tokyo. Hitler’s assault on Russia meant that for a long time Japan would not need to worry about the intentions of the USSR. Her northern flank secure at last, she could safely plunge southwards. Emperor Hirohito could do no more than voice his doubts; the naval command had swallowed its own; the politicians, tamed by the ever-present threat of assassination by the military, did as they were told; on 16 October General Tojo was summoned to form a new Cabinet. Plans were laid for war with Britain and the United States. The Japanese did not suppose that they could successfully invade America, but they did believe that by swift action they could establish an impregnable defensive zone in the western Pacific, and that crushing
blows in the East would convince the American people that there was nothing to be gained from obstructing Japan any longer. In the utmost secrecy Admiral Yamamoto prepared his strike force, believing, as he did, that ‘we will have no hope of winning unless the US fleet in Hawaiian waters is destroyed’.

Washington expected an attack of some kind. Throughout 1941 negotiations had been proceeding, but neither side made offers which the other felt able to accept. Roosevelt, desperately anxious to concentrate on the European and Atlantic war, which would be even harder to win if war broke out in the Pacific, did his utmost to postpone a final breach, in the hope that if he delayed long enough the Japanese might decide to stay at peace after all; and he was reluctant to fire the first shot in any theatre. Japan was nearly as hesitant. On the Emperor’s orders Tojo made a last peace offer, for militarism, despotism and fanaticism co-existed in Japanese minds with a powerful interest in Western civilization and an especial fascination with America. After all, it had been Commodore Matthew Perry, USN, who had forced open the sealed islands to Western trade, techniques and ideas. 285,000 Japanese were settled in Hawaii and California. Relations between the two countries had been increasingly close for nearly a hundred years -always excepting the vital realm of trade; and even there Japan had taken nearly two billion dollars worth of American exports during the thirties. Respect for American strength was almost equal to Japanese readiness to defy it if necessary. The US government found the Japanese offers of immediate evacuation of Indo-China and eventual withdrawal from China inadequate, for they depended on the resumption of American exports of strategic goods to Japan and the abandonment of the Philippines: in effect, acceptance of Japanese hegemony in the Far East. Hull rejected them contemptuously and put forward his own counter-proposals, which Japan could not and was not expected to accept.

So war was more or less inevitable, and on 7 December 1941, thanks to the brilliance of their cryptographers in cracking Axis codes, the Americans were able to decipher and read the Japanese government’s latest orders to its envoys in Washington before the envoys themselves could do so. These orders showed that something was going to happen immediately. All the signs were that the Japanese were preparing an attack to the south; the army and navy staff, unconvinced by General MacArthur’s belief that he could successfully defend his command, the Philippines, thought that the enemy would strike first there; accordingly the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, flashed a warning to MacArthur. But as a matter of routine, the warning, that the Japanese were planning some sort of surprise attack at 1 p.m., Washington time, was also sent to other American forces, such as the ships of the Pacific Fleet in their base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

A farcical series of accidents now supervened. December the seventh was a Sunday, when (as the Japanese well knew) by long tradition the
American services in peacetime took life easily, so much so that their telegraphic network closed down for the day and even General Marshall could not reactivate it in time. The warning could not be telephoned, as that might reveal to the Japanese that their code had been broken. In the circumstances it was thought best to send the message by the commercial network, Western Union. Unfortunately, although Marshall’s telegram reached Honolulu with twenty-seven minutes to spare, the only means of getting it to naval headquarters was by entrusting it to a messenger boy on a bicycle. He did not prove speedy enough.

Other warnings had been ignored or misinterpreted. A Japanese midget submarine had been detected and sunk near the entrance to Pearl Harbor at quarter to seven that morning; nobody realized what she portended. Temporary radar stations had been installed at the base, and two keen young soldiers were practising on one of them. At two minutes past seven they detected aircraft approaching from the north and reported accordingly to their superior officer; unfortunately he assumed that they were American planes and did nothing (unless the legend is true that he arrested the soldiers for playing with radar sets out of hours). Everyone else at Pearl Harbor was in a weekend mood. Edgar Rice Burroughs (the creator of Tarzan), who had for some time been worried about the general lack of preparedness, was taking the air outside his house on a height in Honolulu from which he could see the tranquil ships of the Pacific fleet drawn up in shining rows. At 7.55 he was pleased to note the beginning of what he took to be a spectacularly realistic battle practice.

For Yamamoto had successfully gathered his forces to a point in the empty, un-isled seas of the north Pacific, 275 miles or so from Pearl Harbor. Torpedo bombers, dive bombers, high-level bombers, fighters – 360 planes in all – left the decks of his carriers, stormed down over Oahu and for nearly two hours hammered the arrogant Anglo-Saxons. Three battleships were sunk
(West Virginia, Arizona, California)
, one capsized
(Oklahoma)
, others were severely damaged, and many smaller craft were either damaged or sunk; 120 planes were destroyed;
³
2,403 Americans (mostly sailors) were killed. The Japanese lost only twenty-nine planes and three midget submarines. At a quarter to three the messenger boy, who had sensibly kept out of the way during the battle, delivered his telegram. At 3.45 p.m., six hours after the Japanese force had withdrawn, the general commanding in Oahu ordered a blackout.

President Roosevelt called it all ‘a day that will live in infamy’, and so it is remembered. It was also one of history’s most spectacular misjudgements. In the first place, the Japanese hit the wrong targets. Most of the ships could be and were made serviceable again; had the bombers attacked the oil
tanks and other onshore facilities, the effect of their raid might have been felt much longer. Second, although the aircraft carrier was already known to be the key to naval success in modern warfare, Yamamoto had attacked Pearl Harbor and a moment when all the carriers of the Pacific fleet were absent. Third, the fleet posed no immediate threat to Japan: it could have done nothing to impede her simultaneous swoop upon the Philippines, Singapore and the East Indies, and might as well have been left alone, if only to save supplies. Fourth and finally, nothing, not even the attack on Fort Sumter, has ever aroused the American people to wrath like this episode. The isolationism and pacifism of so many, the hesitations of so many more, were swept aside by this unprovoked attack of an aggressor power (for the Americans stuck stubbornly to the view that they had done nothing wrong in opposing Japanese incursions into Manchuria and China). ‘Lick the hell out of them,’ advised one isolationist Senator. He spoke for the country. America First dissolved overnight. It became the settled purpose of the mightiest nation in the world to destroy the Japanese Empire root, trunk, branch and twig. Three days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler, after some last-minute hesitation, honoured his promise to his ally by declaring war on the United States, thus clearing the last obstacle from Roosevelt’s way. ‘We are going to win,’ said the President in a Fireside Chat, ‘and we are going to win the peace that follows.’ The new crusade to make the world safe for democracy could now officially be launched.

To us it is known as the Second World War. It is such a huge and familiar subject that a certain amount of omission is desirable and possible. For the purposes of this history it is necessary only to isolate the significance of the war for the American people, in terms of their experiences, achievements and hopes.

The war achieved what the New Deal had so falteringly attempted. The need to produce ships, planes, tanks, guns, bullets and bombs did what the need to rescue the unemployed could not. Roosevelt announced that the time for ‘Doctor New Deal’ was over; now it was the time for ‘Doctor Win-the-War’; but the distinction was largely false. For the war brought its own new deal – a deal based on very different values and calculations from the peacetime one, but perhaps all the more effective for that. The democratic, capitalist nation of abundance suddenly began to show what it could do when put to it, and surprised even itself.

It was another period of migration. In four years twenty million Americans moved house as the needs of the wartime economy dictated; twelve million more left home to join the armed forces. Of all the states and regions California was the greatest gainer, for it was there that the shipbuilding and aerospace industries expanded most rapidly, and many of the millions who passed through the Golden State on their way to the Pacific war liked the climate so much that they promised themselves to return for good when the war was over. Perhaps this sort of alteration in the outlook of individual
Americans was the most important of the immediate social consequences of the war. The men in uniform who served overseas had a doubly revolutionary experience, especially if they saw action; but even the stay-at-homes did not stay at home. The United States became a nation of transients again; the structure of the economy became fluid, obeying new forces which would soon transform it almost out of recognition (especially when, after victory, freedom of consumer choice was restored and the production of automobiles was resumed); soon social, political and cultural patterns would alter in response.

The war replaced the Depression with a boom to dwarf the twenties. Like all booms it was unevenly experienced: thirty-five states actually lost population during the war, as their inhabitants went off, either to join the armed forces or to find war-work; half a million small businesses failed, because they could not get essential supplies, which were mopped up by the war industries; the demand for farm produce soared, but emigration from rural areas created a severe labour shortage which led to an amendment of the Selective Service Act: farm workers were no longer to be liable to conscription while they stayed on the farm. The production of bricks slumped, reflecting the fact that wartime housing, factory and office-building used materials that could be produced more cheaply and be more quickly erected. But the production of raw steel increased by roughly 20 per cent between 1940 and 1945; that of rayon and acetate yarn by 55 per cent; that of fuel oils by 44 per cent; that of wheat flour by 27 per cent. Only 560 locomotives were manufactured in 1940; in 1945, 3,213 were – the largest number since 1923. Prices went up by 28 per cent in the same period, which was good news for manufacturers; but it was not particularly bad news for the workers, whose average annual earnings increased, in real terms, by 40 per cent.