Pacific War

Pacific War

Even before Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt and the American military chiefs had agreed on a common strategy with Great Britain: Germany, the most powerful and dangerous of the Axis powers, must be defeated first. Only enough military resources would be devoted to the Pacific to hold the Japanese west of the Alaska-Hawaii-Panama defensive line.

The Pacific was a naval war, and little U.S. Naval power was required in the Atlantic. Aside from the U-boats, the Germans posed no threat in the Atlantic waters. Almost the entire British Navy was deployed in the Atlantic, thus, American naval power could be committed to the Pacific war.

From the beginning of the war, rivalry between the Army and the Navy marked the conflict. The inter-service rivalries and great distances prevented a single unified commander from being named. Instead, the Pacific was divided into area commands. General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) and Admiral Chester Nimitz's Pacific Ocean Areas (POA). The POA, in turn, was subdivided into North Pacific, Central Pacific, and South Pacific commands. Admiral Nimitz retained commander of the Central Pacific. General MacArthur became Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP) in the last days of the war.

Fighting in the Pacific was unlike fighting in Europe. The Pacific was a seemingly endless series of amphibious landings and island-hopping campaigns where naval power, air power, and shipping were of primary importance. The soldiers and marines who assaulted the countless beaches in the Pacific war was brutal and deadly. Japanese defenders always dug in, reinforced their bunkers with coconut logs, and fought until they were killed. They almost never surrendered.

Japan, largely lacking of natural resources to feed its industries, looked overseas for supplies of strategic materials such as ore and petroleum. Before 1939, the U.S. was Japan's major supplier. But President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull shut off American supplies in an effort to force the Japanese to end hostilities against China. The Japanese had long sought the resource-rich British and Dutch colonies of Southeast Asia, and as the U.S. trade embargo tightened, the Japanese increasingly looked southward for raw material and strategic resources.

Only the U.S. stood in Japan's path. The U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was the only force capable of challenging Japan's navy, and American bases in the Philippines could threaten lines of communications between the Japanese home islands and the East Indies. Every oil tanker heading for Japan would have to pass by American-held Luzon.

From these needs and constraints, Japan's war plans emerged. First, its navy would neutralize the American fleet with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan would also seize American's Central Pacific bases at Guam and Wake Islands. and invade the Philippines. With American naval power crippled, Japan's military would be free to seize Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies in a series of rapid amphibious operations. Japan would the establish a defensive ring around its newly conquered empire by fortifying islands in the south and central Pacific. Japan's leaders were convinced the Americans, once involved in the European war, would be willing to negotiate peace in the Pacific.

To Block Japanese ambitions, the U.S. Army had scant resources. Two small forces, the garrison in the Territory of Hawaii and General Douglas MacArthur's command in the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Both were only peacetime organizations. Yet, these forces would face overwhelming odds in the event of war. The thousands of islands that comprised the Philippines lay 8,000 miles from the American west coast, but only 200 miles from Japanese held Formosa. To defend them, Gen. MacArthur had the Philippine Scouts. He could call on additional thousands of Philippine militia, but they were untrained and ill equipped. Lt. General Walter C. Short's Hawaiian command held 43,000 Army troops, including tow infantry divisions, coast artillery, air corps and Support troops. The US had equivalent of three divisions in the Pacific to stand in the path of the Imperial Japanese Army.

American strategists had developed two plans to counter possible Japanese aggress-the Navy to fight across the central pacific for battle with the Japanese fleet. The Army saw no way to save the Philippines and favored a strategic defense along an Alaska-Hawaii-Panama line. Seaman William Jewe was in the U.S. Coast Guard manning these defensive perimeter.

All of the efforts proved to be too little, too late. The Japanese worked to perfection. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese paralyzed the Pacific Fleet in its attack on Pearl Harbor. In the Philippines, Japanese fliers destroyed most of General MacArthur’s Japanese air force on the ground. Japanese forces took Burma, Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies in rapid succession. By March 1942, the Japanese had conquered an empire. Only General MacArthur's American-Filipino army still held out on the main island of Luzon.

A Japanese army landed in northern Luzon on 22 December 1941 and began to push southward toward Manila. Al first General MacArthur was inclined to meet the Japanese on the beaches, but he had no air force and the U.S. Navy's tiny Asiatic fleet was in no position to challenge Japan at sea. The U.S. regulars and Philippine Scouts were excellent

troops but were outnumbered and without air support. General MacArthur decided to withdraw to the Bataan peninsula. There he could pursue a strategy of defense and delay, shortening his line and using the mountainous, jungle-covered terrain to his advantage. Perhaps he could even hold out long enough for a relief force to be mounted in the U.S.

But too many people were crowded into Bataan, with too little food and ammunition. By March it was clear that help from the U.S. was not coming. Nevertheless, the American-Filipino force, wracked by dysentery and malaria, continued to fight. In March 1941, President Roosevelt ordered General MacArthur to escape to Australia. He left his command to Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright and to Major General Edward King, who on 9 April was forced to surrender the exhausted and starving Bataan force. General Wainwright continued to resist on the small fortified island of Corregidor in Manila Bay until 6 May under constant Japanese artillery and air bombardment. The Japanese troops stormed ashore on the island, General Wainwright agreed to surrender Corregidor and all other troops on the island. By 9 May 1942, the battle for the Philippines had ended, though many Americans and Filipinos took to the hills and continued a guerrilla war against the Japanese.

The courageous defense of Bataan had ended. Marching them toward camps in northern Luzon, the Japanese denied food and water to the sick and starving men. When the weakest began to struggle, guards shot or bayoneted them and threw the bodies on the side of the road. Japanese guards may have killed 600 Americans and 10,000 Filipino prisoners. News of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had outraged the American people, but news of the "Bataan Death March" filled them with bitter hatred.

By May 1942, the Japanese had succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. If their forces could move into the Solomon Islands and the southern coast of New Guinea, they could threaten Australia and cut the American line of communications to MacArthur's base there. If they could occupy Midway Island, only 1,000 miles from Honolulu, they could force the American fleet to pull back to the west coast..

Japanese overconfidence lay the seeds of Japan's first major defeat. Japan's fortunes turned sour in mid-1942. Their uninterrupted string of victories ended with history's first great carrier battles.

(To be continued)

(back)